Proposed "Internet Freedom Act" permanently guts net neutrality authority - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/05/gops-internet-freedom-act-permanently-guts-net-neutrality-authority <comment><USER2> This is why politics is important, even in tech.

We need some grownups to represent us.

If you spend ~$50/month on home internet access, and $50/month on cell phone access, that's $1200/year for internet connectivity.

How much do you spend on hardware per year? Do you buy a >$1200 laptop per year? How much money does Google make off of your info?

The ISPs are rolling in cash. They have terrible customer service. They typically have no competition in their markets and they refuse to innovate.

Yet, we give ISPs soooo much money. If there was proper competition, would we be spending such ridiculously high fees on the internet access we get?

<comment><USER3> Wasn't there a bill back in 80s/90s to pay the ISPs to modernize the grid with 100mbps across the entire country?

Politics isn't the sole problem, lobbying in the company interests instead of the customers is the other problem.

There has to be strict federal laws to outlaw lobbying and any type of incentives for all federal employees including the politicians. No gifting, no promises for the future (job), and so on. If such an occasion has occurred, both sides must be punished and the company must be stripped of its ability to do business in the country. The politician must be banned from holding the office and any company that they were involved with for life.

How about we start with removing all free healthcare from the congress, they pay the same as the rest of us and they must go through the healthcare system just like us. If they have a problem, fracking fix it.

<comment><USER4> What lots of people don't know is many ISPs across the country took that money and shoved it in exec pockets and then raised rates and never invested in infrastructure. An exec of one in my area for example was caught embezzling millions of that grant money.

<comment><USER5> Like most things, what really happened is complicated. Here's a good hn thread on the matter.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556)

If you have more interest in understanding the issue, there's plenty of good assessments. Everything from the explosion of wireless, to hdtv, to local municipalities, to mergers, and technological limitations are to blame.

<comment><USER6> I really wish that we as a society would spend less time sitting around figuring out who to blame for shit and actually invest in the things we claim to care about. I am sick to the back teeth of bullshit free market ideologies that have an extremely poor track record in reality.

That does _not_ mean I am opposed to or deny the value of markets.

<comment><USER7> The issue in the U.S. is (and has historically been) that neither side wants to invest in telecom infrastructure--both want private companies to foot the bill. When you start from that premise, all your options are limited by the overriding need to ensure adequate incentives to invest.

As a matter of personal ideology, I'd say: let's build a nationwide public system with a federal/state partnership, and import regulators from Scandinavia to run it. But that's not one of the choices.

<comment><USER6> You know perfectly well that several states have passed laws forbidding municipal entities to construct their own broadband networks. The left has made some tentative moves towards articulating a goal of investing in national broadband infrastructure (citing the example of the Tennessee Valley Authority as a working example of public utility investment) but has understandably been scared off by the right's strident equivalence of any kind of public investment with communism.

I don't want to oversimplify the issue and don't disagree that everyone in politics would prefer if better broadband infrastructure just happened and all they had to do was show up and cut a few ribbons without investing any political capital. But I think you're being a tad disingenuous here. You are too smart and well-informed to buy this argument if I were to make it to you.

<comment><USER7> I disagree with those laws ideologically, but they're a footnote. The vast majority of people do not live in one of those states. My county (in Maryland) is building a fiber network and wiring up towns in the rural part of the county that's not served by FiOS: [http://archive.aacounty.org/News/Archive2013/News%20and%20Up...](http://archive.aacounty.org/News/Archive2013/News%20and%20Updates/anne- arundel-to-be-the-only-county-in-maryland-to-offer-high-speed-broadband-to- majority-of-residents-including-those-in-rural-areas).

At the same time, I inserted the caveat of importing regulators from Scandinavia for a reason. Public infrastructure in the U.S. (outside of NYC/Chicago) mostly sucks and is poorly run. I say this because I've walked the walk: I used to commute on Metro North every day from Westchester to Manhattan, then on SEPTA from Wilmington to Philadelphia, then on Amtrak from Baltimore to DC, then (briefly) on the D.C. Metro. Metro North was fantastic, but the others are worse than Comcast.

The basic problem is that I don't have the choice to vote for Stockholm's fiber system run by Swedes. My only choice is between Verizon (which is actually pretty damn good in Maryland), or the same folks who run the D.C. Metro.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is bewildering how different these Senators' concepts of reality must be from mine to consider this a good idea. I wouldn't even consider it debatable... There's a reason, after all, that ISPs around the world have largely shied back from such practices in the past.

Part of the problem may be that those most hurt don't even exist, yet. Depending on how blatantly ISPs would exploit their position as gatekeeper of the last mile, it could doom any startup. Oh, your two-person team wants to run a ride-sharing service? Start by negotiating access fees with every ISP, in every market...

I guess the best hope is that former startups act somewhat altruistically: Apple, Google, Facebook, or Netflix may have the clout (cloud?) to stop this. Maybe thousands of calls and emails help, but it appears that Republicans consider this their rumspringe, and are probably emboldened by polls showing the ideological divide is so deep, policy is no longer relevant for public opinion.

<comment><USER9> These are mostly the same people who think that climate change is a hoax and that creationism is a valid alternative to evolution. Reality is not their strong suit.

Their ideology says that government regulation is bad and free markets are good, with essentially no wiggle room for nuance. This implies that ISPs are being hobbled by government regulations, and that freeing them to do as they please will benefit us all.

It doesn't matter whether or not it's true, it's what they believe, and they're approaching it from a perspective that's impervious to facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whenever the words "Freedom" or "Choice" appear in the names of laws I can already guess that the laws will do the exact opposite.

</comment><comment><USER11> Take Action, stop just posting ones and zero's to hackernews

[https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-don-t-surrender- the...](https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-don-t-surrender-the-internet)

</comment><comment><USER12> The word "freedom" is really overused, and nobody seems to have an idea what it actually means. This will get ISP more freedom to charge their customers higher rates for the same service they enjoy today.

I'm still a little bit jealous about what the city of Stockholm did. They started to built a dark fiber network, which ISPs can use to get to their customers. The result is, more competition and lower prices. Essentially net neutrality on layer 1.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why aren't google, facebook, amazon and apple fighting against this?

They are some of the biggest companies in the world and they just seem to be rolling over at this. What gives?

<comment><USER14> While the existence of net neutrality-breaking ISPs could have caused any of these companies to fail in their infancy, their current position in the market allows them to largely benefit from this environment.

They may have added costs, but to them, that may be worth it if it artificially filters out possible future competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Current headline: "GOP's "Internet Freedom Act" permanently guts net neutrality authority"

More accurate headline: "GOP's "Internet Freedom Act" preserves 2015-era FCC Internet regulation status quo"

Another headline: "GOP's "Internet Freedom Act" temporarily prevents FCC from enacting 3-2 partisan Internet regulations, unless a future Congress changes things"

Yet another headline: "GOP's "Internet Freedom Act" shifts authority for Internet regulation from unelected bureaucrats, who may not even have the power to regulate here, to elected officials in Congress, who do"

Keep in mind that "Net neutrality" has become a partisan issue. The current 2015 rules were passed by a 3-2 party line vote when the Democrats controlled the FCC. (They're currently being litigated, with U.S. Supreme Court review likely.)

Now that the Republicans control the FCC, the 2015 rules are probably going to be _repealed_ by a 3-2 party line vote. Even if Congress does nothing.

Whatever you think of the reasoning behind "Net neutrality" regulations, it makes little sense for hundreds of pages of regulations to be enacted when the Ds win and repealed when the Rs win. It means regulations applying to a multi- billion dollar industry bounce back and forth every 4 or 8 years. It makes more sense for Congress to come up with a lasting solution that isn't subject to regulatory bounce-back, and this is what the bill being described in the article seems to do.

<comment><USER16> From your post:

 _It makes more sense for Congress to come up with a lasting solution that isn 't subject to regulatory bounce-back, and this is what the bill being described in the article seems to do._

From the article:

 _But from what we know about Lee 's bill so far, it appears the proposal wouldn't impose any type of net neutrality rules to replace the current ones._

Wherein lies the so-called "lasting solution"?

<comment><USER15> Any lasting solution would be negotiated by Congress.

<comment><USER16> If they were going to do that, why wouldn't they just put it in the same bill? It would be extremely naive to assume that they are going to do anything on top of repealing the current NN protections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So ISPs get freedom and the users get screwed? The "Net Neutrality is like a Obamacare for the internet" is one of the most disingenuous claims I've heard from Cruz in awhile, Trump was right with his "lyin Ted Cruz" line.

</comment><comment><USER18> The GOP really are the best a double speak.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's hard for me to empathize (in the literal sense of the word) with someone who dislikes net neutrality.

What're the reasons / justifications for why the current laws and rules are wrong or insufficient?

<comment><USER20> From what I understand, there is the concern that potential new technologies wouldn't be allowed under a strict interpretation of net neutrality. For a hypothetical example: go back in time when voice over IP first came on the scene. At that time there wasn't enough excess bandwidth to guarantee voice packets would arrive on time. Now you could prioritize voice traffic, but you'd have to either charge a fee, or find a way to positively identify voice data (otherwise everyone would turn on the voice QOS flag in all their apps even if they didn't need it). This would then not be net neutral.

Of course, today there is enough excessive bandwidth that voice traffic doesn't need to be prioritized. But what about an application where an expert doctor is controlling a robotic surgical instrument from cross country? Would a special service class for those packets be allowed under net neutrality laws?

But the real reason, is that as soon as there is additional bandwidth available, technology finds a way to consume all of it and then some. So the ISPs want to be able to de-prioritize some heavy bandwidth users (such as bittorrent), and/or give higher priority to traffic with paying users like Netflix (for a toll fee, of course), or their own video services.

<comment><USER21> ISPs charging _their own customers_ for prioritization is completely compatible with net neutrality. Detecting and prioritizing voice would be open to interpretation but would probably be considered reasonable network management. Letting people mark whatever they want as latency-sensitive but charging more for it? Totally fine.

<comment><USER20> Of course, it is a fine line between an ISP allowing someone (who is not a customer) to pay them for higher priority, vs the ISP purposely maintaining a low quality route to certain other web sites to "encourage" them to pay up (this is what Comcast did with Netflix a while ago -- Netflix traffic came through a smaller pipe into Comcast, until Netflix paid up).

<comment><USER21> It was more complicated than that. Level 3 took advantage of its peering agreement with Comcast to undercut Akamai for Netflix's business. Comcast argued that the agreement was meant for transit, not to subsidize Level 3's CDN operations. All three companies had valid points, and all three had ulterior motives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Net neutrality is an important topic, but some politicians sponsoring a bill generally doesn't count as a substantive story. The vast majority of proposed bills go nowhere.

<comment><USER23> You raise an important point, and if this event took place in isolation, I might even agree with your sentiment. However, this, in combination with FCC Chairman Pai's recent actions demonstrate an organized, concerted effort to deregulate Internet Service Provision. And with the GOP in control of both houses and the Executive branch, combined with their desperate need for political wins, makes me concerned that they will aim for the low-hanging, and highly profitable, fruit.

<comment><USER22> FCC/Pai is getting thoroughly treated elsewhere, and the rest is political sausage-making.

<comment><USER23> true, but its looking like the GOP is getting ready to have a bbq

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Call your reps, and ask your friends to do the same.

The Voices app will let you call your reps directly,

[https://tryvoices.com](https://tryvoices.com)

</comment><comment><USER25> How much are they paid for this crookedness?

<comment><USER4> 5k I believe is the congressional donation limit, but only by one person or org. Generally when digging through public finance statements from congress (that's the sort of crazy I am), I often see the 5k limit hit by multiple entities in the same industry around the same timeframe, so that 5k limit ends up being 50-100k, not including all the other ways to _pay_ for a legislator.

That's not even adressing the issue that ISPs have so much data they could probably run their own blackmail ops and similar dirty tricks if donations weren't enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Good.

The less federal regulation over ISPs the better.

<comment><USER27> Barriers to entry in the ISP game are too high for competition. Google can't even hack it.

What is your perspective as a free-market advocate in this scenario?

<comment><USER26> Wait patiently for the inevitable correction.

E.g. innovation like this and other things we can't even imagine yet: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/17/elon- musk...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/17/elon-musk- satellites-internet-spacex)

<comment><USER6> Let's ban all regulation. You can't imagine what wonderful things I could achieve if I could just help myself to your capital. I know that sounds like a bad deal for you but market forces will prove me right in the end, just wait and see.

<comment><USER24> You stop too short. Ban all government. Then those who are already invested in the strongest companies win.

Rule by populism -- forget meritocracy or any notion of innovation.

Trump and his ilk don't have enough. They need more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Then don't do business with terrible companies that invade your privacy.

<comment><USER17> Enough with this crap, many places have one provider to choose from. This is especially true in cities where many live in apartments or condos, and also in rural areas where the cost of build-out is very high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why do we call proposed Acts by the name their creators gave them, instead of choosing a more appropriate (and accurate) name?

      "Internet freedom Act" - Empowering Telecom Companies Act

      "SOPA" - Criminalize Ordinary Internet Behavior Act

      "Patriot Act" - Remove Guaranteed Rights In Favor Of Empowering Central Authority Act

      "Affordable Care Act" - Essentially Romneycare

etc. Why should these names not have colloquially adjudicated corrections applied to them the way anything else does?

</comment><comment><USER30> As a counterpoint to some of the outrage/hysteria over the new net neutrality policy, check out this interview with the new FCC chairman Ajit Pai: [https://thefederalist.com/2017/04/26/fcc-chairman-ajit- pai-s...](https://thefederalist.com/2017/04/26/fcc-chairman-ajit-pai-speaks- net-neutrality-privacy-rickrolling/)

He makes some really good points and generally comes across as well-informed and well-intentioned. In this climate of crazy media hype it's good to keep an open mind and listen to the actual people working on policy.

<comment><USER31> I don't know if he's just misinformed or if he's being intentionally deceptive.

He talks about the "light touch" framework of the Bill Clinton era, which saw telecos profit immensely and never feed any money back into their system. I've know Comcast line who, back in the early 2000s, would tell me they'd take parts to their shop where people would resolder and reconstruct equipment that no one in the world manufactured anymore instead of just upgrading the lines.

Comcast sued the Electric Power Board in TN a few years later to keep them from offering Fibre to the home; a service that provided amazing speed at about the exact same cost.

He brings up AOL CDs versus Gigabit fibre, not talking about all the companies that are keeping that from happening.

There is still a bunch of dark fibre that hasn't been used. Telecos are still charging insane amounts for mobile bandwidth that's nowhere near saturated.

None of this stuff even touches network neutrality, which is simply saying "You pay for x quality of service and you get x quality of service, to everyone. We don't add a faster pipe just for Google. We don't throttle Netflix and give priority to YouTube. We won't throttle VoIP so you buy our VoIP service instead. Equal access, to the best of ability and equipment."

Even if he says Title II isn't the right framework, why gut it until it's replaced. If you say "we'll get rid of it and replace it," more likely than not they'll just git rid of it and telecos will do the same bullshit they've always done and run with it.

I think he's in the pocket of big teleco and is weaselling around giving them more power.

<comment><USER30> > He talks about the "light touch" framework of the Bill Clinton era, which > saw telecos profit immensely and never feed any money back into their > system.

Even in the 1990s it was obvious that the copper network was obsolete and any additional money put into it would be a wasted investment.

> Comcast sued the Electric Power Board in TN a few years later to keep them > from offering Fibre to the home

Chairman Pai specifically speaks about FCC initiatives to increase competition including opening up access to utility poles. It's a difficult issue because many utility poles/corridors are locally or municipally owned and the FCC has no jurisdiction there.

> Even if he says Title II isn't the right framework, why gut it until it's > replaced.

The point is that it doesn't need to be replaced. It's a heavy-handed and unnecessary imposition of federal regulation on a market that needs to be as free and open as possible due to the speed of innovation in the tech space.

<comment><USER32> What's this great innovation in the wireline broadband space being stifled by overeager regulators? Presumably there's some concrete example of what our friends the competitive ISPs want to do and are unable to because of the regulations. Or even, what they _used_ to be able to do: Title II reclassification is obviously very recent and the prior "Open Internet" or net neutrality orders weren't long before that. I suspect that the "innovation" they're looking to provide won't be of the kind most people are interested in fostering.

I'm generally amenable to the argument that robust competition is the best solution and that we should be aiming to reduce those barriers but... unbundling was very unpopular with the ISPs and didn't really work and is dead, and as you said the big last-mile problems are local.

Knowing that the FCC isn't actually successfully creating the robust competitive local broadband markets they say they'd prefer, doesn't it make sense for them to do what they _are_ able to do and keep the existing (already "light touch") regulations?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


AskHN: Are there online communities for technical startups not related to web? - <AUTHOR>

HN is a great community. However, it mostly focuses on Web startups. Do you know of any resources on other technical/engineering startups? For example, anything related to semiconductors/chemical/material science industry would be of great interest to me and there are many other specializations worth mentioning. Thanks. <comment><USER2> <http://StackExchange.com> has a growing network of niche Q&A communities.

<comment><AUTHOR> And here is the list of the sites - <http://stackexchange.com/sites></comment></comment>


Show HN: Skinny Server: The new dedicated server - <AUTHOR> http://skinnyserver.com/

<comment><USER2> What do you offer that differentiates yourselves from cheaper, more popular VPS options out there? (ex. Digital Ocean, Linode, INIZ)</comment>


Ask HN: How can I avoid whiteboarding interview questions? - <AUTHOR> Are there any tech companies that don't do whiteboarding interview questions? I'm looking for a Sr. Engineer role and most of the companies in san francisco bay area seem to focus mainly on writing perfect but meaningless functions on a whiteboard as fast as possible. I have +10y or experience and would like to leverage that for my next gig beyond just recruiters. Not necessarily looking for a big name, been there done that. Today I just want to work on a cool project with cool people and still get paid for that. Who cares about binary trees for an extra few RSU's and a free t-shirt? Bring your dog, free beer, brand new campus looking like a college town... It ain't gonna do it. I have a family, I'm in my mid 30's.<p>Thanks <comment><USER2> If you're stuck interviewing at a company that has these:

1\. Try to suggest an alternative, e.g. "here's some algorithm code I provably wrote, let me explain it". Works better if you have open source contributions.

2\. Learn how to take control of the interview so whiteboarding isn't as bad. I have a writeup of how I do it, but basically I explain I will write tests, then write code, then go through tests. This helps show off testing skills, but also means you look good even if your algorithm solution isn't perfect immediately. Full writeup: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/04/04/interview- puzzles/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/04/04/interview-puzzles/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without- whiteboards/blob/ma...](https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without- whiteboards/blob/master/README.md)

Hiring Without Whiteboards

<comment><AUTHOR> You are awesome my friend!</comment></comment>


Hack for this Weekend. Take a minute and send a Question to your Mayor. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mayorresponds.org

<comment><USER2> Excellent Apps for this weekend</comment>


Ask HN: Review My Questionnaire - Is this Good Market Research? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, My startup (Rootbuzz) is doing a little market research and I was hoping you could help us out with our questions.
We are focussing on Customer Service, and our product is a Q&A platform similar to Quora or Stack Overflow.
.
 ABOUT US
The idea is that the Q&A site will:
- reduce the number of times live support staff have to answer the same questions over and over
- get many questions answered without support staff getting involved at all
- help build/boost community among the company's customers
- boost the page rank (ranking in general, not the page rank number specifically) of the parent domain
.
Who we think our customers are/will be:
- Businesses who sell to a relatively technical audience
- Businesses who make things
- Businesses whose customers think of themselves as "<business_name> users" (e.g., Mac Users)
.
We've spoken with some companies who we think are aligned with those characteristics and some have agreed to answer some more detailed questions to help us out.
Are these the right questions to ask? Are any of them too invasive? Are we going down the wrong path with any of these?
Please, tear them apart :)
.
 OUR QUESTIONNAIRE (SO FAR):
1.) Do you have a customer support staff? How many employees is it? Is this a major cost center for your company?
2.) Tell me a little more about your product? What are your customers like? Are they technical users?
3.) How do you communicate with your customers right now? Phone? Email? SMS? Text Chat? Video chat? Contact Form (on your website)? Other?
4.) Is there an active community around your product? Are you trying to build one? Why or why not?
5.) Do your customers try to find information about you on Google? What kind of info? What do they find? Is this something you're trying to improve? What are you doing right now to take control of what people find about you on google?
6.) Do your customers find information about you or your products on websites other than yours? What kind of sites? Do you know which sites they are specifically?
7.) Which of the following sounds the most interesting to you?
- Software that helps your customers find answers to their questions online
  rather than through your other (more expensive?) support channels?
- Software that's designed to leverage the community you've already built
  around your products in order to reduce your support costs?
- Software that helps you take control of what your customers find when they
  search for information about your company and it's products.
8.) How much would you expect to pay (monthly or yearly) for the software you chose in the previous question? Would you buy it at that price? <comment><USER2> Too many questions. Narrow it to 3-5 actual questions, get a better response rate for the surveys that you put out, then ask more questions individually when your audience is engaged.

Question 8, Price. Nobody is going to answer 50k to your question above without you showing them the pain point. People often do not know what they would pay for things. Especially when they do not know that they need it - yet. Show them a pain point (10M/year spent on customer service phone calls). Show them that your software has saved others money: hard data, testimonials, etc. Now that you have shown them that you reduce call volume by 10% and that you can save them about 1M/year you put a price on it. Now 50k/year for your software seems like a bargain (20X value).

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that's a great set of questions. However I think there are one or two areas where you could use some improvement. You're trying to reduce the time customer service people have to spend on the phone, so ask how much time their people spend on the phone. You're trying to make it so the customer service people don't have to repeat the same set of instructions over and over again. Ask if that is an issue with their company.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question.

I've spoken with some people do actually do customer service and I had overlooked this variable, assuming I already knew the answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like a good list. How about also asking if the businesses know the ROI or at least costs of providing customer support the way they do it now? That way, you might get more insight into whether they think of this as a problem area and what would attract them.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with the comments about the questionnaire being too long. 3 questions max, focusing on consumer experience. Sample questions: 1\. How do you communicate w/customers? -- tick boxes with check as many as apply, with field for other 2\. Where do your customers find info/bitch about you? (i.e. outside the channels you communicate with them) -- tick boxes with usual suspects and field for other

</comment><comment><USER6> Good list of questions, a bit wordy on 5 and 7. Assuming for 5 you are questioning about the sites SEO viability. A more pointed question such as " Is you current site optimized to take advantage of search engines? Why, Why not? ", In a sales meeting you can follow up with your response on why RootBuzz rocks for SEO.

</comment><comment><USER7> Its a good list but too long to get many responses. Better to get a lot of smaller data bits than a few detailed responses because then there's a self- selectivity problem.

I don't have the time to try to cut it down for you now but I'd strongly recommend you get it down to 3 MAYBE 4 questions

</comment><comment><USER8> The questionnaire is pretty good. Good job.</comment>


Mongrel2: State Machines, HTTP-0MQ, Events - <AUTHOR> http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1278464593.html <comment><USER2> I read that post twice and created an account just to leave a comment. What a brilliant guy--saves app developers from having to hack up their webservers to support their choice of backend AND provide incredible insight into (and granular control over) connections.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I appreciate the compliment. That's the general goal, but with all things, it remains to be seen how easy it is to actually do this. It's really easy for me to do it in C code, but the key is how to make it easy for other people without much fuss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Zed makes a big deal about getting long-polling for free, but with evented web servers (built on EventMachine, Node, Twisted, etc), you also get long-polling for free, since requests are just objects that get thrown around until they're completed. This architecture makes long-polling trivial, because when a request comes in you can put the request object into a hash or array, then when the data or computation you're waiting on finishes you look up the request and send it back to the client.

Regardless, there are a lot of interesting ideas here, and I look forward to playing around with it when it's more done.

<comment><USER3> Well, this is long polling from any backend, not from within mongrel2. So your 0MQ handlers can respond to any connected HTTP or JSSocket, which other servers can do given the right design.

However, what I was more referring to was that by using a state machine I didn't have to actually implement anything. I just wrote the code according to the state machine, and what fell out was a ton of features simply because of design serendipity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to me that the logic behind the problem solving going on in Mongrel2 has been 'how can I make this into a problem that's already been solved?'

I think that seems like a pretty good methodology in a lot of cases actually.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, or another way to do it is, "I have problem X, how can I make it go away without solving it." Either by designing the thing so I don't need to solve X, or by finding someone else who's already solved it for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does a finite state machine where you can modify the events to cause any transition you want defeat the purpose of the FSM? It's interesting that while the states are limited, by adding code you can cause a transition from any state to any other. You can look at the pretty picture to understand the default FSM, but as soon as you install any additional code, you don't know what transitions it will take. Adding modules effectively rewrites the FSM.

Is that the intent?

Also, this reminds me a bit of the design behind Varnish.

<comment><USER3> Well, you can't cause any transition you want, you can just change the events in the stream. So, if you're in the middle of proxying you can get out of it and go into a handler, but you couldn't totally screw up the FSM and go someplace weird.

So, adding modules doesn't rewrite the FSM. You'd need Ragel and a C compiler for that. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Currently I have one server running haproxy, which distributes requests to three servers running nginx (which serves static content) and proxies application requests to apache/mod_wsgi. How would Mongrel2 simplify this?

<comment><USER3> Well, knowing haproxy user, it is embed into your infrastructure like a tick, so it probably wouldn't help you. My experience has been, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

But, if I were to do an alternative, I'd basically ditch haproxy and nginx and just have Mongrel2 talking 0MQ or HTTP to arbitrary backends directly, rather than through multiple layers. With 0MQ you don't have a single point of failure by design, so you could (theoretically) run tons of Mongrel2 servers in front and have them talk to big clusters of 0MQ in back.

That's the goal anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This post and comments here have convinced me I need to learn more about Finite State Machines and how to apply them.

Can anyone recommend some good educational material about using finite state machines in software development?

My Google searches find theoretical papers and not practical applications.

<comment><USER3> Check out "Practical State Charts in C/C++" by Dr. Miro Samek.

<comment><USER9> Notes:

The 2nd Edition is better than the 1st Edition, because it does not have the distracting analogies to quantum physics. For me, the best part of Samek's book was Chapter 5, State Patterns. However, he also covers Standard State machine Implementations (and their flaws) in Chapter 3. Chapter 6, Realtime Framework Concepts, covers WHY you want to take special care in implementing a state machine, such as avoiding corrupting the current event in order to preserve RTC semantics. You will not get a more coherent presentation of these issues anywhere else. You could spend years of your life reading CS papers on the subject, implementing state machines, etc. and not come to the mastery Samek has. My favorite quote from the whole book has to be pointing out deviating from a simple Moore FSM, by introducing guards, can cause big trouble. He says overuse of guards is "[the source of] architectural decay" in complex reactive systems.

The one thing I disagree with Samek about is that transitions have any state context associated with them. For me, transitions occur between states. This approximates the design of Mealy actions going between Moore actions., and is closest to the semantics of object-orientation, since the sender does not need to know the receiver directly. Samek presumes actions are dependent on the source context, but if there are two outgoing transitions from a source context, they probably will not have the same action. You move to a state before entering that state, and you move out of a state before moving to another state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The more I read about Mongrel2 the more interested I am in it.

I have never really looked at the code of a web server before for comparison but it is kind of interesting to read about Zed's approach to building a web server.

<comment><USER10> I think Mongrel2 has some cool ideas in its design, but using sqlite for configuration seems very heavy, creates more dependencies and you can't edit the data in a text editor which moves away from how you traditionally configure a unix service. Bad choice.

<comment><USER3> I think the traditional way of configuring a unix service manually using a random config file format that hides the underlying data structure is a bad choice. I'm trying to provide a way to automate things, and the best way to do that is with a universal data structure and langauge that modifies it accessible from every programming language.

sqlite3 fits that goal.

In other words, try doing .schema on your nginx.conf.

<comment><USER11> Initially I didn't like the idea of using sqlite for the config, but actually, this makes total sense and I agree with it as long as you don't make it into something Lovecraftian :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find his use of Ragel generated state machines fascinating. He uses them in ways I wouldn't typically consider, very clever stuff.

I'm on the lookout for nasty code of my own that can be replaced with a state machine.

</comment><comment><USER13> erlang also provides a number of 'behavior' modules e.g. gen_fsm/gen_server etc. which takes out the drudgery of writing boilerplate network client/server code. w.r.t your fsm, are there timeouts also happening at some states ? might be required to avoid holding onto precious resources if either end becomes unresponsive for whatever reason...

<comment><USER3> I had them in there, but was having a problem getting the base state machine right, so took them out. Cool that you noticed though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hey... wait a minute ... what's up with this non-ranty, non-swearing, respectful-reply Zed... What have you done with the real Zed?!

<comment><USER15> I believe it may have something to do with the non-ranty, non-swearing, respectful questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Go Zed! You rock.</comment>


Show HN: DomainWatch – Get notified when a domain becomes available - <AUTHOR> https://domainwatch.me <comment><USER2> When a domain expires it shows in the whois for a few weeks before any one else can register it. There are places where you can browse lists of these expiring domains and if the domain is worth anything people will race to register it first. To win these races people use a register that does backordering to register it within seconds(not 48 hours) of the domain being available.

If the domain is worth registering it will be available and registered by someone else before your system even knows it was free.

Your pricing is also way off. Godaddy will poll at least every minute until they get the domain for a flat $20. You are charing $200 to poll once ever 12 hours for a year, doesn't even include the cost of the domain. If the domain is worth $200 some one else will have it sitting on backorder and you will never get it.

iirc sedo was the fastest at backordering but more expensive that godaddy, I guess you could charge $200 a year and if its a godaddy domain use godaddys backorder pocked the $180 extra if its not backorder on sedo and provide a better service for the same price.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. If you're serious about this and compete with the bigger players, you're gonna need ICANN credits and multiple threads running 24x7...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Btw. gmail shows me this when i click the "Login now" link: [https://vgy.me/QNXHml.png](https://vgy.me/QNXHml.png) . I don't know why it considers your site to be "untrusted" (whatever it means), but it might be worth finding out and fixing, so it doesn't drive people away.

</comment><comment><USER5> Let's just hope this site is around for X years, because I've been waiting for a specific domain to become available for years.

</comment><comment><USER6> Cool concept! I never did like setting up reminders to check "whatever happened to that empty domain name"...

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice design! What framework did you use, if any?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! [https://bulma.io](https://bulma.io) \- check it out.

<comment><USER8> +1 for bulma, makes layout bearable.</comment></comment></comment>


Revealed: Amazon told workers paid sick leave law doesn't cover warehouses - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/07/amazon-warehouse-workers-coronavirus-time-off-california <comment><USER2> Years ago company I worked for announced their family leave policy with much fanfare.

I applied not long after and I was told: "It only applies to California employees, you have to take unpaid leave."

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a point. The flaunt all laws and regulation so easily. We might just declare Amazon above law (both criminal and tax).</comment>


Quitting the paint factory - <AUTHOR> http://adamantine.wordpress.com/texts/quitting-the-paint-factory-by-mark-slouka/

<comment><USER2> Goodness gracious me that is the most well written piece of prose I've read in years. I just remembered what literature is.</comment>


The Problem With Social Networking - <AUTHOR> http://xenlogic.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-problem-with-online-social.html

<comment><AUTHOR>
        Long before the Facebook age,
        I noticed something very interesting about
        the personalities of the most vocal people
        I would meet in chatrooms, instant messengers
        and bulletin boards: They were mostly shy.
        It took a while for me to realize that this should
        have been expected. Shy people tend to prefer the
        anonymity of the internet, where social cues from
        body language, eye contact and tone of voice don't
        apply—largely because they are invisible to all.

This hits right at home. When I'm active a lot on facebook / twitter, I am a typical shy guy with little social skills. Then I started going out a lot and meeting lots of people. Then boom. Less twitter and facebook.

This might applies to HN too, but sometimes I find it weird because some people on HN are successful, and I think you can't be successfull without good social skills. Maybe we grow to become good socially, but still attached to the community? I've never experienced that though.</comment>


The other side of Hacker News - A User Experience Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://volos.posterous.com/hacker-news-user-experience-experiment

<comment><USER2> How to instantly improve the Hacker News user experience in one step: increase the font size.

<comment><USER3> Ctrl +

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After using it for a half an hour or so, it would seem to me that the timer for the user pop-up on hover is much too short, I get it by accident all the time. In addition to a different default, perhaps it should be your first option item.

Great work though!

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, probably I will increase the timer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When you install the extension it warns you that it needs access to "Your browsing history". I can understand why it needs your HN data, but why your browsing history? (or is that message simply misleading)

<comment><USER6> Any chrome extension which uses a 'background page' is listed as accessing your browsing history. This is because a background page (think of it as a daemon) knows which tabs you open and where you navigate and could theoretically store or transmit that data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could this cause problems the way that hnreputation (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=789469>) also did?

<comment><AUTHOR> are you aware of the practises of that script?

I do take a provision to delay 1200msec the request to the Newest page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could you include a larger screenshot? I can make sense of what's going on in the current one, but just barely.

edit: Ah, the larger versions are on the Chrome extension page.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does not play well with AutoPager Chrome extension, though ( after the second page).

Edit: Reply to an existing comment brings a new page as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't changed yet the reply functionality, only "add comment".

<comment><USER9> Oh, ok. ANd I presume you've added the functionality only on the home page ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I thought I shouldn't interfere with the normal behaviour, when the page is viewed normally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like it! Clicking on an article was a really pleasant surprise. What drove you to write this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I wondered how much it would change HN, just by adding a few features. Then it felt really useful, and I decided to release it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> pretty interesting, but i think I found a couple of strange things worth reporting (hovering on your own user generates a "messy" tooltip, some race conditions seem to appear). Where would you like them to be reported properly? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying it. I was going to put it on GitHub later. I will announce the link later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This extension is awesome. Definitely keeping this, very time saving.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks</comment></comment>


Draw retro style pixel art gif animations - <AUTHOR> http://drawbang.com/

<comment><USER2> Is it possible to capture right-click and make it erase? I'm used to that sort of functionality in MSPaint and other pixel editors and it makes it much easier to manipulate an image.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can use shift+click to erase pixels!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is an open source project based on Sinatra, Redis and the canvas element, more details at <http://drawbang.com/about></comment>


Revealed: The Man Behind the Most Viral GIF in Politics - <AUTHOR> https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/295756 <comment><USER2> I'd never seen it before, so I would hardly consider it the most viral, given the vast amount of 'viral' content I do see every single day.</comment>


Bladder cancer 'attacked and killed by common cold virus' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/health-48868261 <comment><USER2> So there's a chance that the cold is a feature and not a 'bug'? That those that weren't vulnerable to it died off from other diseases like cancer so evolution went the other way?

<comment><USER3> Not likely. Cancer only gets serious after most of reproduction and child rearing and nurturing has been done. Whereas cold is pretty serious for infants for example.

<comment><USER4> Colds are not the flu. Children tolerate colds just fine.

<comment><USER5> Colds _are_ dangerous to new borns just as the parent comment says.

<comment><USER6> Pretty much anything is dangerous for a new born. I have to admit that I'd be much more scared from the flu on a new born than a cold.

<comment><USER5> Sure, my comment is generally obvious, except I felt it needed to be said as arkades's comment seemed dismissive of the risks to infants with his response of "Colds are not the flu. Children tolerate colds just fine."

Flu are truly scary causing deaths throughout childhood with increased survival around two years and then again around five years. My youngest turns five this month. Before she was two she was hospitalized with croup and she has had a rougher ride with illness than my other kids along the way too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Threads like this made me with HN had a 'verification' system for certain (opt in by poster) posts a la /r/AskHistorians/. If you are not familiar, therein any comment not made by a verified user or not following extremely strict citation guidelines gets deleted.

<comment><USER8> As long as everyone keep it civilised and learn from each-other I don't really see the point.

When someone posts obvious misinformation he's downvoted to oblivion fairly quickly, and when someone makes an honest mistake he's corrected by people who know better and hopefully update his views adequately.

<comment><USER9> What if somebody honestly posts compelling, non-obvious misinformation? How confident are you that would be corrected?

<comment><USER10> On this site? Pretty confident.

<comment><USER11> Depends on the topic. The volume of comments on 737 Max threads makes me wonder if the community moderation can keep up

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dumb question alert. Could the common cold be fighting off early stages of throat or mouth cancers whenever we get sick?

<comment><USER13> That would be some super interesting co-evolution. My guess is "no", but only for armchair reasons - way outside my area of expertise.

My understanding is that mouth and throat cancers are realy uncommon before middle age, so the moderate but ubiquitous fitness loss from the cold is probably worse, evolutionarily speaking, than the substantial but infrequent fitness loss from dying of cancer later in life.

It seems plausible, however, that the mutations which make cells cancerous might also impair their response to viral infection.

/armchair

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So if this ends up being found true it's entirely possible that some other viruses that don't kill you, make you sterile or cripple you might actually make you stronger. I'd be interested to see more of this type of research on other less-deadly conditions like chicken pox, measles, flu, etc.

<comment><USER15> This is well known.

Why do you think the strongest of the strong bacteria are found in hospitals? Because they do a lot of cleaning and disinfecting. The weak are purged, the few who remain don't have to compete with the weak on other axes, thus they can concentrate on developing resistance.

In your home, where you don't clean as strongly and as frequently, there is a wide variety of bacteria who compete against each other, and can't spend too much on developing resistance.

<comment><USER16> > Why do you think the strongest of the strong bacteria are found in > hospitals?

I presume you mean strong against antibiotics and sterilisation. The evolved bacteria are likely weaker along other dimensions (that are less important for survival in a hospital setting). Some evolution is compromises, improving X has cost Y.

Aside: the mega-plate video is an unbelievably good demonstration of bacterial evolution: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8) especially note the tree at the end showing how many different mutations evolved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 10+ years ago I saw a medical news report that said that people who hadn't had a cold for N years (where N is perhaps between 5-7, but is otherwise forgotten) were more likely to be diagnosed with cancer. I wish I'd saved that article; I've think about it whenever I have a cold, but don't have the pubmed skilz to dig it up.

</comment><comment> cadence- Did they modify the virus in any way? Or was it just a total luck that this particular naturally-occurring virus targets bladder cancer cells?

</comment><comment><USER18> Using virus or weakened virus to tread bladder cancer is already existing treatment. Using common cold virus is new and interesting.

<comment><USER4> It is? Which?

The only thing I'm familiar with is using BCG vaccine vs. Superficial bladder cancer. And that is an immuno therapy. A PTEN mutation allows mycobacterium to enter cancer cells preferentially, and then invites an immune response that the cancer cells themselves had evaded. PTEN is a common mutation and bladder cancer, but is not seen in healthy bladder urothelium.

Edit: I should have read the article before commenting. The virus in the article also does not attack the bladder cancer, it has exactly the same mechanism as BCG. Although hopefully it is reliant on a different targeting mechanism than the PTEN mutation.

<comment><USER19> This is probably still an improvement, though. I haven't seen it happen often, but I've certainly seen cases of BCG instillation backtrack into the central circulation (my first case of this actually seeded his bone marrow with it), and then you've got a case of TB. If there's less morbidity if that happens here, and I presume there is, that's still better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is literally the plot line from I Am Legend

<comment><USER21> It's been known for decades that some infections can kill cancer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, so there may be an upside to the fact that I get colds so damned easily? Cool!

<comment><USER23> You may simply show the signs of common cold infection more than others which would probably indicate a robust or over-active immune system.

People who say they "never get sick" are often "sick" but don't know it.

<comment><USER24> >People who say they "never get sick" are often "sick" but don't know it.

Or maybe they don't have children.

<comment><USER25> First year of preschool was the worst, after that immune system workout, it got a lot easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Bladder cancer is sometimes treated by immunotherapy with an attenuated form of tuberculosis (BCG), so I wonder how revolutionary this is. Maybe the side effects aren't as bad? Maybe it's safer?

</comment><comment><USER27> This kind of thing is totally expected. I am surprised by so many negative comments and that shows that many HN folks are still on mainstream dogma and suffer the tunnel vision provided by the authority with its own agenda.

This is basically form of immunotherapy - most important thing for cancer is to evade immune system. Anything that triggers it in vacinity can have cleaning effect. In Japan you can get colly vaccine for example (intentional bacterial infection). In history, there are number of example of remissions after serious infective disease (in this case not so serious).

Its so obvious that it hurts me that people fail to see it. What is not obvious is what agent will do this.

It also makes one wonder weather certain vaccines actually promote cancer given that those vaccinated quickly clear future disease so infective agent doesn't have time any more to trigger the appropriate immune response (I am not in antivac camp, this is only logical)

</comment><comment><USER28> Does the cold virus target cancer on its own or is this a treatment where outside help is needed to get the virus in the same place as the cancer. Obligatory xkcd: [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1217:_Cells](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1217:_Cells)

<comment><USER29> ???

 _In this study, 15 patients with the disease were given the cancer-killing coxsackievirus (CVA21) through a catheter one week before surgery to remove their tumours._

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> and now everyone is vaccinating against the cold? Or was it the flu? xD

</comment><comment><USER31> I doubt there is zero side effect as claimed, it just might be more subtle and long term. But yes, obviously it's better than cancer.</comment>


The World Food Programme's "blockchain" has one participant–i.e. it's a database - <AUTHOR> https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/11/26/the-world-food-programmes-much-publicised-blockchain-has-one-participant-i-e-its-a-database/ <comment><USER2> I suspect this is how most "blockchain" projects will end up in 5 years; no utility from the fact that it's a blockchain and practically just a database.

<comment><AUTHOR> I found Bitfury's Exonum blockchain quite reasonable in its claims in this regard:

[https://github.com/exonum/exonum-doc/blob/master/src/get- sta...](https://github.com/exonum/exonum-doc/blob/master/src/get-started/what- is-exonum.md)

> Like distributed databases, such as Cassandra, MongoDB or MySQL Cluster, > blockchains are replicated on multiple nodes. However, compared to ordinary > distributed DBs, blockchains are resistant against much wider range of > attacks:

> 1\. Blockchains are resistant against failures of any single node (or even > multiple nodes at the same time). The threat model includes nodes being > switched off, isolated from the rest of the network, or even completely > compromised (say, by a hacker)

> 2\. Blockchains can be deployed in a decentralized network, where there is > no single administrator managing all nodes. This significantly reduces risks > of data corruption and the bias in the system (e.g., preferential treatment > of some participants)

so, they posit Exonum as a particularly resilient distributed database. Which is fine, y'know.

I've said for a while that I think the one good outcome of Blockchain(tm) hype is going to be businesses discovering the usefulness of transaction ledgers tamper-proofed with hashes of everything. Developers of course know this as git.

<comment><USER3> _Developers of course know this as git._

Well, except for the history rewriting "feature".

<comment><AUTHOR> Which turns out to be a highly marketable feature for "blockchains" to organisations who actually have money to pay for this. _e.g._ , [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-blockchain- accenture...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-blockchain- accenture/accenture-breaks-blockchain-taboo-with-editing-system-idUSKCN11Q1S2) Remember, in this context we're talking about business use, not cryptocurrency use.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a Year - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/16/balanced/ <comment><AUTHOR> As an example of openness working at Balanced, I was fielding a question from a customer on IRC yesterday[1] about our support for JCB and Diner's Club cards: we support them, but balanced.js said we didn't. While I was talking with some other engineers about this, they just fixed the bug themselves! [2] We both win: we didn't have to drop everything and write the code, and our customer got their fix even faster.

Or when I saw that /r/dogecoin was trying to get Reddit Gifts (a customer of ours) to support Dogecoin. Since we do all feature discussion on GitHub, I was able to get them involved[3]. That one.... wasn't as productive as the bugfix. :)

1: [https://botbot.me/freenode/balanced/msg/9808050/](https://botbot.me/freenode/balanced/msg/9808050/)

2: [https://github.com/balanced/balanced- js/pull/68](https://github.com/balanced/balanced-js/pull/68)

3: [http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1t3obk/petition_fo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1t3obk/petition_for_reddit_to_accept_dogecoin_as/ce47kh5)

</comment><comment><USER2> The guys at Balanced are doing a great job. I'm using their service for a product I've built to manage gyms [1] and it is working great. This is cool b/c that wasn't the original intention of how their product would be used (i.e. not a marketplace) but it supports our use case well. Also, the ACH API is one of the BIG differentiators of their product when compared to something like Stripe (which is also very cool, but lacks the processing ACH API).

[1] [http://www.simplegym.co](http://www.simplegym.co)

<comment><USER3> I might be lying, but I think stripe recently enabled ACH support?

EDIT: [https://stripe.com/blog/send-payouts-with- stripe](https://stripe.com/blog/send-payouts-with-stripe)

<comment><USER4> I believe harrisreynolds was talking about ACH debits: [https://www.balancedpayments.com/ach- debits](https://www.balancedpayments.com/ach-debits)

<comment><USER2> Correct. Stripe can do ACH payouts (credits) but cannot pull money from a bank account for a payment (ACH debit).

<comment><USER5> You can also not fund stripe to do ACH payments. So if you have your own merchant account with much lower rates, you cannot use Stripe to pay out.

You can with Balanced, which is awesome (in theory).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Balanced is a great service. We use them at Wefunder and are very happy with their product and customer support. They're worth checking out, especially if you want to do ACH.

</comment><comment><USER5> I really want to like Balanced, and we signed up a few weeks ago. Before signing up, I contacted them on the IRC channel and asked if there were any other requirements to get started and send out payments. We would be sending out approximately $160k on our first batch that we'd have to fund through a bank and I wanted to make sure there would be no delays.

I was assured that this would be fine, and no additional information would be required. Well, reality turned out to be different. After sending the funding requests from our bank account, nothing happened for a few days. I didn't want to be impatient annoying customer so I waited till day 3 and shot them an email.

Turned out the transactions were flagged by their risk management team, and that they just made a mistake by not contacting us. They did process the withdrawals that day, and while the funds have now left the bank account, our Balanced account is still not funded and we can still not send out the payments.

My customers were expecting to be paid by today. Now, due to the bank holiday, if I am lucky, they will be paid by Wednesday. These are people's mortgage and rent payments. Completely unacceptable.

Balanced did apologize but did not attempt in any way to speed up the payment process. I even offered to wire the funds as it was essential that things would go through on time.

I completely understand that there is risk management involved, which is why I contacted them to begin with. I also understand that mistakes can be made, and I'll cut them slack for that. But the fact is that I now have 100s of very pissed off customers (understandably so) and that I think Balanced could have made more of an effort to help getting this batch out on time.

Hopefully this was just a glitch and the rest will go smoothly. Like I said, I want to like them but if you are like us and are already somewhat established, make sure you are not on a tight deadline and pro-actively follow-up.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for calling us out on this. We're working to make sure this type of miscommunication doesn't continue to occur.

If you have any other issues maintaining your payout schedule please email me directly at manisha at balancedpayments dot com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> wow - more than i expected. is balanced including their payouts in this number or is the 370M just all incoming payments?

</comment><comment><USER8> All I can say is that my experience with Balanced has been most excellent, I really love what they do.

In my experience their team is extremely responsive and receptive to feedback, to the level customers can (and do) have impact on the product itself, that's pretty huge in my book.

Very happy to see them doing so well and growing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Big congrats to the Balanced team!

</comment><comment><USER10> Stripe, Balanced, Braintree, etc all look like much better technical solutions (Apis, ease of integration) than what I use currently, but the pricing is SO prohibitive! Are there any plans for these guys to do Interchange+ pricing, and lower per txn down to a reasonable 10c? At the end of the day, payment processing is a commodity and I'll gladly do the extra work it takes to integrate with a cheaper processor.

<comment><USER11> (ceo of balanced)

We don't have any plans to offer interchange+ pricing. We found that would create more work for our customers. The predicability in pricing is part of the value that Balanced provides.

<comment><USER10> OK, but you can't get more "open" than interchange plus :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As I continue to say in these threads (and it's been a long time), Balanced has terrible third-party support while Stripe dominates them.

We have this ridiculous non-overlapping issue with payment processors:

Balanced - Same day payouts (!) to WF, next-day to anyone else. ACH processing. Documentation isn't great. Third-party support is horrible. (Tickets are open on my [relatively popular] software of choice and have been for months; no timetable has been set.)

Stripe - Infinitely better documentation. Easier implementation. Outstanding third-party support. Crazy good APIs. Seven-day rolling payments (sigh).

Square - Next-day processing. Physical dongle. Easy to use web store. No APIs (for fuck's sake).

It's like each company looks at one another and figures out a way to best frustrate segments of the market, ensuring that no one provider can handle it all.

As for me, I put through low-mid six figures through Stripe and Square but I'd switch to Balanced if they would engender better support amongst third-party providers. Stripe has worked with me to cut payout speed, but it's not anywhere close to Square/Balanced. And if Square opened up their APIs, I'd leave everyone behind assuming third-party support was there.

Yeah, these guys are all better than Paypal/Authorize.net, but good god figure it out, please.

<comment><USER11> (ceo of balanced)

> Tickets are open on my [relatively popular] software of choice and have been > for months; no timetable has been set.)

I'm sorry to hear that. What software would you like to see Balanced support?

<comment><USER12> This was opened 11 months ago:

[https://github.com/balanced/balanced- api/issues/268](https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues/268)

But it appears it was updated just yesterday by someone with WP experience, so maybe it will be done soon? Would love to test it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 400 customers and $370m in transactions. So average customer is doing less than $1m in transactions a year.

Will be interesting to see if they can retain customers as they grow, I guess that's the reasoning behind volume pricing.

<comment><USER14> It's kind of hard to infer anything from those 2 numbers alone. Given the nature of the payments industry, it wouldn't be surprising if they had 10 customers account for $300m and the rest processing a few $10s/$100s k a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Congrats Matin and team!

</comment><comment><USER16> Anybody have an idea as to how much Stripe is doing annually?

</comment><comment><USER17> Do you know a "Balanced" for europe?

<comment><USER18> (Balanced employee)

Hi there! Yes, have you looked @ MangoPay? We have a great relationship with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> do they have plans for International support ?

<comment><USER20> [https://support.balancedpayments.com/hc/en- us/articles/20013...](https://support.balancedpayments.com/hc/en- us/articles/200135940)

+1 for not encouraging +1 to GitHub issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the reasons we encourage people to leave a comment is that when we actually implement the feature, everyone who has +1'd gets automatically notified.

<comment><USER20> Yes, there is the "subscribe" button for notifications though. I'm just generally annoyed with people +1'ing GitHub issues. While I'm not a huge fan of adding a +1/like button to comments/issues in GitHub it does seem to be the only solution to people adding +1 everywhere.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Doctor performs surgery using Google Glass [video] - <AUTHOR> http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2013/10/uab_surgeon_performs_surgery_u.html

<comment><USER2> A Syrian surgeon in Edmonton has been doing remote surgery in clandestine hospitals he set up in Aleppo and Northern Syria for a year now. He uses Skype and there are multiple cameras set up. [http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/story/1.1341329](http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/story/1.1341329) he claimed to have done a lot of virtual leg and hand surgeries in a more recent vid if you google his name.

<comment><USER3> I hope I'm not the only person terrified about the lag/fidelity on Skype for surgery!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've had my Google Glass for about a week now, and this raises some questions for me.

How long did the surgery last? My experience so far is that you can get a maximum of about one hour battery life from Glass when using video.

Was the resolution and video quality sufficient for the remote surgeon to really see what was going on? Again, personal experience only, but everyone I've made a video call with over Glass has reported very choppy low-res streams.

I'd love a lot more details on the procedure, what went right and what could have worked better, and just how it was done. "This thing happened" isn't a lot of useful information.

<comment><AUTHOR> So the surgery lasted about two hours. We used a 7000 mAh battery pack, since without external battery Glass would make it about 25-30 minutes in the Hangout before going dark.

The resolution was good enough for the remote proctor to assist. We did notice that as the device got warm as the surgery progressed, quality seemed to decrease a little. Overall I think we were really pleased though with the reliability and quality; we didn't experience any drops, or much packet loss or jitter.

I would say the biggest hurdle was audio. Because the version of Glass we used relied on bone conduction and didn't have an available earpiece, it made it pretty difficult at times for the surgeon to hear his remote proctor, especially since there was a lot of sawing and suction going on.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the details. I'm very surprised that you were able to do the surgery without an earpiece. I can't even understand what someone's saying to me when I'm in the grocery store, the bone conduction is so quiet.

If there's a more detailed report of the event up anytime, please share. It's fascinating stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can Google Glass overlay its overlay over more than the small rectangly in the upper right corner? I thought not, but they seem to imply that it does (the overlay for the operating surgeon is provided by Google Glass).

I'm also slightly surprised that there are no focus problems: the Glass display is made so that it appears to be significantly further away than 40-50cm that you have between the surgeon and the operating field.

<comment><USER6> I had exactly the same doubt, the setup requires a see-through augmented reality display, which does not seem to be the case with Google Glass. I would love to be wrong though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm imagining something like this:

[http://www.surgeonsimulator2013.com](http://www.surgeonsimulator2013.com)

Which would actually be pretty fun as a VR app.

</comment><comment><USER8> How was Google Glass necessary, or even preferred, for this application over a normal computer & monitor setup? I can't seem to make that out from the article.

<comment><USER9> I would assume because it's right in the actual surgeon's view instead of requiring constantly moving the head to look at the monitor, then look at the patient.

Better title would probably be "First Ever Virtual/Augmented Reality Assisted Surgery"

<comment><USER8> Ah, for some reason I was imagining this on the side of the remote expert rather than the surgeon in the surgery room. Makes a lot more sense, now!</comment></comment></comment>


What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2008? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/03/24/what-will-life-be-like-in-the-year-2008/ <comment><USER2> _People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn't totally free. The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder's spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments, on the average, about two hours of home study a day._

Intriguingly, this is probably true. The difference is that 'home study of new developments' actually just takes place at work, and the 8 hour workday is still going strong, if only as an illusion.

The pattern seems to be that the predictions for technology, especially anything requiring complicated physics or engineering, are wildly inaccurate, while the predictions for social, organizational, or behavioral change are either on the money, or too conservative.

Since consumer programs are usually meant to aid existing behaviors, the authors predictions don't overshoot the mark by nearly so much.

Sometimes, social institutions are completely ignored as subjects of change.

"Other conveniences ease kitchenwork. The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use."

How quaint. What on earth is said 'the housewife' supposed to do? _not be a housewife_ , perhaps?

<comment><USER3> To paraphrase: "in the future, we will be able to consume more than we produce."

The physics and engineering are fuzzy because nobody with the requisite knowledge would proclaim such a thing.

<comment><USER4> I think that the "we" means the average Joe and Jane Schmoes, not the aggregate society. Or maybe we just outsourced out production to other, poorer countries that _don't_ have domed cities and still vacation on land.

<comment><USER5> Maybe. All I know is that I've outsourced my consumption to wealthier people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies "buy," and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance."

One-click online ordering in 1968. The only difference is that the info is stored on the client rather than the server. This makes it pretty clear how badly the Amazon patent fails the nonobviousness test.

<comment><USER6> Eventually the legal world will catch up with technology, and those kind of silly patents will be no more.

<comment><USER7> We can only hope...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's 8 a.m. Monday August 25, 2008, you are headed to your cubicle 30 miles away. You throw your briefcase into your Camry, throw yesterday's Starbucks cup behind the driver's seat, turn on the radio to Bob and Tom in the morning. The car accelerates to 40 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 45 mph in the less built-up areas. You lurch past endless strings of billboards and strip malls. Traffic is heavy, but there is no need worry -- it has been like this forever. Suddenly your cell-phone buzzes. A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting our for sports boats. You hit silent. You hate that he calls you before you get to work.

Ninety minutes after leaving your home, you arrive at your office. You silently organize your desk and then watch 30 break.com videos. You think, it's so wonderful to be alive in 2008.

<comment><USER9> (that looks like fun...)

Medical research has marginally improved the chance that babies born in the 21st century will live long and healthy lives, assuming their parents have health insurance. Heart disease has become an epidemic as people consume more high-calorie, processed foods and get much less exercise, thanks to the innovations described above. If hearts or other major organs do give trouble, the patient may be lucky enough to get a transplant, if he doesn't die waiting for a donor.

Medical examinations are a matter of sitting in a waiting room for an hour or two, then receiving a five-minute examination that is similar to one performed in 1968, but much more hurried. Blood and urine samples will be analyzed in the lab later that day, but by that time the patient is back in his cubicle and the doctor, who regrets every day that he went into primary care, will not be paid to bring him back and discuss the results in person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Many families reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their needs._

That looks quaint to us, but at the same time we're busily shoveling everything we can into the cloud.

<comment><USER11> Touche! We managed to liberate our data and computation from big blue and then all we can think about is putting it back!

But maybe the difference is that we're all packing supercomputer heat at home and super-extra-duper-distributed-computers up in the cloud. Most futuretalk articles from back in the day always assumed the equivalent of a dumb terminal, and even well after Moore's law was established very few people seemed to realize those implications for the average home's computing power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _The average work day is about four hours._

Take that 37signals ;-)

</comment><comment><USER13> If you like this sort of stuff, also:

The Usborne Book Of The Future [http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefuture...](http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefutureindex.php)

It has excellent illustrations and is, as far as I can tell, a lot closer to reality than this other one.

<comment><USER9> I still have my copy of Star Travel somewhere. I loved that book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> <http://www.paleofuture.com/> is a great source for this kind of stuff.

</comment><comment><USER15> Surprising how accurate the predictions are for computers but entirely off for other technologies.

<comment><USER16> "Yeah", he replied using his pencil-thin infrared flashlight input device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> and life in 2048? Kurzweil predicts the Singularity occurs around 2045.

<comment><USER16> It's Monday August 25th, 2048. You are old. Kids around you are fed up of your stories with no point, your failed dreams of longevity, rejuvenation and mental uploading sound like all fifty year old future predictions have ever done. There is technology everywhere, but like I said, you're old and it's all Greek to you (and after the cheap nervous system splice, you can't stop your hands shaking enough to coherently access the menus and change it back). Your colleagues aren't phoning you to ask for a boat impeller design as magnetohydrodrives became popular after the rise of the room temperature semiconductor and your firm went under a dozen years ago. There is still no one-pill-meal and the first moon base plans (all autonomic) are only 3 to 5 years from approval by the Brazilian Government.

The eleventy o'clock bell rings. Everyone stops what they are doing and switches to the two-minute-hate channel for a good rant and to diffuse a daysworth of anger. Today's figure was picked for raising hopes too high and contributing to the misery of millions. It's Ray Kurzweil. You vent your spleen all over (there's surgery that can fix that now, but you couldn't afford it if you sold your left kidney, assuming you hadn't already done so).

Amazingly, you do live in a dome-covered city. It's stiflingly hot and muggy year round.</comment></comment>


Three Different Meanings of "Singularity" - <AUTHOR> http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singularity-schools/

<comment><AUTHOR> Look, I don't mean to spam or anything, but there's at least three different major _logically incompatible_ concepts being called the "Singularity" by different schools of the debate.

Every time you say "Singularity" without defining what you think that word means, God kills a catgirl.

Please think of the catgirls.

Other resources:

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

<http://singinst.org/AIRisk.pdf>

<http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/faq21/64/>

<comment><USER2> Singularity definitely counts as on-topic here... there was more discussion of it in the early days of the site. I would encourage you to submit anything you want in this area.</comment></comment>


Kran - entity system in JS - a flexible architecture for game development - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/paldepind/Kran I'm the author. Kran is in heavy development and feedback is much appreciated <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author. Kran is in heavy development and feedback is much appreciated!</comment>


Were the Cuban sonic attack victims actually poisoned? - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/were-the-cuban-sonic-attack-victims-actually-poisoned?ref=wrap <comment><USER2> Literally from the first moment the story broke, I had completely discounted the magical sonic weapon theory and was wondering what was in their environment and whether they had instead been poisoned. It fits _vastly_ better, and there are much better questions to be asked probing the nature of the poisoning. The entire "sonic weapon" angle seemed to be some kind of fabrication to _immediately_ drum up Cold War feelings against Cuba and the ongoing efforts to end the embargo and return to normalcy.

In fact, it was this very story that makes me wonder to this day if Obama's move to normalize relations with Cuba in 2014-15 was the inciting incident behind Russia's decision to start the Digital Cold War in the first place.

<comment><USER3> > In fact, it was this very story that makes me wonder to this day if Obama's > move to normalize relations with Cuba in 2014-15 was the inciting incident > behind Russia's decision to start the Digital Cold War in the first place.

I think NATO's assassination of Gaddafi was a disaster re: relationship with Russia

2011: "Putin blamed himself for letting Gaddafi go, for not playing a strong role behind the scenes" [0]

2012: US threatens military action in Syria: "red line"

2013: Russia gives refuge to Edward Snowden

2013: John Kerry gives Syria a week to destroy their chemical weapons. "(Syria) isn't about to do it and it can't be done". Lavrov immediately negotiates a non-military solution. [1]

2014: Direct Russian intervention following the overthrow of the Ukrainian government (cf Yugoslavia)

2015: Full-scale Russian military props up the Syrian government side in the Syrian civil war (cf Libya)

2016: Russia is accused of manipulating the US election

[0] [http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2017/04/obamas_red_li...](http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2017/04/obamas_red_line_failure_brough.html) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_2118)

<comment><USER4> It amazed me at the time of the 'red line' incident how little credence most people gave to the threat intimated by Russia should the US take action in Syria. Those on the right took it as a turn to jab at Obama over perceived weakness and the Left was in a frenzy to initiate some kind of 'humanitarian police action' with neither side seeming to give a damn that their leaders were standing toe to toe with their Russian counterparts in the first credible example of brinkmanship in the new millennia.

<comment><USER5> Not a perceived weakness, proof of just how terrible a negotiator he is. You should never declare a "red line" if you won't adhere to it.

Think of it through an example of a micro-negotiation. Look at parents who constantly tell their children "if you do _x_ I'll do _y_ " but never follow through on it. All their children do is push their boundaries to see just how much they can get away with. It totally destroys any ability to have a normal relationship built on mutual respect.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps more of a failure of intelligence than negotiation -- it seems the Americans at the time perceived the Russian support for Assad as lukewarm and gambled on a weaker Russian response. It seems that Obama may really have meant the red line, until it became clear too late what the cost would be.

<comment><USER5> I highly doubt that, since his administration was actively financing anti- Assad groups, including violent religious extremists. We've been fighting a proxy war with Russia in the Middle East for roughly seventy years and Syria has been Russia's #1 ally in the region for decades. He'd have to have his head in the sand to think that Russia would allow him to directly take out Assad's forces.

He made a horrible decision that reeks of hubris, thinking that nobody would call his bluff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know that there's enough info for an outsider to reliably guess what actually happened...poison, versus microwave attacks, versus sonic attacks, etc.

However, there seems to be enough smoke to assume "some kind of deliberate attack".

That, on it's own, seems enough to dictate the path forward. More onus and pressure on the Cubans to solve it. Certainly they could provide an environment immune from most vectors.

<comment><USER8> >> However, there seems to be enough smoke to assume "some kind of deliberate attack".

I strongly disagree. Its highly irresponsible to claim an illness of unknown source is an attack and turn ignorance into casus belli. The unquestioning certainty of an attack absent of evidence has fuelled my skepticism. I'd consider self-inflicted foolishness from US's own incompetent secret services more likely than an "attack".

<comment><USER7> There's a wide gulf in between "more pressure on the Cubans to provide a safe environment" and "casus belli".

I'm arguing there's enough evidence to ask for more action, not warmongering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How could it be tinnitus if there is a recording of the sound?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocwjNJ6EGyQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocwjNJ6EGyQ)

<comment><USER10> This is to the degree of wild conspiracy theories; however, this whole Cuba incident defies all explanation. Sonic sounds plausbile for other reasons, such as the locality of the phenomenon (the victims didn't experience the effects if they moved). However, let's face it: sonic attacks are. just. _impossible._ There's E.T. It's never E.T. Furthermore, why would E.T. attack political officials in Cuba for, so far, no fallout effect? Poisoning? That doesn't explain the locality of the effect. Microwaves? Some people were in rooms, we can assume that they were shielded by concrete and microwaves aren't known to have these effects without other effects presenting more severely first. Gamma rays, or some beyond-gamma emission? Particle accelerators aren't that portable.

When I first heard about this I basically gave up on all explanations after things started becoming too crazy. The simplest explanation I have right now is a combination attack - you poison officials with "something" and activate it with some combination of other triggers (including sonic, as we have the recordings you linked). This explanation is full-blown Fringe and I don't like it for that reason, but this is really starting to defy all simpler explanations.

I really don't know what to think at this point: it is becoming science fiction.

<comment><USER11> Is it possible they were poisoned, or otherwise exposed to something that made them hypersensitive to otherwise normal environmental radiation? I know when I'm sick with a sinus headache that certain frequencies of sound like fluorescent lights and CRT TVs put me on edge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Salvi said drugs prescribed to alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy, like Cisplatin...." Correction: Cisplatin _is_ the chemotherapy drug that causes those side effects. It is indeed ototoxic.

<comment><USER13> let me add that in the case of cisplatin, morphine to ease the pain is the vomit inducing compound (sadly)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If this story keeps showing up in the news, but without any real information, I'd suspect that this constant simmering vagueness belies undisclosed information locked behind operational secrecy that prevents the public from understanding the media pressure and the suspicion.

This is to say, fingers are being pointed, but we only receive incomplete information. It's sort of like seeing two neighbors bicker about trash collection and garbage cans, but they leave out glaring details about known trash can abductions by space aliens, that they've been summoning with multi- colored LED flash lights.

</comment><comment><USER15> What if it was an accidental poisoning? Maybe the embassy got a shipment of bad rum. Methanol poisoning would explain the white matter damage and disorientation.

<comment><USER16> It's borderline impossible to accidentally get methanol poisoning from distilled spirits.

The vast majority of cases you hear about on the news are due to spirits being cut with industrial methanol, or people accidentally drinking industrial methanol in the belief that it's ethanol.

Poorly distilled spirits are going to taste bad, but they aren't going to kill you (except for ethanol poisoning).

Also, if it was methanol poisoning (deliberate or not), they'd have severe vision impairment, which we haven't heard anything about.

<comment><USER17> >The vast majority of cases you hear about on the news are due to spirits being cut with industrial methanol

So methanol poisoning is more likely to be the result of fraudsters selling fake branded bottles of spirits, rather than moonshine?

<comment><USER18> Not just more likely, it's a matter of certainty.

Ethanol is one of the possible treatments to methanol poisoning. Drinking badly made moonshine that has some methanol is like drinking both the poison and the cure (because ethanol will compete for treatment within the liver against methanol).

It's really impossible to get poisoned by methanol by accident. If you drink enough methanol to suffer from it it's because people added a large amount of it to your drink. Whatever methanol is found in badly made moonshine just isn't enough to show any effect, not when you consider the fact that the ethanol of the moonshine will pretty much stop your body from absorbing methanol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm going to guess it's not a physics-breaking, direct and conspicuous attack on foreign diplomats for observable reason.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure it wasn't a false flag if I'm honest, especially considering the amount of publicity & nature of reporting around the incidents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a Canadian, this has always seemed weird that they were Canadian victims too. Sure Canada is a US ally, but there's been a pretty big difference in policy toward Cuba between the two.

<comment><USER22> I wonder if the Canadians and the Americans frequented the same places in their off hours.

<comment><USER23> Possibly it was something in a restaurant's food or bar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> ...poison? Aren't there actual recording(s) of the sounds? [1]

I guess this doesn't rule out them having bee poisoned on top of it, but it sure does raise eyebrows. Are they hypothesizing sounds were used to cover up the poison or something?

And given that even the article acknowledges some had concussions (here's another source I saw it in [2]) I'm not sure why the poison hypothesis is being entertained?

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghdLfQsztBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghdLfQsztBo)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of- son...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-sonic-weapon- attacks-at-us-embassy-in-cuba-deepens)

<comment><USER25> Sound could be a red herring

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> FBI and other sweeps have repeatedly turned up nothing localized, so whatever is transmitting is likely not in the building(s) unless they are passive- reflectors. The general public probably have no idea just how advanced directed energy weapons are these days, which is what I am guessing this is, but I think they might be _much_ longer range than people thing. Of course it's all speculation.

</comment><comment><USER27> Because of the embargo, Cubans are using a lot of stuff that the rest of us got rid of a long time ago.

I would guess that the cause is something in the environment to which native Cubans have developed a tolerance or else an avoidance habit.

Embassy personnel go there and live in the community without these habits or tolerance, and some of them get sick.

<comment><USER28> I've been to Cuba for three months, and a friend spend a year there. It's really not uncommon for foreigners to do so. This isn't North Korea.

We didn't develop any symptoms that cannot be explained by either "ethanol poisoning" or "sunburn".

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Something like this may explain the localized noise: [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431264-600-ultrason...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431264-600-ultrasonic- speaker-lets-you-whisper-to-people-30-metres-away/)

</comment><comment><USER30> Could be a stolen US/China weapon or at least a stolen smaller component of a larger US weapon. Or stolen IP of some new weapon which was then built by the thieves.

Maybe this was originally supposed to be use as a component of missile defense and now it's been repurposed as a brain melter.

I only say this because I don't know if many countries have the budget to develop advanced, new weaponry.

This may be a leak of epic proportions as some group is running around with some deadly advanced new weapon.

The existence of these weapons might reveal which weapons our government is focused on.

</comment><comment><USER31> Intense stress can also cause these symptoms.

</comment><comment><USER32> Skeptoid had a very interesting episode [0] on this subject recently. The analysis points to a mass psychogenic event; makes sense.

References and further reading located at end of article.

[0] [https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4603](https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4603)

</comment><comment><USER33> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera)

Duh.

<comment><USER34> Do you really think a battery of tests weren't run for any toxin with an acceptable symptom profile? Ciguatoxin is hardly undetectable, along with virtually all of the pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, and toxins listed.

<comment><USER33> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2579736/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2579736/)

"In the absence of a human biomarker to confirm CFP, the diagnosis of CFP is based on the clinical scenario and the patient's recent fish-eating history. CFP is associated with gastrointestinal (GI), cardiovascular, neurological and neuropsychiatric symptoms and signs."

<comment><USER34> Doesn't really explain the tinnitus, the recorded sound, and while you're right that no human bio markers exist there are characteristic forms of demyelinating injuries. There's really never a reason to be that focused on a differential diagnosis, especially when there is no treatment.

...Unless you're a nation state that really wants to figure it out. If you're willing to put people through hell just to diagnose them, it's probably doable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> They all had sex with the same prostitutes exclusive to US diplomats and contracted a form of syphilis that causes brain damage.

<comment><USER36> Fact or opinion? Legitimately curious.

<comment><USER37> That there is an 'opinion'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Microwave attack/accident</comment>


Aggregated knowledge from a small number of debates outperforms large crowds - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00045#%23 <comment><USER2> dupe

<comment><USER3> I only find [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18712038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18712038) that has 2 points and no comments. From the FAQ [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

> _Are reposts ok?_

> _If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill > reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok._</comment></comment>


We Lost a Lot in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/01/01/2018-progress-erica-garner-midterms-progress/ <comment><USER2> Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle or talking points. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.</comment>