Software to avoid the software people - <AUTHOR> http://samaltman.posthaven.com/software-to-avoid-the-software-people

<comment><USER2> This is huge. I have worked at startups where employees feels animosity towards the dev team. "What do they even do?" people ask, given we roll in at 11am and don't ever seem to fix any of the things that are broken for them.

Of course we are always saying "no" to every passing request - last thing we need is scope creep and to take on more tasks than we can reasonably accomplish. Of course _we_ think we're busy, and we are, but we can't satisfy everyone. There is tons of appeal in just buying some software to "get the job done."

And we are so averse to buying third-party Enterprise Software Packages because they're, uh, bad, or something. Expensive. They integrate with Excel, and we _hate_ Excel. We can do the same thing ourselves, obviously, but more quickly. Who needs an accounting software anyway, how hard could it be?

Often they are bad. Netsuite integration is awful, Salesforce integration is awful, and even startups who should theoretically have a superior product end up being awful (for example, last I checked, OrderGroove - which claims to take the pain out of subscription services - is not PCI even compliant, so they can't meaningfully handle billing issues.)

On the one hand, I want to applaud this - if you need something done, go buy something to accomplish the task and don't worry about your persnickety developers.

On the other hand, devs are often the ones who have to maintain and integrate with a half-baked piece of software and are never consulted to evaluate how viable that software will be to solve the problem at hand. But this trend makes me nervous, as an in-house dev, and I think that is a good thing.

<comment><USER3> > _I have worked at startups where employees feels animosity towards the dev > team. "What do they even do?" people ask, given we roll in at 11am and don't > ever seem to fix any of the things that are broken for them._

This is fairly common, although I would extend it to include all technical departments (IT / Engineering). Ironically, I've also witnessed engineering beefing with IT & Helpdesk for this very reason.

> _Of course we are always saying "no" to every passing request_

All too often internal technical departments are viewed, rightly or wrongly, as units whose sole function is introducing speed bumps. I also tend to agree that the implications are potentially non trivial.

<comment><USER4> While my reply may only tangentially be related to TFA, your last sentence reminds me of the Manager / Career Tools podcast episode addressing this very issue: [http://www.manager-tools.com/2012/02/internal-support- roles-...](http://www.manager-tools.com/2012/02/internal-support-roles-and- responsibilities-part-1-0)

From the podcast episode's description:

 _The relationship between internal support providers and their customers has to be one of the most frustrating in the corporate world. The provider NEEDS x and y and z before he can solve the customer's problem. The customer just wants a thing, that does 'you know', and just works. Both are hampered by corporate policies and processes.

There are ways of making this relationship go more smoothly. But as an internal support provider you will need to change your perspective in order to make this work. You might find this hard to hear, to take and to make the changes we recommend. We're dedicating this cast to the Atlanta January 2012 conference attendees who found it hard to hear, but thanked us for telling them anyway. We hope you'll feel the same way._

<comment><USER5> I'm sorry, but by the end of that podcast I was fully willing to go get myself a life sentence for doing something horrible to the presenters. They made two main points:

1\. You, as a member of internal IT, are subservient to marketing. Suck their dicks! "You're collaborating, but make no mistake, you're not a partner." (Also, the CEO will "piss on" the CIO whenever he gets a chance.)

2\. Internal software development must obviously be "fungible", because it's a thing businesses do, and all the _other_ things that businesses do are. Since every other department spends marginal amounts of ingenuity (and lots of bureaucracy) to do reliable, repeatable things, and managers can "crack the whip" to remove some of the slack+busywork+bureaucracy from their processes, then software engineering (a process of spending one's entire budget of ingenuity each day to create things that have never existed, and for which there is no precedent) must obviously be amenable to the same demands to "work smarter, not harder." _And he says this while namedropping the Mythical Man Month._

I don't know about you, but the only thing I want to do in relation to these sorts of companies, is to out-compete them and obviate their markets in the long run, by keeping all _my_ employees healthy and sane instead of "pushing" them to death for no marginal gains. This sort of attitude is precisely why "developing for the Enterprise" doesn't catch on as a trend among startups, no matter how profitable it is.

\---

P.S.: They also _begin_ to make the [sensible!] point that you should probably ask people "what do you need" instead of saying "send me your requirements" and then stonewalling, but it doesn't quite get there. That's obviously the reason you linked it, but it falls flat.

Here, I'll make the point they should have made, and I'll do it in one paragraph:

> Since your whole training in programming is basically a course in "teasing > out the specifics of what people want in concrete machine-encodable > business-domain terms", the fastest way to get those requirements out of > people (who have not been trained in that) is to present yourself as a REPL, > not a compiler. Imagine if you had to throw code over a wall and wait a few > days to see it get rejected with an obscure compiler error (basically, > imagine the 1970s.) Now imagine sitting down with the computer and just > trying things and seeing what works. For the sake of _everyone's_ sanity, > you want to present yourself as the second kind of system. Otherwise, "buy" > becomes a much more pleasant notion than "build", and as a CIO that should > make you feel like you're not doing your job.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your feedback. The podcast overall is definitely non-maker-centric and I guess it's been a while since I listened to both of the episodes, (parts 1 and 2 that is) or I would have added that it gets better in the second part. Perhaps you didn't have a chance to listen to part 2? ([http://www.manager- tools.com/2012/02/internal-support-roles-...](http://www.manager- tools.com/2012/02/internal-support-roles-and-responsibilities-part-2-0))

I would also agree with your summary, and add to it the presenters' proposition that improving your relationships with others in the organization will go a long way toward helping both them and you produce better results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In large organizations, the shear overhead that is IT creates these barriers. Developer tasks are often slated with plans one to three years long. IT fears ad-hoc, one-off, slapped together, or anything like it because it becomes a maintenance problem and takes special skills.

For example, in our organization, IT prohibits the use of Access to build applications, because they end up being a versioning nightmare with copies all over the place, and no concept of "source code".

End users end up building applications in Access because they can, and it will take them two weeks to get a prototype. If they ask IT to do it, they'll need a departmental budget (politics!) and it will take six months to get started (between people who intentionally slow down process in order to look important, and the filled up timeslots of developers). Then, it will be in the standard IT development environment (for us, .NET and MS SQL) which means it is opaque to the customer, and every change they ask must go through IT, and gets bogged down in IT process.

So they go with Access. Two years later, that employee has moved on, and IT gets a phone call from the customer "We have this mission-critical application that has a bug and we need you to fix it!" and then the real pain starts.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is new? I've been doing this for years. Its called _find the origin of the pain_. You don't sell software to the IT team. You sell it to however needs it. Pretty obvious. Just be nice to the IT team because they will be the ones calling you when shit hits the fan. I like to send them small gifts in the form of specialty food. Like cakes, and stuff like that. They always appreciate it. Just don't send them pens...

</comment><comment><USER8> Web-based SaaS has made it much easier for corporate buyers to circumvent internal IT altogether.

The shift in focus (if that is actually the case) probably has more to do with wider acceptance and saturation of the tech-to-tech market.

How far this trend will go? Until internal IT for most companies except those with very specialized needs has been reduced to maintaining desktops and a network.

Edit: of course those desktops also risk getting replaced by BYOD...

</comment><comment><USER9> Can you sell me some software that will let me bypass my IT department that's on "our" (I feel we have a relationship now) second ticket to fix a recurring bluescreen because they insist on trying to troubleshoot it and fix it (see: _second_ ticket) rather than just issuing a new laptop and troubleshooting it on their own time?

</comment><comment><USER10> Couldn't agree more! Consumerization of IT is part of the reason I started <https://starthq.com>. I feel that there's a really big opportunity at the intersection of internal IT, employees and third party developers.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think he's missed the point of SaaS

</comment><comment><USER12> 14 lines is an article now?

<comment><USER9> There should be more like that. Get in, say it, get out, STFU.</comment></comment>


KeyMe a Marriage of Google SAML with AWS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wheniwork/keyme <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this so that people don't need to have accounts made in the AWS IAM Console to be able to access services. This uses assume_role_with_saml so theres currently only a 1 hour time limit for the credentials. I'm working with AWS to see how we can get this bumped up to at least 6 hours and away to invalidate them from the AWS console.</comment>


Ask HN Freelancers: Upfront payments - <AUTHOR>

A prospective client says that it is against their company policy to pay up front for anything and that they "always pay on time". Given that they haven't been particularly responsive in our email back and forths, does this strike any of the more experienced freelancers out there as a red light? What are your policies for upfront payments on hourly contracts? If you require them, what kind of percentage? <comment><USER2> I usually work solely on fixed-price contracts. Whether or not I need payment up front depends solely on the company, if they have a track record of hiring and paying freelancers or if I have done work for them before I don't really mind about the upfront payments (unless I'm short on cash). For a new company I would ask for 50% up front or on a project that's larger 25%, the largest projects would be 10% up front. If companies don't like the pay up front and you aren't certain about them, the best way to go would be to set certain milestones, so that you get paid for sections of the work you complete. You get to see that they will pay, and they get to see that you are doing the work to schedule and a high standard - everyone is happy.</comment>


California Proposes Rules For Autonomous Cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1073910_california-proposes-rules-for-autonomous-cars <comment><USER2> > _"The vast majority of accidents are due to human error."_

Obviously, as there is very little alternative to human error right now. But there's no reason to believe that to be the case when you introduce autonomous vehicles. There's a whole new variable.

Still, a required step for progress.

<comment><USER3> Manufacturing defects, bad roads, poor signage - Government has optimized these pretty well.

<comment><USER4> Weather conditions as well. Black ice is one hell of a thing.

<comment><USER5> An interesting note from Sebastian Thrun--I think in the second office hours of his CS373 course--Google's self driving car can't currently drive in snow because it covers up the road, and the sensors can't see the lines on the road (but they can adjust for the rain).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the proposed text, for anyone who's interested: [http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_1251-1300/sb_129...](http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_1251-1300/sb_1298_bill_20120223_introduced.pdf)

Edit: As I read it, this is pretty straight forward, doing the following things:

\- Makes it explicitly legal to operate an autonomous car on public roads, if your car has met a safety standard yet to be devised.

\- Authorizes the establishment of safety standards for autonomous vehicles by the California Highway Patrol.

\- Until these standards are devised, it does not prohibit autonomous cars from operating on CA public roads.

"Autonomous Cars" in this case are defined fairly narrowly: a car capable of driving "without active control and continuous monitoring of a human operator".

</comment><comment><USER7> Prediction: at some point, there will be an accident involving an autonomous car. The event data recorder (aka the "black box") will indicate that the human operator took control of the vehicle before the accident occurred. The driver/passenger, however, will claim this was not true, and a lawsuit will commence where there will be claims that the EDR was hacked or that the car manufacturer/software provider modified the EDR to falsely blame the human in the event of an accident.

<comment><USER8> More generally, how can we evaluate an autonomous car's effectiveness in avoiding an accident, if there is always a human sitting in the driver's seat?

I think most drivers would instinctively take control of the car if they felt in danger, whether or not it's statistically in their interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would really love this if it creates a minimally-invasive legal framework to enable innovation and curb nonsense like pedestrians jumping in front of cars and trying to sue the manufacturer when they get hit (hopefully while providing a mechanism where manufacturers can indemnify their vehicles without too much liability danger in such cases).

On the other hand, I have to say that I don't exactly have the greatest level of faith in the California Assembly based on past performance. Here's hoping they buck the trend and establish a framework to encourage rather than inhibit innovation.

<comment><USER10> Have cameras on the car. Have them record into a 120 second buffer. When the car detects a crash write the buffer to disk with a timestamp.

<comment><USER11> Ugh, as a driver I'd prefer not to have all my actions recorded regardless of whether it's beneficial to me. This reeks of invasion of my privacy and possibly opens me up to prosecution if the camera were subpoenaed in a criminal proceeding for something unrelated to the car's function. Same reason I don't leave a GPS trail everywhere by choice.

<comment><USER10> In the UK we have automatic number plate recognition and a nationwide network of CCTV. Some places can recognise a stolen car and dispatch police within 60 seconds. (Notably the City of Westminster and Heathrow airport.)

> _I'd prefer not to have all my actions recorded_

Fair enough, but it's too late for some countries.

<comment><USER4> I mean no offence (I fully recognize that the UK is a sovereign state with rules that largely satisfy it's own culture and people), but I feel that if we universalize this idea ( _"Fair enough, but it's too late for some countries."_ ) the result will be nothing more than a race to the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know if Nevada or California have discussed operating an autonomous vehicle while intoxicated yet?

<comment><USER13> :-) The SEO kings are going to be waaaaayyy out in front on those terms now. Shall we start the domain rush?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are there companies working on this besides Google?

<comment> k-mcgrady Car companies. Google certainly wasn't the first to be working on self-driving cars, they just got a lot of time in the tech press for it. The big car companies have been working on it for years. I can't find any details but I remember hearing about some companies working on it about 8-10 years ago. More recently BMW have been working on it: [http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1072117_on-the-road- with-...](http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1072117_on-the-road-with-bmws- self-driving-car-video)

<comment><USER15> There is a difference in complexity though. Most systems developed by the Automotive companies are just a step above highway lane keeping, and adaptive cruse control. Google's system handles city roads with pedestrians and more complex traffic patterns.

There is a cost to that of course, Google's system uses $100k of sensors, and isn't well integrated into the body of a car. This means it's father off from being seen a in a production car. I could see it being sold as an aftermarket add on to specific cars, maybe even only to business customers, who then want to sell the service and automated car can provide.

<comment> k-mcgrady You're right there is a difference. Google has better software. The car companies have better cars. If Google does continue to push the technology I hope they license it. I dread to think what an actual Google car would be like. It's an interesting market that's been progressing for years. It seems now that we are very close to seeing it in production models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there any article/video (I didn't investigate) showing multiple autonomous cars interacting ? I'd be curious to see if there's any behavioral resonance leading to epic havoc.

<comment><USER17> DARPA Urban Challenge (2007): [http://www.google.com/search?tbm=vid&q=darpa+urban+chall...](http://www.google.com/search?tbm=vid&q=darpa+urban+challenge)

Several teams competed, entering driverless cars which interacted with each other and some vehicles operated by real people on a closed course. Carnegie Mellon's Boss car completed all the DARPA conditions and won the grand prize.

<comment><USER16> Thanks a lot. I wish there was a higher density of cars. Also different teams => different systems.. that might introduce good jitter to avoid systemic locks. Anyhow it feels pretty safe.. can't wait to see it becomes standard.

<comment><USER15> One issue that I haven't seen much talked about is the is system wide control instabilities if everything is automated, as you have alluded to. I also don't know if anyone is doing any work in preventing cross talk and interference when you have several dozen vehicle all with similar lasers and radars in close proximity. If you operate two of the popular Velodyne lasers near each other, used on the Google vehicles, you get a good amount of noise on both sensors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Excellent. The sooner we get the laws into place, the sooner autonomous cars become a reality. Does anyone know if California's laws are modeled after Nevada's?

<comment><USER6> Looking at [http://www.leg.state.nv.us/register/2011Register/R084-11I.pd...](http://www.leg.state.nv.us/register/2011Register/R084-11I.pdf), it looks like Nevada decided to define a class of license (G) for operation of autonomous vehicles. The CA legislation just makes operating an autonomous car legal if it meets certain safety and performance criteria, which it doesn't define (instead, asks the CHP to come up with these rules). The way this bill is drafted, it looks to me like CA would be much less restrictive of autonomous car operation than Nevada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Has anyone written or thought deeply about all the ways that self-driving cars could be tricked or hacked into causing accidents, kidnapping passengers, driving off cliffs, running people over, or otherwise creating havoc? Seems like it was just a couple years ago that Toyota was recalling cars over a "sudden acceleration" problem.

A system like this is only going to be as good as the data coming to the car, and given the knowledge that all cars will react a certain way to a certain stimulus, it's a lot easier to design a low-tech hack that would kill a lot of people. Here's one that comes to mind:

Given an two-lane road with a narrow shoulder and an embankment, place a small boulder on the right side of each lane. A human being will either swerve off the embankment or rip their transmission out on the rock. What's a bot going to do?

<comment><USER20> Or you could fill a truck up with diesel and fertilizer and blow it up. This technology is far more likely to reduce deaths associated with cars than increase.

Go back to the beginning of the 20th century and think how much damage could be caused by creating a nationwide electric grid. People could electrocute people at will. Personally, I'm kind of glad we went ahead with it.

<comment><USER19> [EDIT] Again, I really don't understand why I'd be downvoted for asking a legitimate question like this. It's rather disconcerting. While it's great to think about a future in which this technology is safe and widely available, it seems to me I'm being attacked for simply asking basic security questions that I would ask about any large system that was going through trials prior to mass rollout. And rather than hearing any specific answers, I'm just being attacked and voted down. I think anyone who's spent time in IT would probably ask these things first before they deployed a new system in their company office, so I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them about about a potentially game- changing social innovation.[/EDIT]

That's true. But blowing up a diesel truck is hard to do remotely, and requires someone to actively attack at a specific place and time.

I'm not sure why I got downrated for my post; I'm just asking, doesn't this create a lot of security holes and attack vectors that need to be studied before allowing it? I mean, I haven't heard anything about security, at all. The focus seems to be on a safe driving experience, but where's the white paper on counter-hacking measures? Can you imagine if Google launched Gmail without any kind of plan to mitigate stolen passwords or hijacked accounts? As it is, there are plenty of people who _do_ have their accounts hijacked. Luckily, that doesn't lead to collisions and deaths.

Consider for a moment how many people run Windows and IE, with the latest security updates, who are still vulnerable to zero day exploits. Consider how many don't update their software and get swept up in botnets a few days later. Now imagine each and every compromised PC has physical control over 2-3 tons of rolling aluminum and steel, that can go anywhere on a public highway, with human beings inside it.

An attacker who had taken control over a botnet of compromised autonomous carscould drive swarms of them wherever they wanted by remote control.

Now, rather than downvote me, tell me what security protocols will be in place to prevent the scenarios I've outlined.

<comment><USER21> No network access. The computer that controls the car doesn't need to talk to anything other than the car. That eliminates a slew of attack vectors right there.

<comment><USER19> Is "no network access" going to be part of the legal framework under which the vehicles operate? Presumably they need to download maps from somewhere, along with traffic updates, road hazards, etc. Most new cars have network capabilities as it now stands. So it's unreasonable to assume that they won't have any network access. And as we know, anything with network access can eventually be rooted.

<comment><USER22> My guess is that the basic systems (keep the car from going off-road or colliding, letting people takeover, etc) will run on an real-time barebones OS on a embedded system and will have a very simple and well defined interface to a full machine that runs all the crap like the UI, navigation systems and such.

I wouldn't discount having your car stolen remotely, but hijacking with humans inside is unlikely to work, and so is crashing into things.

<comment><USER23> If it's navigating according to a map that's downloaded from a network, upload a faulty map to it. Then it will go whereever you want it to.

<comment><USER15> These aren't "dumb" cars. For example, Google's have a high fidelity laser range finder that builds dense 360 point clouds 15 times second. If the car is given a bad map which sends it into a build or other cars, the collision avoidance system will recognize that fact before an accident occurs and stop the vehicle.

<comment><USER23> It's a lot more complicated than that. The car can't always stop when the map disagrees with the sensor. There are any number of situations where that's a bad idea.

<comment><USER24> If a cars sensor says there is a wall in front of the car and it goes with the map then some coder some where made a mistake. If the car sensor says there is a cliff in front of the car and it goes with the map some coder some where made a mistake.

replace wall and cliff with obstacle/dangerous environment of your choice and the sentence will always end with some coder some where made a mistake. It's really is as simple as that. sensor wins over map when it comes to avoiding a crash. What possible condition can you come up with that would make it desirable for a car to ignore it's sensors and go with what a map says is supposed to be in front of it?

<comment><USER23> If the car stops every time the map differs from the sensors, then I just give you a nonsensical map and you go nowhere. Or if the map is outdated, which will of course happen.

If sensors say the road turns and you go with the sensors, what happens to the navigation? Eventually they become irreconcilable. The car will completely lose track of where it actually is, having only local (and perhaps some limited amount of historical) sensor data.

The scenarios aren't just limited to "STOP or CRASH", there's a lot of subtle ways things can go wrong.

<comment><USER25> > _If the car stops every time the map differs from the sensors, then I just > give you a nonsensical map and you go nowhere._

..Yeah, as opposed to driving nonsensically? I think I'll take the car that defaults to whatever won't kill everyone around me.

> _Or if the map is outdated, which will of course happen._

Assuming the cars download new maps on a regular basis, I'd consider this situation pretty unlikely on any official road or highway (unless we are to accept that in certain locations every car will consistently stop driving).

However, if this situation were to occur, option one: sync with the latest map data; failing that (network issues, etc.), option two: pull to the side of the road, stop, and enter manual mode.

> _If sensors say the road turns and you go with the sensors, what happens to > the navigation? Eventually they become irreconcilable. The car will > completely lose track of where it actually is, having only local (and > perhaps some limited amount of historical) sensor data._

What do you mean by this? Google Maps and most GPS navigation systems recalculate routes perfectly fine.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which group of people generally make acquisitions at a company? - <AUTHOR>

When you approach a company or they approach you about an acquisition, who at the company is it?
Is it the product department, is it business development/corporate development, is it some executive, is it the tech team?
For the big acquiring companies specifically (like Google, Facebook, and Twitter) who would this be? <comment><USER2> Larger firms (ie. those you want to be acquired by ;]) will have a focused corporate finance team whose sole role is to seek out growth through M&A.

This M&A team does all the number crunching to make sure that they're adding value to the firm when they do deals. M&A also seek out the deals. They may do this directly (i.e. a team of research analysts within M&A) or indirectly (i.e. 'feelers' throughout the firm who have incentives to forward possible deals).

My suggestion is that you identify which firm/s you would offer the biggest value to (i.e. the greatest synergy), and contact their M&A team directly (even if it's a distant deal).

</comment><comment><USER3> Generally at a larger company with a more defined process the people that make acquisitions will be at least a piece of the corporate development team along with a product head.

It seems like a person, or group, inside the company becomes aware of a target and advocates for the acquisition of that target. The product group might then make first contact to explore the opportunity of acquisition (confirming interest) and hand off to the corp dev team to complete the transaction while keeping an eye on the whole thing.</comment>


XMPP works – 1 July 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://xmpp.org/2020/07/newsletter-01-july/ <comment><USER2> XMPP doesn't "work", but on the other hand, the alternatives probably worse:

1\. Don't run your own server? A co-worker once operated a fairly popular "public" XMPP server with a decent number of typically active users, a couple hundred. Some eastern European "darkweb" drug sellers had an account on the server, so their competitors thought it worthwhile to threaten the XMPP operator with very directed violence. If you don't host your own, who is running your XMPP server? What will they do when the government/yourThreatActor threatens them?

2\. If you do (or don't!) run your own server, how do the end users find a halfway decent application on their fancy iPhone 18 Pro++ that supports push notifications? Their Windows 10 desktop? Ubuntu Linux?

3\. If you run your own server, what do you do in the unlikely event of spam?

4\. Crypto? OTR sucks for multi-device, OMEMO isn't extensively supported.

XMPP obviously doesn't work, but I can't suggest anything that's better.

<comment><USER3> When I used it professionally it was always a pain. XMPP was very chatty for mobile. Multi user chat and chat history was a pain to get working. Clustering was also dark magic. This was Ejabberd which was considered the best option at the time.

At the time, it felt like every feature was stuck in beta/RFC mode with very poor cross server compatibility. How is a federated protocol supposed to work like that?

I think XMPP just failed to cater to any audience. The Googles and Facebooks could roll their own and for everyone else it was too cumbersome. It's not as "easy" as running an email server and no one wants to do that either. It wasn't even agile enough to woo small communities with whiz-bang features.

<comment><USER4> I worked on an XMPP client for a while, many years ago, for a proprietary chat system that used ejabberd as a back end. The protocol is/was awful.

On a related note, AOL should've open sourced and federated AIM. Everyone in the late 90's, early 2000's was on it.

<comment><USER5> > Everyone in the late 90's, early 2000's was on it.

Outside the United States, very few people were on it. When I signed up to play some video games with some US friends from a forum, I remember having to Google a valid US address and it's matching ZIP code as it wouldn't even let me sign up without one.

MSN was more popular in western Europe and as I understand it ICQ (eventually federated and shared some tech, but not the same network) was the top early IM in eastern Europe. Can't comment on the rest of the world at that time but I doubt the sign-up form was any more accepting of Korean addresses for example.

<comment><USER6> ICQ was also huge in Italy and, I understand, most of western Europe, at the turn of the millennium. Then MSN took over.

Imagine if the global phone network was balkanized like messaging networks...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What was it about XMPP that made people move to facebook, slack, hangout or other closed systems?

In 2011, at my job everyone used their own favorite account to chat with each other. I'd logged on Empathy with my yahoo mail. My coworkers were on gmail, aol, yahoo, hotmail, facebook, and some I can't even remember. Chatting wasn't a problem. How did it go from being a convenient thing for everyone to everyone should use slack?

<comment><USER8> "How did it go from being a convenient thing for everyone to everyone should use slack?"

Correction. Everyone went to Facebook. Because Facebook was convenient. Now we are all heading to slack (& discord) because XMPP was no longer convenient & the right-wingnuts are the top 10 shares every single day every day on Faceboook so we no longer wanna hang out on it.

<comment><USER9> "right-wingnuts are the top 10 shares every single day every day on Faceboook so we no longer wanna hang out on it"

I'm not sure which Facebook you're using, but I certainly don't see anything shared by 'right-wingnuts' going very far. In fact, it's usually silenced and removed almost immediately.

I actually had to stop using Facebook over the past couple of months because of all the left-wing nut job ideas that seem to have become mainstream like the hundreds of thousands of protesters around the US that spread Covid by not wearing masks and are now trying to blame business owners and Republicans. Science and facts seem to now be a thing of the past.

It's also very difficult to have any actual opinions about any current events, especially of you are not African American and disagree with any of the current narratives the mainstream media is attempting to shove down our throats.

Sure you can have an opinion, but if the wrong person sees it, they will attempt to get you fired from your job and shame people into de-friending you. It's the 2020 Salem witch trials.

<comment><USER8> > I'm not sure which Facebook you're using,

As I said, we're not using it anymore.

Ben Shapiro & BlueLives Matter were 6 of the 10 most reshared pieces of content yesterday & none of the other top 10 are anything but polarizing trashy antagonistic regressives either.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/kevinroose/status/128100072722610...](https://mobile.twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1281000727226101760)

I would be willing to admit, this kind of content does not feature a lot in my personal experience when I did use Facebook. But in general, I'm not inclined to log in & stay logged in, as it doesn't add continuous value. And I don't want to give advertising-dollars to a platform that does, day after day after day, reliably, serve to brainwash America with these reactionary attention- hungry wolves.

I'd point out that the Salem witch trials you raise judged people based on fiction (there are no witches), & killed them. Losing some friends & your job for being a demonstratively terrible awful person does not seem like a fair comparison: there is real guilt, & the consequences seem survivable. I'm not sure that the ability of any one incident to become a lightning rod of attention is ideal, but it felt like being an absolutely terrible person for too long had no consequences: I would like to see more safety nets, more forgiveness, more healing, but there being consequences for actions is an enormous improvement over where we were, and frankly the consequences seem reasonably inline & reasonable in a vast majority of the situations at hand.

I'm sorry that this seems so overwhelming for you. I hope you can find some peace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's never about the protocol, it's about the SLA of the server and UX design of the client.

</comment><comment><USER11> A while ago I tried getting the latest version of Gajim (XMPP client) to run with OMEMO (encryption plugin) on Trisquel. I worked through lots and lots of compilation issues for dependency libraries of Gnome and other stuff that was new to me, but after trying for something like 3 or 4 days, I lost motivation. I also did not want to use the version number-wise much older version of Gajim to be able to use it. Perhaps that was silly of me.

I did run the older version to try Gajim out and to see how one connects to servers and which servers to use and whatever. That worked actually pretty well. I only had to find an OMEMO supporting server in at least superficially trustworthy hands. I really likes the instant feeling of sending messages and being able to log into 2 accounts on different servers and sending myself messages.

I'll have to try it again at some point. I would really like to know a reliable long term server, run by people with a privacy mindset though.

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems like with the right client that IRC could basically do what Discord does today, but without the need for all the bloat.

<comment><USER13> TheLounge is an interesting web client for IRC that's very useable on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> XMPP is a very resilient protocol that has survived the years of neglect and mismanagement by the XSF.

<comment><USER15> As a board member of the XSF for this term and for the first time, I don't really find myself in disagreement. It seems to me the culture of change is almost nonexistent and it's hard or close to impossible to get the XSF to provoke it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> it doesn't really matter if nobody is using it, this is Betamax vs VHS all over

</comment><comment><USER17> One of the first OpenDomain!

</comment><comment><USER18> Can anyone point me to other RSS-able newsletters I should follow? Between This Week In Matrix, Sergey Tihon's F# Weekly, Pine64s updates on the Pinephone, and now this XMPP newsletter (which admittedly I thought was a Johnny-come-lately approach to showing that XMPP was cool like Matrix, see, we've got the newsletter stuff too! - but A: it's clear they have been doing this for a bit and B: I digress), I'm enjoying reading tech 'periodicals' and keeping up with what's new in my favorite technologies.</comment>


What Went Down at WWDC 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/what-went-down-at-wwdc-2019-12a8d59b2497?gi=77a1e6e6a437 <comment><USER2> > No More iTunes

For those of you excited by this, don't be. All they did was split one app into four. It still works the same way.

Yes you can see your device in the finder. But you can't _do anything_ with it other than upgrade the OS and back it up.

Want to put a movie on your iPhone? You'd think you could just drag it from finder. But no, you have to load the AppleTV app, which is just the movies and tv part of iTunes, import it, and then go back to finder to hit sync.

Honestly, the experience was better with iTunes, which was awful.

<comment><USER3> Who still uses the stock iOS app to watch videos? There are a thousand other ways to put video files on your iPhone or iPad and tons of great apps like VLC for iOS, Infuse, etc. that offer many ways of adding video files. I don't fault Apple for not adding new features to the legacy iTunes-iOS media sync system.

<comment><USER4> VLC has really offered outstanding support for transferring content onto the device.

SMB, FTP, Plex servers, all the well known cloud services, even a built in web server so you can connect any web browser to your device's IP address and drag and drop files onto the device.

<comment><USER2> VLC is great and I use it personally. But it's too complicated for my kids and doesn't integrate with the parental control system. And also, millions of people use Apple's apps to consume content and my objection was that they made that process worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I dislike how much focus Apple and other companies put on Memoji's, Emoji's, Bitmoji's, Animoji's and all other shitty, cartoon representations of their users.

<comment> yoz-y Emojis are one of the few reasons why people update their OS. It is a great win for security.

<comment><USER6> I've never thought of this, but wow it seems so true. Whenever a new batch of emojis come out, my friends start sending them which entices me to go update immediately.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps they're onto something here. Clickbait in the service of security? The black hats are already using the darker side of mass Internet behavior. "Secure your computer with this one weird trick!"

<comment><USER8> Do you have an example of this in the wild?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _> Apple doesn't sell this stand with any mount, but for most professionals, they'll already have a VESA mount to use with it._

No: you have to pay $200 (!) for a VESA mount adapter to use your existing VESA mount.

<comment><USER10> My understanding is they had requirements that the screen could be moved from environments and rotated while mounted, so they came up with a custom quick- release magnetic + mechanical connector.

I'd think normal VESA mount holes would have worked fine as an option, especially since there has to be suitable depth with the power socket. However, I'd assume lack of extra holes to be an apple design decision sooner than assume a money grab.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This article will give you a quick rundown of the major releases in this year's WWDC conference, and help you get a sense of what happened — even if you didn't have the time to watch the keynote.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the article. I really like how it was categorized and had a ToC so that I could read only the sections I am interested in (iPadOS and MacOS in my case).

<comment><AUTHOR> That means a lot :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> WWDC in bullet points: [https://github.com/Blackjacx/WWDC](https://github.com/Blackjacx/WWDC)

<comment><USER13> Thanks a lot :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The Apple Watch has become a staple for many, allowing them to be more > active throughout the day, and saving many from life-threatening situations > throughout the years of its existence

Is this a PR piece?

<comment><USER15> The watches have suggested people go to hospital due to arrhythmia, with life- saving results more than once. The new Apple heart beat sensor supposedly allows this (so you won't find the same functionality on Fitbit etc.).

Pity you require an iPhone to even turn them on.

<comment><USER16> The word "years" suggests they aren't just talking about the new arrhythmia feature.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, Apple aren't known for being entirely honest about the scope of their innovations. Suffice the say, that's Apple parlance for "a handful of times the past year."

<comment><USER16> It's likely they saved lives with previous models too. I work at Fitbit (don't speak for Fitbit) and we often see stories of people who say their Fitbit saved their life because it helped them notice some heart condition or other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Platforms State of the Union 2019 had more technical stuff. Here's a good summary of the event/video: [https://blog.solomonvictorino.com/wwdc19-platforms-state- of-...](https://blog.solomonvictorino.com/wwdc19-platforms-state-of-the-union- highlights/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing that resource!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I missed 'Sidecar' \- the thing that'll let you use an ipad as a second screen for a mac.

But I don't understand if it's true second screen, i.e. a native replacement for what the Duet app does, or more like a second screen 'portal' for specific apps that implement that functionality.

<comment><USER19> The ipad shows up just like another monitor to the Mac. You can move your mouse into it and drag windows to and from it. The ipad seems to just be a dumb display (and touch input) when connected. I believe it requires a USB-C connection.

<comment><USER18> Ah, that's great! I use Duet (paid app) for this at the moment but it's disappointingly flaky - it seems to only work sometimes and when it does, you'd better not touch anything unless it resets and stops working again. Worth the setup effort for longer sessions but hardly practical for shorter ones on the go (which let's face it, is the main usecase). Having this native so it 'just works' out the box would be amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So many things missing from this (multi-user support in tvOS, Apple Arcade, new text editing features and mouse support in iPadOS , etc.) and what's there reads like a PR piece.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also new, updating Apple TV and HomePod to support multiple users.

I was kind of expecting to see multiuser support be made available for home iPad users in addition to the existing support for schools, but that still hasn't happened.

Another nice accessibility feature was support for a new vocal user interface on iOS and Mac.

</comment><comment><USER21> When I read the phrase "no pun intended" in an online article, I always wonder why, if they don't intend the pun, they don't just rephrase it?

<comment><USER22> I've never understood why people ever feel the need to point out whether a pun is intended or not. I never see (rhyme intended) for example, so why puns? To me it tends to disrupt the flow of the prose

<comment><USER7> It really means, "I didn't originally intend the pun, but now I'm running with it and proudly announcing it to the world." That phrase would be even more disruptive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > However, this release did not cover the iPad, and is only available for > iPhone—more on that later.

Note that iPod Touch exists.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Shoutout to Heartbeat for featuring this post.

</comment><comment><USER24> Really dislike the hate on Nvidia and the half-truth marketing speak about the "$40,000 display"

<comment><USER25> I actually had to read it twice to get the meaning. I read _" use the best GPU on the planet (not by Nvidia)"_ first as _" well we couldn't get Nvidia so we used the next best thing we could find that wasn't"_

Gave me a chuckle at least.

<comment><USER23> Isn't that what they meant?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A follow on Twitter would be appreciated: [https://twitter.com/vhanagwal](https://twitter.com/vhanagwal)

<comment><USER23> Hacker News doesn't usually take kindly to these kinds of comments, FYI.</comment></comment>


Rare implementation of RC5/RC6 in ShadowBrokers dump connects them to Equation - <AUTHOR> https://securelist.com/blog/incidents/75812/the-equation-giveaway/ <comment><USER2> GNU confirmed as Equation Group: [https://godbolt.org/g/EDvrn2](https://godbolt.org/g/EDvrn2). Wait, MSVC does this too---they're all in cahoots!

        $LL8@f:
        ; Line 4
            mov ecx, DWORD PTR [edx+eax*4-4]
            sub ecx, 1640531527             ; 61c88647H
            mov DWORD PTR [edx+eax*4], ecx
            inc eax
            cmp eax, 44                 ; 0000002cH
            jl  SHORT $LL8@f

Flipping the sign of addends is a common compiler transformation, likely there to optimize for code size in some cases. Unless that code looks weird enough that it _had_ to be coded by hand, that constant switch doesn't mean much of anything.

<comment><USER3> I started writing a reply along the lines of "you may be misinterpreting the authors", but looking more closely I agree that their logic is particularly flimsy here. They explain their reasoning more fully in a 2015 piece, where they concluded that two code bases were distinct because they used different constants:

 _Searching for "0x61C88647 0xB7E15163" on Google results in barely two pages of results, indicating this combination of constants is relatively rare. Most of the hits are on Chinese forums. Searching for the 2-inverse constant "0x9E3779B9 0xB7E15163" results in a whopping 2500 hits. ... This suggests that the EQUATION group and the Regin group are two different entities._

[https://securelist.com/files/2015/02/Equation_group_question...](https://securelist.com/files/2015/02/Equation_group_questions_and_answers.pdf), page 28.

They seem to be totally ignoring the fact that Google is more likely to index text files than binary executables and short lived assembly temp files. If you search on Google, you do indeed find source files with the "0x9E3779B9 0xB7E15163" pair, which makes sense as these are used in the reference implementation: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2040](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2040).

But as you say, if you compile the reference implementation, you are likely to produce an executable which contains the negated form. If you then "decompile" this executable, you get the "rare" pair, where "rare" just means that Google is more likely to index the input source code than compiler generated assembly or the output of 'objdump'.

I think you nailed it --- all the compilers are in cahoots, and the perpetrators can assumed to be using one! But not Clang, which gamely tries to vectorize. What's less clear is whether the authors of the exposé are charlatans or just "logically challenged". Since they are obviously smart enough to be working for the "goto source" for commentary on these issues, I'd be inclined to guess "charlatan".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First of all, can we stop regurgitating the claim that they want 1m BTC? It's an auction, they'll stop when they like the sum, but if they get 1m BTC they will release a _different_ set of files to the public.

Second of all, the Shadow Brokers announcement reads like how a native English speaker thinks a non-native English speaker writes. There's no consistency to the mistakes, they just omit random articles from the text, whatever fits the "Russian accent" stereotype.

<comment><USER5> Yap. Sale offer just reads as too comical, like say if South Park decided to create an Ivan-The-Russian character.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Took a quick look at files:

> TOOLS/Apache/httpd-2.0.52-9.ent.i386.rpm

Heh RHEL4! Nothing points to a 3 letter US govt agency like an outdated RHEL version. Even for 2013 (based on file date) RHEL4 was ancient. RHEL7 beta for example, came out that year.

Also another striking thing about it, there are no swear or l33t-speak words in there. I know if I had to write ASN.1-based SNMP firmware hacks for obscure Juniper switches, that code would be drowning in curse words.

Seeing this kind of stuff is fun too:

         ar rules update filename `/tmp/.b` type ar url http://topsec.com.cn

Also a bit of whimsy perhaps, can't be too serious after all, even at the NSA:

        class ELCAExploit(HTTPSExploit):
          name = "ELIGIBLECANDIDATE"
          version = "v22.214.171.124"
          desc="What is the sound of a single thread blocking?"
          modes = ["nopen"]

</comment><comment><USER6> Could be Equation Group burning old exploits. A sorta curious way to do it but it wouldn't be that surprising.

</comment><comment><USER7> > This code similarity makes us believe with a high degree of confidence that > the tools from the ShadowBrokers leak are related to the malware from the > Equation group. While the ShadowBrokers claimed the data was related to the > Equation group, they did not provide any technical evidence of these claims. > The highly specific crypto implementation above confirms these allegations.

...or means that they're just extremely thorough, like you might expect a state actor to be.

<comment><USER8> Some skepticism is always warranted with these things, but the prevailing belief in the security community is that this is very, very real.

From Nicholas Weaver[1]:

> Because of the sheer volume and quality, it is overwhelmingly likely this > data is authentic. And it does not appear to be information taken from > comprised systems. Instead the exploits, binaries with help strings, server > configuration scripts, 5 separate versions of one implant framework, and all > sort of other features indicate that this is analyst-side code -- the kind > that probably never leaves the NSA.

If you think for a minute about the motivations here, you can see that it would be absolutely idiotic for a state actor to release this kind of volume of their own exploits and malware frameworks. On the other hand, a state actor would _love_ to release this information from their competitors' toolchest, as it virtually guarantees the entire set of exploits will quickly be rendered useless against high-profile targets.

[1]: [https://www.lawfareblog.com/very-bad-monday- nsa-0](https://www.lawfareblog.com/very-bad-monday-nsa-0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Snowden claims the Equation group is the NSA, Shadow Brokers the Kremlin. SB is sending the message "careful about the DNC hacks, we can link you to bad stuff".

True or not, this would also explain these news.

<comment><USER5> You're thinking Kaspersky has ties with Kremlin, and, after an apparent lack of belief in authenticity (even after inserting commically bad Slavic-person- speaks-bad-English phrases in their "ad") they worked together on writing an "analysis" to bolster the authenticity. So the world believes that this a bona-fide stuff?

<comment><USER10> _You 're thinking Kaspersky has ties with Kremlin_

There's no need to "think" that; it's well established that Eugene Kaspersky and Vlad Putin are BFFs, or if not that then at least Kaspersky is very careful not to offend the Kremlin: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-19/cybersecur...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-19/cybersecurity- kaspersky-has-close-ties-to-russian-spies)

 _So the world believes that this a bona-fide stuff?_

I have no opinion on any of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone else recall Jacob Appelbaum discussing this publicly a while back?</comment>


My blog can now be browsed with cURL - <AUTHOR> https://anderspitman.net/17/curlable/ <comment><USER2> This is not a good look.

<comment><AUTHOR> How so? Did you read it?

<comment><USER2> I posted when your submission still had your defensive title up. It didn't help that your site still didn't work for me without JavaScript enabled. It doesn't reflect well on you.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you didn't read it? Because both of those points are addressed in the post (and it's not very long). And come on, after taking all that heat yesterday I'm not allowed to poke a tiny bit of fun back at HN? ;) I really am grateful for the feedback everyone gave and did something about it.

<comment><USER2> More to the point, I _couldn't_ read it. What I'm saying is that the combination of your defensive title and the fact that the site still wasn't readable is not a good look, regardless of the content of the submission.

<comment><AUTHOR> If it's still not working for you without JS, that's either a bug in my site or your browser (the noscript includes a link to the text version and GitHub), not a design decision on my part. Can you access this link?

[https://anderspitman.net/txt/17](https://anderspitman.net/txt/17)

<comment><USER2> Yes, but linking to the text version instead of simply providing the text is hostile to the user. You know what resource I requested. You know where that resource is. Give me the resource.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree it would be ideal to return a static HTML file for direct requests. I'm working on adding that back in. But I think the /txt version of the site is still valuable. I tried to come up with a way to return it without requiring a separate URL, but short of doing magic on the server (such as detecting user agent) couldn't think of a way to do it without having nasty HTML in the result. Any suggestions?

EDIT: I updated it to HTML-redirect to /txt/feed for noscript users. Still not ideal if you're trying to find a specific post, but it includes instructions to help. I think it's a reasonable compromise.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that works. I'm glad you're willing to put in the work, but I have to tell you, if you'd just focused on delivering the content and followed the principle of progressive enhancement, you'd be delivering a better experience for probably the same amount of effort at this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think something that got lost in the conversation is that a big part of my personal site is experimenting with different ways of delivering content. My current experiment was to see if I could serve a git repo as-is without any build step, and what the trade-offs would look like. Unfortunately everyone just assumed I was ignorant or lazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a shame when dev sees html as challenge.</comment>


China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-cryptocurrency/china-says-it-wants-to-eliminate-bitcoin-mining-idUSKCN1RL0C4 <comment><USER2> Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1].

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8)

<comment><USER3> No, Bitcoin won't raise global average temperatures by 2°C. This Nature article was debunked by other researchers. I too was asked to review it (recently, post-publication) and the gist of what they did wrong in their analysis is:

* They overestimate (probably by 3x-5x) the present power consumption of miners because they assume the distribution of types of mining machine is homogenous in this table: [https://github.com/moracamilo/Bitcoin/blob/master/Randi_Tabl...](https://github.com/moracamilo/Bitcoin/blob/master/Randi_TableS1.csv) (when in fact 60-70% of the mining power comes from a single row in this table: Antminer S9). This error causes their calculated average efficiency (J/GH) to be much overestimated as their dataset contains mostly inefficient obsolete ASICs

* They overestimate future power consumption by ~50x by assuming it grows linearly with the transaction rate (in reality it doesn't). Power consumption grows with miners revenues, proportional to {block rewards + transaction fees}. Fees account for currently ~2% of revenues (average of last 60 days). Rewards decline over time, so that fees will eventually account for close to 100% of revenues, which _will_ happen on the authors timeline of 100 years. So if fees per transaction remaimed constant, we could see a 50x tx rate growth with no increase of power consumption.

* They assume the proportion of CO2 emissions per kWh never improves over the next 100 years (great progress of renewables coming to a sudden stop?), and that Bitcoin consumes more fossil fuels than what the entire world currently consumes (infinite fossil fuel reserves?). It is not unrealistic to imagine the proportion of CO2 per kWh could be in a century 20% of what it is today.

Overall, these errors combined mean their scenario overestimates CO2 emissions by a factor of about a thousand: (3 to 5) x 50 ÷ 20% = 750x to 1250x

Edit: simplified bullet point #2

<comment><USER4> You're quibbling over details: The point is that bitcoin is _deliberately designed_ to waste as much energy as possible. It's a constant arms race where you have to keep escalating your hash rate, or you risk somebody else being able to execute a 51% attack.

It's an absolutely atrocious example of the Red Queen effect ("running just to stand still") and I can't believe that technologists who in other contexts value elegance and efficiency can defend bitcoin with a straight face. I can only assume they have a lot of money tied up in bitcoin, because otherwise it makes no sense.

<comment><USER3> " _You 're quibbling over details_"

CO2 emissions being wrong by a factor of a thousand is a "detail" to you? ;) My point is that the impact of proof-of-work, although real, is grossly exaggerated and appears to be more manageable than what eye-catching press titles suggest.

Another example: journalists like to claim Bitcoin emits as much CO2 as an entire country. But in fact current emissions are comparable to what a single _city_ like Cape Town emits (28 MtCO2/yr.) Thus these sorts of statements are not so much a testament of how much Bitcoin emits, but more a testament of how _little_ CO2 these countries emits.

" _designed to waste as much energy as possible_ "

It is designed to use no more than what the revenues (fees+rewards) allow to purchase.

But instead of debating how big or how small Bitcoin's energy use is, I think a more intellectually interesting debate to have is whether or not Bitcoin is useful to society, and whether or not its utility justifies the costs.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for taking the time to point this out, especially since you're swimming upstream.

> I think a more intellectually interesting debate to have is whether or not > Bitcoin is useful to society

Exactly.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it's at all useful to _society_ conceived of as the best a society could be, but there's no doubt it's useful to capital. Either way, I'm not sure if merely being useful to society is sufficient to justify that level of energy usage.

<comment><USER7> Bitcoin is censorship-free, permissionless money. It is sound money (the single soundest money ever conceived) and this allows for an age of monetary freedom where citizens are no longer forced to fight an uphill battle against centrally planned 2% inflation that is gradually transforming the working class into a position reminiscent of indentured servant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From an energy-consumption standpoint, I'm not too surprised at this. They have better uses for their mostly-non-renewable power generation. This will probably continue the push towards bitcoin mining in places with stable renewables (like hydro and geothermal).

That being said, I just found [https://www.coindesk.com/norway-ends-power-tax- subsidy-for-b...](https://www.coindesk.com/norway-ends-power-tax-subsidy-for- bitcoin-miners), which makes me wonder if current prices would be able to support mining there. Also, at least part of Washington State is interested: [https://www.bendbulletin.com/business/6853387-151/central- wa...](https://www.bendbulletin.com/business/6853387-151/central-washington- doubles-down-on-blockchain)

<comment><USER9> from planet's perspective. everyone can be thankful

<comment><USER10> Banks run green. They only require lights in the building, the building, the branches, and the atms, the employee's cars, the oil deals financed, and the wars financed.

<comment><USER11> Same can be said about the Bitcoin exchanges. Minus the wars maybe but including the drug cartels.

<comment><USER12> What drug cartel runs on Bitcoin? I thought it was US Dollar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why a Chinese Bitcoin mining ban is good news:

* It kills the narrative that China controls Bitcoin.

* It severely diminishes the Chinese state's ability to disrupt the Bitcoin network by commandeering hashpower.

* The Chinese miners will move their operations overseas, leading to higher geographical/jurisdictional decentralization.

* It becomes relatively speaking more profitable for Chinese ASIC manufacturers to directly sell their miners compared to mining themselves. This will diminish their oversized power in the ASIC market and decentralize mining in terms of operators.

* BTC itself isn't banned, OTC demand will stay, causing a premium. This means some mining will likely continue in smaller, less obvious operations outside the reach of the state. Everything about that is healthy for the network.

* The biggest source of Bitcoin blocks won't be behind the biggest firewall of the globe anymore.

* The article mentions a phasing out, so the two-week difficulty adjustment period can more than likely gracefully handle this.

* Although a lot of Bitcoin mining is done with hydropower in China, it also has a significant share of cheap coal-powered mining. This likely makes overall Bitcoin mining greener, hurting the Bitcoin climate change FUD.

<comment><USER14> >This likely makes overall Bitcoin mining greener, hurting the Bitcoin climate change FUD.

I dislike the fact that Bitcoin fans have commandeered the term "FUD". The term originally referred to coming out of Microsoft, but you are using it to refer to well-intentioned people saying things that are true.

It's the same as what happened to the term "fake news."

Bitcoin has some very serious problems. We all know what they are. If you keep pretending they don't exist, you only hurt your own credibility.

<comment><USER15> Bitcoin certainly has its share of problems. There is nothing true, however, about Bitcoin causing climate change.

<comment><USER16> Citation needed! Renewables are not free of externalities. Hydro damages environments.

Wasting renewable energy on crypto mining prevents that energy being used for something productive and so drives the need for more renewable capacity or drives further use of fossil fuels.

Bitcoin is an environmental disaster in the making. I see mining as akin to a religious rite that diverts potential away from useful activity and towards a fantasy instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Commenters are applauding the environmental implications of this policy, but I'm curious why no one is considering the human side of this ban. There are a billion people living under authoritarianism who are stuck with an increasingly devalued Yuan and steadily losing the ability to obtain other currencies.

Is that not also a problem that can result in humanitarian disaster? I don't think we should be comfortable with blanket bans just because they are accompanied by government greenwashing PR.

<comment><USER18> Bitcoin trading is already essentially banned in China.

<comment><USER13> Exchanges are, not OTC - it's booming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Because they finally realized everyone is using bitcoin to exfiltrate currency?

<comment><USER20> More like they are using cheap subsidized Chinese power prices for something that they weren't intended for. It's more of an environmental play (since a lot of that electricity is produced by dirty coal burning).

<comment><USER21> Funny that they care about the environmental effects when the end result is something they have little control over, less so when it's a state-run or state-affiliated business

<comment><USER22> It makes sense to me. They believe their control is an important part of the country's economic development. They're willing to sacrifice the environment when they believe the benefits outweigh the concerns, but they trust their own plans more than that of individual actors. Not saying it's right, but it's consistent with their outlook on politics and government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When people realize that Bitcoin mining is a mechanism to prevent fraud, the energy consumption suddenly makes a lot more sense. How much waste in the world is the result of fraud and lack of trust? Quite a lot of it.

That said, reducing the energy consumption of Bitcoin should be an absolute priority. Lightning Network and other such technologies help.

<comment><USER24> It doesn't really prevent fraud that isn't already a solved problem. When was the last time you had to deal with wire transfer fraud?

If you buy counterfeit goods with bitcoin there's not much you can do. A credit card protects you from fraud over $50.

What exactly is this bitcoin waste getting us?

<comment><USER25> I would not call it preventing fraud, rather simplifying global money supply and making it more transparent, which in turn could prevent fraud due to smaller attack surface and more eyeballs.

<comment><USER24> But this is just a pipe dream. You would just have fraud hidden away in Swiss bitcoin accounts and wallets in the Cayman islands. Isn't it just less privacy for the naive user and business as usual for the fraudster?

<comment><USER25> You are correct in that money can and will still be used for fraudulent activity. But the system itself (so far) could not be corrupted. So there is a class of systemic manipulation, that becomes a lot harder with Bitcoin (e.g. inflating money supply).

<comment><USER24> In theory, but in practice it seems easily manipulated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This will probably crush Bitmain and other Chinese bitcoin mining giants and they will probably move elsewhere, however Chinese courts have said bitcoin itself is legally allowed. Probably what is going to happen is that you can own but you can't mine or even obtain more bitcoins in China.

[https://www.ccn.com/chinas-merchants-are-legally-allowed- to-...](https://www.ccn.com/chinas-merchants-are-legally-allowed-to-accept- bitcoin-and-crypto)

<comment><USER27> Bitmain makes huge margins on selling equipment, not mining. They make shovels in the gold rush.

<comment><USER21> From what I understand, and, correct me if I'm wrong, but Bitmain _does_ make money by mining, but they do it by using their own next-generation hardware to mine before making it available for sale, which spikes the difficulty and then they sell it off when the profitability drops.

Manufacturing mining ASICs and running your own mining operations seems like it has these big inherent conflicts of interest to me.

<comment><USER28> which looks like the most efficient way. China will likely make it the State miner initiative in the middle of all those legal changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Al-Khwarizmi As a techie and a math lover, I was initially excited with Bitcoin, and did a bit of mining, transactions, etc. But after learning about the environmental impact, I no longer support Bitcoin. It's just not worth the cost, a very beautiful idea but with a serious flaw (which I hope can be fixed in the future). So this sounds quite sensible to me.

<comment><USER29> As a techie, you should still apprectiate the fact that Bitcoin mining is the first financial system that can be measured in terms of energy impact.

Existing systems, banks and all adjacent institutions and companies, are close to impossible to track and measure.

<comment><USER30> I think the same thing, I'd love to see the Co2 emissions of all financial institutions combined put against bitcoin, that would be interesting.

<comment><USER31> Financial institutions offer a vast array of services, safeguards, and functionality and significantly higher transactional infrastructure versus Bitcoin/cryptocoins.

Exchanging cash versus submitting a Bitcoin transaction would be more on par.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Oh thank the lord this idiotic waste of (often fossil) energy will find it's end. Crypto proof of work is such a flawed (proof of) concept in many ways.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think bitcoin has been really overhyped (and manipulated in many different ways), and would be happy to see it fade into history (if not some of the technologies and ideas it's based on).

However, I'm not happy to see an outright ban on it, for all sorts of reasons. Not only are there fundamental freedom of speech issues involved, but it sets a dangerous precedent with regard to decentralized computing in general. I also believe that the best way forward in a bitcoin-free future is to leave things be, expose rather than suppress, and to let people do what they want so as to encourage transition.

I'm surprised to see so many comments supportive of this move here. First they come for bitcoin, then they come for Matrix?

</comment><comment><USER34> "Ok guys, enough with this money launderying, the party should be over now."

</comment><comment><USER35> _"...said should be phased out as they did not adhere to relevant laws and regulations, were unsafe, wasted resources or polluted the environment."_

It surely doesn't help keeping the rivers clean

</comment><comment><USER36> Genuine question. Would it be possible for mining facilities to harness the heat from the miners and use it on steam turbines to generate power that'll be used by the miners?

<comment><USER37> Not an engineer so maybe someone else will have to chime in but i doubt the radial heat from a GPU is enough to heat an element which in turn can flash water to steam.

Surely you cant get the density needed before the GPU's themselves burst in to flames?

<comment><USER36> Yes but we're talking about thousands of GPUs here and each one radiating 70ºC

<comment><USER37> Again, probably need a physicist or engineer to figure out if that's enough to get water to the 500-600 degrees typically used in steam driven turbines.

<comment><USER38> I do not believe this would be possible. If we stick with 70 degrees being the max temperature of the GPUs^, as we increase the number of GPUs then the coolant will approach 70 degrees but not go over, hovering from 69-70.

To break it down, if you have a comically large stove top heater set to 70 degrees and a regular sized one set to 70 degrees, if you put a pot on either the max temperature of the water in the pot is still 70 degrees. The rate at which it heated to 70 would change but max temp wouldn't.

^Max safe temp of GPUs is around 100c. What will actually happen is that the GPUs will heat the coolant to this temperature, then either the coolant will lose heat through normal means (when water isn't heated it cools), or if the coolant stays hot eventually a GPU will turn itself off through overheat safety mechanisms. Once this GPU is off the coolant loop will drop temperature for a while then slowly approach max temp again, until either another GPU gets turned off or the system finds its equilibrium where the coolant is at a stable temperature and no more GPUs are turning themselves off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This should help a little against centralization. With the cheaper electricity out of the game, more locations might become viable as sites for bitcoin mining.

We're still stuck with two Chinese ASIC manufacturers, but at least more of the actual mining will be outside china.

</comment><comment><USER40> in the long run I believe cryptos that doesn't require mining this way will be more popular, such as EOS and maybe Ethereum soon. But mining will probably never go away completely

</comment><comment><USER41> This reminds me of the idea of bitcoin owning 51% of miners and being able to split.

What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER42> "China bans Bitcoin, for realsies this time."

</comment><comment><USER43> Interesting development. There's a massive amount of accumulated capital and equipment inventory held by Chinese miners.

These are mobile, and will surely emigrate.

</comment><comment><USER44> Good luck

</comment><comment><USER45> Saw this coming back when the Chinese government expressed an interest in Bitcoin. They'll pass a law to confiscate all Bitcoin in China.

</comment><comment><USER46> Supply reduction should pump up the price, right? Good for holders.

<comment><USER47> Supply is constant, regardless of how many people mine. In theory it should have no effect on price.

I guess existing miners would get their coins cheaper, so there would be less pressure on them to sell to cover electricity costs, so the supply may reduce a little via that mechanism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> BTC harms "poor" newscomers who think they will get rich/richer overnight.

So instead the media told that it's a revolution with blockchain, they should tell people that: BTC is also a game, a trading game, keep yourself at risk before pouring your money into it.

</comment><comment><USER49> I wonder if bitcoin will try to go the Ethereum route and move to proof of stake [1] instead of proof of work.

[1] [https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake- FAQ](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ)

<comment><USER50> It wouldn't be bitcoin anymore then... Being able to grandfather in the whole transaction log after rolling out a new system runs counter to the principle.

<comment><USER51> Fine by me, if it makes people want to switch to other proof of stake networks. Who cares about a name when we all know we need to use drastically less energy?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> In the early days of crypto, it used to be that China would ban it and the price would drop as the market would freak out. This is just another scare tactic that won't go anywhere.

China makes so much money from mining and crypto, there is no way they would get rid of it.

<comment><USER53> In the total Chinese economy it's a blip. I don't think the central planners at the Party care about crypto very much.

<comment><USER54> Yeah, it's a drop in the sea.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Battlesnake, AI Competition in Victoria BC Today - <AUTHOR> https://www.battlesnake.io/ <comment><USER2> Cool, thanks for posting this. Had no idea this was happening in my home town!</comment>


SpaceX's Falcon 9 first stage has landed (again) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/736313075385540608 <comment><USER2> It's almost like this is becoming a regular occurrence. I'm looking forward to the next generation looking back on this and being incredulous that we used to completely throw away boosters on every launch.

<comment><USER3> "I think we will be successful - ironically - when it becomes boring." \- Elon Musk

At the NASA press conference after the first successful drone ship landing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When will SpaceX actually reuse one of these landed stages? That's the whole point, right?

<comment><USER5> At the CRS-8 post-launch presser Musk said "sometime in June", though lately I've seen them describe it as "later this year". That sort of implies after June.

<comment><USER6> How many do they have?

<comment><USER7> 4 now, though the first one is going on display at their headquarters. I _believe_ the second one is going to be examined and undergo ground testing only (might be wrong on that). So that leaves just the third and now this one as candidates for re-flight.

I like being able to use the term "re-flight".

<comment><USER8> The high velocity drone ship landing (#3) landed too hard and was deemed unusable for launch duty (Edit 1: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/731984739012251648](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/731984739012251648)), so realistically, it's likely just two of the four so far.

Edit 2: per mikeash, it's definitely flyable (i.e. I'm wrong), but it'll still be grounded to aid with testing efforts. Thanks for the correction, Mike! [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/734274360588926976](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/734274360588926976)

<comment><USER5> The problem isn't that it landed hard, it's that it had to slow down very quickly. That's going to be the case for any GTO launch, including today's flight.

From what I understand there was heat damage around the engines.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the clarification. I'd read that elsewhere but couldn't ID a source in time. Where've you seen that?

The good news there is that it might mean the rocket can be rehabilitated if needed since structural damage would be less likely.

<comment><USER5> Nothing official. This is based on comments (at _Ars_ , I think) from people who studied the pictures closely.

According to the latest Musk tweets _today 's_ rocket was actually somewhat damaged in the landing - the scrificial "crush core" was, well, crushed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Congrats again to SpaceX!

They had some live footage of the first stage reentry which was pretty cool.

<comment><USER10> I hope the next SpaceX technological breakthrough is cameras that don't fog up on reentry.

<comment><USER11> In all seriousness I hope they release the full feed from that camera. It's got to be a hell of a view to see it bearing down on the drone ship from above.

<comment><USER12> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jEz03Z8azc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jEz03Z8azc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If anyone was wondering about repeatability I think they're well on the way to putting that to rest.

<comment><USER13> They're landing so many, pretty soon they are going to have to open up a used booster sales lot.

Speaking of which, when the first booster landed successfully, someone put up a gag Craigslist ad for a used booster ("only used once, excellent condition") but it got taken down quickly, unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good launch pace, if they keep it up, they'll surely build up a positive reputation quickly.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've watched the SpaceX launches with my 4-year-old and 2-year-old. Exciting for me, but they really get into it as well. Indoctrination at it's finest. I was born in the 80s and missed the moon race, so it's nice to have this new space race.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm reminded of my early 20s when I played Everquest hardcore. My guild was one of the top among all servers. As soon as a new expansion came out we would quickly get to the endgame content and then spend weeks wiping over and over until we finally beat it all. Then we'd beat it again. And again. After a few times no one cared anymore and we went back to "farm-mode" until the next expansion was released. I guess the "next expansion" for SpaceX would be Mars.

</comment><comment><USER17> Only a few frames of the actual landing, but here was the live stream.

[https://youtu.be/zBYC4f79iXc?t=2290](https://youtu.be/zBYC4f79iXc?t=2290)

</comment><comment><USER18> when are they going to perform a launch with a recycled booster?</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone familiar with medical software regulations and certifications? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Yes. There are a lot of varied areas of it though so you'll have to be more specific. There are FDA requirements for some software that is quite different then say HIPAA type certifications.

A very gross overview if you know none of it, FDA regulates anything that might involve a patients treatment or care, including recommendations based off of data collected on the patient. HIPAA and other certifications really deal with patient privacy, data access and security more or less.

Of them, FDA is the hurdle for most organizations because they have very detailed regulations and requirements and rightfully are conservative on what gets approved without significant validation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the overview - that's definitely very helpful.

From my perspective, it looks like I'll have to deal with both as we're looking to host medical imaging algorithms and even if we aren't the ones providing the recommendation itself, we will still be helping research labs process them.

Where can I learn more about FDA requirements and HIPAA certifications? Are there organizations that eventually conduct an audit and provide confirmation that software companies indeed comply?

<comment><USER2> You can reach out to me privately via email if you'd like, in my profile.

FDA -- if this is required, you must go through certification with them and depending on which regulatory group you fall under could be a simple 3-6 month process to a multiyear process to prove the system is not a risk to patient safety. If you are doing image processing and it is new algorithms, new techniques, it will need to be clinically validated, which means studies etc, so you are probably looking at 1 year minimum to get cleared before you can legally sell in the U.S. If you are using existing cleared safe algorithms in new ways, then it could be faster. If you are making clinical recommendations than it could be considerably longer.

HIPAA is overall fairly easy if you are starting new, you can research it online and reach out to any number of companies that can help you learn the details. There are free classes given by different some legal firms, government agencies etc too that can give you the basics. Essentially, it is about keeping data secure, limiting access, policies and procedures and reporting. It isn't tough, mainly a lot of business processes and maintaining security around patient records etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Titanic Struck By Berg but Passengers Saved, Disabled Liner in Tow - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/titanic1.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting to see:

1) How the company tried to manage the news cycle and put out that the ship's design held up well and saved lives.

2) The attempt to blame new technology (wireless) for the lack of accurate information.

3) Focus on the business personalities on board.

The WSJ story the following day focused on the value of assets lost and insurance coverage.

<comment><USER2> ... which makes sense, because the WSJ of 1912 was far more narrowly aimed at financial news than it is today.

<comment><USER3> Observe how "blame the techie/tech" syndrome has been out there for ages!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article is total spin. I fail to see how the egregious number (and detailedness) of factual errors in this report could be blamed on faulty wireless communication. Is it a case of just overzealous filling in the blanks, or was the Edwardian-era WSJ the Fox News of its time?

Incidently, by coincidence I happened to see the 3D version of the movie last night at the exact hour of the hundreth year anniversary of the collision. Didn't realize it til later when I was reading about the disaster on Wikipedia, at what turned out to be, after triple checking my calculations, the centennial of the final sinking, _to the minute_ , 2:20am ship's local time.

It was a bit surreal to say the least, inspiring a long night of contemplation about technology, nature, society, love & honor, and the brevity of life. So terrible to see how the facts were initially so thoroughly misrepresented...

<comment><USER5> Out of genuine curiosity: did you miss the movie the first time, or did you think the 3D would add something more to it? Either way, did you enjoy it?

<comment><USER4> I'd seen parts of the movie on the small screen, wanted to finally see the whole thing, and there's no better place to watch an epic scale movie than in a theater.

3D was ok. I could take it or leave it. At least in this movie it wasn't overdone; apparently Cameron kept many of the wide shots pretty flat to avoid making the ship look like a model. I guess it's a wash: how much the added dimensionality enhances the experience was balanced by the times when it's just a distraction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article[1] about senior telegraph officer Jack Phillips seems to paint wireless as a success and responsible for saving those that were picked up.

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg- titanic-...](http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-titanic- telegrams-20120415,0,7916165,full.story)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. After a bit of searching, found this: [http://www.journalism.co.uk/news-features/titanic- disaster-a...](http://www.journalism.co.uk/news-features/titanic-disaster- anniversary-how-it-was-reported/s5/a548774/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Quite a clever ruse to give the insiders more time to dump their stocks.

</comment><comment><USER9> Whew! What a relief!</comment>


The Tragedy of the American Military - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/the-tragedy-of-the-american-military/383516/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> Wow. This is a great article. James Fallows has been writing about these issues since the 1980s and knows them well.

I was astonished by this paragraph in the article, having many relatives who are farmers, and knowing in a general sense how rare farming is as an occupation in the United States: "Now the American military is exotic territory to most of the American public. As a comparison: A handful of Americans live on farms, but there are many more of them than serve in all branches of the military. (Well over 4 million people live on the country's 2.1 million farms. The U.S. military has about 1.4 million people on active duty and another 850,000 in the reserves.) The other 310 million–plus Americans 'honor' their stalwart farmers, but generally don't know them. So too with the military. Many more young Americans will study abroad this year than will enlist in the military—nearly 300,000 students overseas, versus well under 200,000 new recruits. As a country, America has been at war nonstop for the past 13 years. As a public, it has not. A total of about 2.5 million Americans, roughly three-quarters of 1 percent, served in Iraq or Afghanistan at any point in the post-9/11 years, many of them more than once." I know some veterans of the recent long-term war too, but indeed the United States doesn't feel at all like a country in which the public is preoccupied with the ongoing war. I have been an American who studied abroad for three years. I had no idea that that is now more commonplace than enlisting in the United States armed forces.

<comment><USER3> Under the Bush Administration, at least, the Department of Defense was putting downward pressure on the number of personnel, and any noises about expansion, draft, etc., were coming from Congress, often the Democratic side of the aisle.

There is fundamentally no way that a draft the size of the WW II draft would now work--and remember that now we would probably need to draft women, too. We can't use and probably can't pay that size of a military.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a long piece, and I think this summarizes it well:

"The vast majority of Americans outside the military can be triply cynical in their attitude toward it. Triply? One: "honoring" the troops but not thinking about them. Two: "caring" about defense spending but really viewing it as a bipartisan stimulus program. Three: supporting a "strong" defense but assuming that the United States is so much stronger than any rival that it's pointless to worry whether strategy, weaponry, and leadership are right."</comment>


Tim Ferris saves the plunging Chinese Space station in 4 hours - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@uldis/tim-ferris-saves-the-plunging-chinese-space-station-in-4-hours-ff981f3e4bd1 <comment><USER2> Timeline is a bit off. Other than that, I'll give the author a 3 out of 5 for execution.</comment>


DOJ Proposal Would Expand FBI Power to Hack Computers Abroad - <AUTHOR> http://justsecurity.org/15018/justice-department-proposal-massive-expand-fbi-extraterritorial-surveillance/ <comment><USER2> Why is the FBI being given powers that could count as an act of war?

If the FBI needs the ability to invade foreign computers, it should have to seek a court order requesting the military (eg, the NSA) compromise those computers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see what difference this would make. U.S. spies & "law" enforcement only work by their own rules anyway (not the rule of law) and they don't give a rodent's backside for the written law of any country, including the U.S. itself.

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems to be aimed at VPN & Tor users inside the US.

> The proposed amendment addresses a jurisdictional limitation in the current > version of Rule 41(b)(1) that prevents a judge from issuing a warrant unless > the target is known to be located within her district.

</comment><comment><USER5> shouldn't such things be contested in international court of justice first?Isn't it considered breach of sovereignty for other nations?

<comment><USER6> And who is going to enforce this court?

<comment><USER7> NATO

<comment><USER8> Although this might change in the next decade, the NATO is the US today.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Bootstrap Form Builder - <AUTHOR> https://formden.com/form-builder/

<comment><USER2> Very nice! Will this work with complex forms I already have built on my site, or do I need to create the form with special code/markup for it to work properly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our site offers form processing that will work with any html form.

The form builder itself is specifically for creating Bootstrap-compatible HTML forms.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I created this tool to make it easy to create Bootstrap Form HTML. Drag and drop form fields, preview the results, or copy the HTML code. It is built using Django and crispy forms. The forms you create can (but don't have to) be processed using my start-up's form processing service (in free beta).

I'd love to get some feedback!

<comment><USER3> font chooser is broken on latest stable chrome on OS X. I actually made something similar to this a few years ago before jotforms got huge, and mine never really took off, so if you could find your niche then that'd be great!

One thing, this is kind of confusing:

Use the form builder below, or POST your own form to [https://formden.com/post/abc123/](https://formden.com/post/abc123/) and add formden.js to your webpage.

Do I need to set up the action of the form to POST to your server AND include the javascript?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Will look into the font chooser. EDIT: Font chooser should be working now.

Yes, to have us process the form you need to POST to our server and add the formden.js to the page. The JavaScript is there to repopulate the form and show validation errors if the POST is rejected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should build-in support for other Bootstrap form layouts, such as ".form- horizontal".

[http://getbootstrap.com/css/#forms](http://getbootstrap.com/css/#forms)

Just a thought! Nice work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. .form-horizontal is currently possible via Settings -> Label Orientation -> Horizontal. I can see how you missed it. It's a challenge to try to make the UI intuitive. I do still need to add .form-inline at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool! I was just looking for something like this :)

</comment><comment><USER6> this could be very useful. Reminds me of a similar tool for jquery themes (If I recall correctly).</comment>