13 Lessons Learned at Go Youth Conference - <AUTHOR> http://startupship.org/13-lessons-learned-at-go-youth/#gs.03f1357df4124e9aacf2d27bde4d0e36

<comment><USER2> Love this artice, full of wisdom:

"you should always listen to feedback but don't let anyone slow you down"

Plus for those doing sales: "Be insanely persistent but polite too"

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Thank Kathryn Minshew from The Muse and Or Arbel from YO for those tips ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great event coverage! Awesome stuff guys

</comment><comment><USER4> Great article @Mariardalmeida

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great piece. Go Portugal!

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice one</comment>


What Was the Washington Post Afraid Of? - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/what-was-the-washington-post-afraid-of.html?src=longreads <comment><USER2> Journalists and their editors are human. They are just as susceptible to confirmation bias as anyone, and it's generally the problem with most journalism. Instead of following the facts and the story where it leads, I think there's an internal bias that dictates where a story should go. Whether it's the reporter doing the bias pushing, or their editors, truly independent, fact-based journalism is becoming a myth.

<comment><USER3> You're using a constant factor (human nature including a tendency to confirmation bias) to explain a change (a supposed current decline in journalistic standards).

<comment><USER2> Which part didn't you understand?</comment></comment></comment>


Dapp Got Game – Ethereum is an established player, but EOS is gaining notice - <AUTHOR> https://www.dapp.com/article/dapps-got-game <comment><AUTHOR> Awareness of dapps and what they have gained huge traction in the blockchain developer community, especially on Ethereum and EOS. Ever since EOS launched its mainnet in June, the so-called "Game of Thrones" of the blockchain has kicked-off officially. Ethereum, the most established blockchain, EOS, the operating system designed for dapps, and high-speed blockchains including NEO, Stee, and TRON, are aggressively expanding their dapp landscape. As the facilitator and enabler of dapps, Dapp.com produced the "Dapp.com Q3 Market Report," to recap what happened and where we are with dapps, especially regarding Ethereum and EOS.</comment>


The Lemon Parser Generator - <AUTHOR> http://www.sqlite.org/src/doc/trunk/doc/lemon.html <comment><USER2> Lemon is great. I used it to develop a browser based GLSL parser[0]. I spent ages working with existing javascript parser generators and kept running into walls with syntax and performance until I settled on porting Lemon.

I ported the core parser to haxe rather than straight javascript which means it can be used to build dependancy free parsers for python, java, c++, php (and any other haxe-supported[1] language)

I've only ported the LALR portion of the parser - the data tables are still generated by the c version of lemon. Although I haven't wrapped it up in a self-contained project, if you want to do something similar have a look at the gh repo[2]. I've not documented anything, but if someone finds this and is interested in building a cross-platform parser with a similar method feel free to get in touch and I'll give you a guide on using the code. If there's enough interest I'll build it out into something self-contained and easy to use.

[0] [http://haxiomic.github.io/haxe-glsl- parser/](http://haxiomic.github.io/haxe-glsl-parser/)

[1] [http://haxe.org/manual/introduction-what-is- haxe.html](http://haxe.org/manual/introduction-what-is-haxe.html)

[2] [https://github.com/haxiomic/haxe-glsl- parser/tree/master/too...](https://github.com/haxiomic/haxe-glsl- parser/tree/master/tools/parser-generator)

<comment><USER3> what kind of limitations did you find in the JavaScript ones?

<comment><USER2> There were a few aims I wanted to meet:

\- Stick as closely as possible to the GLSL specification by using the reference grammar with minimal modification

\- Produce a haxe version of the parser so I could do some haxe-compile-time magic with it

Haxe is fairly similar to javascript so I tried altering PEG.js to spit out haxe. The result was a 9000 line file which it turns out was too big to compile. ANTLR looked promising but it appeared to be a bit too much to work create a haxe port of the runtime.

Lemon was minimalistic and had a simple syntax which was fairly close to the syntax of the reference grammar. The core parser is only about 300 lines[0] and everything else is in data tables[1] which are generated by the lemon command line tool.

[0] [https://github.com/haxiomic/haxe-glsl- parser/blob/master/gls...](https://github.com/haxiomic/haxe-glsl- parser/blob/master/glsl/parse/Parser.hx)

[1] [https://github.com/haxiomic/haxe-glsl- parser/blob/master/gls...](https://github.com/haxiomic/haxe-glsl- parser/blob/master/glsl/parse/Tables.hx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So where does this lie on the antlr, Allen Short's parsley, PEG, spectrum? (very loosely speaking)

And how does it relate to the issues discusseed in Haberman's articles [0], [1], [2]? which can be considered a good survey of this field (although I'm open to other surveys if anyone can point out).

Also intersting (Terence Parr's talk, ANTLR creator) [3], Allen Short's talk [4].

[0] [http://blog.reverberate.org/2013/07/ll-and-lr-parsing- demyst...](http://blog.reverberate.org/2013/07/ll-and-lr-parsing- demystified.html)

[1] [http://blog.reverberate.org/2013/08/parsing-c-is- literally-u...](http://blog.reverberate.org/2013/08/parsing-c-is-literally- undecidable.html)

[2] [http://blog.reverberate.org/2013/09/ll-and-lr-in-context- why...](http://blog.reverberate.org/2013/09/ll-and-lr-in-context-why-parsing- tools.html)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8p1voEiu8Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8p1voEiu8Q)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5X3ljCOFSY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5X3ljCOFSY)

<comment><USER5> I wrote lemon in the late 1980's on a Sun4, while a graduate student. There was also a program called "lime" that generated an LL(1) parser, but I've long since lost that code.

Lemon was intended as a yacc-replacement. The advantages of lemon over yacc are that lemon has a less error-prone syntax (it uses symbolic names rather than $1, $2, etc), and that lemon generates a reentrant and thread-safe parser. (At the time, yacc/bison parsers were neither reentrant nor thread- safe. I don't know if that has been fixed in the intervening decades.)

Lemon has always been open source. But it languished with little attention for 10 years until I used it to generate the parser for SQLite. Then suddenly people started to notice and use it.

Lemon does not have a separate version control system. The source code to Lemon (a single file of C plus a template file for the generated parser) are part of the SQLite source tree.

<comment><USER6> Hey! I've written a bunch of stuff with lemon over the last few years and at some point. Lemon has been my go-to parser generator for a long time. At some point, I:

* collected some examples I'd found

* split up the single .c file into constituent parts

* improved error reporting and modernized some syntax

* started working on adding Rust support as a learn-Rust project.

* fixed 64-bit conversion warnings

[https://github.com/martinmroz/lemon](https://github.com/martinmroz/lemon)

It's definitely not packaged up, but hopefully someone finds this stuff valuable. I'd love to see Lemon gain more widespread use. I want to help address the biggest issues I had getting started using it, which were lack of community, lack of documentation/examples, difficulty contributing and lack of a package/distribution medium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want to see the complete SQLite SQL grammar that gets passed to Lemon, check out [http://www.sqlite.org/cgi/src/artifact/f599aa5e871a4933](http://www.sqlite.org/cgi/src/artifact/f599aa5e871a4933)

It's pretty easy to read once you understand the file format (basically for each "line": [parser stuff] { C code using results of parsing })

</comment><comment><USER8> I love lemon, and used it to implement a simple configuration file language that my customers loved.

The advantages for me -- especially vs yacc -- were:

\- easy of use / great documentation

\- clear & customizable syntax error messages

\- thread safety (no statics)

\- no memory leaks / support for C++ destructors

\- generated code runs cleanly under valgrind

</comment><comment><USER9> I've used Lemon before for a compilers class at Uni. I was using yacc before, and can say that the Lemon syntax is much more pleasant to work with.</comment>


ClojureScript: A Great Place for React [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81_p6PSu064 <comment><USER2> As a lifelong back-end and embedded engineer that has stayed away form delving into much front end due to a allergy to javascript, I have to say I've been loving using ClosureScript Reagent/Re-frame.

I just wish there were more Clojure jobs out there. I'm in the Bay Area and they seem to be few and far between.</comment>


The entire world's carbon emissions will finally be trackable in real time - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/7/16/21324662/climate-change-air-pollution-tracking-greenhouse-gas-emissions-trace-coalition <comment><USER2> Here is the project / coalition link

[https://www.climatetrace.org/](https://www.climatetrace.org/)

Hope it will make a (any) difference!</comment>


CryptoZombies: Learn to Code Ethereum DApps by Building Your Own Game - <AUTHOR> https://cryptozombies.io/ <comment><USER2> Hey I'm one of the devs, I'm curious if anyone on HN is building stuff on Solidity or wants to ?

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the graphics, really approachable</comment>


Font Awesome 5 Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/232193852/font-awesome-5 <comment><USER2> Never seen a "library" make that kind of video before. Cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We had a lot of fun with it. :)</comment></comment>


WikiLeaks Release Excludes Evidence of €2B Transfer from Syria to Russia - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-russia-bank-2-billion/ <comment><USER2> The authors were commenting and taking questions in this Reddit discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/51z582/report_wik...](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/51z582/report_wikileaks_syria_docs_exclude_email_on_2b/)

According to them, Assange asked them not to publish the information because it might help Hillary Clinton.</comment>


Ask HN: Do RoR Developers Fall Within the 95/5% Rule? - <AUTHOR>

In doing lots of research for potential Rails developers I seem to be hitting either:
5%:  Individual developers with great online reputations, lots of blog entires, contributors to several gems/plugins as well as books; but are "not available for hire" either because they are too busy, or are somehow able to hold down a full-time job at a firm in addition to all their valuable community work.
95%:  Individual developers or small development shops with nicely laid out web sites but "portfolios" that are extremely thin and/or seem to be on the very low end of the complexity scale.
Have others had the same experience?  Any outliers? <comment><USER2> I'm by no means a top-flight Rails programmer (or programmer, for that matter), but be that as it may I am occasionally contacted for various types of consulting. (Frequently SEO or marketing because I'm sort of good at those.) I tell them that I'm busy. This is both true and not true. I am busy -- I run my own business, have a day job, and do occasionally like to have free time. But if you dangled a big enough check in front of my nose, I could be less busy in a hurry.

"Not available for hire" is a polite fiction that I tell people to avoid saying "I'm not available for hire at any price near what you are willing to pay". You can sort of tell, right?

"Hey, I read your blog and saw that you were a Rails developer. Cool! How much would it cost for you to do a simple five-page website?" => "Oh, terribly sorry, I'm busy. (Forever.)"

"Hey, you seem to be pretty good at SEO? Could I hire you for some consulting work? How much could I get for $500?" => "Oh, terribly sorry, I'm busy."

More broadly I think that contract programming gets progressively less attractive the better you get at being a businessman. Even if you command premium rates (and you darn well better command premium rates if you're that good), if you just buy your own time for a few weeks and then release the app that people were going to pay you to write, then you can scale your income past the number of hours you invest. Far past. Programmers are smart people, most of them are capable of doing this math.

</comment><comment><USER3> The nature of consulting (no ongoing support) means that most apps built by consultants are trivial. That doesn't mean they aren't talented programmers, but it also means that if you're looking for something that could legitimately be a 10k line Rails App you may want to think about whether it's appropriate to even be hiring a consultant.

Also, a lot of people that are famous for "community work" are the last people you want to be working with in the trenches.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points thanks. Best-case scenario would be a 20K-50K project on a consulting basis, that might turn into a full-time gig if the idea proves viable. Still seems like work of this size falls between the cracks...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to think that I fall in the top 10% if not the top 5. Check out my page on working with rails and feel free to contact me if you're interested. <http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/12559-brandon-pollet></comment>


Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal/ <comment><USER2> Haved a look, greate</comment>


Ask HN/YC: Does HN Pay for Itself? - <AUTHOR> Given there are reportedly numerous moderators working hard, and thus most certainly getting paid for it by someone, and also obviously there being some hosting & dev costs, I got curious — does HN bring some profit? Is it a practical business decision to keep it alive, or more of a goodwill community service?
If it's claimed profitable, then how? Is it accounted as a "promotional channel", thus more of an expense, but with some claimed/perceived ROI? If yes, is the ROI measured/measurable to some extent? (This last one I suppose is some general knowledge in advertising, which is totally not my domain, so I'll accept if you just send me the RTFM way on it.)
Was this matter maybe answered already on HN or some other public venue? <comment><USER2> It could be argued that YC wouldn't be as popular as it is today without HN. Also it seems to be a great recruiting source for YC companies. It doesn't have to literally __bring in money __to be considered profitable when the profits could be in the form of more intangible things.</comment>


In Praise of Halvings: Hidden Histories of Japan Excavated by Dr D. Fenberger - <AUTHOR> https://publicdomainreview.org/conjectures/in-praise-of-halvings-hidden-histories-of-japan-excavated-by-dr-d-fenberger/ <comment><USER2> OK, I'll be first. This is too weird. I stopped reading when the guy was canning his own shit. Didn't see the relevance.

</comment><comment><USER3> The gallery of "killed negatives" bearing the hole indicating no replication is an interesting and curious practice.

[https://petapixel.com/2016/03/28/many-great-depression- photo...](https://petapixel.com/2016/03/28/many-great-depression-photos- killed-editors-hole-punch/)

This article, however, confuses me. I've always been interested on notions of cultural identity and otherness in Japanese history - instead there's this strange constellation of disparate and only somewhat amusing historical anecdotes. The ending upsets me. I've experienced too many different variants and strains of this kind of New Age scientific mysticism clothed in a language of Japanese pseudo-Zen buzzword soup that is usually a segue into discussing their recent mushroom trip. Reading my own words back to myself, this reads as being flippant and dismissive but then I think about the number of times this has actually happened and how it makes me nauseous.

I'm being a bit harsh here, but this is more common than I'd like it to be and I'd really wish people would stop using Japanese religion and spirituality as a crutch for their psychedelic dabbling that always speaks to what feels like religious voyeurism.

I should speak more specifically as to why this is upsetting. There is a vein of thought in Japanese spirituality and to some degree, the larger whole of Asian mysticism that lends itself to this sort of ambiguity and perhaps more accessible kind of rigorous contemplation. I think a key observation would be an example like Zen koans where perhaps the pursuit of meaning and the act of moving towards insight is in itself valuable even if you never actually obtain a perfect idea of what it is you're supposed to get out of anything. As if to say, you're not supposed to suppose it at all would be one interpretation. So this cuts a few ways. On one hand, some practitioners can wave their hands around and speak profusely on very little. On the other hand, there's a great deal of credence towards what you give is what you get and ultimately who is to judge how people make sense of what imbues them with a state of wonder?

What upsets me is the tone of the article is monotonous and routine. It is all too familiar. The preamble bearing the quotations of German nihilism of some sort. A remarkably shallow critique of Japan's cultural and historical identity lacking the rigor to appropriately challenge what is deserving towards its reticence to admit its racism. And ultimately what does the passage of words sublimate into? A sandwich containing extraneous descriptions of shit and pleonasm.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is no source and no actual text. Most searches (Fenberger, HansetsuRoku) point to the author. Siebold and Empuku-ji are real. But the Hinooka RC11 Bridge crosses a road. Many things sound fishy. Made up stories and characters for art and entertainment ?

</comment><comment><USER5> Most of the pictures in the article were taken in the US in the early 20th century: engineering equipment, farm fields. Nothing from the Dr. Fernberger's research in Japan is actually displayed.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with bottom feeders and undesirables?   - <AUTHOR>

Sometimes they are good in giving insight on the direction a site should go but most of the time they want your site to go to a direction you don't want it to.
How do you deal with these guys without destroying your site's reputation for openness?  Any good examples out there?
This is especially important if your creating a website that is for all ages.  This group of people can be anywhere from spammers to people who use your site to buy/sell gold (you know those commercials) by just walking the grey area.  They can also be those people who's main goal in life is to completely disrupt the community your trying to create. <comment><USER2> I'm finding it very difficult to really understand the question and how it relates to your text/comments. Are you talking about trolls? Or spammers? Or both? There's a ton of info on the web about both.

</comment><comment><USER3> This board actually has fairly elaborate scoring mechanisms for dealing with trolls and other undesirables. You might wish to research what they are doing.</comment>


Google Images Hacked? Searches Bring Up Images of Russian Car Accident - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/3181662/google-images-hacked-russian-car-accident/

<comment><USER2> Works for me just fine.

Why do people say something was "hacked" every time a technical issues arises? Did something actually happen or is it just a bug somewhere?

<comment><USER3> Russian car accident images being ubiquitously dumped to unsuspecting Internet users via a common resource as Google Image Search absolutely _reaks_ of 4chan. Tossing in Durant just somehow seems to shore it up. I'd be very surprised if this were just a bug.

<comment><USER4> It's a cache problem, and it's clearly visible once you click on specific image.

Here's an "official" thread: [https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/gNv...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/gNvWXP4-0JE/discussion)

<comment><USER5> This is an answer by a Google employee:

"Thanks for your question. At the moment we have nothing to share beyond that it's a technical issue on our end"

[https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/websearch/gNvWXP4-0JE...](https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/websearch/gNvWXP4-0JE/oah- LVig9c8J)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's made headlines for my country's biggest newspaper

[http://www.elpais.com.uy/informacion/busqueda-fotos- google-a...](http://www.elpais.com.uy/informacion/busqueda-fotos-google- alterada.html)

and I can confirm it affects Uruguay (and it looks like all of South America as well).

<comment><USER6> I'm just getting reports from some German ISP customers being also affected while customers of other providers in the same area are not seeing any issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This has been all over the web for the past 5 hours.

As usual it's probably nothing.

<comment><USER8> There's images of car crashes and Kevin Durant all over google images, that's quite something if you ask me.

<comment><USER7> What I meant is, it's probably a bug, not a major hack or paranormal magic (as oposed to normal magic) like some have claimed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As the Kevin Durant image is also a popular image for memes, this would actually speak for a hack.

Without having read the reddit thread, has anyone checked the pages that are actually "found" by the image searches? It seems kind of unusual to me that this single image is actually hosted often enough that so many hits can appear in the search, hacked or not.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maps is also affected.

<comment><USER11> How is maps affected?

<comment><USER12> It shows red traffic on every road, due to excessive crashing. (Only joking)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> for me it works as usual

</comment><comment><USER14> An official statement by Google would be great</comment>


Programming Without Coding Technology (PWCT) - <AUTHOR> http://doublesvsoop.sourceforge.net/pwcthelp/main.htm Programming Without Coding Technology (PWCT) <comment><USER2> Always interesting, although the design could have been better. It just can't be picked in a single day despite its visual "simplification". After a while I always want to come back to text-based programming. The visual interface should have been closer to what Gamemaker proposes: loops, conditions are represented as bitmaps and text that can be dragged and dropped in listboxes. In PWCT there are a lot of repetitive steps that have to be accomplished in order to write/configure some logic. And the size of this download...

<comment><USER2> No. Seriously no. Why all the jargon now? There is nothing that's remotely recognizable to someone familiar with programming language and user interfaces. I tried it and it was ugly. Uninstalled after less than 10 minutes. Will never try that again.</comment></comment>


Ask YC - Selling software to large companies - <AUTHOR>

I spend a substantial amount of time working with a particular type of bioinformatics data which is collected and organized by about 5 companies.  During a recent painful session, I had an idea for an interface that would greatly improve the experience.  It is quite simple, but also quite novel.  I mocked it up and showed it to some other people who work in the same area as I do, and they all agree it is an improvement over what is available.  I would love to try to sell the interface to one of the companies who work in the area.  My question is, has anyone ever tried to sell software to a large company?  Is it possible to protect your idea even while shopping it around? <comment><USER2> This is always a tricky questions, because some companies do have a habit of stealing ideas. But at the same time, its not like people go out of their way to steal. I'm sure if your work can save them time and money and its not overly expensive, then there's no reason for them to try and steal it. On the other hand, if one of their guys can just implement what you did, some companies might just do the work themselves after seeing your idea.

You might want to pay a little bit more attention to branding if you're going to try do this. That sounds like a weird strategy, so let me explain. Right now its just an interface, and someone can look at that and say "yeah, one of our guys can do that next week, so we'd rather not buy it." The more you work on branding, the less easy that becomes. Instead of just having an interface, you have the "X" interface. So when people talk about the interface, they'll be talking about the "X" interface. Everyone will know its connected to you, and what a good job it does. It makes it harder to steal when it has a name and identity.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've sold software from a small start up to automotive companies. Enterprise sales have longer sales cycles. Plan for 6 mo. to a year to navigate the purchasing system and users at the companies. We used a prototype to get in the door and generate interest. The users and customers at these companies provided valuable feedback for product design. Developing a product that meets the needs of these customers we met was they next key step. Sadly the venture I was involved with failed this step.

As far as them 'stealing' your concept, many large companies do not want to spend their internal capital budget to build tools and would rather focus those resources on their 'core competency.' That means buying commercial tools can make more sense in their budgets than building something on their own. In fact, our product development got a boost from one internal R&D team who lost their budget, and asked us to take the code they had developed and build a product. Then they would buy it from us using their ample remaining tools budget.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to set up a website in 2018 - <AUTHOR> Say you are a part of an association, or an organisation, or a small company which has no or very outdated online presence, and you have been tasked with fixing that. A pretty common situation.
Now, you like/work for/are otherwise compelled to help this entity. You want to make this happen and you can and also want to code. Like always, the budget is small (say <100-200€$£ one time plus 5-20€$£ per month, the cheaper the better (relatively) of course) but your time is ultimately free, even if you only have 1 to 4 hours per day for it. Deadline? Well, the faster you are the more street cred you get but end of summer is fine.
Regarding specifications for the site, you are told: "Articles, news, calendar, media. And other people must be able to edit them, too!".
How would _you_ do it? Or a better version of _you_? <comment><USER2> Well, I think it depends a lot on if you can & want to code to get this done. Otherwise, the answer is mostly comparison between several different website builders already available on the internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can assume can and want in coding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would also recommend one of the big ones like Squarespace or Wix. I have had my fair share of getting my wordpress sites hacked. Hosting and security are another level of support you have to deal with too.

Not affiliated with this, but the Sitebuilderreport has some good comparisons

[https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/](https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I recommend self services like Wix and Squarespace. Prepare to make some compromises, but at that budget compromise is the default IMO.

Alternatively look into WordPress and plugins, but prepare for support calls along the way.</comment>


How a domain registrar can kill your business - <AUTHOR> https://www.uptimechecker.io/blog/how-domain-registrar-can-kill-your-business <comment><USER5> I recall a time when a company I had association with lost their main domains due to a failed renewal. In this case it was a long-term employee who left the company that had loads of company bills going to his card. He cancelled the card sometime after he left and the domains were not renewed. I'm not sure where the renewal failure emails were going but probably some unmonitored admin email box.

These were very important domains. Without them, this $1 billion+ company immediately lost all of its ability to generate revenue. It was quite shocking.

The problem was discovered when users started getting the registrar's landing pages rather than the company website pages. It was fixed relatively quickly once identified but do to DNS propagation took about 48 hours for complete resolution. During the window unrecoverable revenue well into the hundreds of thousands was lost.

It seems to me that a domain renewal is always a risk, even with a highly reliable registrar. A good defense is to limit the renewals for important domains by registering them for as long as possible (10 years). Even then you have a weak spot because your credit card will be expired by then so you should back that up with a calendar reminder a few months prior to renewal to make sure everything is set.

<comment><USER6> > A good defense is to limit the renewals for important domains by registering > them for as long as possible (10 years)

This is an interesting take. I prefer the opposite approach: choose the shortest possible registration window (1 year), and have a very clearly defined, properly-documented renewal process that multiple people at the company understand. It's unlikely that _all_ of those people leave the company in a 1-year window, so the knowledge gets passed on reliably.

If a renewal happens only once every 10 years, then it seems _very_ likely that the person responsible for it has moved on, knowledge around the process is lost, and at best the documentation is very out-of-date (but more likely it's missing).

My process is to have a shared calendar for these high-risk renewals. Top company officers should be on this calendar (CEO, CTO, and some engineering VPs). The calendar contains recurring events for domain and SSL cert renewals. These calendar events are set up for about 1-month before the actual renewal, and fire reminder emails at several intervals beforehand (in case people are away or on PTO).

<comment><USER7> I personally found a period of 1-2 year to be the absolute worst. On the next cycle the man is gone because it's past the average tenure. The emails about it were lost or auto deleted. Any documentation or process is useless because the company or the supplier has changed.

To have a process be remembered, make it monthly or quarterly.

<comment><USER8> How can you make domain renewals be monthly or quarterly?

<comment><USER9> If you have multiple domains you could renew them at seperate times.

Has the advantage that a failure might not be so disastrous either.

<comment><USER10> Only if you had the foresight to register them at different times, right?

<comment><USER11> Not necessarily, most registrars will let you renew for a full year or more at any time. Buy both on the same day, set a reminder or open a ticket to renew only one domain in 3/6 mo.

Also, get a registrar with an API and use a script to figure out how long a domain is valid. Alarm through your monitoring system when you hit the too close for comfort time frame.

You can scrape whois as well but that seems fragile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The timing of this is an amazing coincidence — I recently "lost" my domain in the same way. I bought it originally on Namecheap but have since transferred all my domains into a singular Google Domains account. My main domain, where I have my personal site and all my important emails, disappeared without notice on Wednesday the 9th last week. No expiration notice sent, no information as to what had happened.

I contacted Google as soon as I noticed and hey have been alright to deal with. Fortunately I am a Gsuite customer. I had to pay a fee to renew and another fee to restore, which was over $100. It's been in "restoration" mode, ie offline, for days now and I am unable to even touch the DNS records until it's back. I've already lost a week of uptime with zero recourse. FWIW I use a .co domain, and my site was throwing (for 24hrs or so) a splash page saying the domain was suspended.

Eagerly awaiting for it to come back but I'm totally in the dark as to timing.

<comment><USER13> Did the domain expire, or was there some other issue?

I just transferred some .com domains to Google from Name.com, I hope these expiry problems are limited to non- .com TLDs...

<comment><USER12> The domain did expire, though I was never made aware of the upcoming expiration. My assumption is that there was some glitch between Namecheap, Google, and the .co domain authority... but I still don't know exactly how my domain expired so silently. All my other domains were purchased through Google, this one was transferred in.

It really was a massive headache. I have no idea how long it would have taken me to notice (site is my authoritative presence on the web, but is a static personal page — no marketing or sales) and my email is a light trickle of messages by design: bills, bank statements, close personal relationships. Fortunately my brother told me his wedding invite bounced a day after going offline so I could follow up relatively quickly.

I filed a ticket with Google and got first line support within an hour. They confirmed it was still in Googles system. Then I was assigned a Senior Specialist who called me on Monday to confirm ownership. It is now Wednesday and my DNS records are still inaccessible.

If I were you I would definitely set an independent annual reminder to check your domain status, just in case.

<comment><USER14> I note my domains expiration dates and renew them at least 30 days before.

Your not the only person whose had issues recently with Namecheap not sending renewal emails.

<comment><USER15> I have the opposite issue with namecheap. I have my domains on auto-renew, and every time they're about to be due for their renewal, namecheap sends me a scary email saying I don't have the funds to renew, and only the next day do they auto-renew my domain.

<comment><USER16> I had that happen with them, when I first finally decided to trust their system to save my credit card information and turned on autorenew. Support told me it was/is because I have a couple of dollar balance with them from years and years ago, back when something involved making a transfer payment to my balance with them and then executing against that balance.

If you have autorenew set, it first tries to draw against any existing positive balance you have directly with Namecheap. If/when that doesn't work, it then next tries your preferred payment method (e.g. your registered and designated preferred credit card).

I was told if I found a way to clear my couple of buck balance with Namecheap, I'd no longer get the warning email. The first attempt would be against my credit card, which would work, and I'd just get one success email (after preceding "upcoming" emails and all that).

I don't know whether this is correct. It's what I was told by support over chat, IIRC.

<comment><USER15> OK, I'll investigate that solution when I get a chance. I reported it to tech support a year or two ago and they were fairly confused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's a horrible situation, and one I'd encourage everyone to try to avoid - register production critical domains with a company that provides live phone support and stick with tried and true TLDs.

Yeah, it may cost more, but this story just illustrates that you're staking your entire company on a $15/yr service, and you get what you pay for.

Even if you want to run your marketing/landing page/etc off a .io or other fancy tld, run your production stuff off a .com or country-level equivalent so your customers aren't left in the lurch if something like this happens.

\- _edit - <USER2>

<comment><USER18> Indeed, there's a reason large multi-nationals use companies like MarkMonitor as their Domain Register, even if they could get the same for $30/year, the potential loss in revenue and brand damage could be worth tens of thousands.

It is a much harder balancing act for a startup, finding a domain register who is reputable and responsive but not "overly" expensive. Even if your entire business relies on it, $1K+/year just may not be in the cards even knowing the risks.

I haven't used it but Google Domains claims they have telephone support and are reasonably priced. Might be worth people checking out, their Gsuite support has been pretty good.

<comment><USER19> On what basis is your gsuite support -- Google's rep is "amongst the world's worst support unless your spending $millions" ...

<comment><USER20> Paid gsuite has live 24/7 phone support. I've used 5-6 times over 8 years and gotten 5-star service _every single time_.

Haven't needed to call them in the past 18 mos. or so, however, and these things can change.

I have gripes about aspects of gsuite itself, in particular how they've removed a few features that I used from the $5/user/mo tier. Had to move to $10 tier to keep email content filtering (ability to use regex to prevent accidental SSN or CC inclusion). The filtering setup is much easier to use now, but the old system worked well enough.

<comment><USER21> >Paid gsuite has live 24/7 phone support. I've used 5-6 times over 8 years and gotten 5-star service every single time.

I've been a reseller for most of the decade and I can honestly say in all the times we've called, we have _never_ had a single issue corrected by support. We usually end up having to find workarounds for bugs. The last time was an autosuspension our panel(s - there are two versions now) would not let us un- suspend the client. This left him without email for a week, while support would only respond during the early AM hours, and would repeatedly ask us to prove identity, even though we were registered resellers with admin panel access.

In all the years of working with different vendors, I honestly cannot think of a single one with a 0% success rate in their support.

<comment><USER22> Office 365 is pretty close to that, actually. You need Premier support to get anything useful.

My favorite O365 support story is where first level support dicked around so long with a missing mailbox that by the time they escalated the ticket, _their_ backup had been overwritten. Luckily it was a user's archive mailbox and we still had their source PSTs, so not a lot was lost.

<comment><USER21> > Office 365 is pretty close to that, actually. You need Premier support to > get anything useful.

I haven't had too much experience with their service support, but their app support seemed decent. I was having an issue with S/MIME signatures not being parsed properly on Outlook iOS. Support chat seemed competent and knew what was happening (no support for S/MIME signatures yet).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I had some fun with NameCheap and the xyz tlds. Turns out, CentralNic (who actually runs the zones) was not doing proper validation on the glue records, and not removing old ones. NameCheap was sending CentralNic cached records, and managed to foobar my domain glues.

I bypassed NameCheap, because I knew they weren't the ones actually maintaining the records (registrars are just middle-men.) Using the DNS contact in the SOA, I got a response within 12 hours, and it was fully resolved within 24 hours (minus propagation.)

CentralNic contacted NameCheap, as did I, and they got their system fixed within the week.

\--Edit--

CentralNic, not Nic. The roots were to nic.xyz.

</comment><comment><USER24> Never heard of domain.com. If anyone wants a recommendation I use namecheap and have never had a problem. They are supporters of the EFF and Net Neutrality.

Edit: If you are going to downvote, state why. Namecheap is a good service for a good price and supports Internet freedom. When even GoDaddy was supporting SOPA Namecheap took a stand against SOPA.

<comment><USER25> Namecheap online support is seriously kick-butt great. Only complaint is that they don't support Letsencrypt certificates with their web hosting plans.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I noticed that. What did they used to charge before Letsencrypt? $20?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My registrar suspended my domain because an abusive user was using a subdomain for phishing. They told me they can't inform me first of abuse so I can deal with it; they'll suspend the domain immediately.

Who's a good registrar that will contact me first if they get an abuse report?

<comment><USER27> I'm printing and framing this for the next time our PO brings this amazing sub-domain per user idea back on our backlog.

<comment><USER28> The problem was the phishing, not the subdomain. If your app allows users to run phishing operations, moving the content from user.foo.com to www.foo.com/user probably won't help much in parent's scenario.

<comment><USER29> But it would help to run user content on user.foo.io just like Github.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I work for a domain registrar, albeit not the one mentioned in the article.

Obviously, we see a lot of expired domains on a daily basis, mainly because customer's forget to renew despite us reminding them repeatedly during the three months before the domains expire.

General advice: 1) Make sure there is more than one single contact person for invoicing. All too often, the problem is that a single employee is unavailable for some reason and that the rest of the business have no idea that the domain needs to be renewed.

2) Keep the contact details valid and up-to-date. This should be a no-brainer but a surprisingly large amount of businesses have domains registered to single employees, or with invalid contact emails.

3) Don't wait until the domains expire; renew the domains for at least one additional year. It will give you a whole year to fix stuff if you forget a reminder. EDIT: Or if the registrar screws up like in this case.

4) Automatic renewals is your friend. It's a last line of defense if all else fails.

5) Make sure you have a process for handling all of the above, even if you're a one-man business. Domain names are often critical for the business, and it's ridiculous to let the entire business rely upon a reminder sent 90 days before expiry.

<comment><USER31> They payed for the renewal in time. The registrar didn't forward it "in time", which is apparently a requirement from .io.

<comment><USER30> In this case, the registrar obviously screwed up. Still, if the domain had been renewed for an additional year already, the domain would not have been expired.

As sad as it may seem, you need to take other people's incompetence into account when you're dealing with business-critical things like domain names.

<comment><USER31> The domain was paid, the registrar took the money, but .io didn't renew it, because they need the renewal notice at least 3 days prior to expiry.

It was a registrar screw up, but my main take away is: avoid .io like plague.

See also: [https://hackernoon.com/stop-using-io-domain-names-for- produc...](https://hackernoon.com/stop-using-io-domain-names-for-production- traffic-b6aa17eeac20)

<comment><USER32> > avoid .io like plague

How else am I supposed to automatically add a layer of cool to my startup

<comment><USER33> Make the startup name something ending in .de and use a .de domain. The "TLD is part of the name" is also cool, and .de is reliable. e.g.: starma.de

<comment><USER32> For English words that would work I guess. Here in EU a .de would also obviously point to something German which wouldn't be the intention.

<comment><USER34> Why even support EU users though with all the GDPR overhead? Unless you are a multinational who doesnt care about GDPR overheads, best not to target the EU market isnt it?

<comment><USER32> I'm in Brussels, right in the belly of the beast!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Don't use *.io anyway. The domains are being sold under a very morally dubious arrangement, given the UK kicked all the people off the island of Chagos and gave the domain registration to a private entity.

[https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how- the-u-...](https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-k-is- making-web-domain-profits-from-a-shady-cold-war-land-deal/)

The UK government's view of the Chagossians at the time they gave the island to the USA for a military base was apalling:

"Unfortunately along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure and who are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius."

</comment><comment><USER36> Related - [https://medium.com/@alexandernst/from-successful-to-zero- tha...](https://medium.com/@alexandernst/from-successful-to-zero-thanks-to- namecheap-d392c76b2ffd)

<comment><USER37> TL;DR: Don't use namecheap.com either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Something that scares me regarding domain names is their variable cost. I purchased a .sexy domain for a joke website and its price got raised by +70% less than one year after that, making the joke a lot less appealing. There's no guarantee that when you purchase a domain name it reasonably stays around that price for years.

Build a business on a domain -> the name increase by XX% -> you're screwed and must pay.

<comment><USER39> If it's a joke, okay, 70% might hurt.

.sexy is about 60-100$ per year. If you've build a business on it, paying double the amount should not hurt.

For me the most important thing about this new gTLDs is more about reputation of the gTLD registry. What if these go out of service? I'm pretty sure that there exist a protocol for that case, but I'm also sure that domains in a less popular new gTLD space might get far less protection from ICANN than any non- sponsored gTLD.

<comment><USER40> > sexy is about 60-100$ per year. If you've build a business on it, paying > double the amount should not hurt

I feel the issue is the lack of transparency and control. Who is to say some registrar won't start charging people per visit or % revenue in the future?

<comment><USER39> Sure, I hear you. If it's a registrar, it's okay, simply change it. For a registry, I believe that they would risk their mass market business cases, but I'm also very sceptical about those ngTLDs for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Do not rely on other people to resolve time-sensitive issues when you can easily avoid it.

In this particular case as soon as it's clear the domain hasn't renewed despite being billed then manually renew it using the usual user interface, pay the extra $10 and then contact support after to get one of the charges refunded now the time-sensitivity is gone.

The stress alone isn't worth being out of pocket $10 let alone only for a week or two.

<comment><USER42> According to one of the comments in the support ticket (at the end of the article) the registrar did not allow manually renewing the domain.

<comment><USER11> I believe that's true, I think the point stands though, when you realize a shit storm is coming, that's the right time to open your umbrella. Waiting until you've been out of business for three days is a little late.

I probably wouldn't stick around as a customer, not because they got screwed here but because they stood there with their hands on their head and watched the train wreck. That's the difference between amateurs and pros (and the pros learned this the hard way)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is one of the potential drawbacks of using ccTLDs like .io - <USER3> nations are afforded much more control in the administration and dispute resolution process than gTLDs. Unfortunately some are run more poorly than others, which is why in this case the support agent states:

"Unlike common domain names [gTLDs] like .com or .nets. .IO's are managed by a specific organization, that manages only .IO domain names..."

.IO of course being the ccTLD for the British Indian Ocean Territory, run by these chaps: [http://www.icb.co.uk/](http://www.icb.co.uk/)

At any rate, it's worth bearing in mind that ccTLDs are not administered the same way as a gTLD, and weird issues like this that are a pain to resolve can happen.

<comment><USER44> And every couple of years someone finds this out the hard way and goes on a big rant like this one. Particularly with the .IO ccTLD. Or .LY.

It tells me that the person running the business isn't very good at estimating the business risk of the technology they're using. That's when I start hoping I'm not a customer of theirs and invariably find out that I'm not. Phew.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I create websites for small businesses. I've seen almost every conceivable domain renewal failure in my 20 years of experience. No matter how many times we remind clients to get this aspect of their business documented we still have sites go down every year. We charge a fee to "manage" domains for those who opt-in, solely for this reason (and it's worth it).

The most common reasons:

Bad contact email

Auto renew off

Expired CC

Lost password

The more obscure:

Bought domain through a reseller who is now out of business (more common than you think)

"Branded" contact email which post expiration, no longer works.

Disgruntled "losing" webmaster who registered domain under his/her account and is now holding it hostage.

</comment><comment><USER46> It is sad that often, a slightly less appealing .com domain is a better choice than a slick domain on an unreliable tld.

<comment><USER47> .io is run by morons. It's astounding that they haven't been fired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I recommend using easydns.com as the registrar and DNS service. Their email helpdesk is fast: <30 minutes. They answer the phone immediately and they are knowledgeable. Phone support is during business hours, but the more expensive packages have 24hour support.

And yeah, you need to have a lot of faith to use .io or other new TLDs which are serviced by new companies.

<comment><USER49> Hmm, lots of people here recommend EasyDNS.

I'm curios so I went to check.

They say that the "DNS PRO" offer has 5 million queries/month. Is that a lot? Do they enforce the limit? That's 7000/requests/hour (or 115/minute or 2/second). That's not PRO in my books.

<comment><USER50> DNS results typically get cached for at least a few minutes, and most users use ISP or public DNS servers (eg, Google, CloudFlare, etc) which only do the lookup once for many users, so your authoritative DNS server will see only a fraction of the number of web requests you actually handle. I'd guess for most sites this is probably below 1% in terms of requests per second.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> We spend lot of time thinking about making our services resilient against failure at the infrastructure level yet the domain registrar is often overlooked.

Not only do you have to worry about them making a technical mistake there is also the risk of a phishing attack.

A while back I did a bit of research about what was the most reliable registrar and the only one that i could find was Markmonitor. Most of the big sites (google.com facebook.com etc) use them. They offer lots of cool features that i had never heard of like registrar level locking and custom 'protocols' (like a phonecall from X no. of authorised people) to validate a change. Plus some others that seemed less interesting (to me) such as the brand protection.

They do of course charge a pretty penny. From memory there was a minimum cost of $30k per year which allowed you pretty much as many domains as you might want and the promise of being able to get ahold of a human if something goes wrong.

</comment><comment><USER52> Algolia implemented a retry strategy on a different domain, TLD, and provider in their API clients. See step 14 of this article: [http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/7/27/algolias-fury- road...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/7/27/algolias-fury-road-to-a- worldwide-api-part-3.html)

Complicated to apply to a website, but it gives some thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER53> Yes well. Don't use .io domains for anything serious.

I had one of the 20 largest .io domains for a time, until they shut us down because they received one complaint in 3 years. It took them 2 days after we resolved the matter to put the domain back online as well.

By that time I had already migrated to .org - which is run by a considerably more professional non-profit organization.

</comment><comment><USER54> For those who want the short version: Never EVER use domain.com as your domain registrar. Yikes!

i really feel bad for those guys at uptimechecker.io

</comment><comment><USER55> I had a related issue where a previous registrar — who we had moved away from months before — managed to accidentally "claw back" and disable our domain due to a misconfigured billing script. The fragility of the whole ecosystem is pretty scary.

Wrote it up on Medium @ [https://medium.com/thisiscala/the-duct-tape-holding- the-inte...](https://medium.com/thisiscala/the-duct-tape-holding-the-internet- together-12118be60ff1)

</comment><comment><USER56> I worked at a domain registrar for over ten years. Every day I would have to deal with a call from some irate customer who's business was down because they forgot to renew the domain. This was after we would send them emails, starting a month before the renewal was due and then more frequently the closer they got to the renewal date. Many times they wouldn't even notice until the domain had passed the grace period, fully expired and been snatched up by some scalper and replaced with adverts.

Then they would be on the phone claiming to be losing thousands of pounds for every minute the website was offline and how it needed to be resolved right now or they would be sending in their lawyers.

If your business resolves around having a functional website, make sure you have a solid domain renewal plan in place and are hosting with a trustworthy registrar.

<comment><USER57> > This was after we would send them emails

Did your e-mails look like spam by any chance? e.g. contain images, look like newsletters, contain tracking pixels, etc. -- most such e-mails get auto- deleted on my end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Just to be fair, this person waited until 3 days before expiration to verify that everything was ok with his registrar.

They should have done this 90 days ago.

Create and implement a business policy to have IT come up with a procedure to check this quarterly. There's no really any excuse for a tech company to have this happen.

</comment><comment><USER59> Domain registrar and DNS for a company are too critical and fragile to go cheap on.

For personal, hobby, one-off marketing domains; sure go cheap.

But for something you earn money from? Go with highy recommended providers. Registrars with a secure administration, good track record of customer service, high reliability, etc.

Also spread the risk around. Don't have domain, DNS, and services with one provider. E.g. register domain with Gandhi, Hover etc, use DNS from Cloudflare, Route56, etc, and host with GCP, Heroku etc (for example).

And use several providers if you have multiple domains in case one implodes. That way not all of your domains disappears overnight.

And as many have mentioned already on this topic: Have well documented, well practised renewal processes, and renew for multiple years if possible.

<comment><USER60> > And use several providers if you have multiple domains in case one implodes.

I'd add only on refinement: if possible, use domains with different top-level (national) authorities.

Sadly, this kind of operational wisdom is rapidly being lost by the emphasis on hiring "DevOps" engineers, with most of the emphasis on the "Dev" part, since they're often just coders against cloud APIs, with much less value placed on traditional sysadmin (or what ended up being called operations engineering during and after the dot-com boom) experience.

Now, of course, that makes sense not to hire a full-time 100% sysadmin if what you (think you) need is a 5% (or less) sysadmin. Also, most startups, and probably even larger businesses, are going to be easily lulled into complacency by the uptime records of the larger vendors (or really just AWS), when following the best practices for technical reliability. "Infrastructure as code" is supposed to alleviate the human/administrative risk, and I'm actually convinced that it does to a very large degree (just at a huge cost in markup/profit for Amazon for that infrastructure).

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> If this service was some run of the mill e-commerce or SaaS I wouldn't have this reaction, but being a critical monitoring service that was down for days, this reflects very poorly on them. My reaction is that I'd never use uptimechecker.io. Quite honestly I am baffled why they'd even want to write this post for others unaware of their company and the outage to discover. It does not reflect well on them, despite spinning it and rightly blaming domain.com.

Just use a respected and well known registrar such as Amazon Route 53 domains. This could have all been avoided. I know the blame "should" fall on domain.com, but ultimately startups are responsible for their service.

<comment><USER62> Wasn't their fault. Their users deserve to know exactly what happened. I value transparency.

<comment><USER61> Absolutely, send your current customers an e-mail explaining... Just not convinced a public blog post is good business for them moving forward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> They might have completely shut you out with the silent treatment because they think you might sue. So maybe you should.

</comment><comment><USER64> For a very long time, DNS simply has not been an identified risk for most corporations. In the risk analysis they make, DNS is not on the map at all, even though it may be a single point of complete collapse for them. Thus we see extremely large corporations depending on a single DNS provider, using a registrar that are more interested in profit rather than resilience against attacks, no DNSSEC. Etc etc. This is slowly changing. What is. Not changing fast enough is the ability to run more than one DNS provider, giving you yet another spof.

</comment><comment><USER65> The whole domain registration system is a very complex and messy area to work with, both from a development as an enduser perspective. I speak from experience working at a hosting company implementing domain registrations directly with the registry systems.

It's a incomprehensible mishmash of tld's implementing different methods of registering, renewing, restoring, domains. Some require ID verification before registrations, some have a quarantine of 1 week, other of 4 weeks, some no quarantine. Some domains need to be renewed before expiry, some can still be used 2 weeks after expiry, some domains allow transfers and trades, others don't or do under strict circumstances. Some require transfer codes, others don't. Some transfer codes are valid for 1 week, some are valid for longer.

There is no decent standarization on the technical level when it comes to managing domain registrations. There is the EPP protocol but almost none of the registries implement a standardized way of registering domains each implementing a mess of extensions to suit their bureaucratic needs.

ICANN introducing over 1.2k new gTLD's some time ago also didn't help along with the introcution of domains containing non standard latin characters and the puny-code implementation there (eg: café.com is actually listed as xn-- caf-dma.com)

I'm not trying to defend domain.com who obviously failed to deliver on the basics of decent support, but things like this (issues between domain vendor and registry) happen more than most of us like to admit.

</comment><comment><USER66> This is an interesting discussion, as I've recently run into problems with transferring a domain from domain.com to google domains.

I've heard good things about google domains in the past and the price seemed right (never had a problem with domain.com, but they charge separately for domain privacy) and now I'm stuck in Vonnegut-like situation. They locked my account because apparently the record that was transferred in doesn't exactly match my uploaded govt ID. I can't/won't change my legal name, and the account is locked so I can't fix the record. The phone support was sympathetic but said I had to go through email, which I'm pretty sure is an AI. This has been going on for a month now, and I'm pretty sure I'm never going to get this resolved.

I haven't seen any discussion or experiences people have with AWS route 53. Is that a valid option? Seems reasonable and has privacy included.

</comment><comment><USER67> Pardon my ignorance, but this is something I've always wondered.

You can setup fail over DNS servers, just list different DNS servers, possibly from different companies, with your registrar.

Is the registrar a unavoidable single-point of failure? Your multiple name servers are listed with your one-and-only-one registrar, no matter what?

<comment><USER68> This wasn't a technical problem with the domain. The DNS changed because op's registrar failed to renew the domain. The website was working intermittently because of propagation, not a server issue.

Problems like this are why registrars renew domains a month before they expire. The way to avoid these issues is to check to see if your domain renews on time. If your registrar fails to renew it, you have ample time to transfer it to another registrar.

<comment><USER67> I understand it wasn't a technical problem.

I was wondering if it was possible to have a backup listing of your nameservers in some fashion?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I used a free domain coupon from domain.com a few years ago, and was spammed with both snail mail and robocalls (advertising services for the domain) for months afterwards. I don't know whether they're selling customer data or what, but it left me with a very negative image of their company.

<comment><USER70> > I don't know whether they're selling customer data or what, but it left me > with a very negative image of their company.

Whois is public and has always been as required by ICANN. If you don't understand how things work then be fair and don't blame what you think is the obvious cause or reason. There are valid reasons for whois being public and all registrars have this in their agreement and it is widely known.

<comment><USER69> I know how WHOIS works. The letters were sent to my academic address, not the professional address I disclosed to WHOIS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> On my previous job we had to manage thousands of customer domains, including annual renewal. This was very tedious task, so I wrote a Perl script, scraping WHOIS and DNS data for all domains listed on our DNS servers. Based on this data every domain was assigned a status, such as "Ok", "misconfigured", "about to expire", "points to foreign DNS server" or "points to foreign Web server". This script was scheduled to run every other day and sent CSV report (full and diff from previous run) to a person responsible for domain renewal. Needless to say, our support specialists were very happy with this improvement.

</comment><comment><USER72> I had similar beef with a .io domain name many years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1973704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1973704)

</comment><comment><USER73> Big domain registrars operates usually on such a low profit margins that a single support ticket cost more than that customer will ever create in revenue. This create a very clear incentive models to focus on growth and keeping support costs down.

I work at a smaller registrar and we usually close (resolve) tickets within minutes and as a policy under the hour. We depend on word of mouth and contacts for sale, so we kind of have the opposite incentive model. I may be biased but I recommend avoiding the race to the bottom registrars for business critical domains.

<comment><USER74> Given that you're in the industry perhaps you could list both yourself and your best, most reliable competitors. It'll benefit all of you. And all of us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> So, how does one prepare for the worst? Let's brainstorm:

0\. Register alternative domains in advance with a different registrar.

1\. Setup mailing list for all registered users and be prepared to blast them with a new domain.

2\. Make mobile apps check both the main and the alternative domains.

3\. Make the mobile app notify the user of a new domain name requirement via push notification and the like.

4\. Setup the phone system so that it can read the new domain before connecting support.

5\. Setup support on a different domain (e.g. zen desk). If zendesk goes down users will know to call us, if the main site goes down they may remember to check zendesk.

6...?

<comment><USER75> -1. Choose a domain registrar & TLD not known to be fishy or incompetent (so not .io)

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> This sorta reminds me of when Regions Bank forgot to renew its domain name.. for everything a smart business can do to acquire customers, developing groundbreaking software, etc - sometimes the things that break are the most obvious and mundane.. [https://www.billhartzer.com/pages/regions-bank-fails- to-rene...](https://www.billhartzer.com/pages/regions-bank-fails-to-renew- domain-name-web-site-goes-down/)

</comment><comment><USER77> There are 100 year domains renewals/registrations if anyone wonders. So if they really wanted to safeguard it, they could of done it. [https://www.networksolutions.com/domain-name- registration/po...](https://www.networksolutions.com/domain-name- registration/popup-100-yr-term.jsp) [https://www.tonic.to/faq.htm#12](https://www.tonic.to/faq.htm#12)

</comment><comment><USER78> Yep.

""Sunkenness" refers to the fact that intangible assets tend to have little or no market value, unlike, say, land or a factory.

 _They have value as part of their owner's business, but not to anybody else._

This means that investment in intangible assets is risky."

[https://www.ft.com/content/a01e7262-d35a-11e7-a303-9060cb1e5...](https://www.ft.com/content/a01e7262-d35a-11e7-a303-9060cb1e5f44)

</comment><comment><USER79> I recall UnitedDomains (German provider) who wanted me in 2016 to fax the request to update the contact information. Fax it.

Times are mature for the equivalent of Letsencrypt for registering domains, something like Letsregistrar. We need to have this inefficient industry wiped away since it's really too much manual and too much in the way.

If somebody wants to found a noprofit to create a free registrar, I'm 100% in.

<comment><USER80> _> I recall UnitedDomains (German provider) who wanted me in 2016 to fax the request to update the contact information. Fax it._

I had a similar experience with an Austrian registrar a few years ago. Must be a regional thing, since Austria is Germany's Canada.

<comment><USER81> Nice pattern identification. I live in New Zealand and we are Australia's Canada.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I transferred two domains from Ghandi to Lunarpages over a decade ago. Somehow, Ghandi's anonymization service was still enabled, and as a result, my domains were blocked a few months ago.

Took about a week for Lunarpages to straighten out.

(BTW, the spam calls started immediately after Lunarpages fixed the problem. It's a great thing that the EU finally twisted ICANN's arm over this issue.)

</comment><comment><USER83> A lot of domain registrars seem to go for the "pile it high, sell it cheap" business model. I think as with any other commodity that a tech business (or any business!) needs to run, you pick your suppliers carefully.

In the UK, I wouldn't touch 123Reg with a stick because I know their support is terrible. I would however use Gandi or AWS as I know their support is decent.

</comment><comment><USER84> I don't know if this is a culture thing or personal style, but the author keeps emphasizing that the story is true. To me, that reduces credibility since I've often heard false stories whose narrators reiterated their truthfulness unexpectedly when I wasn't doubting them. Not very reliable logic, I know, but it's a small warning bell.

</comment><comment><USER85> I always wonder how people care about "good prices" if they choose a registrar. Quite often the domain name is the most valuable asset of your company. As long as you are not a domain squatter you shouldn't care about if you pay $10 or $1000 per year. And if possible register the name for the next 10 years in advance.

<comment><USER86> I agree, but not all domains are fully fledged corporate entities - some of us just throw together fun things randomly and for that it's nice to have an $0.88 TLD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> I'm not sure the domain registrar is completely at fault here. If your website going down will "kill your business" then it's a good idea to use a reputable one and not the cheapest you can find.

And looking at domain.com just now, they don't seem to offer .io domains, so I wonder how he even got the domain there?

</comment><comment><USER88> None of the .ly domain registrars have auto-renew. They have an option to send you a yearly invoice and a link to login, which they call "auto-renew", but it doesn't actually take the all-important step of renewing. Lost a great domain because of that.

</comment><comment><USER89> You'd have a fantastic case for a lawsuit against them. Good job keeping a paper trail.

</comment><comment><USER90> I had similar experience with domain.com

Their support team is from India, and they took a week to solve the issue.

I am looking for good domain service provider to transfer all of my domains 30+

Any recommendations? We use Digitalocean as the hosting service provider

<comment><USER91> I've used Namecheap for many years and have found them very reliable and their customer service responsive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Yes I've heard of domain.com . In fact, we even used it for one of our products. We tried to purchase wildcard ssl via their control panel - <USER4> result was a delay from our go live schedule by as much as more than a week. It was the most horrible control panel I've ever used honestly. Feels like bug from the alpha release candidate V1 bugs list. there's this weird bug when it suddenly delete all our mailboxes for no reason. The moment we saw that bug we immediately stop using it.

The support? The first guy that tends to you will always be the most stupidest one. You almost always had to insist to get/ be forwarded to a senior level support with actual brain.

tl;dr Stay 100 miles away from domain.com . By the way it wasn't me that chose domain.com . I would never buy from any website that looks like this.

</comment><comment><USER93> thought this would be another idiotic story but it's actually valuable.

still, some blame falls in their shoulders, cutting it so close.

anyway: use mark monitor. don't know if they do .io though.

<comment><USER94> While they did cut it close for looking at renewal status, based on the following quote from the article, I can infer that the domain was set to auto- renew:

> I knew our domain should be renewed about these dates, and we were already > billed for this renewal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> ICANN should make it mandatory for the domain registrars to send reminders at least 1 month before expiry.

</comment><comment><USER96> Here's my plug for NameSilo. Try them and you will not regret it.

</comment><comment><USER97> If you can, just transfer your domains to Google Domains and never worry about shady registrars again.

(We also use Dynadot [good], Hexonet [good], Uniregistry [... okay].)

<comment><USER21> Terrible idea.

While Google's registrar seems ok right now, Google's support is nonexistent when things go wrong. Literally every bit of their support is outsourced to 3rd-party companies that provide no path of escalation.

Even the really bad registrars (and there are a ton) usually have some direct support (or resell off enom, which will extort your money for the privilege of bailing you out).

<comment><USER39> That's the point. Domains causes no problems. Only in some weird scenarios, things can become troublesome. In those cases you need a support. In others you don't.

If you have a domain registrar with a good support, account the premium you pay as such: a premium for an insurance when things go bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> TL;DR .io

<comment><USER13> I _think_ TL;DR Domain.com, unless this is common with other registrars?

Is this a common problem in .io?

<comment><USER72> .io has particularly long lead times for renewals with third party registrars. I ran into a similar issue 8 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1973704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1973704)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Back in the late 90's before it was Verisign (I can't recall the name), my domain registration could only be changed with an email from my domain. Of course I didn't have my domain up since I switched ISP and had to move my DNS and mail server. Catch 22; what a cluster fuck. Weeks of phone calls with no resolutions.

I was going to Virginia anyway, so I physically showed up at Verisign (I wanted to bring a baseball bat), and explained it to the lady at the front desk. She came back with an engineer who fixed it in 5 minutes.

As a side note, had to do something similar with Garmin. They kept sending me GPS units with horizontal LCD polarization, when vertical is the standard for sun glasses. Showed up and told the clerk to put on my sunglasses and turn her head sideways to her LCD monitor. "Oh yeah, I see". She fetched an engineer, and 1 week later had a GPS with correct polarization.

Sometimes it takes a physical presence; baseball bat optional.

<comment> gm-conspiracy [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/)

<comment><USER100> With that advertisement for Spider Man, that's the last time I ever click an IMDB link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Mistakes and glitches happen. Op should have noticed their domain did not renew a month before it expired, not just before.

DNS and domain propagation are slow turning ships. If a problem occurs, you sometimes need days to straighten out the problems.

> I tried to set nameservers to correct values, but Control panel returned > error: uptimechekcer.io is not managed here!

They misspelled their own domain in this article. It seems their problem is a lack of attention to detail.

The complaint about charging for domain registration is nonsense. Domain registrations are non-refundable. If a registrar ever registered domains for customers before payment, they'd quickly find themselves out of business. Payment is always up front across the industry.

</comment><comment><USER101> nearlyfreespeech.net provide great service, notifications and overall highly recommended. been customer with several domains transferred or registered with them over the past tears

<comment><USER102> They don't support registering ccTLDs, such as .io:

[https://faq.nearlyfreespeech.net/section/domainregistration/...](https://faq.nearlyfreespeech.net/section/domainregistration/tlds#tlds)

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> Who on earth uses .io for production critical domains?

<comment><USER18> These posts are tiring.

> Who uses [any technology/infrastructure choice] on production?!

A lot of people. That's always the answer.</comment></comment>


Scientists uncover mechanism that stabilizes fusion plasmas - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-07-zigzags-scientists-uncover-mechanism-stabilizes.html <comment><USER2> Always take what you read on phys.org with a massive grain of salt, they often report 'news' with radical breakthroughs that are often taken out of context or reported about with minimal information and lots of speculation.

They have good articles occasionally but they churn out a lot of non-news too.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Magnetic flux pumping in 3D nonlinear magnetohydrodynamic simulations

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.06672](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.06672)</comment>


Apple tells Mac users: Get anti-virus - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/02/apple_mac_av_advice/

<comment><USER2> The misery caused by anti-virus software often seems to outweigh any marginal benefit. It's not even like the software is more than 70-80% effective.

Even the Vista built-in AV software rendered it impossible to install Flight Simulator X. This is AV software from a major vendor. If it jacks up the install of their own software, then something is very wrong with the approach.

Personally, I believe in regular backups by imaging my HD every week or so, and being careful about what I run on my computer.

<comment><USER3> Exactly what I always say. I suspect the damage done by AV software is greater than the damage done by viri.

It get's really funny when the AV software comes with security holes. Better to just reduce the number of unnecessary software installed on the computers. No software == no security holes.

<comment><USER4> I've meaning to ask HN this. I remember an article a while ago where somebody recommended not using anti-virus software. His recommendations was to have a separate administrative user that you only use when you install something. That is the standard practice in Unix. I recently asked my friends and they told me that you wouldn't be able to run a lot of software without the administrative privileges.

It does make a lot of sense, we are basically running our PC and everything is run as root. What do you guys think?

<comment><USER5> "I recently asked my friends and they told me that you wouldn't be able to run a lot of software without the administrative privileges."

(on a mac) that's not true. I've been using this approach for years now (both on Tiger and Leopard) and most mac software recognize this (ones that don't eventually come around very quickly - it's been 3 years since I've seen one that didn't)

The only thing you'll run into is the minor inconvenience of having to login seamingly all the time (though eventually you'll get used to it)

<comment><USER6> Sounds like Vista + UAC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Quote from 9to5mac: "Apple has always recommended anti-virus software - especially to enterprise customers. They do it because they want Apple users to be safe and for Virus makers to know that their user base is protected. Do a quick search on Apple Docs and you'll find a number of them. Here's one from 2002 (<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=50569>). Here's one from earlier this year (<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1147>). There are plenty more. This isn't at all new."

<http://9to5mac.com/crazy-displayport-virus>

<comment><USER8> Did you read the linked article?

[http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/12/apple_m...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/12/apple_mac_users_should_get_ant.html)

While Apple may recommend anti-virus programs to enterprise customers, they still use the Mac's relative lack of viruses as a selling point in their ads, and an Apple employee told the column writer that anti-virus was unnecessary. Walt Mossberg says the same thing: <http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/garfinkel/17586/>

There is a bit of a disconnect between the Mac's public image and these quietly posted technical articles.

<comment><USER9> Is there really a disconnect?

The only Mac OS virii out there have been ones that require the user to run something and/or confirm an obviously unsafe action.

And there have only been 2-3-4 that have made the news, vs. thousands for Windows.

So it's not really a very dire situation, and Apple is right to feature it.

I'd certainly rather have a family member use a Mac than a Windows machine, if only for this reason.

<comment><USER10> I just wanted to point out that the parent-parent made no reference to Windows. It would be better if your arguments didn't require this reference.

<comment><USER9> Huh? Isn't the whole point of Apple's ads that Mac OS X is better than Windows?

<comment><USER10> You're right; my mistake -- I glossed over the post and missed the "relative."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been thinking of picking up an anti-virus app for a while, but I really hated mcafee / norton etc when I used a PC. What's the best "mac-like" antivirus application? Something with a good interface and doesn't feel too bloated, but is also powerful?

<comment><USER12> They all suck up your resources. Don't waste your time until there's a real virus in the wild.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'll consider it in the future when a virus for OS X exists.

<comment><USER14> It's not tough to write a virus for OS X, the hard part is getting root so that you can do some real damage.

<comment><USER15> Isn't this sort of a myth? I run Linux and a virus running as my primary user (non-root) could delete every single thing I value on my computer.

I assume the same is pretty much true for OSX.

<comment><USER16> The problem with building a virus on OSX is not obtaining root access, it is replication. How is a virus going to propagate from one mac to the next?

If you don't propagate you're just a trojan and will have limited penetration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> <http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2550>

Egad, they actually are recommending Norton/McAfee

Poor MAC users, at least there's an option for Avast.

<comment><USER18> I've been using Sophos for a long time on my Mac. You don't have to fall into the Norton/McAfee trap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This may be only tangentially related, but something about AV has never sat well with me. For the record, I fall into the: "don't really use AV software, read mail in Mutt, never use IE under any circumstances, etc."-category so many of my attack vectors may be closed; I've never lost data from any sort of malware.

Going back to what I was saying before, something about the approach of AV seems _inelegant_. This article[1] (point #2) sums up my sense of AV. With it, you're always playing catch-up and that seems weird. I just wanted to get others to weigh in on that idea.

[1]: [http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/d...](http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/dumb/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I've never ran anti-virus, even when I was using Windows. I've always been very careful about what I downloaded, what I allow to get root permissions, backing up, etc.

People always want to know why I haven't looked at their email attachments, and the response is always the same: no attachments, no exceptions! (Ok, I'm cool with images attachments.)

</comment><comment><USER20> In OS≤9 we used Norton, so no big deal. Frankly it's weird that we've been able to get away with not having anti-virus so long.

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't recommend anyone use Norton - on a Mac or Windows machine!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Maybe they will recommend the Microsoft Anti-Virus software when it's released next year ;)

</comment><comment><USER23> Apple tells Mac users, ignore OpenSource revolution.

Stay with us, we are closed environment just like M$FT, we just do it with a smile ;-)

<comment><USER24> While that looks to be a blatant troll, I really have to ask if you seriously see MS Windows and Apple OS X as being equally closed? Where are MS's versions of Darwin, Webkit, etc...?

While Apple isn't 100% open source, they are the closest among commercial end- user targeted OSes. Apple obviously feels, and honestly I think they're probably right, that fully open sourcing their OS would negatively impact their ability to run a profitable hardware/software business. That's absolutely their right.

I'd also argue that for mass consumer end users, there is no open source revolution. While I love and use Linux all the time, I'd never put my mother or my sister or my wife on it. Likewise with software, it needs to come with a nice printed or online manual that's easy to use, and a 1-800 number for the support department. Fixing an issue needs to not involve steps like "use vi to edit giant.xml which depending on your distro could be in one of these 10 long path locations".

 _goes to get coffee_

<comment><USER23> 1\. Most of the Internet runs on open platforms. The Internet is a tremendous revolution by all measures. I strongly believe that your mother, your sister and wife are all been into it already.

2\. Have you tried to develop and deliver an Iphone app? Don't you think Apple could have make the iPhone SDK some how more open and flexible. Wouldn't you as a Java guy be happy to have Java there in addition to the Objective C?

I switched to Ubuntu from OS X 10.5 and don't think will ever go back.

<comment><USER24> 1\. Yes, there is a huge open source revolution on the server side, but not on the consumer desktop. My mom doesn't know or care if the web servers serving up pages are Linux or Windows. As a server-side developer, I've seen and been a part of the big shift to open source OSes, software, tools, etc... However, if you're talking about consumer desktop OSes and apps, there isn't one yet.

2\. I haven't worked on an iPhone app. Not really my area. Sure Apple could be more open, although they obviously see reasons not to be, and that their right. However, I'd argue that they're generally more open than most of the widely used competition. You might wish the iPhone SDK supported multiple languages, but compare that to developing for the Motorola Razr, or the Blackberry? I think Apple is doing pretty well. Obviously not as well as some folks would like, but they're running a business and trying to ensure profits, quality, low support calls, all that stuff, and I respect that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Towards a Navy Corps of Nuclear Engineering - <AUTHOR> http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2010/02/towards-a-navy-corps-of-nuclear-engineering.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+professorbainbridge%2FsheN+%28ProfessorBainbridge.com+%C2%AE%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> This is actually a pretty reasonable idea. There are several considerations that need to be worked out first. Specifically:

1) there are few programs in the entire US which have nuclear engineering degrees (MIT has one, I believe fewer than 10 others do too), a topic requiring a sufficiently broad range of skills that its almost like a fusion [sic] of solid state physics (for robust materials), electrohydrodynamics (to understand anything relating to fusion and plasma), numerical computing (analytic solutions to realistic PDEs is a funny idea sometimes), as well complete case analysis of all possible risk and failure modes via probabilistic model building (there is in fact dedicated software used to handle the complexity of these models). In short, do we have the educational capacity to train the people needed?

2) at least with how current nuclear regulation is structured (which would presumably have to change), technically any new reactor designs that get approved are "exemptions" to a general ban, so theres actually a lot of time spent finaggling approval via a somewhat insidery process.

3) I want fusion thats commercially viable! :). The idea of having energy become functionally free and what would then be possible boggles my mind, and I don't think anyone can fully comprehend the myriad subtle ways in which the world would immediately change. Also, while in practice dealing with fission products/waste isn't that bad (and its much more contained than waste from conventional power plants), it is logistically tricky to manage both the waste and all the people who worry about the waste.

<comment><USER3> Carter,

Where did you get the idea that fusion power is functionally free?

The fuel you burn is nearly free, but you also use up a ton of material and make it radioactive so it's hard to recycle. The structural and shielding elements of the reactor will likely degrade (for we haven't tested this) on a similar timescale to the degradation of wind turbines, solar collectors, and the other components in the balance of the plant.

The heat from the sun and at the core of the earth is functionally free, in the same sense: the question is how expensive it is to get it out! I've never seen a really reasonable and measured study of what commercial fusion _might_ cost to produce power.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. Plus the thing about fusion power is that likely these plants will be absolutely massive, which raises issues about: * single point of failure * huge transmission needs * very large start-up cost, likely banning developing countries from using it.

All of these issues are much alleviated with distributed power like solar or wind (or the mini-reactors suggested by this article), which makes me think it's preferable.

<comment><USER5> One of the encouraging things about IEC fusion and dense plasma focus fusion is that they're supposed to be something you can do with smaller facilities, and construct incrementally. What you said certainly applies to more traditional fusion methods, though. We've already seen the economic problems of huge power plants with recent nuclear reactors: they're so darn _big_ nowadays that financing them is a huge headache.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is crazy. No one is doing anything about the commercial waste, and this fellow wants to bring military-trained engineers in to create more waste?

To this date there are tanks full of liquid waste at military sites that people are concerned about touching in any way, because no one knows what's inside them, and there's the possibility that disturbing the contents might create a fissile mass.

I've got a better idea. Stick the corps on cleanup and have them report back when finished.

[edit: Just to be clear, I don't argue from an uninformed position. I do have a BS in nuclear engineering.]

<comment><USER7> That is because of the fuel types used. The Navy is using cheap fuel from the weapons program, which provides more than enough power and fuel for their needs. However the cities would likely use a Thorium reactor, which can easily be made to not produce weaponizeable (sp?) byproducts. I refuse to believe that France can handle itself with fission plants and we cannot. We must not allow irrational fears to drive policy and we must stop the use of fossil fuels to provide the majority of our power.

I say gimmie a few hundred fission plants, a new electrical grid, and electric cars & trucks. Our greenhouse gas emissions will go way down and our geo- political strength will rise.

<comment><USER7> Oh, and it would provide a spark for nuclear studies in the US which could give us an edge in energy production. I would love if the wind would provide for all our power needs, but fission is a great transition method. Use it until we can get fusion or viable solar/wind/bio power.

<comment><USER3> There's a good argument out there that wind can be considerably less expensive than coal with good energy storage and good transmission.

<http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/energy.pdf>

I haven't seen anything like that for nuclear.

<comment><USER5> In the US, nuclear power is already cheaper than coal because we get most of it from old plants that have already paid for their construction costs, so now we're just paying operating and maintenance costs. Now imagine how much the situation would improve with any of these way of decreasing nuclear costs (in order of increasing radicalness):

* Mass-production of modular conventional reactors, like China is gearing up to do with AP1000 plants.

* Mass-production of smaller fourth-generation reactors, such as pebble beds (again, China is doing this) or some of the various breeder reactors, like the Hyperion Power Module.

* The same as above, but with Brayton-cycle gas turbines instead of steam turbines. This leads to simplified reactors and higher thermodynamic efficiency and quite significantly lower costs.

* The same as above, and then you stick them on a boat. This lets you float them to wherever they're needed, and the sea-water handles their cooling needs without costly cooling towers, and they can provide water desalination with waste heat. A nuclear aircraft carrier is already providing large amounts of fresh water to Haiti, and other countries are having serious water problems, and would pay good money for this. More here:

[http://finger-tree.blogspot.com/2009/11/floating-nuclear- pla...](http://finger-tree.blogspot.com/2009/11/floating-nuclear-plants-for- cheap-power.html)

* Liquid fluoride thorium reactors. I love LFTRs; they're so damn _beautiful_ that I'd recommend having a look at them just to appreciate the cleverness. They can be made at any size, they're self-regulating, they can load-follow beautifully, they can use supercritical CO2 turbines for cooling, the waste is tiny and becomes safe after about 500 years, and the fuel supply is enormous.

<comment><USER3> But how do the costs of any of the above compare to the cost of building a wind turbine? Even taking the fuel and operations and maintenance cost to be free, how does one compare the capital cost against other renewables where you don't pay for fuel?

If you use a Brayton-cycle gas turbine for a nuclear reactor, for example, now heat exchange to the gas becomes the biggest issue. And even the most optimized gas peaker turbine plants cost $500/kw.

<comment><USER5> The capital costs per kilowatt of average power generation are surprisingly good for nuclear. I don't have time to look up the figures now (sorry) but last time I checked, wind was more expensive to build average capacity than nuclear, even when you compared the cost of _just_ the wind turbines with the _complete_ cost of nuke plants.

> If you use a Brayton-cycle gas turbine for a nuclear reactor, for example, > now heat exchange to the gas becomes the biggest issue. And even the most > optimized gas peaker turbine plants cost $500/kw.

Heat exchange to the gas is an issue, but it's the sort of issue that nuclear reactor designers have a lot of experience solving. The Chinese pebble bed reactors, for example, are cooled with helium gas, and they don't seem to have much trouble with that.

As for the cost of the turbines themselves, in general Brayton-cycle gas turbines are cheaper than steam turbines, and supercritical CO2 gas turbines are remarkably small, so they'll probably be cheaper than the conventional ones. Even conventional gas turbines would work, though.

Of course, when competing with natural gas burners, the fuel cost is a huge issue. Natural gas fuel costs are vastly higher than those of nuclear plants (per kilowatt-hour, of course).

I'm not sure I answered what you were saying, but I hope I covered something interesting.

<comment><USER3> Prof. Marc Jacobson of Stanford pegs the cost of wind power at an amortized cost of wind at 3 - 4 cents per kwhr. There are independent indications that they're around 3.5 - 4 cents per kwhr. Nuclear can compete with that? Last I checked it was around 12 - 20 cents per kwhr...

<http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/energy.pdf></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why subscriptions – not free content – is the future of media - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/subscriptions-free-content-future-media <comment><USER2> From experience, the downsides of the subscription model are that you have to sign-up to a deal where there are significant barriers to cancellation.

Also, you still get the ads and the click-bait articles.</comment>


Bought my first camera and went to North Korea a few months ago - <AUTHOR> https://boards.4chan.org/p/thread/3052889/bought-my-first-camera-and-went-to-north-korea-a <comment><USER2> Why do people think they're the one who will go to NK and be the one hero who will bring back "what they don't want you to see"? Pro tip: you're a useful idiot. Someone knows what you're doing 100% of the time.</comment>