Yandex.Mail's successful migration from Oracle to Postgres [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.pgcon.org/2016/schedule/attachments/426_2016.05.19%20Yandex.Mail%20success%20story.pdf <comment><USER2> My take aways:

* Reasons to migrate were: unresponsive support, inconvenient deployment, closed source, huge cost.

* It took just 10 man-years to rewrite whole project from Oracle to Postgres (e.g. 10 developers, 1 year), which is amazing.

* They benefited from Postgres data versioning, arrays and composite types.

* They liked writing logic on PL/pgSQL more than on Oracle PL/SQL: reduced code size, increased test coverage.

* Easier deployment of changes due no library cache locks.

Great thing for community is that Yandex now commited to Postgres, meaning it will get more testing and bug-fixes faster.

<comment><USER3> > Great thing for community is that Yandex now commited to Postgres, meaning > it will get more testing and bug-fixes faster.

That remains to be seen. There's a fair amount of huge postgres users that don't even bother to report bugs they find...

<comment><AUTHOR> But you're right – a lot of such companies exist unfortunately.

If Uber DBAs came to IRC or any public place (see [http://Postgres.chat](http://Postgres.chat)) where Postgres experts are present and didn't hesitate asking questions, they would still be running Postgres.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yandex.Mail provides custom domain E-Mails for free, the only large company to do so and not to mention how good it is.

<comment><USER5> Russian email hosting. What could go wrong?

<comment><USER6> American email hosting, what could go wrong?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I always find it amusing when people find russia and china on a lower moral/ethical ground when everything on american soil is equally watched and processed. if not by nsa, it's for ads.

<comment><USER8> Please take a look at the Human Rights Watch reports[0] for USA, China and Russia. I honestly wonder how you can reach such a conclusion about freedom of expression and human rights in those countries.

[0] [https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016](https://www.hrw.org/world- report/2016)

<comment><USER9> Human Rights Watch being an American organisation, led by a member of the US power elite (e.g. Goldman Sachs, Soros' OSF) might have something to do with it?

Nah, perish the though!

<comment><USER10> HRW funding and staff indeed looks surprisingly US-biased. But Amnesty and PEN also score the US a couple notches above Russia and China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Overview [https://www.pgcon.org/2016/schedule/track/DBA/923.en.html](https://www.pgcon.org/2016/schedule/track/DBA/923.en.html)

Video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SS4R1sFH3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SS4R1sFH3c)

</comment><comment><USER12> So having read through the slides, these are not bad slides, but I'm missing the 'real' wow-factor of why Postgres was a better choice in the end than Oracle. There's no doubt that the rewrite (which, because of PL/SQL -> PL/pgSQL, there was a rewrite) benefited them, but all I can glean from the slides is Postgres hasn't failed them yet and the rewrite worked.

So as much as I want to talk about Oracle vs. Postgres, these slides aren't giving me anything technical to debate.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Price if obvious reason of migration, and in their case (multiple datacenters and "-1 datacenter" policy) it was huge benefit.

2\. The other concern was Oracle's slow bugfixing and reaction to feedback.

So, this is a good case showing how a company can stop wasting millions of $ for proprietary software, joining Open Source community, contributing to it and taking benefits from tech collaboration with core developers of the product.

<comment><USER12> So, they say 'shop.oracle.com' was their 'main reason' for switching but that reads as a half-joke, half-serious riff on Oracle's famous ability to extract money from people; the other salient points I can find are:

\- PL/SQL was harder to deploy than PL/pgSQL (as stated later)

\- Only synchronous interface in Oracle's OCCI

\- Problems with Oracle's development environments

\- Not very responsive support from Oracle.

But the dev environment and support for Postgres are not talked about.

Also I can't quite figure out if "3x more hardware" is supposed to be a good thing on their last slide. It's possible that it's a good thing (if it's, say, we can replicate to more servers), but to me it doesn't read like one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Details were in the talk itself, watch the video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SS4R1sFH3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SS4R1sFH3c). In particular, they mentioned how Tom Lane fixed a bug they found and did it just in 38 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am using Yandex for my FOSS project's domain. So far, I haven't encountered any big issues. The web interface is plain and simple, but occasionally has some glitches.

Their mobile app (Android) is quite pleasant and lightweight.

What might be a problem for non-Russian speaking people is the lack of documentation in English. Quite often a random link redirects to a page in Russian.

</comment><comment><USER14> To stay on topic: Does anyone else have stories of moving massive datasets to postgres from other commercial databases?

We're looking to make the switch from SQL Server when 9.6 comes out (and proves to be more scalable).

<comment><USER15> SQL Server performs slightly better than PostgreSQL for analytics. This is mostly because of parallel queries which will still be more efficient on SQL Server when PostgreSQL 9.6 is released.

On the other hand, PostgreSQL can take advantage of ZFS compression which is great for archiving cold data.

<comment><USER16> Minor note: ZFS compression is great for live data too -- lz4 compression has _very_ low CPU overhead.

<comment><USER15> Yes and no. It depends on the use case, if you do a lot of updates, you do want a small recordsize(8kb) and if so, you do not benefit greatly from LZ4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > 3x more hardware # for Postgres

Tells you something about how insanely costly Oracle's licenses are. Whatever you say about Oracle though - Oracle DB is an incredibly well performing and reliable piece of software. (Attested by experience - we had several Oracle DBs running on HP-UX Itanium that only needed to be handled when OS and Oracle patches were needed. Massively used too - think 36 PA-RISC cores at peak, 24 IA64 ones. It also helps that there are lot of DBAs with great deal of Oracle experience.)

<comment><USER18> Nobody argues that Oracle is a very good database. But 3x more hardware and 10 man-years are an order of magnitude cheaper than Oracle licencies cost (even with maximum discount).

<comment><USER17> Yes that's the point I was trying to make. Licenses and support are an ongoing cost and from what I keep hearing oracle has increased them significantly in recent years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yandex.Mail is my favorite email provider and I would invite anyone reading this to give it a try.

<comment><USER20> Please cite examples as to why it's your favorite Email provider.

<comment><USER19> For starters it's not very crowded on usernames, so I got to use my 'namelastname' as username, also I don't think I've seen any ads so far. Another aspect of the service I really like, is that it has less magic than Gmail. I always get email labeled wrong in Gmail. At first I tried to label them properly and expected Google to get them right over time, now I don't bother. I would definitely pay for this service if this was an option. To be fair Russia along with the US, France & Japan is one of my favorite countries, so I might be very biased.

<comment><USER21> > Another aspect of the service I really like, is that it has less magic than > Gmail. I always get email labeled wrong in Gmail. At first I tried to label > them properly and expected Google to get them right over time, now I don't > bother.

While I never tried yandex's email, I do share the impression that gmail is too magical and shouldn't be labelling my emails outside of the explicitly rules that i have set.

> To be fair Russia along with the US, France & Japan is one of my favorite > countries, so I might be very biased.

Haha same here! It makes me so sad the propaganda war that russia and the us are having. Those two countries are similar in so many ways. Russia was unfortunate that communism had a successful revolution, so they are currently some 30 years behind culturally :-/

<comment><USER22> > Russia was unfortunate that communism had a successful revolution, so they > are currently some 30 years behind culturally :-/

That "unfortunate" revolution took Russia from the feudal age into the nuclear age in a single generation, so without it they'd presumably be about 100 years behind the USA.

This may explain why your negative opinion of the USSR/communism is not necessarily shared by Russians.

The most popular leaders of the 20th century, as voted by Russians, are Brezhnev, Lenin and Stalin, while the most unpopular are Gorbachev and Yeltsin, responsible for the collapse and break up of the USSR.

Only a rigged and unfair election prevented the Communist Party leader being elected president by the people of Russia in 1996, after they had experienced the joys of several years of capitalism.

In 2016, a quarter of a century after the breakup of the USSR (which happened against the express wishes of the Soviet people), the Communist Party is still the second most popular party in Russia, and most Russians (as demonstrated in repeated polls) would like to see the restoration of the USSR.

As for Yandex, the founder started in business in the USSR, and he is not Russian.

<comment><USER23> > The most popular leaders of the 20th century, as voted by Russians, are > Brezhnev, Lenin and Stalin, while the most unpopular are Gorbachev and > Yeltsin, responsible for the collapse and break up of the USSR.

Brezhnev is more responsible for the collapse of the USSR than either Gorbachev or Yeltsin (or anyone else, except maybe Yuri Andropov.) Oh, sure, he was dead and the other two were around when it happened, but it was his intervention in Afghanistan that essentially sealed the fate of the USSR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This seems good.

Not related with the migration itself but I tried to use yandex and its mailing service a couple of years ago when attempting to become google independent but it didn´t work well with spanish queries so I eventually went back to google. But I recall that yandex mail was really nice.

</comment><comment><USER25> I look at the operations of a lot of middle market tech companies that are fairly old (10+ years in existence) and I'm starting to see more and more companies move off of Oracle and on to Postgres. I expect this trend to continue.

</comment><comment><USER26> What version of Postgres did they end up using?

<comment><USER18> We started our first production systems with 9.3. When we started migration process and until it ended we used 9.4. Right now all our production clusters are 9.5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yandex is doing quite some interesting things, I think they don't get enough love from HN.

<comment><USER27> Never seen any non-russian yandex user myself.

<comment><USER28> I don't see any other free providers of custom domain emails; so when a friend incorporated and wanted to have firstname.lastname@example.com then I set him up with yandex - all "english market" services suddenly wanted a rather unreasonable business-class pricing for that simple thing.

<comment><USER29> as someone else mentioned: zoho. I think it's $2.5/month for unlimited domains connected to one mailbox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I see that document is poorly formatted. Lacks sufficient indentation.</comment>


Will Electron take over native macOS development? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Electron is hated on Hacker News. I personally critique it quite a bit.

But here are a list of things that Electron does better than any other desktop GUI framework.

1\. Skills portability. Just use HTML and CSS to build your layouts. Hundreds nee thousands of web developers become instantly desktop developers, at least when it comes to UI development

2\. Non natively cross platform. Your app looks exactly as you designed it across all major platforms. Down to the last branding design element. Without any additional effort.

3\. Vast CSS, Node and JavaScript library ecosystem.

4\. Flexibility in UI. I have yet to see a traditional UI library have the flexibility of CSS + markup.

5\. Good enough native integrations. Users don't lack any of the major native integrations.

I am sure there are downsides of Electron. But unless a pure native library challenges some of the pros of electron, it will continue to grow in popularity.

<comment><USER3> And what are the downsides to Electron apps? All I hear is file size is bloated and slow but slowness is likely to be the fault of the developers who use frameworks blindly without knowing what they're doing and can be improved.

You can see some web sites can be snappy...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> macOS has terrible resource management (probably a fault of the developers of various major apps). EDIT: Lmao, look at kernel_task, a mysterious phantasm that seems to be using 2gb at any moment. Look at other abstract, undocumented Apple processes that just exist, and you have no control over them. It's literally insane.

Electron has even worse resource management, since its built on top of Chromium, which doesn't even attempt to make any reasonable decisions about how much resources can be utilized. I find it truly remarkable that 5 years ago I could use an 8GB MBP with no issue, and now with a 16GB MBP I get daily warnings about running out of space, because of RubyMine (I get it), Discord, and Chrome.

Maybe instead of writing all these articles about how JavaScript is great and the new-wave, actually writing apps that can stay bounded to 250MB memory?

<comment><USER5> Because of how the compositing works, it's not uncommon to have 100 or more megabytes of RAM taken by the UI alone. Not a bad thing though, it allows for simpler and more performant animations.

Other than that, I'm not familiar with any particular features of the OS that unnecessary spend resources. Do you have examples?

<comment><USER4> Finder (made 10000x worse by their "inadvertent" disabling of DaisyDisk because of "security")

Mail (completely garbage, can't update 300 emails within 5 hours), yet takes up 400mb in the Activity Monitor

Not identifying what exactly is the 1.18gb "java" process thats running right now (maybe elasticsearch? why not surface this info in activity monitor?)

I mean I have a million examples, I try to do lots of novel research and development and my machine is paralyzed by all these insane background processes, despite the fact that I have a 16gb, top of the line MBP as of last year. It's an insane joke.

EDIT: it is really interesting you are telling me that animations and UI graphics processing are important when it takes away from actual serious work/processing. Everyday I have to shut down my conputer to get to a clean slate because I have no visibility into the background processes occurring.

I guess that drop shadow is really worth the extra 100kb memory footprint!

<comment><USER5> Are you sure you're looking at the "real" RAM usage? Apps nowadays are allowed to claim up to 4 GB of virtual memory. On my machine I'm seeing Finder reported to have taken 800MB in total, but only 160MB of real memory.

I'm not sure if animations, blurs and shadows are important to everyone, but I find them pleasant to look at while I'm doing my serious work. Although I must say that if I could virtualize macOS, I'd prefer a Linux laptop.

<comment><USER4> I might be characterizing the nomenclature improperly, all I know is that I'm running a handful of processes that are critical to my work and things are hung up constantly on a machine that is dated 2018. _Shrugs_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems to me like there's a high chance __Catalyst __will take over macOS development for a lare part. If Electron works with that, maybe. If it doesn 't I think that will significantly hurt its popularity with Apple ecosystem developers.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that's the plan. SwiftUI is where Apple development is heading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> i hope not. Electron should just die...Its resource hog and its use should have never left MVP part of the project build!

</comment><comment><USER9> Only if native bindings are freed up of Chromium ties.</comment>


Equity for lawyers? - <AUTHOR>

It seems that Silicon Valley attorneys typically work on a deferred basis, taking 1-2% equity for $10-20k legal work.  Does this type of fee structure work well?
I once remember reading somewhere (possibly by Paul Graham) that trading equity for legal work isn't ideal in many cases.
Additionally, what's the most cost-effective method for filing for a S-Corp/Delaware incorporation?  If I have existing incorporation documents, would I be able to go straight to Delaware authorities to apply for a business license?
Thanks in advance for the helpful insight. <comment><USER2> I'm a former lawyer (corporate, technology, IP) who started a s/w company in 2000 and sold it for $120M in 2005. So I've been there and done that. I help (for free) Atlanta-based hacker teams think through the "legal issues" involved in starting a business, but I'm not really a lawyer any more. It's not that complicated:

(1) IMHO you should think first about the founder equity vesting issues. On the one hand, it wouldn't be fair for a co-founder to bail out after 2 months and keep all of her equity. On the other hand, it wouldn't be fair if her co- founders kicked her out after 2 months for no reason and left her with almost no equity. So there's a balance that needs to be reached, and the discussion can be emotional. With the lawyer's help, the team can strike their desired balance in an agreement that governs equity vesting, such as a restricted stock agreement. I can send you a sample agreement to illuminate the trade- offs. waytking AT gmail DOT com.

(2a) If all founders can't agree on the founder equity vesting balance, you do not have a startup team. Form another one.

(2b) If all founders agree on founder equity vesting balance, your lawyer can easily form your Delaware C-corp for a few hundred bucks. If you want ultimate flexibility, he can form a Delaware LLC and create your LLC operating agreement for around a thousand bucks. But a C-corp should be fine. Pay in cash - don't pay in equity.

In any city with a decent-sized tech community there will be lawyers willing to do the above for just a few hundred dollars, in the hope that you'll be successful and get big and give them significant legal work later on. You may need to dig to find such lawyers in your city, but they are there.

You will also be tempted to engage lawyers who promise to introduce you to VCs, angels, etc. IMHO this is not that valuable. If you are smart and resourceful, you will find the angels and VCs. If you are building stuff people want, the angels and VCs will invest in you, especially if you make them think you don't need their stinkin' money.

</comment><comment><USER3> The firm should do the work for deferred cash payment. I.e. they do $25k of legal work, and you pay up when you get real money. You obviously need to look credible / have good intros / etc.

They shouldn't get equity because they don't _really_ add that much value at an early stage. It will also look bad to investors if you give equity to people who shouldn't have it. Work on your product, ask questions later.

Set up an S corporation if you incorporate yourself.

</comment><comment><USER4> No.

Lawyers don't get equity for a tech startup. Period.

If, on the other hand, your startup is in a heavily litigious or heavily regulated field, you not only will want a lawyer involved from very early, you'll probably want a lawyer holding a stake in your company.

So...for example, an equities or futures trading company: the lawyer gets equity. Equities or futures social networking site: the lawyer gets paid a fee.

Or, medical mal-practice hedge fund (I dunno, I'm just making up a phrase from words that involves lots of litigation and huge smelly contracts): you need a lawyer on your board. Medical Mal the Practical Hedgehog video game: the lawyer gets paid a fee.

Got it? Good.

Incorporation costs a few hundred bucks (even if you get outside help), plus a few hundred bucks for statutory representation in Delaware.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Joe. Do you have a suggestion as to where I should start with incorporation? I have all of the necessary legal documents.

<comment><USER5> If you have the legal documents, which in this case means downloading them from the web, then just send them in. Each comes with mailing instructions. If you are incorporating in Delaware, you will need to get an agent to have a mailing address there as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What $10-20K in legal work are you talking about?

If you are talking about incorporation, that costs next to nothing and takes little time. Just do it yourself.

Other than that, it depends how you value your equity. That is, read <http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually not entirely sure about the $10-20k. This was brought up during discussions with a couple of law firms. All of these firms want to jump straight into VC introductions, so I would imagine most of this money would go towards the legal work associated with raising a Series A.

Regarding incorporation, do you have any suggestions as where to start?

Thanks for responding.

<comment><USER6> > _All of these firms want to jump straight into VC introductions, so I would > imagine most of this money would go towards the legal work associated with > raising a Series A._

Sounds like a red flag to me. It seems like they're looking out more for themselves than for you and your business, unless for some reason they are super excited about your idea and think it needs a lot of VC cash ASAP to move forward.

<comment><AUTHOR> To clarify, we got very positive feedback from major law firms. Many basically take the stance of trying to get us together with VCs/angels while they draw up the incorporation paperwork, etc.

Frankly, I'd prefer to incorporate on my own and don't want to get too far ahead (i.e VC meetings) while assuming the law firm will cover my ass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lawyers do more than incorporate.

If IP is important, you can easily blow $40k on a reasonable set of patents. That's a good place for a bit of equity.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, if your company is going to tank, then 1-2% is a deal. Otherwise pay cash.</comment>


How the Pwnedlist Got Pwned - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/05/how-the-pwnedlist-got-pwned/ <comment><USER2> Is it really necessary to run Kali to just change a parameter in a POST request? Also the response from InfoArmor is disconcerting: "Clearly you have a special account... Oh wait s\ _\_ t no". The default position shouldn't be to fob it off as not an issue it should be "Ok, we'll look into it and try reproduce"

<comment><USER3> It's easy to think that and initially downplay this kind of thing but, in my 20+ years in this field, I've had more than one instance where I've said to someone "no, that _can 't_ happen" only to discover that it can and did happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does Pwnedlist get those dumps anyway? Pastebin bots would cover Pastebin but what about chat rooms and the rest?

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it me or are there quite a few security related services and companies making these sorts of minor (but easily addressable) mistakes that cost them a ton?

I swear I remember quite a few sites like this getting compromised or exploited recently.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: site used to track public password breaches allowed users to get a list of 866M credentials because of a simple parameter tampering vulnerability.</comment>


Sony Won't Use Android Wear Yet, Will Instead Focus On Its Own OS - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/25/sony-wont-use-android-wear-will-instead-focus-on-its-own-android-based-smartwatch-platform/?utm_campaign=fb&ncid=fb

<comment><USER2> Well as of now they may not be interested in Android Wear OS, but soon they will join the platform. As According to NextMarket insights, the market for smartwatch will grow significantly in 2014. From 5 million shipments worldwide in 2013, the number will grow up to 15 million in 2014. Shipments are projected to increase to 37 million by 2015 and almost 373 million by 2020. The smartwatch revolution will be driven by Asia, where low-cost Android powered smartwatches could become popular in emerging economies as an alternative to phones. New segments of the market such as fitness/active lifestyle and youth will fuel growth in coming years. [http://www.dazeinfo.com/2014/03/19/google-inc-goog- android-w...](http://www.dazeinfo.com/2014/03/19/google-inc-goog-android-wear- smartwatch-shipments-2020/)</comment>


Matt Groening's Apple Ad From 1989 - <AUTHOR> http://homepage.mac.com/mbishop/PhotoAlbum30.html

<comment><USER2> I used to have the poster:

[http://www.digibarn.com/collections/posters/mac- groening/ind...](http://www.digibarn.com/collections/posters/mac- groening/index.html)

Various sites seem to be claiming that this was some sort of rare poster created only for Apple employees. Which comes as a surprise to me, since I somehow acquired one in college without any insider contacts whatsoever...

</comment><comment><USER3> Matt Groening really does just have that one joke setup --- "The X: parody parody! The Y: parody parody!" --- doesn't he?

<comment><USER4> Nah, that was his old shtick. Now, he just collects royalties and allows god- awful Simpson's Comics to be published.</comment></comment>


User:126.96.36.199 – This is the IP address for the entire nation of Qatar - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:184.108.40.206 <comment><USER2> It's the IP address of a proxy server owned by Ooredoo. Their telecoms group had a monopoly in Qatar until 2006 so a lot of traffic has gone through it. I'm not sure why this IP is prominent enough for its own page though. There was some media reports in December 2006 when Wikipedia blocked a Qatar IP but the page was created in April 2009. Is it standard practice to route all public ISP traffic through a single proxy in situations where nations wish to impose filtering?

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, 18.104.22.168

</comment><comment><USER4> This is not true.

</comment><comment><USER5> Misleading.</comment>


Simple Isn't Just Beautiful, It's Essential - <AUTHOR> http://apprabbit.posterous.com/simple-isnt-just-beautiful-its-essential <comment><USER2> I agree with the premise, but disagree with this comment 'A system that tries to be everything to everyone will often require so much configuration and maintenance by its users that, while they may become experts at setting up your software'.

The art of simplicity isn't to dumb down things, but to make the complicated simple.

If there are so many settings, features, etc. that the user must 'learn', then you have a problem. If all the features that a user wants 'exists', and the user doesn't need to 'learn' them, then you are likely on the right path to simplicity.

One method to manage layers of complexity is to 'hide' the more advanced features until the user starts looking for them or needing them.</comment>


Samsung's exFAT Linux driver officially released as GPL - <AUTHOR> http://sfconservancy.org/news/2013/aug/16/exfat-samsung/ <comment><USER2> I didn't hear about this the first time around so maybe I missed out, but the press release is not clear. It doesn't actually seem like there was a GPL violation. Samsung released a binary in one product. They later applied the GPL to that component as it is used in another project. That shouldn't have any retroactive effect on the first, however.

Still great of them to release the earlier code though.

<comment><USER3> They produced the driver under license, somehow someone got a hold of the code and "guerilla relicensed" it, which they did not have authority to do, and uploaded the result to Github.

Sometime later when this repository was noticed on Github, someone noticed the source was a derivation of one of the existing Linux FAT filesystem drivers. In other words, under the terms of the GPL it is derived code. The fact it was only previously distributed in binary form does not excuse this: Samsung were distributing GPL derived code in violation of the license.

So this clears things up a little bit. What I don't understand now is the usefulness of this code. For example, could it potentially be merged upstream? If not, then why not? If it can be distributed under the GPL independently, I don't understand why it couldn't get shipped with Linux.

The fact this driver exists "legitimately open source" now, yet is still covered by patents, confuses me a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's probably in the same situation as ffmpeg, x264, lame, (previously) gif encoders etc are or were.

If it is true that non-US countries do not acknowledge the related patents, it would be a very interesting situation if anyone were to make it integrated in a git fork of the mainline kernel. Could we end up having a richer git branch/repo hosted on "kernel.eu"? Would others do pull requests on top of this, thus meaning further kernel patches (related or not so related) get interwoven? Would a "us compatible" mainline linux stagnate while an off- limits-for-americans "eurolinux" flourish? Probably not for just a fringe fs driver that can stay separate. But what about possibly-US-patent-covered patches to the core, if they provide enough benefits?

<comment><USER4> Source code can't infringe US patents because source code isn't a machine or a process or a composition of matter.

A machine running a Linux kernel can be plausibly accused of infringing thousands of active US patents even without FAT support. There is no version of Linux that does or could ever pass a patent clearance review in the USA.

The distinguishing character of the VFAT patents is that Microsoft threatens to sue people over them. I don't know of any cases they've won so far and no patent is actually infringed until a jury says so.

<comment><USER5> Does this mean that Fedora is wrong when they say _" This means that we cannot include MP3 code, even as source."_?

[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Forbidden_items?rd=ForbiddenI...](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Forbidden_items?rd=ForbiddenItems#MP3_Support)

<comment><USER6> No, because Fedora releases binaries.

<comment><USER5> I was referring to the " _even as source_ " part.

(They make package maintainers excise MP3 code from upstream tarballs and repackage those, not just patch it out of the compiled code - it's a massive pain).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's the patent status of exFAT?

<comment><USER8> I thought it was clear that Microsoft was still asserting patents on exFAT.

Link stolen from wikipedia: [http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/legal/intellectualproperty/IP...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/legal/intellectualproperty/IPLicensing/Programs/exFATFileSystem.aspx)

So, GPL or not, it doesn't do Linux a whole lot of good, since it can never be properly included.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't anyone else think having the company with 90 percent market share in PCs charge for access their OS this way, is a little insane? How did the anti- trust committee miss this one a decade ago?

<comment><USER6> exFAT is new, and actually quite different from FAT32/16/12\. If I recall correctly it has things like extents, xattrs, and support for files >2GB.

The only reason to use exFAT is if you need a filesystem that can be accessed from both Windows _and_ Mac OS X. If you only need Windows, then use ntfs-3g. If you only need Mac OS X, then use HFS.

<comment><USER10> exfat is also the default filesystem on Android devices for large (>32G maybe?) SDXC cards. It has clear advantages over FAT on huge filesystems, though this is excruciatingly annoying as it's easy to forget to format it wrong by accident and end up with a filesystem I can't read from my Linux machine.

What use is removable media without a universally recognized format?

<comment><USER6> That's because exFAT is mandated by the SDXC specification, whereas SD only required FAT [citation needed].

Presumably, the original reason the exFAT driver was written in the first place was to enable Android devices to read SDXC cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remember there was heated discussion about whether the initial "release" was legit or not. Was that ever resolved?

<comment><AUTHOR> The first version seemed to be a leak with a very unclear licensing situation. This here is the resolution :)

<comment><USER12> The licensing situation of the leak was quite clear; it was proprietary code without any doubt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not wanting to be tangential but is exFAT any good? And what do others use for a cross platform file system? I sadly had to format a portable 600GB drive as FAT32 the other day, just so it would play ball across OSs and devices. I went to use extFAT, then realised I'd have to use FUSE to get it to work so fell back to FAT32.

Also is it backwards compatible with the other FATS; as in can't you read an ext4 as ext3 (hoping that I haven't made that up)?

<comment><USER14> Problem is FAT32 can't handle anything beyond 4GiB (or 32 with some trickery) and we've reached that limit.

Would you rather use a journaling FS on a flash drive?

<comment><USER6> No. Flash drives are slow enough to write to without having to write things (even metadata) twice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Um.... so GPL Code can be Patented??

<comment><USER16> Sure. IIRC, even GPLv3 allows it (GPLv3 just requires patent licensing terms iirc).

<comment><USER8> This was released under GPLv2, so it may not even require that (iirc2).

<comment><USER17> GPLv2:

> _7\. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent > infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), > conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or > otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not > excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so > as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any > other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute > the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit > royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies > directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both > it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the > Program._

This means anyone distributing this driver -- including Samsung, since they are not the sole copyright holder -- is on, at best, extremely tenuous footing. I don't expect Samsung has license from Microsoft to sublicense the relevant patents to the world.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Drink Poison and Smile: How I Arrived at My Position of Pro-Democracy - <AUTHOR> https://improve.hk/post/drink-poison-and-smile/ <comment><USER2> Good luck to protestors. Hard to see the reasons for China to compromise though.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author seems to have left off his name, but I assume the Chinese or HK government could easily obtain his name/address from the domain registrar. So if the extradition bill was passed he might join the many people he lists in prison.

But the bill was declared "dead", so I guess he's probably OK besides the possibility of masked thugs.

</comment><comment><USER4> You should write this in Chinese so the Mainlanders could actually read it.

<comment><USER5> If he writes this in Chinese the mainlanders will not be able to read it anymore (it would get blocked).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Legislative bodies is in trouble. Britain seems to have just had a coup. Look at how Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, not by popular election but by vote of Conservative Party members only. And now he's suspending Parliament.

The problems of the US Congress are well known. It used to run the country. Now it barely does anything.

<comment><USER7> It's intellectually dishonest to say that Congress barely does anything.

<comment><USER8> I think the argument is clear. A few people in the West have found ways to abuse the political system in a few marginal ways and get away with it for limited periods until independent journalism, public opinion and the courts stop them.

However they get away with it for a while. Therefore it's ok to have an entire political system in China, constructed entirely out of the abuse or elimination of the rights of it's people, with no way to challenge their leaders or hold them accountable.

I make no claims for the validity of the argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Fine you say, you may not care for some religious leaders, as they are such > a tiny percentage of the population.

This is a huge difference between western and eastern thinking. Group rights vs individual rights. Here in western culture we typically tried to develop a culture on which each single individual rights should be respected above the group if the case was necessary whereas Asian societies traditionally have put groups (or families) above individual rights and wishes.

And for those reasons we had several wars against fascism, communism and other totalitarian ideologies. Currently in the west we also have lobbies which try to segregate population in smaller groups and lobby against others, or communities as they say in the USA. I guess this herd behaviour is just part of human being's nature and this sort of events will be repeated forever.

<comment><USER10> Then it's ironic that everyone wants to join the individualistic countries/unions, and the group countries/unions have to force keeping things together because parts want to leave.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was super confused by the initial "A letter to our brothers and sisters just north of the border." until I figured out it was a Hong Kong writer speaking to mainland China residents.

</comment><comment><USER12> I agree that the things described are very bad. But I do want to point that many western democratic governments do things that might be just as bad (are the Uyghur Muslims treated worse than immigrants in many western places like US / EU / AUS?).

Though I have to admit I'm not well informed on exactly what type of "democracy" they are after. If you get the majority of people to not care about what happens to a minority, it doesn't really matter how a government is structured (when it comes to democracy we see see things like "Tyranny of the masses").

EDIT: everyone disliked this comment but I think because I used the wrong examples. So I quickly want to clarify what I mean:

He wants a different political system (democratic) and his arguments are that the current one did many bad things. My point is that changing the political system doesn't change the bad things he's talking about. As we can clearly see in many democratic systems in the world.

<comment><USER8> There has been abusive treatment of some illegal immigrants into some of these countries, particularly recently, but there had also been massive outcries about it.

In almost every case the law and public opinion has stopped or prevented the worst mistreatment. The Australian detention centres are winding down, the separation of children from their families ordered by Trump was successfully challenged in court. Massive public protests and press coverage worked.

Therefore it seems perfectly reasonable to hold China to the same standards of public accountability and legal due process that other countries are held to.

<comment><USER13> My understanding of US detention centers is that their capacity is only expanding.

<comment><USER8> That is true, people who illegally enter the US in violation of it's laws get detained, however they have access to legal due process and their rights are guaranteed in law. There certainly have been abuses and violations, but these have frequently been reported in the medial and successfully challenged in courts of law.

Don't get me wrong, the recent treatment of refugees entering the US has been appalling. In my books, no supporter of the current US administration gets to claim they are pro-family or support traditional values, after the deliberate rending of children from their parents, as a terror tactic to scare other migrants away. "Don't come here, look what we will do to your children". Despicable. China can rightly use that as a counterpoint to their actions. The point is, it doesn't get them off the hook though.

These cases in the West are subject to public scrutiny. Journalists and opposition politicians have access to the facilities and to detainees and access to the courts to ensure judicial review. It is absolutely reasonable and fair to expect China to meet the same standards.

<comment><USER12> I just did a quick google search on the matter, and according to the top link[1] this is not possible in practise for people in "detention facilities" to leave them.

[1]: [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/immigrants-free-leave- dete...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/immigrants-free-leave-detention/) this is not

<comment><USER8> That's what detention means, right? I'm not sure what point of mine you are referring to.

<comment><USER12> > however they have access to legal due process and their rights are > guaranteed in law. There certainly have been abuses and violations, but > these have frequently been reported in the medial and successfully > challenged in courts of law.

This point! According the the link in practise they do not have the ability to leave. So I guess that's the standard "we" should hold "them" to?

> The point is, it doesn't get them off the hook though.

I very much agree, but at the end of the day these choices were made by people - they should be held accountable. Don't hold a politicial system accountable.

<comment><USER8> >According the the link in practise they do not have the ability to leave...

That's a rally weird and kind of irrelevant technical point. In that specific case 'leave' means pay for their own flight back to their own country, instead of being deported there by the US government. It does not mean simply walk out of the detention centre. They are in violation of US law and in US custody. The argument is about their humane and fair treatment.

I'm in no way saying the western system is perfect, it's been terribly abused, and still is. My point is that independent journalism, an informed public and independent judicial review are powerful things and do make a difference. It is entirely morally consistent to both argue for fair treatment of people in the west, and advocate it for people in China.

As for political systems, they are created by people. When I say 'China' or 'The Chinese Government' I mean the individuals in power in the Chinese government. They are accountable.

<comment><USER12> Apologies, I got many replies at the same time (a minute after I posted my initial message). My point was against:

> Also given that China has to actively prevent the Uyghur from leaving, while > the West has to prevent immigrants from entering, should tell you who's > treated worse.

Which you didn't type but deogeo.

> It is entirely morally consistent to both argue for fair treatment of people > in the west, and advocate it for people in China.

Agreed with this and everything else you say. My initial point was shifting the conversation away from "pro democratic or anti democratic" into holding people accounting for human right violations. If a political system makes it hard to hold people accountable than that's what we should talk about.

Which one is worse is a bikeshedding discussion which I didn't intend to start with my initial comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fake Net Neutrality Comments Draw A Federal Probe - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kevincollier/feds-investigation-net-neutrality-comments <comment><USER2> Surprising no one who was paying attention. Similarly there will be no consequences to this action, which will also not come as a surprise to anyone who was paying attention.

<comment><USER3> I agree the possibly criminal behavior in the NN repeal has been known for a long time, but the fact the FBI actually believe it's criminal enough to investigate is definitely new.

<comment><USER4> The implication I assume is that we've all been down this road before.

"We'll investigate." "Here's the report. We recommend minimal/no action."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > In it, the commission voted not to release the records that the news > organizations had requested: data from web server logs that could shed > additional light on the suspicious comments.

Well, that has to change...

</comment><comment><USER5> Let's hope they compare the names (typos and all) with subpoenaed data from Comcast, Verizon and others to see where the "leak" came from.

<comment><USER6> Evidence very probably exists to show the faked comments accessed the FCC unpublished API to bypass the web form. I wonder if these server logs still exist...

<comment><USER7> Scratch the logs, subpoena email records of Pai and direct reports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Duh. But why do FCC comments even matter? They mean literally nothing. You might as well be counting reddit comments.

<comment><USER9> They are required to consider them by law. What you're saying is that cheating is ok, and laws can be ignored.

They may be routinely ignored, but there is a price to pay for ignoring the law. Even parking tickets you can brush off for a while but you'll pay (a lot) later.

Or is something different for this administration?

<comment><USER8> > What you're saying is that cheating is ok, and laws can be ignored.

Huh? All I'm saying is FCC comments don't matter. And therefore neither do fake ones. Not sure what you're referring to...

If the comments matter only because the law requires them, that's a very weak argument.

<comment><USER10> >If the comments matter only because the law requires them, that's a very weak argument.

If the law requires that they be considered in the process of creating policy, then fraudulently spamming comments is a direct attempt to subvert the policy making function of the FCC.

We cavalierly assume the comments do not matter because of an underlying assumption; that FCC Chair Pai will not actually consider them regardless of their contents, and that he functionally controls the decision to enact or repeal NN regulations. Imagine if we had a different FCC chair - would the comments still not matter?

There are two problems preventing the comments from fulfilling their intended function, but the existence of a second problem (Pai's refusal to discharge the duties of his office honorably) does not negate the first (the fraudulent corruption of the public comments record).

<comment><USER11> >If the law requires that they be considered in the process of creating policy, ...

The important distinction here is that they have to be considered as comments, not votes. For example, if a whole lot of comments say more or less the same thing, then that only counts as one comment. In this case the politics had already been decided so no comment could affect the general outcome. In a very real sense the comments did not matter in this case. In other situations they can matter.

The pointless distraction related to the various attempts to spam the FCC comments in the end prevented actual politics that could of possibly retained net neutrality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How is this news? This has been known for like, 18 months now.

<comment><USER3> The news is the FBI investigation. The NYT is completely shut out of the data, but apparently it's drawn enough attention to get some actual muscle behind it finally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Even at that rate, I still think some form of net neutrality has to exist in the absence of decent broadband competition and/or municipal fiber being laid everywhere in the US...

</comment><comment><USER14> I would be happy to see some Verizon executives land in the pokey, among other things.

Unfortunately, one of them is on course to be the next Attorney General.

Enough to give pause for a moment of thought.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone blame John Oliver for all of this? A sort of Cold War of comments.

Maybe there should be an internet startup selling e-stamps.

</comment><comment> java-man Why did we let this slide?

What can we do to prevent this behavior in the future?

Why is Ajit Pai not in jail?

<comment><USER16> Serious question: Why is everyones reaction to put {executive} in jail?

People don't understand that corporations, and to a larger extent, governments, are Medusa. You can cut a snake off, but there are more, who were trained by {executive}. (And it doesn't actually stop the {bad_practice} from happening; the head wasn't cut off.) (And for those who really want the myth, the head still turned people to stone, IE 'we've always done it this way.')

Don't get me wrong; as a net-isizen, I want Pai to rot in hell for everything he's done, but what is the rational behind putting people in jail?

USA already has enough people incarcerated from tiny drug charges; what makes this any better? Throwing people in jail won't solve anything, so why is that the biggest reaction to stuff like this?

<comment><USER17> What is your proposal to stop this behavior then?

Putting people in jail for doing bad things is a signal to future people who want to do those bad things that they will suffer consequences for it. This will make them rethink doing those things. AKA "deterrence"

If people can do these things and get away with it, why wouldn't they? They make billions of dollars doing this and have no chance of suffering any negative consequences. If you were in a room with a billion dollars on the table and you knew you'd be free to take it and no one would ever come after you for it, wouldn't you take it?

> You can cut a snake off, but there are more, who were trained by {executive}

If your boss told you to do a bunch of things, and then got thrown in jail for doing exactly those things, are you saying that you would keep on doing them? Most people wouldn't.

<comment><USER18> What, exactly, are the "bad things" you want people to go to jail for?

<comment><USER17> In this case, manipulating government regulations by submitting false comments. If it's proved that companies fraudulently submitted comments to create the appearance of a grassroots sentiment that did not exist, specifically in order to obtain favorable regulations that would enrich them, don't you think that someone should go to jail for that?

<comment><USER18> Are there any credible allegations that Ajit Pai, or any other government employees were behind any false comments?

Because I haven't seen any such claims. It seems to me that people are demanding he be put in jail for drafting and voting for a regulation they disagree with.

<comment><USER17> I honestly don't know what role, if any, Pai specifically may have had. This is why we have a justice system - to investigate crimes and hold trials to determine if someone committed a crime or not.

I agree he should not be put in jail solely on the basis of allegations from the Internet. I don't think anyone is proposing that.

<comment><USER18> The original comment here says "Why is Ajit Pai not in jail?"

<comment><USER17> I assume that person believes that, as former general counsel of a major telecom company and then head of the FCC, if there were wrongdoing, Pai would have been aware of it, if not involved. Do you think that's an unreasonable assumption? Even if it happened without his knowledge, he's the leader so it's ultimately his responsibility.

In the best case, we could say he was negligent in assessing the validity of the comments that were submitted to his agency. After all, subsequent investigations have been able to determine the comments were fraudulent, so why didn't he?

If he knew they were fake and just ignored that fact because they supported what he wanted to do anyway, that's another thing. If he was being compensated in some backdoor way from the industry for ignoring that the comments were fake, that's yet another thing. These are things that should be investigated.

<comment><USER18> Yes, it's incredibly unreasonable to go from "fake comments were submitted" to "Pai is responsible".

<comment><USER17> Ok, see if I were a government official in charge of reviewing comments from the public, I would consider it my responsibility to ensure that those comments were an accurate reflection of public sentiment and had not been manipulated by an interested party to benefit themselves.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about what sorts of responsibilities government officials have.

<comment><USER18> It was incredibly obvious to anyone paying attention that they were manipulated. 2.8 million comments were identical and were from a pro-net neutrality site called "Battle for the Net". That's not organic.

Do you think he should have blocked comments from there? Or what, specific, actions should he have taken?

<comment><USER17> > 2.8 million comments were identical and were from a pro-net neutrality site > called "Battle for the Net". That's not organic.

Lots of advocacy groups offered a form for users to submit comments with a pre-filled comment field in support of net neutrality. I used one myself. The fact that the text is the same does not necessarily imply the comment is fake.

There are many other comments where the person who supposedly submitted the comment says that they didn't. That would be a fake comment.

> Or what, specific, actions should he have taken?

I don't know, how about something besides "not a damn thing"? How about tracking down the source of the fake comments and fining or otherwise holding them accountable if it's within his jurisdiction to do so, or turning them over to the appropriate authorities if not? How about cancelling the comment period due to the rampant fraud, implementing some measures to verify user and re-opening comments to try to get something accurate? How about giving the tiniest shit about the public he's supposed to be serving? Is that too much ask?

<comment><USER18> You seem to be operating under a severe misunderstanding of the point of the public comment system. It is not to figure out whether or not the public supports a particular action. Polls are much better at that particular goal. Rather, the purpose is to surface relevant arguments so the committee can consider those arguments in their decisions.

<comment><USER17> > Rather, the purpose is to surface relevant arguments so the committee can > consider those arguments in their decisions.

And would you say that having one side flood the system with millions of fraudulent comments is conducive to this purpose? Before you object, yes it was overwhelmingly one side. FTA of the 14 organizations being investigated, 11 were anti-NN and only 3 are pro.

If what you say were true, all they should have had to do was submit their one comment with their best argument against net neutrality so that the committee could consider it. Surely their sound argument would be enough to win the day, right?

But that's not what they did, is it? Instead of submitting one argument, they tried to overload the system. It's almost as if they wanted to prevent the committee from considering the other side's argument, rather than presenting their own, isn't it? Does that sound like a healthy, functional democracy to you? Is that the sort of tactic that you would like to have deciding how our government is run?

<comment><USER18> I think basically all the sites that facilitated bulk comments are pointless. Can't think of any cases where bulk comments made a difference (outside petitions are a different story, although they're more useful to make obscure issues get noticed by politicians than for changing positions).

But I think portraying this as part of some broad conspiracy is a stretch. In theory the fraudulent ones (as opposed to the merely manipulated ones facilitated by websites giving one side of the issue) could have been placed by one bored teen script kiddy. I agree it should be investigated, but I don't think there's reason to demonize Pai for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Voting should be the only way to influence government. Emailing representatives, posting comments on message boards, and protesting in the streets all give an unfair voice to people who have more free time.

<comment><USER20> > Voting should be the only way to influence government.

Sure, and when the elected representatives get a majority they get to be kings for four or five years.

I don't think that's a good idea.</comment></comment>


Why there's no such thing as a gifted child - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jul/25/no-such-thing-as-a-gifted-child-einstein-iq <comment><USER2> The SAT and other standardized tests can be used to identify students in middle and even elementary school who are prepared for college-level work. Julian Stanley started this with the Johns Hopkins Talent Search. Jonathan Wai has studied the careers of talent search participants. It's just not true that intelligence is uniformly distributed.

<comment><USER3> I took the SAT as a 7th grader, as part of the John Hopkins CTY program. This was back in 1989.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > While the jury is out on giftedness being innate and other factors > potentially making the difference

Countless studies showing the heritability of intelligence and behavioral traits means "the jury is still out", but a few outliers and the fact that practice _also_ plays a part, merits an article title of "no such thing as a gifted child".

The Guardian has such a _fascinating_ approach to science!</comment>


I have 3 Mailbox for Mac betacoins but nobody to give them to - <AUTHOR>

You can download Mailbox for Mac (beta) here: http://www.mailboxapp.com/#download
have at them:
https://i.imgur.com/xNXjRXr.gif https://i.imgur.com/quu1POA.gif https://i.imgur.com/dqVbW0K.gif <comment><USER2> Just FYI all three coins are taken.</comment>


Show HN: Turn your Slack message into an actionable item - <AUTHOR> https://contalist.com/slack/home <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

We built a simple Slack app that can turn your message into an actionable item.

It works like this, when you get a message, you can add some custom fields to it and turn it into a task, request, or whatever you want, then you can assign it to a team member, and track the state changes.

It's quite simple as you can see in the introduction page. Do you think is helpful? Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks</comment>


Quit Facebook Day flops as only 1 in 15,000 pledge to quit - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/31/quit-facebook-day-flops-as-only-1-in-15000-pledge-to-quit/

<comment><USER2> This is sort of emblematic of the Facebook Faux Activist generation. While they are so prepared to step up and say something about their convictions, wrapped up and emotionally spirited after been told, all throughout their school lives about how their parents were activists (for things that actually mattered, but that's a different story), my generation lacks what matters when it comes to being an activist:

The ability to realize actions speak louder than words. As long as it doesn't involve going outside, standing in a line or otherwise stepping away from your precious Macbooks for a few hours a day to actually form a peaceful, but resolute protest about a matter, it's very unlikely that this generation will actually accomplish things like this. And even then, something like deactivating your Facebook account turned out to be a flop.

What's more shocking is that they were more than willing to take part in a day in which thousands of people stood up, and willfully desecrated the holy figure of another religion, whether or not they actually understood the overtones of what they were doing, or understanding the undertones of the moderate followers of the Muslim community who reached out to media outlets to explain why the Muhammad drawings disturbed them (Muhammad did not want to be worshiped as an Idol, and they felt that depicting him in the form of an image would detract from the central message he was trying to convey).

Surprising, yet expected all at the same time.

<comment><USER3> Given there are followers of Islam out there who (off the top of my head) bombed the Danish embassy in Pakistan, murdered Theo Van Gogh and put a bounty on Salman Rushdie's head I don't find it shocking at all that there were people willing to stand up and declare that they weren't intimidated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As I've said before: "Quit Facebook Day" is bound to be useless. What we need is "Join Alternative X Day". Where X is something you can recommend with a straight face.

It's as if they had declared "Quit Internet Explorer Day" before Firefox was even released.

<comment><USER5> People should remember that before Facebook, MySpace was the unstoppable juggernaut. It's only when there's something to steal Facebook's thunder that it will go the way of MySpace and we'll all forget about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The problem for Facebook isn't that people are going to quit, it's that they're going to stop sharing anything worthwhile.

Once the majority starts treating it as a glorified address book there's much less reason for people to visit regularly.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is silly, they have no idea how many people actually quit. Not that I think many people quit anyways.

<comment><USER7> That's exactly what I was thinking; it would be more interesting to know how many people kept that pledge. Still, it does put it into perspective; the vast majority of people simply don't care, or don't know, about Facebook's privacy issues, despite all the noise lately.

<comment><USER6> I was thinking more that the people actually concerned with their privacy might not want to submit their name and email address on some random site. So the the number of pledges could under represent the people that actually want to quit (or did quit).

But, yeah, it's far more likely that most people just don't care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used to be on Facebook quite a bit. I deleted my account a week ago, and the abrupt change felt surprisingly liberating. Facebook was becoming a chore to manage, but I didn't realize this until after I left.

Sems like there's still room for something more simplified (but not to Twitter's extreme.) Buzz?

</comment><comment><USER9> It's not a "flop". Many of the most respected tech bloggers have permanently deleted their Facebook accounts. I did so myself about a month ago when I heard that Zuckerberg called FB users "dumb f __cks". Who cares about hooking up with people you went to high school with anyway?

<comment><USER10> > It's not a "flop".

Agreed. It's a change in direction. Facebook is no longer on an easy, upward, unchallenged trajectory.

A business plan to compete directly with Facebook no longer seems foolish. Regardless of Diaspora's success, the overwhelming support of $200,000 of real money proved that there is a hungry market for a Facebook competitor; someone just has to build it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's the wrong way to calculate the "flop". 1 in 15k registered accounts quitting is a flop, but it can easily be argued that not all 500 million heard about the day. It's a marketing/awareness issue and language barriers (in how many languages did the day get promoted?).

The more correcet number is how many have pledged to quit and actually did? That's the real number. Even then it's not fool-proof because those pledging are already self-selecting. However, if zero (or very close to zero) people from pledgers actually quit, we even can call it a win for Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have multiple Facebook accounts back from the day an edu address was required. I never bothered to delete them. Same with my main account.

I am not sure why everyone takes Facebook's 500 million member number at face value when a quick look around reveals numerous spam, fake, and barely updated accounts.

<comment><USER13> That's their active user number, not their total-user-accounts-in-our-database number.

<comment><USER12> Why would you believe that is their active number?

Back when I was active on Facebook, there was no shortage of fake accounts that survived multiple attempts by Facebook to purge them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So much for the thinking that people would leave FB in droves after the latest privacy mishap(s). The thing is that people have invested too much time and effort in FB. Unless there's a one-button migration button to some other rival system, many people just won't leave.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm sure some of the people that get involved with a pledge like this will rejoin when the realise they made no impact. After all if you have no thought for making an impact why would not just quit quietly?

</comment><comment><USER16> Of course it flopped. People who have strong objections to Facebook have already quit, or never joined in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER17> This was bound to fail: it's very hard to pledge to quit if you have > 0 friends that you actively follow.

</comment><comment><USER18> fb says it has > 400 million users. thats about 27k who quit in a day. now if we knew what the baseline quit rate is, the #s might mean something..</comment>


The pathetic Indiegogo campaign to save Greece - <AUTHOR> http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-pathetic-crowdfunding-effort-to.html

<comment><USER2> Wow. Taking it way too seriously. It was started by a Brit, look at the perks, etc. etc...

</comment><comment><USER3> Completely misses the point.</comment>


Do You Need All That Water to Boil Pasta? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all <comment> patrickg-zill Interesting but the "savings" are minimal if you account for someone's time. A billion pounds of pasta taking an extra 6 minutes to prepare is 600 million hours, right? For a savings of $20 million a year?

<comment><USER2> I'm always suspicious of analyses like that. Most people's earnings aren't that granular. If I make $X/hour, I don't automatically get $X/10 if you save me 6 minutes in the kitchen. Even if I do bill by the hour, it's practically impossible to bill for 6 minutes. Now consider that fact that many (most?) people don't even get paid by the hour, but by the week/month.

For me, the marginal income from an extra 6 minutes of time is zero.

<comment><USER3> No, the marginal income (in dollars) is the smallest amount of dollars that you'd take to work for someone else for those 6 minutes.

Said differently, if I'd offer you six bucks at dinner time to give up cooking and work for me and you'd say no, then your time must be worth at least six dollars, or $1/min, otherwise you'd have done it.

Since it's a nice, clean, hypothetical we get to ignore things like the silliness of working for only 6 minutes, or the time it takes to leave your kitchen.

How you actually get paid is irrelevant, the question is 'How much would you have to pay me right now to stop doing this and work.' That's the value of your time, because in an open economy, you could go work instead (subject to the caveats above). =)

Usually the question is asked in terms of what work you'd get paid most doing (which is often work you enjoy). Even If I get paid $10MM/yr in one lump sum from a trust fund, the value of my time per minute is still however much money I'd take in lieu of my time, or, in economic parlance, the 'second best alternative'.

Just because you can't practically bill for a fraction of your time doesn't make it value-less. That's a common fallacy, and (imho) a wasteful way to look at life.

In this case, I'd argue that in light of what you said above that I would have to pay you a LOT to get you to quit cooking and go do work, so the value of that chunk of time is actually quite high.

<comment><USER2> Good points. Theoretically, you're right, but I don't think it works that way practically. I'm not saying that my time is valueless. I'm just saying that while _I_ value it, there is no efficient way for anyone to compensate me for 6 minutes of my free time. There are too many fixed costs associated with employing someone for that person to get paid the true marginal value of their time.

 _"No, the marginal income (in dollars) is the smallest amount of dollars that you'd take to work for someone else for those 6 minutes."_

Theoretically, yes. But try to find someone who will employ you for just 6 minutes. There's not that much liquidity in the job market (yet?).

<comment><USER3> Hehe fair enough =).

I just wanted to make that point because I believe many people (although perhaps not many hacker news types) are likely to waste their time because (from a cold, unfeeling economics nerd perspective) we tend to undervalue it.

Blowing 4 hours on the tube on for a CSI marathon becomes a lot less likely when you think of it as spending two-hundred bucks to be slightly entertained.

It's an unhealthy way to make every decision, but still a bit underused in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I didn't know cooking pasta was this complicated. Directions:

1) Fill pan with hot water (your water heater already expended a ton of energy heating the water, why waste that? Or if you have an energy efficient water heater that only heats water when you turn the tap on, well that's still tons more efficient than a gas or electric stove top).

2) Put pan on the stove and add copious amounts of water.

3) Insert pasta and wait ~10 minutes, or to your personal texture preference.

4) Drain pasta and place on plate.

5) Eat pasta; a good pasta is usually tasty just on its own.

<comment><USER5> I think hot water leaches more stuff from your pipes, but it's probably not a big deal. The value in using less water is it takes money and time to heat extra water.

PS: There are lots of ways you can make it cheaper or faster such as covering the pot while you wait for the water to boil. In the end it's not a big deal, but if it's saving you time and money why not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, _I_ do.

If _you_ don't know why you use the amount of water you do, try it with less until you see a difference. (This advice goes for pretty much everything)

<comment><USER7> The article is about the author and two chefs trying a series of different configurations of water volume and heat to try and find out what is traditional and what is the actual breaking point for making it not taste as good or be too much work.

<comment><USER6> The submitted link points to a one sentence blurb, and I figured it was just a lead-in to an environmental fluff piece. I suppose if it contains hard data, I'll go through the "nytimes hassle". (thanks)

<comment><USER8> I never get these registration hassles people mention. Does the NYT not ask for registration coming from, say, the UK?

<comment><USER4> I used to get them often and frequent and I used to live in the UK. I'm currently in Canada and in the past couple of months I've noticed the NYT is no longer a humongous pain in the ass and I haven't been asked once to register.

Perhaps they have stopped requesting sign-ups from international users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Everything should be done with moderation.

<comment><USER10> Sounds like a cached thought; from your presence at HN, I assume you support:

Working extremely hard to compress a lifetime's earnings into a few years, e.g. from a startup.

Obsessing over a small number of hobbies, e.g. coding, to get unusually good at them.

The idea that people can improve themselves and their lot, and that results are linked with effort.

Everything in moderation - unless you want to be particularly good at it, perhaps.

[Edit: Damn, I've done it again. Voting you down because I disagree with you, even though raised a point I wanted to reply seriously to. Sorry].

<comment><USER9> Even if you wanted to be particularly good, you should still do it with moderation. Whenever someone becomes successful we hear the same story across all industries: "started with nothing, worked 100 hours a week, etc...". Sadly enough 1 in hundreds is an exception and not a rule. What you do not hear about is how bad it is for the ones who did not moderate their input (physical, emotional, financial). Subsequently years later market crashes, housing bubbles, increase in divorces etc...make the news. What is the source of these problems? Lack of moderation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone else keep the pot covered? I find that I can bring the water to boil faster. Once it is boiling I drop the heat to low and still maintain the heat. There's a bit of an art to keeping it from boiling over, but I'm "sure" I use "way less" energy.

<comment><USER12> I boil the water with the pot covered, and then cook the pasta with the pot partially covered - maintaining just enough heat to keep the water boiling. It does take more effort, but it uses less energy (water evaporating from the surface cools the remaining water, putting a lid on the water minimizes this evaporation). I'm not sure about "way less" energy, but it usually shaves a few minutes off the cook time.

I wonder how fast you could cook pasta in a pressure-cooker?</comment></comment>


Predictive Analytics is changing the financial landscapes - <AUTHOR> https://www.zepto.io/blog/how-predictive-analytics-can-help-finance-professionals <comment><USER2> You get this Error message when opened the link : zeptolytics.com unexpectedly closed the connection.

</comment><comment><USER2> You get this error message, when we open the link -

zeptolytics.com unexpectedly closed the connection.</comment>


Fail - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/tanmay-shankar/fail/10156284481025342/ <comment><USER2> Brings to mind the quote: "He failed in business in '31\. He was defeated for state legislator in '32\. He tried another business in '33\. It failed. His fiancee died in '35\. He had a nervous breakdown in '36\. In '43 he ran for congress and was defeated. He tried again in '48 and was defeated again. He tried running for the Senate in '55\. He lost. The next year he ran for Vice President and lost. In '59 he ran for the Senate again and was defeated. In 1860, the man who signed his name A. Lincoln, was elected the 16th President of the United States."

</comment><comment><USER3> While it's important for everyone to learn that thriving past failure is an essential life skill, this post somehow came off more as a humblebrag as I read it. These are "failures" in some sense, but very high status ones. Not looking forward to the raft of copycat humblebrag posts this might inspire.

<comment><USER4> Um, yeah part of me felt so too, but I was thinking, how else could the guy have phrased it? I mean he's at CMU in a masters program, so to us all his failures feel big, but I don't think that's how he thinks about them. To him, they're all just failures. Nothing more, really.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but rest assured if he's human, he has other, less impressive, failures that aren't shown. This list is carefully curated. And deliberately published. Some other options available to him, since you were wondering, would be a) refrain from posting it; b) use non-humblebrag items to make the supposed point just as effectively; c) make the point without a list; d) use known examples from history. These are all perfectly valid. If you think option a is bad, there are still options b, c, and d. And others I haven't thought of.

However, the author gets to decide how to write their post. That's their right, even if it annoys me. But I'm kind of surprised you think there were no other options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the topic of failure, I've failed to pass facebook's Data Science interviews 4 times in 5 years. I've been rejected at every level now (phone screen to the "more signal" round).

At what point do I give up? Each time I interview, it ends up with me dedicating roughly a week to prepare, and a week recovering from the rejection.

<comment><USER6> Honest question, what's the appeal of working at a place like Facebook these days? It seems like a pretty well known fact that they're a horrible company in terms of their "product" (advertising and data mining). Is it money and experience? Being in my 40's with 2 young kids I don't think I could ever bring myself to contribute to a company like that.

<comment><USER7> I've thought about this a lot vis a vis "What kind of company do I want to work for."

Despite not being proud of the product, I think I would still be excited to work with/learn from other programmers that are at the top of their field.

For a few years at least :)

<comment><USER8> Working at a company that makes software for hacking and spying on people that sells to oppressive governments sounds pretty exciting and challenging too. Where do you draw the line?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think we think very much about how culture-specific self-improvement and striving for success are. They are ok but they are not universals in the human condition. From some vantage points they just look comical or odd.

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." - Kurt Vonnegut

It doesn't take seeing the firebombing of Dresden to cultivate some of Vonnegut's perspective.

</comment><comment><USER10> Let me explain how happy I am to read this. This is beyond motivating. In my profession, failure is part of the job. In fact, I'm not in a "job" per se, but a profession, the "practice" of a healing art. Doctor's do not "work." They "practice." They make mistakes, learn from them, and continue on.

I have a child in middle school now. At the parent orientation, the principal addressed everyone. He said he welcomes mistakes, actually encourages them to try and fail, because that's the only way you learn.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is so important. We're generally wired to portray only the positive and successful things about our lives, putting on the facade of success despite a much greater rate of failure.

Failing is how we learn - if we choose to learn from our failures.

I wrote a brief thought about this a few years ago[1], I hope you'll read it :)

[1]: [https://medium.com/@simonhamp/don-t-fail-at- failing-9633aed0...](https://medium.com/@simonhamp/don-t-fail-at- failing-9633aed02a55?source=linkShare-d33a8c32c05d-1535799631)

</comment><comment><USER12> I am pretty sold on the idea that failure of ambition = good, failure of sloth = bad. This post seems to be in line with that.

</comment><comment><USER13> what is this?</comment>