Idea: Y Combinator for Startup Recruiting - <AUTHOR> http://blog.adamsmith.cc/2011/01/idea-y-combinator-for-startup-recruiting.html <comment><USER2> _College students are irrationally risk averse._

Sorry, but not joining the typical startup for a below-market salary, a handful of options that will likely never pay off, and an expectation that you work 80 hrs a week may be "risk-averse" but it's hardly irrational. The main benefit to working at a startup with those conditions (not all are!) is that you want to start your own company and want to learn and build your network. But even then, a lot of these recent grads would be better off just starting a company now.

<comment><USER3> In my experience most undergrads are so risk averse that they don't even get as far as making that calculation. The reason most don't go to work for startups is the same as the reason most don't think of starting them: that those alternatives don't even seem real. We're talking about a phenomenon much deeper than calculations of expected value.

<comment><USER4> I think you're right about the options not seeming real, but I don't know if the reason is primarily risk aversion. I think the majority of CS graduates just don't realise it is an option.

In my university, the big software houses all do serious recruiting on campus. The cream of the crop are generally offered jobs before they graduate (some are also hand picked by the faculty for postgraduate research). The careers office goes out of its way to try and ensure a seamless transition between school and work. In that sort of environment, somebody wishing to work for a startup would have to consciously reject the idea of working for Google/microsoft/IBM/whatever and actively seek something else (and you won't come across most startup jobs on Monster).

I think it boils down to the job offerings being good enough. Microsoft, for example, offer a fancy graduate program with a lot of travelling to interesting places where they certify you in all their main technologies. That training is supposed to seem like an extension of the college life, except it pays well. And its being offered to you before you sit your finals. Just about everybody you know thinks it's a great opportunity. Why go digging for hard to find jobs in companies that might not even exist tomorrow? (Rhetorical!)

Then again, my university is in Dublin, where we have a real shortage of programming talent, a few big name computing companies and almost no startup culture whatsoever. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We've funded two startups that are partly aimed at solving this problem, one in the s2010 batch and one in w2011. (Neither is launched yet.)

<comment><USER5> This is along the lines of a startup idea I've been kicking around for a bit as well. Interested to hear (eventually) what tacks the two YC teams are taking.

<comment><USER6> Same here. It shouldn't come as a surprise, it's a problem most of us have faced from _both_ sides, and it's a problem that has a direct monetization path. Finally, recruiting is something only a small % of technical people are really good at, so it makes sense to let them sell their comparative advantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One idea I had during my internship with Cloudkick this summer was an "Intern at a Startup" program, vaguely modeled on YC's "Work at a Startup".

Basically a bunch of startups would have their interns make a short presentation about interning at a startup. When the interns return to school they go around and present to any classes or groups that they can, and generally do their best to recruit more interns for the sponsoring startups.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this is a great idea though i did think it was worthwhile to comment on some of the things that I think are actually problems versus the ones that aren't really problems.

Real Problems: 1\. Difficult for students to find startups interested in interns. Sounds like a number of folks are working on this which is awesome.

2\. Speed. Startups and universities move at different speeds. A y-combinator like organization could go a long way toward solving this problem.

Things that are not really problems: 1\. "Many of the best college students at MIT are risk averse and think short term." I work as a Program Manager at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and was a CS grad Berkeley and neither place is short on risk-oriented CS students. In fact most of the CS students i went to school with either wanted to start their own company or work at a startup. If they ended up at Google it was because they couldn't find a startup that was a good fit or because the startups that would have been a good fit didn't want to hire straight out of school. I graduated about 5 years ago and i think students are even more interested in startups now than they were then.

2\. "Startups are missing brand value for parents, relatives, and friends. This is also highly cultural." This certainly isn't true for "friends" and i think it is largely untrue for parents/relatives. With a whole generation now of young and successful entrepreneurs like Gates and Zuckerberg, I think many parents are starting to realize the prestige of working at a startup. Obama's National Entrepreneur's Day this has been brought even further into the mainstream. There is plenty more we should do here to continue celebrating entrepreneurs, but i don't think this is what prevents people from joining startups fresh out of school or for an internship in school.

</comment><comment><USER9> This could work for internships, I agree, but I think it will be a tough sell for permanent employment.

You are setting up a trade. Work somewhere that you normally wouldn't work, because you have other great options and very few Summers until graduation. In return, we will ensure you learn a lot, work on cool stuff, AND receive prestigious branding to put on your resume in the future. Here is why I'm skeptical on intern-to-fulltime conversion.

I remember when I was an undergrad, two of the most prestigious Summer internships in tech were IBM's Extreme Blue and Microsoft (hard to believe now). While I don't have the hard data, all my anecdotal evidence suggests the number of intern-to-fulltime conversions were amazingly high at Microsoft and atrocious at IBM.

Why? My theory is Microsoft interns expected their fulltime experience at Microsoft to be more or less the same as their internships (whether or not that's true is another story). However, all the Extreme Blue interns knew that they were in a special, experimental IBM program and if they were to join fulltime, it would definitely not feel like Extreme Blue all year long. However, as a resume brand and an educational Summer, both options were still attractive.

Which brings us back to the proposal. The program is giving the interns a taste of something they can't quite get by joining up full-time with the startups. If a guy had his pick of places to intern, he might intern at the "Extreme Startup Internship" to learn all about how to found his own startup while doing cool stuff, or he might go because it will help him land the Google / Facebook job. Either way, when graduation comes around, my guess is he's either founding a startup or acing his job interviews. The more he loves interning at the startup, the more he should love the thought of founding one, and the other cohorts in the Summer program are the perfect pool of co- founders.

Very cool idea though; it would be a great success to have the Extreme Blue of startups internships, and even a few conversions would be a big win.

<comment><USER10> Heh. I've worked on staff at IBM Extreme Blue for four years, and actually, our conversion rate is well above atrocious. (I'm guessing your undergrad years were a few years back, though, since you mention us & Microsoft but not our biggest rival for talent, Google).

In any case, though, you're right on the money in the bulk of what you're saying. Top-quality interns are highly aware of what they're doing, and what their goals are for a given internship. A prestigious internship should deliver on all of the following: exciting challenges, a high level of autonomy/entrepreneurship, a decent salary, _and_ an impressive top line in the "experience" section of your resume.

From my perspective, here's what a company must do in order to attract top interns, and convert them to full-time hires:

* Be a great place to work (for interns _and_ full-timers). Your interns will be with you for at least three months. They'll know within three days whether you treat your employees well.

* Give the interns real meaningful work to do, where they can clearly see the impact to the company's customers & its bottom line.

If you can do those two things, you'll attract great interns, and should be able to net some great full-timers as well.

</comment></comment><comment> tomh- This article focusses on new college grads. The questions remain, are college grads the right choice for startups and are startups the right choice for college grads. The answer will probably depend on the type of startup, the grad and time available for mentoring and training the new grad. Though I suspect the majority of silicon valley startups concentrate on hiring experienced people in the early stage before they have the resources and time to invest in new grads.

Personally I would prefer to work a couple of years for a more established company to become expert in certain technologies and learn how stuff happens at "real" companies.

<comment><USER6> There are tons of different startups. I feel like you're talking about extremely early stage startups, or startups started by college students themselves.

A startup founded by seasoned founders that's been alive a year or so is actually quite a good learning environment for a recent college grad. They will have good coding process in place, good communication, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe part of the issue is "Many of the best college students at MIT are risk averse and think short term." The top students at the top universit[y|ies] form quite a narrow recruiting pool. Are you sure the people you are looking for can only be found within this group? You've also just helped to alienate the top 1% of students from long tail universities, or none at all (why waste time on a program that will sift based on your alma mater rather than your abilities? - I mean what are you actually looking for from recruits?)

Also, if that is your target group it's bizarre to exhibit any sort of surprise that there is fierce competition from other recruiters (Wall Street, Google), and that statups might not fare well against them (who has more $$$ to offer?).

"Too Many Startups / Choice Paradox. Students have no idea how to pick the right startups. Even if they did, there are an overwhelming number of choices. This is classic paradox of choice." I expect that anyone who knows how to pick the right startups should consider moving into venture capital.

</comment><comment><USER12> is he talking about something like this: <http://www.techstars.org/hackstars/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, what a great find!! Sadly I don't think this will work, though I would love to be proven wrong.

A brand new, two person startup in my (limited) experience isn't able to give an intern the support they need.

At Xobni we had a one-month intern from MIT when it was just Matt and I. I still regret that we weren't able to give him the full startup experience. He wouldn't be around long so he couldn't work on anything core, which meant that his work didn't really get much support from me. And he was burning the midnight oil side by side with us, with no definite long term stake in the company.

But who knows. Anyone been through the HackStars program and able to share their feedback?

I also imagined better pay -- like a $90k equivalent salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Adam, great post. We are aiming to do that with www.collegejobconnect.com. Undergraduate recruiting needs more diversity and a better way for students to connect with a whole host of employers, not just those in consulting, finance, or the big tech companies (although these are great places to work too, I myself went to Wall Street before jumping into startup land). Startups offer a great place to work, you'll likely not a find a place where you'll work harder or learn more. I think pay and uncertainty are strong detractors, however.

The overall point is there should be more optionality and more exposure. I'd be happy to chat further, we have some cool stuff going on and I'd like to get your thoughts. In November we generated 50 interview offers to companies that never have the opportunity to recruit on campus and we just signed up a big player in the geo-social space. Hit me up at jeff _at_ collegejobconnect _dot_ com

</comment><comment><USER14> I disagree that "college students are irrationally risk averse".

College students are just students whose parents care that they get a nice career out of college. The brand name and perception of companies therefore dictates where most of them go. When asked, "so what did you end up doing after college?" most college kids, at least subconsciously, want to be able to say "I am working for great company X" and have the listener know what they are talking about.

That listener is typically their family.

Thus if you want more college kids to join startups, you should make it attractive to their families to do so. You'll still have the brand problem, but maybe the word "startup" will be like the word "wall street" ;-)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a great idea, when I was in the US under a F1 visa I didnt know how to get in contact with startups. I tried through recruiter, indeed it resulted into an epic fail.

Now I still looking but from EU makes thing even more difficult.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why would a smart college grad want to join this program and not the real YC?

<comment><USER17> Because they need a salary or because they don't have the expertise to be the lead dev on a project ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I need is a startup recruiter for people working with time to spare. If you don't assume someone has to take the complete step of faith and quit job cold turkey, you have a very large talent pool, tho you'll need an innovative work strategy. Patio11 has seen success here, as we know.

My .02, and would work with such a recruiter if existed. Email eric dot holloway at gmail if wishing to converse w/ me.

</comment><comment><USER19> www.Students4Startups.com is taking the first step at this in Los Angeles, by vetting interns and startups and connecting each other. John Shiple is their CTO and is a great technologist.

</comment><comment><USER20> It exists: <http://hackny.org>. I was one of the students in the first class this past summer.

</comment><comment><USER21> It also seems like if you're good enough for a startup to want you then you're good enough to start your own startup.

<comment><USER6> I really disagree with this.

You can be a well rounded engineer (important for working at a startup) without being a) financially stable and b) risk tolerant (important for starting a startup)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> <http://www.enternships.com/>

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a great idea.</comment>


What if Uber kills off public transport rather than cars? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jan/13/uber-lyft-cars-public-transport-cities-commuting <comment><USER2> It's sort of happened before - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy), that time on purpose. The Market didn't really decide on universal auto use, GM did.</comment>


Teletext - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext <comment><USER2> For your information its still the number one communication platform for inland shipping in the Netherlands :) Since the coverage of terrestrial tv requires the first three public channels to be accessible for free any one can get this information using DVB-T receiver and read it. The coverage is quite a bit better than 4G as well.

Plus we have a smartphone app and website to view it on too :). [http://nos.nl/teletekst#721](http://nos.nl/teletekst#721) -> Notice to skipper information.</comment>


Ask HN: Status of Wayback Machine distributed backup projects? - <AUTHOR> Are there active projects to create distributed backups of Wayback Machine which could use donations of money or disk space? In my opinion, since it seems to be proving difficult to backup everything, we could prioritize backing up plaintext (that is, HTML of web pages, but not images or videos). There's a lot of technical reference info in the Wayback Machine from dead personal websites that could be saved. <comment><USER2> I'm not knowledgeable on the technicals of what would be required, but scanning over this reddit thread from yesterday implies that it is still intensely difficult for individuals to contribute. I didn't see any indication of a successful backup so far, but the subreddit that this thread is a part of might have some info.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/h02jl4/lets_sa...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/h02jl4/lets_say_you_wanted_to_back_up_the_internet/)</comment>


A Look at the Evolution of the Dial Telephone (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.arctos.com/dial/ <comment><USER2> A rotary dial phone communicates numbers to the central office by breaking and reconnecting the circuit with a quick series of pulses: a single pulse for 1, two for 2, on up to nine for 9 and ten for 0. A longer pause separates the individual digits.

So you could either use the dial or tap the hook switch repeatedly in the same sequence. I found it fun to dial numbers by tapping the hook switch. (I guess I am easily amused.)

I lived in San Jose in the mid-1990s, and our phones were all touch-tone, but the lines still supported rotary dialing as all phone lines did back then.

We had underground utilities that sometimes flooded in rainy weather. During one bad storm our phone was barely usable - when you picked up the phone all you could hear was click after click as the water intermittently shorted out the lines.

One day there was a loud and insistent knock on the door:

 _San Jose Police! Open up!_

I asked if there was a problem and the officers said there had been a 911 call placed from our number but the caller hung up. The 911 dispatcher tried to call back and no one answered, so they were required to come out and investigate.

I invited them in and had them listen to the phone, and explained how rotary dial phones work and what must have happened: with all those clicks on the line, at some point there were nine clicks, then one, then one.

The officers were relieved that their emergency dispatch was just a technical glitch!

<comment><USER3> Which is actually why emergency numbers were chosen to have 9's in them. 911 in the US, 999 in the UK. Slower to dial and connect, but far less likely to accidentally call via poor wiring or line noise. 0 was often already in use for connecting to the operator in the exchange, so 9 was used.

During the 80s or 90s when premium rate chatlines were a new thing, there was a fairly popular urban myth going round: that you could call them free by tapping out the number on the cradle. Course all you're doing is pulse dialling the hard way. You would still be getting the very expensive phone bill. :)

<comment><USER4> Related trivia: New Zealand rotary dialers had the numbers in ascending order, that is zero was in the rest position and nine nearest to the turning stop. The pulse encoder was therefore "ten minus digit", i.e. one pulse when dialling nine, ten when dialling zero [1] - a thread with some crusty old PT&T engineers argues whether this arose to avoid patent/licensing issues or just as a mistake [2]

So the emergency number was 111 rather than 999 on the same basis of reducing accidental use, not just from line noise but especially from having the finger slip out partway through the turn of the dial (even with international dialling there was no reason anyone would attempt a number starting with three zeros)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_dial#/media/File:New_Ze...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_dial#/media/File:New_Zealand_Rotary_Telephone.jpg)

[2] [https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?topicid=171168](https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?topicid=171168)

<comment><USER3> Fascinating, I never knew that. Seems like the UK GPO sold or licensed handsets overseas too, which I also didn't know. From your link 1, they appear to have used at least some GPO 746's: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPO_telephones#/media/File:746...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPO_telephones#/media/File:746_telephone_in_ivory.JPG)

The 746 was the standard handset just about everyone got in the 1970s.

<comment><USER4> That 746 photo certainly looks identical to the standard NZ unit, right down to the removable cover in the centre-top (which in big fancy offices was host to an extra switch for some kind of PABX function [possibly just a safer cradle-rest-tap for transferring calls?]. These switches were long rectangles and usually made of clear plastic like a small version of HAL9000's logic blocks - in the days before the BT phone jack reached NZ (around 1987) it was as exotic as anyone's phone could get - we used to salivate over UK electronic magazines and the riot of innovation on display: not just alternative handsets but even directly connected modems rather than acoustic couplers.

<comment><USER3> Aye that switch sounds identical too. There was also some sort of extra switch set that was like a matching base, with 3 or 4 extra switches, that I only ever saw in a movie or two. Both illustrated on that Wikipedia page.

Exotic was the arrival of the phone plug. Two phone points in the house and a push button phone, which usually still had a bell. The peak of 80s luxury. By the 90s I wanted a second line as the USRobotics Courier thing was always hogging the phone. :)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The page was last updated in 2004 per the source.

The author ends with this quote, "Today, it's unusual to see a rotary dial still in use. There is a generation growing up which has never made a phone call by turning the finger-wheel of a rotary dial telephone."

15 years later you can now make the same observation about touch tone phones.

Also, from the links page ([http://www.arctos.com/links.html](http://www.arctos.com/links.html)) only one of the external links from yesteryear still works.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, we've added 2004 above.

I don't suppose much evolution has been missed since then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have five rotary dial phones (including a rotary wall phone) that I use in my home. All but one are Model 302s or 5302s. I inherited all but one of them. One was my grandmother's that she undoubtedly paid for at least ten times over with her monthly rental fee.

The sound quality is still superior to newer phones. Occasionally some younger person will use one of them out of curiosity and will be amazed by how much more sonic detail comes through the receiver compared to their cell phone.

The end quote should be updated to, "Today, it's unusual to see a landline still in use. There is a generation growing up which has never made a phone call on a landline telephone."

<comment><USER8> Wow, can you still get rotary dial service? I thought all that CO equipment was gone, except for a few tiny independent rural telco's.

<comment><USER9> There are VoIP ATA adapters that can handle rotary dialing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One vestige of rotary phones are some of the original area codes in the North American numbering plan. Highly populated areas like New York City and Los Angeles have area codes 212 and 213– both are "fast" to enter on a rotary dial. More rural area codes have digits with 9's and 0's.

<comment><USER11> To add to this, the original area codes had either a 1 or a 0 as the middle digit; in the original assignment codes with 1 were issued to states which needed multiple codes, and 0 to states with single codes. Of course, as codes split, that became impossible to manage, and in the 1990s, new area codes appeared with 2-8 as the middle digit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A similar site charts the history of UK (GPO & BT) phones.

[http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/phones_1960-80.htm](http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/phones_1960-80.htm)

</comment><comment><USER13> fun fact, if you can find one of these on ebay, it's an older model of SIP ATA that you can use to turn a rotary phone into a voip phone. It's one of the few models of ATAs that understands pulse dialing. Of course you can't use any a lot of modern things with it, since rotary phones can't sent DTMF tones to IVR menus.

[http://www.grandstream.com/products/gateways-and- atas/analog...](http://www.grandstream.com/products/gateways-and-atas/analog- telephone-adaptors/product/handytone-502)

[https://famicoman.com/2018/07/29/building-a-pbx- part-4-hooki...](https://famicoman.com/2018/07/29/building-a-pbx- part-4-hooking-up-a-rotary-phone/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Theres at least one crossover phone that has buttons but isnt touch-tone.

Actually the Trimphone seems to have come in dial and full touch-tone variants.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimphone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimphone)</comment>


What Geeks Need to Understand About Women - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekatsea.com/hard-relationship-lessons-that-all-must-learn

<comment><USER2> So many of these silly articles would be unnecessary if people just used their brains and their empathy.

People with two X chromosomes are not some sort of bizarre alien for you to "figure out how they work". They're people, like you. They have desires -- probably pretty similar to yours in most respects. Use your empathy, and think from their perspective... just like you would for _anyone else in the world_.

Yet people constantly go into relationships thinking only of themselves. Rants are everywhere about what a person "wants in a woman/man" or "wants in a relationship" where the entire concept that the other side of the relationship has "desires" or "wants" is ignored. Relationships fail largely because people think only about themselves, not others.

A lot of "geeks" seem to want to generalize everything about women and make up "rules" for dealing with them, as if somehow all people are all the same. They constantly come up with "scientific" explanations for "why women are different", ignoring the fact that the variation among people of a single gender is vastly larger than the variation between genders. Saying "all women want X" is much akin to saying "all black people want fried chicken", except a whole lot more politically correct (somehow).

... have you ever tried thinking about them and treating them as _people_ with _brains_? It works pretty well, you know.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's unfortunate if it came across as one-sided, but I tried to make a point that "noticing nuances" works for all sorts of relationships. In this case, yes, I royally screwed up my relationship with that girl ... but being selfish and ignorant to other's needs and desires goes way beyond just romantic relationships. So yes, I agree, "they" are certainly people, and this is a reminder to treat each other how you want to be treated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So this is how straight people date? Sounds like hell. I try to avoid relationships expectations of emotional support are based on how well I can follow unspoken rules and keep my feelings under wraps. For many gay men this means being a lot more brash and rude with our partners, and relaxing the rules of monogamy. I'm not saying that it will work for everyone, but I've seen similar kind of relationships work with my straight friends.

> Guys often love to look at the other ladies and check out their curves, > maybe fantasize a little. It's the nature, sort of. I mean, single guys do > it, married guys do, even gay guys do it.

Ha, no we don't. I mean, I do with guys and all but still.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was hoping he'd talk about how women work (in general, of course), why, and how to apply this information. Instead this article reads like this: a guy didn't pay attention to his girl, and is now regretting the fact, so he's advocating misplaced submissiveness--pretending she's right, thinking he "should have been dumped" for one non-huge mistake, never looking at other women--in lieu of the misplaced confidence he had earlier. Well, misplaced confidence can drive away a woman, but misplaced submissiveness is the least attractive thing in the universe.

I'm willing to bet the reason his ex "won't see him or talk to him" is because, in his attempts to talk to her, he comes off as desperate and pathetic--and probably a little creepy.

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems to have fallen a looong way from front page then immediately? How?

It's useful stuff to me. If taken as accurate, it tells me that I am not ready for a girlfriend, if it means I can't ogle other girls. Useful to know that.

<comment><AUTHOR> In all honesty, that's probably because I once shared a HN link in email ... and I am pretty certain I now get automatically banned from the front page. It's kind of a bummer, but PG's ruling is final.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the great article Kirill...very well written & you articulated some complex thoughts, which are kind of relationship commonsense, but hard to articulate & internalize/implement :)

I had a q. about your comment above though.."In all honesty, that's probably because I once shared a HN link in email"

I am a HN n00b...is sharing HN links in emails forbidden ? If so, what's the reason ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not forbidden, of course, but if you share a link in email and ask people to upvote that link, chances are you'll be picked up as spam. "Gaming" HN is really a no-no. But, turns out in my case, that wasn't the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Look on the bright side: she was wrong on tips: they're calculated on net price and need not include the tax. If you're tipping based on total (incl. tax), you're tipping few % more than you intended to.

<comment><AUTHOR> lol. I know, right, that's the "right" answer from the patron's point of view. From the waiter's view, it's as much as you're willing to give'em =) le sigh</comment></comment>


Apple's iPhone Offers the Ideal Micropayments Platform - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/11/12/apples-iphone-offers-the-ideal-micropayments-platform/ <comment><USER2> This is just the tip of the iceberg.

As Apple evolved their music player into a phone and their music store into a media/software store, they have an astronomical opportunity to adapt iTunes into a generalized payment platform for real world goods.

You could buy stuff on the spot with your iPhone/iTouch or browse and pay ahead of time and pick it up later. Brick and mortar shops would be quick to support "iPay" to bring in the iPhone clientele (for the same reason they currently accept credit cards), and the timing is right: Apple could kick the banks/credit card companies in the nuts when they're down (look at AmEx...), charging a lower rate and alleviating some of the hassles of synchronous transactions. All a shop would need is the computer they already own and some merchant software.

Why would they beat PayPal or Amazon Payments (TextPayMe)? Because those guys just provide an abstraction above a bank account or credit card. With iTunes, you pay upfront, in cash, at the gas station down the street. No bills. It's not like this would apply to all purchases, obviously, but certainly stuff <$100... And Apple has a popular UI that really doesn't have to be constrained to music, movies, and software. Just because I can't download a pizza on iTunes doesn't mean I couldn't select and purchase one.

Now, given regulatory issues they'd almost certainly have to partner with an established player (like their deal with AT&T), but, again, they've got a golden opportunity with the state of banks right now.

Am I missing some obvious reason this wouldn't work? This seems to me right now about as likely as the iPhone did in 2006...

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to hear what some developers think. Applications that would benefit, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tipjoy...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I probably missed something, but why Apple are in front in that respect?

Google are the web masters, I imagine they could provide a funky solution!

One more things: Mobile devices micropayments is an old concept, a mobile phone as a wallet concept is a hard nut to crack.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think that headline is missing a "could".

<comment><AUTHOR> I misread that as "cloud" and thought you were saying something about buzzwords. But yeah, you're right.

<comment><USER5> Cloud micropayments? I'm calling some VCs right now...</comment></comment></comment>


Convert JSON To C# classes - <AUTHOR> http://json2csharp.com

<comment><USER2> Cool. Whats is the use-case?

Edit - I hate to bitch about downvotes (as per <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>), but can the downvoters to my comments in the thread, please respond, why the downvotes? Are my comments Off-Topic, rude or not adding to the discussion? Since, I am genuinely curious about all my queries.

<comment><USER3> There are a couple of places in .net where json can be deserialized into a c# class you provide, for example posting json to an asp.net mvc controller action. I find it is a massive pain to go through and create the classes manually.

<comment><USER2> Just to clarify, you mean that a json object can be deserialized into an _object_ of the c# class, right? or just the class definition (as done by the site)?

If latter, how do you use the class definition generated dynamically? (without the values, that is)

<comment><USER3> Yeah an object of the class. Sorry about that.

<comment><USER2> Thats OK. I have had the case of convert Json to Language Class objects myself before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thinking on this further, you're really doing two things: extracting a schema from an instance; and converting it to C# classes.

1) extracting the _schema_ from an _instance_ : in a JSON instance, a list will have some number of elements; but in a schema, you just have the concept of a list, and what it may possibly contain. Because JSON doesn't explicitly facilitate choice or references, they can't be automatically extracted (in the rare cases where someone implements this, they do it in their own non-standard way on top of JSON). JSON also doesn't represent the idea of productions - fair enough, since productions are a schema/grammar-level concept, which simply don't appear in an instance. (In general, there are many different ways of dividing up a grammar into production that yield identical languages ie. the set of possible instances.)

2) representing this schema in C# classes. This is conceptually straightforward, once you've got the schema.

In practice, these two steps almost disappear, even conceptually, because (with the exception of lists), you are just making classes that have the equivalent contents to each object in the JSON instance.

i.e. you can see it as an isomorphism:

      mapping from JSON "objects" (within {}) to C# classes; and
      recursively within that, from
        JSON "fields" to C# fields and
        JSON values (int, boolean, string etc) to C# primitive types.

(BTW: The mapping of objects to classes is instance-to-schema.)

Lists are an exception to this isomorphism:

      mapping a JSON list (within []) to a C# list/array,
        the _elements_ of a JSON list are not _all_ mapped -
        only one is mapped (eg. a JSON "object" is mapped to a class)

</comment><comment><USER4> Cute. Minor point: it doesn't check for invalid field/classnames, e.g.

        {"{ [ string" : ""}

<comment><USER5> Thank you, 6ren. The service will be extended and the first feature on my list is displaying erroneous submissions such as this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did this in Python a while ago, but I was following JSON Schema [1]:

<https://github.com/igorgue/py2json>

Its use was very internal and to be hones we would have just pickle or unpickle Python objects and it'd have been the same result (for our use case).

[1]: <http://groups.google.com/group/json-schema></comment>


Microserver Market Heats up: Intel S1200 - <AUTHOR> http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2012/12/11/MicroserverMarketHeatsUpIntelAtomS1200CentertonAnnouncement.aspx

<comment><USER2> Honest question: What is the use case for these with the trend toward virtualization on more powerful hardware? The machines are really neat, but what in what fields are they used?

<comment><USER3> They're fantastic for redundant clusters (e.g. something Cassandra-like). Virtualization doesn't help you there -- you actually need the physically separate nodes.

Keeping power used down directly affects our rack costs, which only provide so much power. We do _a lot_ to stay within that, so we only need 2U (and the included power) instead of 4U or more, since our boards only require 2U.

We place all of our clusters nodes in the same physical box, _including the networking between them_. This allows us to ship the box to a datacenter and all it needs is power, ethernet connections to the outside world, and possibly, the assignment of static IP addresses. Any tech can install the cluster in minutes.

We're not using the Atom processors though, we're using the lowest-power Xeon E5 in our current design. The Atom S1200 looks interesting.</comment></comment>


Bernie Tax Calculator - <AUTHOR> http://Bernietax.com <comment><USER2> It's not just about how much in taxes you would pay; it's about the risk of you actually getting quality care for what you are forced to pay in taxes. The risk of that care not being adequate is significant...consider that Bernie Sanders is Chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee which oversaw people dying in waiting room floors of VA hospitals. Sanders originally tried to blame the Koch brothers for this episode instead of fixing it. The voters had very little recourse like they do in the free market where they can just go to a different healthcare provider, because they are forced to pay taxes for the VA hospitals either way. The same goes for the Flint water issue in Michigan as well. The citizens of Flint are being forced to pay for water that they can't drink or use, and they were lied to about the risks it posed to their health for almost a year before the truth came out. This is the real risk you face with any government program, regardless of how little a tax calculator website will tell you it is going to cost you.

<comment><USER3> Bernie never spoke about banning private healthcare.

I find it amusing you think there is a free market for healthcare in the US.

Bernie's main idea is to destroy all forms of monopoly in various industries in the US - banks,healthcare. It's no different than state capitalism ( in USSR ).

Bernie is not against the free market. He wants single payer to leverage the free market in healthcare which is dominated by big players on the supply side.

You as an individual are free to afford whatever you want. But the govt's concern is improve the standard of living for the average citizen. And all of the world it has been proven time and again that single payer is the best system - empirically. So any arguments you make without any data but on some notion of "choice" will not be as convincing - sorry.

<comment><USER2> My original comment wasn't about banning private healthcare, it was about a government forcing people to pay for a product or service that isn't acceptable, or actually damages people's lives because it is managed so poorly. The Citizens of Flint still have access to bottle water, thank goodness, but they still have to pay their city water bills unfortunately. The same would go for Bernie Sander's health plan whether or not the service provided was actually worth the price paid.

>>You as an individual are free to afford whatever you want.

That is not actually true. I'm spent the afternoon searching for health insurance for my wife, who is pregnant, and trying to immigrate to the U.S. Thanks to the 2,000 pages of ACA regulation, there is no clause or loophole that allows us to purchase insurance for her. Your argument using 'data' is not sympathetic nor persuasive to me.

<comment><USER4> Bernie's real expectation is that things will get better if people get off their butts and take action. I doubt he believes that government programs will be magically efficient and effective without the right people to make them that way.

Government jobs are available. You can't really complain about something being "managed so poorly" unless you're one of the people in that organization trying to make it better.

Currently the U.S. has a system where doctors' offices need SEVERAL _full time_ staff _just to deal with insurance companies_ , which is _insane_ and _nothing_ like what I have seen elsewhere.

<comment><USER2> >>Bernie's real expectation is that things will get better if people get off their butts and take action. I doubt he believes that government programs will be magically efficient and effective without the right people to make them that way.

The problem is, with a government program, we're all forced to pay into it, no matter how good or bad the program actually is. When you are forced to pay for services from an organization, you have every right to complain about how poor those services are if you suffer because of them. If you expect that a government program will be great because Bernie hires the right people, what about the next President, and the President after that? The capabilities of individuals is government statistically by a bell curve and normal distribution. Even if you can select the very best person to manage that program for 4 years, the law of regression to the mean dictates that some future hire will be less capable. So how to we prevent mediocre people from eventually filling these positions, and thus wasting the money we are forced to pay in taxes to fund them?

<comment><USER4> Well one thing to consider is that a great many countries have managed to do it so we aren't exactly charting scary new territory. We've essentially been _told_ that this _has succeeded_ so the real question is why haven't we at least _tried_ our own version of it?

Every single job or project has the risk of eventually being taken over by less competent people (or at least, people who didn't understand the entire original vision). Every taxpayer has to live with the fact that he or she won't agree with everything the government does with money. I would have personally loved to have contributed no tax money at all on the military wastes of the last decade, for example. Taxpayers don't really get to choose at a low granularity, otherwise everyone would find some way to cherry-pick to the point that nothing big could get done.

The way to fix it is to put skin in the game personally. Quit your job and apply to work for the government; or, write to a congressman and really press on them that you consider this important; or better yet, tell 50 of your friends and get some network effects; or join some larger group that petitions for change (as so many other groups do).

<comment><USER2> Your points are not completely unreasonable, but there is more to consider. I agree with you about wasting tax dollars on military affairs in foreign countries, but at least those expenditures are (theoretically) temporary.

Consider that many other countries, mainly in Europe, have managed to put in place a single-payer healthcare system over the last 20-30 years. In the time span of governments and the legal system, this is the blink of an eye. Again, consider statistically that eventually someone incompetent is going to be put in place running one of these systems. This happens in government, and it happens in the private sector (how many firms are in the S&P 500 from 20 years ago?). The difference in the private sector is, when failure happens, individuals are free to choose a competing option, and are not forced to continue to pay for the failing one. I'm sure you've heard the lines about how competition in free markets (truly free, not highly regulated insurance) drive down prices too.

Consider also that no benefit system has lasted longer than a generation and been successfully managed by a federal-level government. The closest we have is Social Security, which is well on it's way to bankruptcy here in the U.S.

Furthermore, the great majority of what are considered good single-payer healthcare systems have been implemented in countries with Parliamentary Style Governments. What this means is when the party in power is no longer doing it's job, the citizens or opposing party can vote them out, more or less ASAP. The difference with this and our Constitutional Style Government is that if we elect the wrong person, or they put the wrong person in charge of our healthcare, we have very little power to change the situation for 4 years. In this sense, those Parliamentary Style Governments operate closer to what an actual free-market operates, giving their Citizens much more power over who runs and manages their single-payer healthcare system than we could.

The reason we haven't tried our own version of it is, because once it is implemented, it is very, very hard to change or roll back. Furthermore, as is with all the data coming out about Obamacare, it is very hard to actually judge whether such a program is actually successful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fairly certain this calculator fails to account for Sanders' proposed lifting of the Social Security tax cap for (presumably household?) earnings over $250,000. That's a fake 6.2% and real 12.4% marginal income tax hike.

Also the brackets don't match up with this analysis[2], though I have no idea who's right. That analysis also suggests Sanders' plan adds _another_ employer-paid payroll tax of 6.2%! I'm not sure how that overlaps with the "Medicare for All" tax. Let's assume they're not cumulative. The result is still something like a real 60% marginal rate on a household with two $150,000 earners. Before state and local taxes, of course.

EDIT: No, of course, the 2.2% employee and 6.2% employer taxes are cumulative! It's disingenuous to imply that your wages aren't being taxed if your employer pays the tax instead of you.

[1] [http://taxfoundation.org/article/details-and-analysis- senato...](http://taxfoundation.org/article/details-and-analysis-senator- bernie-sanders-s-tax-plan)

[2] [https://berniesanders.com/issues/strengthen-and-expand- socia...](https://berniesanders.com/issues/strengthen-and-expand-social- security/)

<comment><USER6> Yes, this looks like a simplified picture that is much more incremental than what is actually proposed on the Bernie Sanders site:

[https://berniesanders.com/issues/how-bernie-pays-for-his- pro...](https://berniesanders.com/issues/how-bernie-pays-for-his-proposals/)

The "more accurate" calculator linked from github is similarly limited.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: not an official website of the Sander's campaign. Also, let's keep it apolitical?

What's interesting to me is that there's not yet a product-comparison-like table where you enter your income and relevant financial information (stocks, etc) and it would tell you how this candidate's tax idea would affect you. This calculator for Sander's idea is amazing, and I hope to see more of these for other candidates!

<comment><USER7> > _Also, let 's keep it apolitical?_

Uh, it's a tax calculator from a presidential candidate. How on Earth can you discuss that apolitically?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Should probably make it a little bit more obvious that this isn't an official website; the way the logo appears at the top right now makes it look way too official.

<comment><USER9> I noticed that too. It amuses me that it just takes a couple of tasteful red and blue stripes to make something look official!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tax rate needs to be area dependent. 150k in the bay area isn't the same as 150k even just a few hours in any direction. I don't know how they'd implement city based tax rates, but I'm never going to own a house here if I keep getting taxed 50% and more.

Sanders calculator says I'd be paying more.

<comment><USER7> It's _Federal_ income tax for a reason. Are you suggesting people get a cost- of-living adjustment for federal taxes?

<comment><USER10> Yes, see you get it.

<comment><USER7> Move somewhere cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I watch a lot of UK television, even though I'm not an ex-pat or anything. I just find it better than US television. So I get a lot of insight into the UK culture. One thing I see is that the the citizens of the UK are actually very happy with their socialized healthcare. There are very few negative jokes about it. When I see how they take advantage of it, especially with home-care, I am extremely jealous.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is pretty useless.

We still don't really know what his tax plan is.

I heard him in an interview that the upper federal tax bracket will be 55%. This combined with state and local taxes means it will be closer to 75% (not including sales tax and countless other taxes that are paid).

It's just like in Norway and Sweden (the countries he wants to emulate). On paper, it looks like a small amount. But when it actually comes down to it, it makes it nearly impossible for even things like startups to thrive.

I also heard him say that the money will only come from 'greedy wallstreet executives' (I got a flyer in the mail saying exactly this).

I think many people will be in for a rude awakening when the middle class has to foot the bill for all of this and the system is substandard compared to the rest of the world.

<comment><USER13> Not only that, but this whole health plan debate is weird for those of us in high deductible HSA plans. My health insurance costs _negative_ $1000 ($-1000), because my company _pays_ me extra if I choose an HSA plan, and the company covers the high deductible premium. What the heck happens to those if health insurance goes single payer?

<comment><USER14> You have to admit, it's a fucked up system when your employer is basically paying you not to use your insurance.

Your employer should have no influence on health care decisions, which is one of the many reasons we need to fix our current system.

<comment><USER15> > You have to admit, it's a fucked up system when your employer is basically > paying you not to use your insurance.

That's not what an HSA plan is.

I'm not OP, but OP's situation is pretty common, and it's more equivalent to employers offering 401(k) matching. They deposit a certain amount of money each month into your HSA account, though by law, you can only have an HSA account if you're on a high-deductible plan.

Generally, the only employers who offer this are the ones who have the money to offer very attractive benefits (ie, tech companies). This usually includes covering part or all of employees' premiums, so their employees usually don't pick the government-mandated HMO plan option (it ends up not being any cheaper for them to choose the more restrictive plan).

<comment><USER14> HSAs in general are not a terrible idea; but they have created some scenarios (like OP's) that are pretty counter-intuitive. But HSAs are basically "small insurance" \- if you max out your HSA on a high-deductible plan, you probably will never use your insurance. So you're paying for most normal medical expenses out of pocket, and your insurance plan is basically a backstop for if you get cancer, have an accident, etc.

Overall though, health care should not be tied to your employment.

<comment><USER15> > Overall though, health care should not be tied to your employment.

Yes, I agree.

> So you're paying for most normal medical expenses out of pocket, and your > insurance plan is basically a backstop for if you get cancer, have an > accident, etc.

That's literally what insurance is supposed to be: a financial mechanism for smoothing risk. The actuarial price for insurance on routine events will be exactly the same as paying for those routine events directly.

Economically and financially, "insurance" is explicitly _not_ supposed to cover predictable, routine costs, because there is no risk associated with them. It is a really terrible and unfortunate misnomer that we call this "insurance", because it's not. You wouldn't expect your collision insurance to cover your annual DMV fees.

If you want normal, routine medical expenses to be priced below cost, then you're talking about a subsidy. But a subsidy is not insurance. Insurance pools money from at-risk parties. A subsidy is a transfer of wealth.

To be honest, it's perfectly fine to advocate that if that's what you really want, but it's misleading to call this "insurance", because it serves a completely different goal (wealth transfer vs. risk pooling).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very minor nitpick: It shows "higher", even the difference is exactly $0.00. Inputs: 251429 (Income) and 4955 (Health Insurance).

</comment><comment><USER17> I come from India and if USA is going socialist path I think I will better go back to India. Socialism can make even a big ship sink faster than you can imagine.

I think American youth has developed a sense of entitlement and no clue about rest of the world, that is why people like Bernie are getting such support.

<comment><USER3> India's problem was never socialism vs capitalism. India's fundamental problem is systemic corruption and heavy bureaucracy. Those things can arise under a capitalist or socialist system.

<comment><USER18> As an Indian who has lived in both majorly socialist and now a mixed economy India.

I can tell you corruption is way worse under a more capitalist society. Reason is simple, if people are making nice profits why not ask them to pay a little extra bribe.

Every one starting from the government to the private citizen is involved. Scams run in the tune lacs of crores, government servants think they are entitled to a bribe, you will be hard pressed to get a driving license without greasing some one's palms(I was asked by a license agent, why I was worked up about paying a bribe while I was getting paid well as a programmer), the postman thinks if he delivers a important document like a passport he deserves a bribe(because you are going to US, and will earn well anyway, why not pay me a bribe tip here), clerks in the income tax office rake up all kind of false flags when questioned they will tell you, they put it out if you pay a small bribe. The list is endless. Every single activity or a movement of a file, has a bribe fee on it. Every single one, no matter what activity you do.

Lastly this isn't just government corruption. Private companies have rampant corruption issues. Even in top MNC's managers routinely favor people from their states and people who speak their mother tongue. Promotions, raise, stock bonuses, salary bonuses, foreign travel and many such things are decided based on which state you come from, which language you talk, may be even caste and religion too. God save if you, if you don't have a match with your manager.

But surprisingly every body thinks, every one apart from them is corrupt. So corruption is somebody else's problem. The very same manager who cheats openly will complain why India isn't making progress because of corruption. Irony.

One guy even told me he was not cheating or doing anything wrong. He was simply "Helping" people from his state.

<comment><USER17> You have confused scale of corruption, definition of corruption with something that you think is wrong.

I remember we had to bribe a local fair price to get sugar and better quality rice. Those days are over long back.

Also I don't see private company managers favoring people from their state of region as a corruption. It all depends on company's internal policies and whether they can run profitably under those cases or not.

<comment><USER18> >>You have confused scale of corruption

Everything that I wrote, right from the prime minister's office to ordinary man on the street is public knowledge.

>>definition of corruption with something that you think is wrong.

If you think corruption is only when a printed note is exchanged, I wouldn't be surprised to see why its so hard to eliminate corruption in India. Bulk of the corruption doesn't see any exchange in money. Its the favors and grants that are exchanged in way that facilitate further ease in earning money. Bargaining ministries, portfolios, license et al work this way. Heck bulk of the corruption in the Media in India doesn't even involve money.

>>I remember we had to bribe a local fair price to get sugar and better quality rice. Those days are over long back.

When did you leave India? This was the scenario circa pre 1995. I don't even know any one close, even my relatives who are poor who take rations from government fair price since more than a decade and a half. I think only BPL people get it these days.

>>Also I don't see private company managers favoring people from their state of region as a corruption.

So true, most beneficiaries of a scam rarely see the scam as a scam. They see this as an one time opportunity to get ahead, and others are supposed to lie down and co operate.

Like I said before, most managers who do this think they are just "helping" their pets.

>>It all depends on company's internal policies and whether they can run profitably under those cases or not.

A manager openly manipulates employee ratings, discriminates on the basis of language, geography, caste or religion. The person in full knowledge hands out rewards to people who don't deserve. And denies and discriminates against those who do. Not only do you see nothing wrong in it, you seem to be justifying it.

Hardly surprising, why its considered impossible to eliminate corruption in India.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I came from Soviet Union. I don't have any illusions about socialist ideas. Lots of young people here might have illusions. But I don't.

<comment><USER20> There's a huge difference between Socialism and Democratic Socialism, surprised you wouldn't know that.

<comment><USER21> Perhaps you could explain the difference, because I don't see it.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Democratic Socialism" the best I understand it seeks to further Democracy by putting the power back into the social class, not the oligarchy as the US (in my eyes) become. I think it's putting the "we the people" back into power. Look at Bernie's top-priority messages. Get rid of Citizens United (money in elections) and get rid of big banks. If those two things are accomplished, "we the people" would have more power and held less at-hostage by the oligarchies at power... But just my thought. This video does a decent job: [https://www.facebook.com/DemocraticSocialist/videos/57540356...](https://www.facebook.com/DemocraticSocialist/videos/575403562607686/?pnref=story)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Git-bug 0.4: performance, comment edition, GitHub importer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug/releases/tag/0.4.0 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN !

After my first presentation of git-bug here [1], I'd like to show you the progress made.

While the original version was pretty much a prototype, the 0.3 version [2] featured a caching/indexing layer with its query language, easily handling 10k+ bugs.

This last version [3] include among others things a feature that was asked a lot, a Github incremental importer.

While this is still not 1.0, it's close. Work left before that is mainly the rework of the identity management [4] along with a Github incremental exporter [5] to make sure that the data model is done well enough and won't change much anymore in the future.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17782121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17782121) [2]: [https://github.com/MichaelMure/git- bug/releases/tag/0.3.0](https://github.com/MichaelMure/git- bug/releases/tag/0.3.0) [3]: [https://github.com/MichaelMure/git- bug/releases/tag/0.4.0](https://github.com/MichaelMure/git- bug/releases/tag/0.4.0) [4]: [https://github.com/MichaelMure/git- bug/issues/55](https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug/issues/55) [5]: [https://github.com/MichaelMure/git- bug/issues/56](https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug/issues/56)

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks very well done - I've been hoping for something like this for a long time!

For code review (pull requests) there's also [https://gerrit- review.googlesource.com/Documentation/note-db...](https://gerrit- review.googlesource.com/Documentation/note-db.html) which may be of interest.

I think the GPL3 license may be problematic for some potential contributors, but that's entirely up to you!</comment>


Technology versus government: The rise of data and the death of politics - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/20/rise-of-data-death-of-politics-evgeny-morozov-algorithmic-regulation

<comment><USER2> Can't say I agree with the guy but it seems an interesting question as to whether some government functions could be better served by 'algorithmic regulation.' I think if the algorithms were open source and well tested it could work better for some stuff.</comment>


Twitter live feed of Assange getting arrested - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/#!/search/?q=%23Assange&src=hash <comment><USER2> Awesome link. Thanks!</comment>


Disclosure of Beneficial Ownership After the Panama Papers - <AUTHOR> https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2016/10/07/disclosure-of-beneficial-ownership-after-the-panama-papers/ <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: "The Report suggests that for anyone wishing to conceal their beneficial ownership there are ample legal means to do so. But—even more significantly—the survey suggests that the majority of firms are failing to engage in meaningful disclosure and existing disclosure and the reporting rules are not having the intended effect."</comment>


What if we could vote from our phones? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@arixking/what-if-you-could-vote-from-your-phone-e639ace46fed#.pztoqhi6c <comment><USER2> I'm not sure making it trivial to vote will improve our situation. The internet comes to a boil easy enough. Now whole elections can hinge on the last sound bytes before polls close?

Maybe something like 'absentee balloting' via internet could be useful.

</comment><comment> atom-x I would trust the fairness of the polling system even less than I do, now.</comment>


Ask HN: Intermittent EC2 DNS failures at 1 minute past the hour - <AUTHOR>

For about the past 72 hours, our EC2 instances have been encountering intermittent DNS resolution failures when talking to the default AWS DNS server, 172.16.0.23.
These failures pretty much always occur at around one minute after the hour (i.e., between 12:01 and 12:02, between 1:01 and 1:02, etc.), and the form the failures take is that the AWS nameserver returns SERVFAIL.
I have attempted to isolate the problem to AWS's name servers, as opposed to the DNS servers that AWS is speaking to, by running code outside of AWS that looks up exactly the same DNS records at the same time. I have a script which runs out of cron at 1 minute one minute after the hour and spends about 60 seconds repeatedly looking up host names that doesn't exist and reporting if the lookups return SERVFAIL instead of NXDOMAIN. The script returns occasional errors when run in AWS, but returns absolutely no errors when run outside of AWS.
The domain I'm looking up records in is hosted by Dyn through their DynECT service, but I'm not sure that's relevant since I've confirmed that the errors only occur when the AWS nameserver is in the loop.
Amazon's DNS servers are notoriously unreliable, but we've never seen this particular failure mode before; the usual failure more is that DNS simply doesn't work at all on a particular instance and we have to terminate and replace it. Certainly, we've never seen a failure mode where the all the errors occur on an hourly cycle like this.
What I'm looking for from HN is:
1) Are you seeing similar behavior in your AWS deployments?
2) Would you be able to run a script similar to the one I'm running to find out if you can reproduce the issue?
If I can collect evidence that this is happening to lots of people rather than just us, I have a better chance of convincing Amazon to pay attention to it.
Thanks! <comment><USER3> I'm in for #2. And no to #1, but I'm not sure we'd notice if we did.

Here's a theory that you might be able to chase down with AWS EC2 support folks:

Many, many EC2 instances are either scheduled to be created on the hour (e.g. by cloudformation/knife ec2/whatever) or are running cron jobs that run hourly;

EC2 provisioning tasks and cron jobs usually require connections to outside servers - package installs, apt-get updates, sending logs to s3, etc. - <USER2> that means looking up hostnames;

Lots of hostnames are being looked up on the hour as a result, and <resource X> is being exhausted hourly when a flood of lookups go to the DNS server.

Important caveat: resource X may not be the AWS internal DNS server itself! It can be the port it's connected to being saturated, or a particular uplink on a two port portchannel being flaky (and the flakiness is only evident when it's under high load>, or the elastic interface that is attached to the DNS server, or any one of another dozen things.

Are you seeing this behavior across multiple AZs and regions, or just one?

(This is just a theory, mind you, but I've seen this same behavior when managing other large DNS clusters, and it sounds like a good fit.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Can also confirm. We've been seeing them for over a week, more severely in the last 2 days. It is not specific to AZs or accounts. We know from Amazon that none of the AZs in our accounts overlap.

It doesn't seem to be the VPC DHCP Options set assigned recursive resolver having problems as resolution from within the VPC via 22.214.171.124, say, still results in occasional SERVFAILs again zones Route53 is authoritative for.

EDIT: some tcpdump confirmation

      17:01:27.988201 IP 10.0.0.2.domain > xxxx.54322: 61062 3/0/0 CNAME xxxx., A 10.x.x.x, A 10.x.x.x (151)
      17:01:28.278093 IP 10.0.0.2.domain > xxxx.53047: 49767 ServFail 0/0/0 (61)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I received the following from AWS support at 9:33am US/Eastern today (8+ hours ago): "... We have now been able to reproduce the behavior in tests similar to your scripts to pinpoint where the UDP packets were disappearing, and yesterday evening the team tested a fix that unfortunately had some unexpected problems. I am hesitant to provide any time estimate since any software development has risk, but I'm hopeful it will be fixed today...."

The last DNS blip we saw was less than an hour ago, so I don't think it's fixed yet, but the day is not yet over...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the script I'm running from cron both inside AWS and outside it at one minute past the hour (with our internal DNS domain replaced with example.com):

      #!/bin/bash

      tf=/tmp/out.$$

      for turn in $(yes | head -60); do
          start=$(date)
          if ! host $(uuidgen).example.com 2>&1 | tee $tf | grep -q -s -w NXDOMAIN
          then
              end=$(date)
              echo "$cmd failed from $start to $end:"
              cat $tf
          fi
          sleep 1
      done

      rm -f $tf

</comment><comment><USER5> Hi, here we are seeing this too, starting around September 27. Some of our worker processes have been getting DNS exception notifications, always at 1 minute past the hour, and we had been scratching our head about it. We'll open a ticket with AWS too. Thanks for helping us find out we're not the only ones seeing this!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It looks like this was fixed on October 7.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been experiencing the same issue since the reboot events, but only RDS DNS errors: [https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=573380](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=573380)

</comment><comment><USER7> I heard rumours that it was fixed on reddit, however I'm still seeing the issue. Lookups to my RDS instance from an EC2 instance will fail. The last few failures were at 6:01am, and 7:02am.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have asked the AWS DNS team to take a look at this thread!

<comment><USER4> Any update Jeff? We're having trouble getting information via account managers and requesting ticket updates. We're still seeing it right now 13:00 UTC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> We isolated it to East 1a zone and have taken our webserver in that zone offline until the issue is cleared up.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're seeing it in multiple AZ's, so I don't think it's isolated to just one. And I don't know if you were aware of this (I learned it just recently), but AZ's are labeled differently for different customers, i.e., your 1a may be different from ours! Gotta love it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We also see the same exact behavior. I opened a ticket with AWS earlier today and just forwarded them this thread.

<comment><USER10> I received a response from AWS a short time ago regarding this issue. They are able to reproduce the problem and are currently testing a fix. I will send a follow up once we receive confirmation that the issue has been fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yup, a client of mine's nagios keeps fritzing every minute past the hour with DNS issues. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes, we're seeing similar failures at 1 minute past the hour.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yep, seeing this too across multiple machines!

</comment><comment><USER14> We're seeing these as well.

<comment><USER15> Yes, something straight from our logs:

      6 2014-10-02 14:01:28.394: 141002 14:01:28.394 pid=16680 jid=157622 REDACT ERROR fatal error during work: getaddrinfo: Name or service not known
      7 2014-10-02 14:01:28.394: 141002 14:01:28.394 pid=16680 jid=157622 REDACT WARN Caught SocketError: getaddrinfo: Name or service not known

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Still broken this morning.</comment>


An Asteroid Could Destroy the World Before Impact - <AUTHOR> https://lithub.com/how-an-asteroid-could-destroy-the-world-before-impact/ <comment><USER2> Mistake #1, the idea of a "risk corridor" applies to an object in a decaying orbit. It will hit somewhere along the line of orbit. But for an object coming from out of orbit, there is a center of where it is likely to hit, and then a bell-shaped curve across the cross-section of the Earth for where it might. Basically half the world is at risk, with some areas at higher risk than others.

Mistake #2, objects that we find which could hit us get within range of our rockets only a finite number of times. For a previously unknown large object with a several year returning orbit, that finite number is likely to be 2 - once when we found it and once when it comes back (at which point it is too late). A more realistic version would be that it is on a long trajectory that will hit Earth after 3-4 times. Which gives us a lot longer to prepare, and a clear timing on when we want to try to hit it.

I won't comment on the cultural mistakes. Except to note that "We're going to get hit but odds are good that it is over water and nobody gets hurt" might be less panic inducing than the story claims.

<comment> T-A > the idea of a "risk corridor" applies to an object in a decaying orbit. It > will hit somewhere along the line of orbit

It also applies to asteroids, and is a standard concept used in these scenarios. See e.g. the materials from the exercise at this year's Planetary Defense Conference [1] (the story on LitHub is basically a variation on that scenario, which also features an asteroid splitting in two during the deflection attempt, a failure to use nukes, and a city destroyed by the impact: New York).

> objects that we find which could hit us get within range of our rockets only > a finite number of times

There are more and less viable launch dates, clustered in launch windows, but the details vary depending on your vehicle and the orbit. JPL's NEO Deflection App [2] has several illustrative examples which you can play with, and which work pretty much as in the story.

[1] [https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc19/](https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc19/)

[2] [https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/nda/](https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/nda/)

<comment><USER2> Huh, that is bizarre. How does this square with my understanding that the path is off by something close to a normal distribution?

I guess that the big question mark is time. If we know the path of the asteroid very precisely, and the path of the Earth very precisely, but we don't know exactly when the asteroid goes down that path, it would result in something like a risk corridor depending on where the asteroir was between leading and trailing the Earth at the point of impact. I wouldn't (in fact didn't) guess that.

Thank you for the references!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't really understand the title. Before I call clickbait, how did this destroy the world? Sure, house prices will fall in the predicted impact zone, people will panic and create shortages of essentials in a much wider region, and the worldwide economy is set back by a decade or two. But destroying the world before impact? What?

<comment><USER4> It really is clickbait.

Nowhere in the article does it talk about "destroying the world." You'd suppose they were referring to some kind of near-miss from a massive body causing, I don't know, gravitational forces or something.

What it's actually saying is that there would be a lot of panic in the run-up to an impact, so that even a relatively small event could cause oil prices to spike and real estate values to drop in the impact area.

Hardly anything at all like the headline suggests.

<comment><USER5> Worse than the possible destruction of life is the destruction of _money_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not a specialist, but I don't buy this.

In this story, they have a 6-year warning of an asteroid with 35% chance of 700megaton impact.

I just know that with that lead time, and with such an aligning mission, humanity would be able to do amazing things.

The Apollo program was from JFKs speech in '61 to moon in '69, and that's built on a '60s technological and social infrastructure. We have tons more brainpower and tech now, globally.

This scenario would just be so politically aligning we'd be able to mobilize massive resources to stop it in that timeframe; way more than 6 launches. I'd be much more concerned about one they didn't see until 6 months out or something.

<comment><USER7> At six years out, it's unclear where the asteroid will strike. You think Americans will throw their national budget behind doing "amazing things" for the Caribbean?

<comment><USER8> How localized would the effects of a 700 megaton impact be?

<comment><USER9> Horrible mental exercise...

As localized as a 700 megaton nuke (compared to the 13-18 kiloton nuke that his Hiroshima). Reliable sources say that virtually everything within a 3 mile radius from the impact was heavily damaged in Hiroshima and everything within 1.6km / ~1 mile radius was obliterated so you should be able to extrapolate from that.

For comparison, the entire USA is ~3.797 million sq miles, so the equiv area of 184.35 entire United States would be utterly obliterated.

        700000000 - 18000 = 699,982,000 sq miles of totally obliterated things

For comparison, the entirety of planet earth is 196.9 million sq miles, so the equiv area of 10 planet earths would be heavily damaged.

        (700000000 - 18000) * 3 = 2,099,946,000 sq miles of heavily damaged things

Update: My math is totally wrong and people smarter than me explained it. Yay for internet people!

<comment><USER10> Yield isn't linear. It's a cube root relationship.

The difference between 100MT, 10MT and 1MT is hardly insignificant, but it's smaller than many people realise.

FWIW a ballpark estimate says 700MT would have a 1 psi overpressure radius - which would break windows but not buildings - of less than 100km.

It would be a huge bang and the noise would circle the world a few times. But if it landed on land, the total obliteration region would be smaller than a state. And the explosion itself wouldn't be extinction-level - although the winter that followed it would cause some severe problems.

Tambora, which is the biggest explosion in modern records, was estimated around 33GT, and the blast effects from that were very, very, very bad, but still relatively localised.

Chicxulub has been estimated as at least 20 _billion_ Hiroshimas - and perhaps as much as four times that. That set fire to most of a hemisphere. And it still wasn't a complete obliteration/sterilisation event.

<comment><USER9> > Chicxulub has been estimated as at least 20 billion Hiroshimas - and perhaps > as much as four times that. That set fire to most of a hemisphere. And it > still wasn't a complete obliteration/sterilisation event.

Unless you were a dinosaur living at the time :)

Thanks for the cluebat, I've put an update on my post to note the math is all bollocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm ready. An asteroid is an alright way to go out for me, everything else seems lackluster by comparison. This would be an acceptable early-ending to my normally schedule programming of marching endlessly behind the other humans towards oblivion.

In all seriousness, what can be done about this sort of thing(mitigating it)? Opinions(albeit ones from the internet) range from spacecrafts intercepting and mounting thrusters to divert the object's course, or planting nuclear bombs, and other "fantastic" sounding solutions. Is there anything to be done other than expect the unexpected?

<comment><USER12> It's very easy to avoid asteroid impacts. You do lots of observation, so that you can tell _decades_ in advance, that the asteroid is an imminent threat. Then you build spacecraft which intercept it, and use some type of engines (probably ion engines) to slightly change its orbit. You don't need extremely powerful ones, you just need them to operate for a long time. A very small orbital change will result in it completely avoiding the Earth decades later.

The key, of course, is being prepared well ahead of time, and looking for these things. We're doing a terrible job of these.

If you're a stupid species like the dinosaurs and don't bother to prepare for these things decades in advance, then there's nothing to be done; just let it happen.

<comment><USER13> Eh, that all assumes the object has a relatively short orbital period around the Sun. None of that would work for an object with a very long orbital period, which would have a very high velocity in the inner solar system and likely would not be observed until it was already on its way here. Then there are objects which are not in orbit around the Sun, with even higher velocities.

<comment><USER12> >and likely would not be observed until it was already on its way here.

That's my whole point: if we were more serious about this, we'd have orbital observation platforms looking for all these objects and keeping track of them all, so that we _aren 't_ surprised by anything short of another asteroid from totally outside the solar system like that one a couple years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Only about 150 years ago the idea of rocks coming out of the sky was ridiculous, fringe, crazy-person talk.

We laugh at the flat-earthers, but I think you can estimate how sane an Earthling is by its attitude towards meteor defense.

My point is most of us are "flat-earthers" after a fashion. Most people don't really internalize physics and the structure of the Universe[1], but when you do, you have these moments where your mind resolves the inconsistencies in your worldview and it expands and these mind-blowing vistas spread out before you.

One thing you realize is that the sky is fucking terrifying.

The world includes gigantic explosions that happen literally out of the blue for no real reason other than there are falling rocks in the sky and gravity.

[1] If we did, solar power would have taken off the moment someone thought of it. The Sun is _awesome_.

</comment><comment><USER15> Fun story, but one quibble: with a week's warning, Pasadena, Texas could manage an efficient & orderly evacuation. The region has a high level of cooperativeness in the face of imminent common threats.

<comment><USER16> Living about 15 minutes away from Pasadena, if it needed to be evacuated it would take months. There's a meme of evacuating Katy any time it rains because the people there tried during a hurricane and ended up staying locked in grid lock for days. Now imagine that same scenario with the entire city of Houston trying to evacuate. Most people would not be able to escape in a week.

<comment><USER17> Part of the issue with Hurricanes is that they hit a huge area. If you just need to evacuate a single city, it would be a lot easier. Especially with the added urgency of an asteroid. Hurricanes happen all the time and usually, it's not the end of the world.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, a near-failed state, managed to evacuate 300,000 people in three days from a Volcano. I'm pretty sure suburban Texas can handle it.

<comment><USER12> I doubt it. DRC could do it because they can just get everyone to start walking, and 300k people walking as a huge group isn't that hard to do. Texas can't do it because everyone will try to load up their giant SUV and drive out on roads never designed for that much traffic, and they'll be stuck in gridlock where they'll die when the storm or asteroid hits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In this scenarios it wouldn't destroy the world. A 50m asteroid hitting a minor city in the western world (with time to evacuate for anyone with a functioning braincell) is probably the best thing that could happen as far as space defence goes.

<comment><USER12> We already had something a bit like this, several years ago when a small asteroid exploded over Chelybinsk, Russia. 1000 people were injured.

Has humanity sat up and decided to take this threat seriously? Nope.

Most likely, this was a test from some aliens to see if we're smart enough to avoid a much larger, extinction-level asteroid headed our way, and to try to get us to prepare ourselves better without violating the Prime Directive too badly. We failed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ridiculous to assume that US/NASA are only one with the capability, EU/China/Japan/Russia/India/SpaceX could very well launch an interceptor and ride the popularity. If anything I expect multiple independent efforts competing to become the first one to take it out and saving humanity.

<comment><USER20> The cynic in me thinks Elon would first buy up all the property around the impact zone for pennies through a bunch of shell companies, then send up a BFR or FH with a W84 warhead (designed for a cruise missile so it would be extremely light relative to the lift capacity), rig it with an impact detonator that could be activated post liftoff, and then drive it into the asteroid.

Save the day, collect the gratitude of a grateful nation, and then sell off all the property at an obscene profit to make back all the costs.

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't take Armageddon as an instruction guide of how to safely get rid of asteroids. In fact, detonating it would likely lead to a shotgun effect. Lots of smaller pieces. Sure, these wouldn't do as much damage to a single city but they could damage many cities and many objects in orbit. Beyond that you now have to contend with the political ramifications of causing the destruction of someone else's property.

Tldr: asteroid defense is quite hard. Currently we are not adequately equipped to do so it safely.

<comment><USER20> Ok seriously, you read the article right? And its really just a summary of the work of fiction that is coming out in book form, and in that fiction _the people in the story all agree that using a nuclear weapon on the remaining shard is their last and only option._ To be clear, I didn't write the book, I was suggesting (what appears to be a way to cynical :-) a coda where a billionaire with a penchant for making money in unconventional ways, exploits the situation. He thus saves the world _according to what the book postulates is the best strategy_ and he makes a ton of money.

That said, I agree with you, its stupid to blow up an incoming asteroid so that it can basically shred all of the satellites in orbit and cause a Kessler cascade and make it difficult if not impossible to put things in orbit for decades. But in defense of my comment, you have to work within the confines of the story, that is the rule of improv.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/ttx14/](https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/ttx14/)

<comment><USER23> The part of the read where I realized it wasn't a real story I was reading was where it became 35% chance to hit. And I was like, "I think I'd know if this wasn't fictional".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Help me with the maths... current largest rocket we have is The Falcon Heavy, correct? How much more capability would we need to hit something 3 years away from impact with a Russian Tsar Bomba?

Let's assume we don't do multiple launches and orbit rendezvous.

</comment><comment><USER25> Has anyone read the full book this is an excerpt from? If the whole book is like this it could be a fun read.

</comment><comment><USER16> The cynic in me believes we'd do absolutely nothing and just let it slam into Pasadena after people who think it's a hoax fight with scientists.

</comment><comment><USER26> Isn't this an allegory for global climate change?

<comment><USER27> Sorry to break it to you, but last time I checked it wasn't climate if the weather goes "BOOM!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd find it funny if the US proved uncapable to hit the damn thing and Russia just throws a makeshift deflection apparatus at it that basically makes use of angular momentum for the task (Soyuz™ tech!) and just keeps burning itself to death on the asteroid's surface. The result would be bipartisan gratitude to Russia, while putting Rachel Mathews out of a job for good. The potential hilarity of the future is literally endless, even without an asteroid on collision course.

</comment><comment><USER28> Fiction. Very realistic read, though.</comment>


Support for indexes that use deterministic expressions - <AUTHOR> https://www.sqlite.org/src/info/2131a5ca53f0e9b0

<comment><AUTHOR> Example using the json1 extension:

BEGIN TRANSACTION;

CREATE TABLE json_tbl(id integer primary key, json text collate nocase); CREATE VIEW json_tbl_view AS SELECT id, json_extract(json, '$.value') AS val FROM json_tbl;

CREATE INDEX json_tbl_idx on json_tbl(json_extract(json, '$.value'));

EXPLAIN QUERY PLAN SELECT * FROM json_tbl_view WHERE 'the_value_33' = val;

COMMIT;

</comment><comment><USER2> If I understand correctly and this is similar to Postgres' functionality, this is really awesome for any calculated value (particularly anything expensive) that you frequently need to search on.

It makes inserts and updates more expensive, because the calculated values must be recalculated, but it can be an awesome win.

Hooray SQLite!

</comment><comment><USER3> SQLite gets better and better all the time. Considering that hard disks and memories get faster and cheaper as well SQLite is even becoming a serious option for handling "big data".

I use it in several of my personal and professional projects, especially in cases where data can be sharded well. The one thing that is a bit annoying though is the locking mechanism in SQLite, which prevents simultaneous writes to the database and locks it for reading while a write transaction is underway. If they could find a way to improve that behavior I think the use cases of SQLite would grow way beyond embedded application databases. Whether or not this is a good thing is of course a different question, but having a zero-configuration "plug-and-play" database engine could be a very attractive proposition to many people.

BerkeleyDB for example, which handles concurrent access much better than SQLite and also comes in a high-availability version is used in many production environments today, most notably as the backend of Amazon's DynamoDB key/value store.

<comment><USER4> If SQLite can handle your data handling needs, then almost by definition you are not doing "big data".

Quoting my friend Wikipedia: "Big data is a broad term for data sets so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate."

But yes, I agree that SQLite gets better all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really wish things like blog and forum software would use sqlite more often. It makes installation and backup trivial while being good enough for the vast majority of cases.

</comment><comment><USER6> That puts it one (more) step ahead of MySQL, which still doesn't support function indexes in 5.6.</comment>


Interactive Singles Map - <AUTHOR> http://www.xoxosoma.com/singles/

<comment><USER2> Adjust the age range to be 18-44, and you see that ALL cities are lopsided male below 44. Since there are roughly the same number of men and women out there, how can this possibly be right?

"Single is counted as being never married, divorced or widowed."

Aha. So this is ACTUALLY a map of when people first marry, and females tend to uniformly marry [and divorce] earlier, versus men who sometimes wait until later. Thank goodness, the map was really starting to worry me.

<comment><USER3> There aren't the same number of men and women out there. There are a lot more older women than older men.

That said, I don't see why the definition of "single" makes a difference to you, unless your concern was that we're going to have a catastrophic shortage of women in 50 years. Women may simply marry earlier in life, but you're still just as screwed if you're a young guy (Or not, as the case may be.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find this almost more valuable for the list of caveats to the data than the viz itself.

It's really nice to see them break down why it seems to skew so male at the younger ages, as opposed to OH NO THERE ARE NO GIRLS.

P.S.: Oh no, there are no girls! =)

</comment><comment><USER5> Now I've got stats to back up my failures. I don't know if that's a good thing or not...

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd seen this before, but not with the age being adjustable. I see that the male to female ratio is significantly worse for my location, sexual preference, and age range than it was just for the first two.

</comment><comment><USER7> Summary: Springfield, MA is where it's at.

</comment><comment><USER8> Today's Dilbert is on the same subject:

<http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-04-10>

</comment><comment><USER9> anyone know what he might have used to make this? looks like a java applet. processing? prefuse? something else? homegrown?

<comment><USER10> yup, processing. one day i'll give in to the people who complain that i'm not using flash, but until then it's processing all the way.</comment></comment>


Is using encryption suspicious? Half of Americans say yes - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/03/17/is-using-encryption-suspicious-half-of-americans-say-yes-according-to-pew/

<comment><USER2> "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt: A Usability Evaluation of PGP 5.0" came out in 1999.

[https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/sec99/full_papers/whitt...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/sec99/full_papers/whitten/whitten.ps)</comment>


A Quick (Battle) Field Guide to the New Culture Wars - <AUTHOR> https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/03/06/a-quick-battle-field-guide-to-the-new-culture-wars/ <comment><AUTHOR> ""Culture war" is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people change their minds regardless of the quality of opposing arguments." from /r/SSC</comment>


Show HN: OpenAI's Cartpole Can Be Optimally Solved in ~10 Random Initializations - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/EugenHotaj/gym/blob/master/cartpole-random.py <comment><USER2> Indeed, cartpole should be that easy. The observation vector is dimension 4, and the action vector is dimension 1. Gym has a range of difficulties, of which this is the lowest. It's good for debugging because you can verify the math in your head.

The linked code is quite fragile, though. It chooses random models (4-vectors) with all positive signs between 0 and 1. It so happens that there's a valid solution in this range, but a good RL agent should work equally well with flipped signs of observation and action vectors, and it should be able to solve it (possibly with more iterations) with any affine transformation of the two vector spaces.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, the code is not meant to be a good solution.

This was actually my starting point for an implementation of an "evolution" based algorithm that I wanted to experiment with. I was surprised that completely random models were able to optimally solve the Cartpole environment so I thought I'd share :). Of course I don't expect this to be the case for more complex environments.</comment></comment>


EFF to Supreme Court: Violating Terms of Service Isn't a Crime Under the CFAA - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-asks-supreme-court-rule-violating-terms-service-isnt-crime-under-cfaa <comment><USER2> One relevant court cases in support of this:

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

<comment><USER3> How is that relevant? That deals with cyber bullying, no? This is about TOS.

<comment><USER2> The CFAA charges were given to Lori Drew because she violated MySpace TOS.</comment></comment></comment>