Windows Phone nears 10% share in Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.electronista.com/articles/13/09/30/verizon.extends.smartphone.dominance/ <comment><USER2> The article is confusing and misleading.

One thing is that the 10% of the new phones that are sold now are WP, and another _completely_ different thing is that WP has a 10% share in Europe.

According to statcounter WP penetration in Europe is still ~3% [http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-eu- monthly-201309-20130...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-eu- monthly-201309-201309-bar)

<comment><USER3> Not misleading at all. "Market share" means exactly that -- the share of the market for smartphones.

Installed base is a different concept from market share.

Statcounter is a proxy for installed base rather than market share. It therefore presents an outdated picture of a fast-moving market. Blackberry above Windows Phone? iOS with 3/4 the share of Android?

<comment><USER4> Statcounter shouldn't ever be seen as representing marketshare or installed base, rather it represents usage share. If you buy a device but put in a drawer, it counts as market share but since it isn't being used day by day, it wouldn't count as usage share.

I wonder if the reason Nokia hasn't been crowing about the marketshare numbers in Europe is that it is a Pyrrhic victory won with massive discounts. If they are displacing their own feature phones (but without the profit margin), it would create the impression of an installed base, when people are primarily using it for telephony and texting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The thing is the Windows Phone is actually quite good. In many ways it is better then Android (consistency across the OS & apps, Visual Studio is better then Eclipse, C# better then Java). Much, if not all, of the bold choices around flat visual style have now born out as great choices. Lots of things going for them. Pretty cool seeing it born out in higher adoption numbers.

<comment><USER6> Eclipse has always been terrible, but IDEA on the other hand is the best development environment in existence, regardless of platform. Even Google finally realised that Eclipse is a dead horse and switched the official environment to IDEA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me the slow but steady grow of Chrome a few years ago over IE. I don't think MS would dominate those markets but it is healthy to have a firm third alternative.

<comment><USER8> This reminds me of Windows Mobile around 1998, 1999 or so. Palm was so vastly far ahead everyone thought that WinMo was laughable and Microsoft would never get anywhere. A few years later, Palm was shipping WM.

Agreed, the market's very different, the network effects are stronger, etc.

<comment><USER7> Yeah.. those were other times though... when MS used to crush their rivals by using its monopoly as an advantage. Remember when people used to use Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect and Harvard Graphics?

However, today is way different. Developing in Windows is not sexy anymore. Young developers prefer a Mac or a Linux box over Windows, and young windows programmers are seen as substandard developers. All those are insulting stereotypes of course, but are the stereotypes that Microsoft have to deal with unlike the old days.

I just going to grab some popcorn and see what happens :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Microsoft needs to cut the crap and really streamline the process for developers. If its developer onramp were as easy and painless as, say, Android's, the floodgates would be wide open because it could use the installed base of Windows developers and the superiority of Visual Studio as a dev environment to its advantage. If it does that it has a chance at second place. But as of now it won't climb past a distant third.

<comment><USER10> When was the last time you saw a really attractive, well-designed Windows application?

<comment><USER7> It is arguable, but Word, Excel, One Note and Visual Studio comes to my mind.

If you are talking about the new metro style then Fresh paint comes to my mind too.

<comment><USER11> Those are terrible examples though, not because they're bad programmes but the teams that designed, researched and implemented those design and UX choices are probably bigger than many entire software companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Android makers need to make money on the phone while MS needs market share credibility. So these users are more valuable to MS than to Android vendors and MS is outbidding Samsung et al with spiffs for salespeople.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty impressive since Nokia had only ever sold 27 million Lumias worldwide up until June 30. Or Kantar has messed up their analysis.

</comment><comment><USER13> My guess is this is almost all Nokia.

<comment><USER14> 80%+ -- Probably closer to 90% now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think this may contribute to a trend away from mobile native apps to web apps (or web apps in native wrapper like phonegap). It's already difficult supporting iOS and Android. But what if WP and maybe Firefox OS also gain significant market share? How many companies can support 3+ dev teams for an app?

<comment><USER16> Doesn't have to be, Xamarin is doing great with their framework :)

<comment><USER17> Agreed. Couple Xamarin with something like MVVMCross [1] and it's pretty easy to develop cross platform relatively quickly.

[1]: [https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross](https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've had a Lumia 920 for about a year now and I'm kind of just tired of not being on the iOS/Android bandwagon. Since I've had the phone, WP hasn't had a meaningful/noticeable update and there are some pretty big flaws.

The biggest being no central notification center. If you receive a toast notification from more than 5 applications (you can pin 5 to your lock screen) you'll have to hunt for the 6th app's tile on your "home?" screen (the hot mess of tiles dumped onto your screen) just to see if you have a notification or not. Assuming you have 2 email accounts (1 work, 1 personal) and send text messages, this means that you really can only afford to put 2 other apps on your lock screen. Hilariously, if the application isn't on your home/tile screen, swiping over to the applications list won't help because the tiles there don't update or display toast notification count.

Another issue that I've noticed more recently (while trying out some of the mediocre applications in yawn-inducing app store) is that, because of the tile driven UI, I don't actually even know the names of some of my applications. The real issue is this: I can't have multiple pages of tiles like iOS & Android, so I have to throw them all onto one page that just turns into a wasteland of small tiles. If you use big ones, this wasteland will become so large that you'll find yourself forgetting about applications on the bottom so I try to keep it small. The other problem this causes though is that I'll "unpin" rarely used applications which sends them to the applications list... but because I'm used to seeing them as a tile, I don't even know THE NAME OF THE APPLICATION so I have to scroll around this application list looking at the tiles hoping that I spot this thing like some kind of police lineup. This sounds stupid, but it happens... I'm talking about rarely used applications.

I'm sure I could think of more. Most of these problems are just subtle annoyances... lots of little "workflow" issues that go unrecognized until you really start to use the phone a lot. Restricting tiles to 1 screen really sucks. I try to include only the apps that I use often on my home screen... but everything else... I'll never touch it again. Remove a tile from the home screen is a big deal. As soon as you demote something from the home screen, you'll probably never use it again. If I had the luxury of multiple pages of tiles, I know for a fact that I'd use more of these things, but once your tiles get 20 rows deep it just feels dirty, inefficient and unorganized. Some applications benefit greatly from having a large tile as well... weather apps and stock portfolio apps... so those alone can take up 2 entire rows.

Edit: Another issue that I thought of is that I was assigned some awful XBOX Live username "Player1045748#####" and I've tried to link up my actual XBOX Live account (which I don't ever use anyway), but I can't actually figure out how... so I've just given up. It's not a huge issue for me though, but might be for the gamer types. To WP's credit though, all of the games get lumped into a Games tile

Edit: Sorry, this is really poorly written, I'm not actually as illiterate as this reads.

/rant

<comment><USER7> I have a Lumia 920 too but my experience had been completely different.

I had before an Iphone 3G and an Android 2.3 and don't miss anything as those two. First the camera is hands down the best camera I had use in a mobile phone (I haven't check the new Iphone or the last Lumia though) and I appreciate the new camera app that came with the Amber update.

Xbox Music is also another big thing to me, it just works and I can download the music I want for a reasonable subscription price. Last time I checked Spotify didn't really compared to it and not to mention how painful it is to set it up in Canada.

I haven't had the notification problem yet, but I only really read notifications from 4 apps, all the other ones I don't care.

So I guess it depends on the user, for users like me it just way better.

(PS: Not to mention how good are SkyDrive, OneNote, Word, Excel)

<comment><USER18> Have you used Google Music? It sounds like it offers roughly the same experience as Xbox Music.

<comment><USER7> It is not available in Canada yet :(

Also it seems to be streaming only, in which case I couldn't use it when I am on the subway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I got to play with one at work for testing purpose. The UI is actually not that bad but as with anything Microsoft it had some pretty major flaws... like date and time having to be set manually before SSL certificates works.

<comment><USER17> That's a bit odd...I know my Lumia picked up the date and time immediately upon finding a cell signal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Where does this information come from? Article mentions the research firm (Kantar) but I can't find any explanation on where or how they got the numbers.

</comment><comment><USER21> I still haven't seen one windows phone, only windows tablet.

<comment><USER22> I'd say half of my "non-technical" friends have old crappy androids (and generally dislike them) and the rest have iPhones or windows phones (and like them). Apart from one hold-out on a Nokia feature phone.

I've not asked but I wonder if early android has put people off going with modern android when upgrade time comes around.

<comment><USER23> Your friends don't seem very representative of the market.

<comment><USER24> I bet it depends on the local market. I was at Redmond over the summer and I'd guess the market share was 50% WP, 25% iOS, 25% Android. Some parts of the town have higher WP usage, others less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Windows is always going to be behind a free system, especially since all cool features invented by one get copied within a few weeks by others.

At most Microsoft can charge them less but even that will probably more than Android pays in licenses to Microsoft. Not sure what benefits can Microsoft offer them over Google, or maybe for an extra $10 (or whatever the license cost) manufactures won't care. Verizon, ATT and other have a vested interest to promote a third OS so who knows.. Another wild card is Nokia's purchase, Microsoft can easily eat a few dollars and flood the world with phones of all kinds

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Windows is always going to be behind a free system"

Why? Linux was/is free and was never able to topple Windows on the desktop. If MS does a good enough job there's no reason they can't beat Android.

<comment><USER26> The problem with Linux on desktop was never technical, but business. Microsoft made sure no other system, free or not, has a breathing room.

Android does not have that problem.

<comment><USER27> " Microsoft made sure no other system, free or not, has a breathing room"

I would believe this if Linux didn't dominate Microsoft in the server space.

Linux did hand Microsoft it's lunch--- in areas where the users who know what they were doing get a say.

Linux has always struggled with the non-technical user and ridiculous OS-size gui's have to be written for Linux just to make it palatable by the common user.

<comment><USER7> > Linux did hand Microsoft it's lunch--- in areas where the users who know > what they were doing get a say.

> Linux has always struggled with the non-technical user and ridiculous OS- > size gui's have to be written for Linux just to make it palatable by the > common user.

I disagree with both statements. I found myself as a technical user that knows what he is doing and I do prefer to work Linux on the server side but I cry of frustration using my linux desktop at work. After all these years it still feels like a buggy hobbyist OS, with visual glitches everywhere.

I think the reason why Windows won't dominate the server space anymore is because Linux is free (as a beer) and a good gui doesn't matter too much over there (it is even inconvenient)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't get it. For me and most of the people I know < age 50, "Windows" is pretty much a synonym for "bloated, insecure, junkware"...

Who in their right mind buys a windows phone?

<comment><USER29> Perhaps the analyst's report is inaccurate.</comment></comment>


Who Owns Huawei? - <AUTHOR> https://www.huawei.com/en/facts/question-answer/who-owns-huawei <comment><USER2> Who Owns Huawei? [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3372669](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3372669)

Abstract

As Huawei has come under increasing scrutiny over the last several months, the question of who really owns and controls it has come to the fore. Huawei calls itself "employee-owned," but this claim is questionable, and the corporate structure described on its website is misleading. A number of pertinent facts about Huawei's structure and ownership are in fact well known and have been outlined many times in the Chinese media, but the myth of Huawei's employee ownership seems to persist outside of China. This article, drawing on publicly available sources such as media reports, corporate databases, and court cases, aims to refute this myth once and for all.

In summary, we find the following:

• The Huawei operating company is 100% owned by a holding company, which is in turn approximately 1% owned by Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and 99% owned by an entity called a "trade union committee" for the holding company.

• We know nothing about the internal governance procedures of the trade union committee. We do not know who the committee members or other trade union leaders are, or how they are selected.

• Trade union members have no right to assets held by a trade union.

• What have been called "employee shares" in "Huawei" are in fact at most contractual interests in a profit-sharing scheme.

• Given the public nature of trade unions in China, if the ownership stake of the trade union committee is genuine, and if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned.

• Regardless of who, in a practical sense, owns and controls Huawei, it is clear that the employees do not.

</comment><comment><USER3> How can Huawei be owned by employee when they treat their employees like dirt?

</comment><comment><USER4> They don't actually mention what the ownership % is for the large number of employees though. I would bet that most of it is held by institutions, like most serious companies in the world...

<comment><USER5> I would bet that for all practical purposes, the CCP owns it.</comment></comment>


Wondering if there are any blind programmers? - <AUTHOR>

Just a thought, do you know any "blind" programmers? <comment><USER2> Yep, there sure are. One rather famous individual is T. V. Raman, I believe who currently works at Google Research.

It's amazing how far screen reading and other technologies for the visually impaired have come along, more of a reason for me to consider accessibility over aesthetics when doing web development.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, I'm intrigued. it must be an experience just watching someone like that work!

<comment><USER3> I seem to recall him -- or someone -- appearing on a Google Talk video on emacs' org-mode. I don't remember whether that was peripherally or as a presenter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was friends with a blind web developer years ago - I remember him telling me that he had the computer "speaking" so fast that a tech fixing his laptop thought it was broken.

<comment><USER5> Same experience working with a world-class security developer. When he checks his email on his phone, it sounds like a wasp with a stutter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> yeah, totally... I knew a couple of folks from our local association for the blind who took computer science classes in college.

Also, see WWW:Wake from Robert Sawyer.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is a blind CS professor at NYU. His name escapes me right now, but watching him navigate OS X (with its built-in voice guidance) is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sneakers. Whistler is blind. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/></comment>


What, No Python in RHEL 8 Beta? - <AUTHOR> https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/11/27/what-no-python-in-rhel-8-beta/ <comment><USER2> > In order to improve the experience for RHEL 8 users, we have moved the > Python used by the system "off to the side"

This was a good move.

> we came to the tough conclusion, don't provide a default, unversioned Python > at all. Ideally, people will get used to explicitly typing python3 or > python2.

This seems like a principled stance, one I can agree with. But it's probably one RHEL will suffer for. I think they have a lot of share for the enterprise linux marketplace (maybe #1 or #2?), so maybe they can afford it. RHEL customers should dust off their Python2 source and seriously consider migrating to straddle both 2 and 3 for now. Although the fact that RHEL8 provides ten years of Python 2 support means that they're unlikely to feel that pressure any time soon.

<comment><USER3> > customers should dust off their Python2 source

Customers will do what they want to do with Python 2.7 code and libraries that _work very well_ right now. The continuous improvement workers are clearly annoyed that Python 2.7 is _not broken_.

With the right amount of effort, Python 2.7 will continue to work well for the next ten years.

Perl comes to mind here..

<comment><USER4> It's going to break horribly in 2020 irrespective of RedHat's efforts.

Earlier this year, one of the projects I maintained started failing on CentOS 6 (Python 2.6). No code changes had been made to account for it. What had happened was that pip/pypi had updated some modules which had dropped Python 2.6 support, and now required Python 2.7. Unfortunately, the package management and dependency information is so rudimentary that pip will happily create an environment which is completely broken, or fails to build due to the scripts being incapable of running with an older interpreter. This completely broke our build.

The same fate lies in wait for Python 2.7. A number of common modules are planning on fully dropping Python 2.7 support come the EOL date. Once they do so, pip will break, and it will not be possible to construct a working environment except by hand. Or using manually packaged modules e.g. from the FreeBSD ports tree or the Debian archive. This will be the death knell for Python 2.7 for practical use and deployment. It will only take a tiny number of critical modules to make the switch for the whole pip/pypi ecosystem to be completely crippled for use with Python 2.7.

<comment><USER5> > Once they do so, pip will break, and it will not be possible to construct a > working environment except by hand. Or using manually packaged modules e.g. > from the FreeBSD ports tree or the Debian archive.

Or by explicitly specifying versions in requirements.txt (yes, it can be pita for dependencies inherited from other packages). Pypi does keep the old versions, no need to scour fbsd or debian archives.

<comment><USER4> Yes, you're absolutely right about requirements.txt. However as you say, it's a problem when you have to start considering transitive dependencies. In fact, for the case I mentioned, this became a problem because there were so many it became increasingly complex; you ended up having to start moving more and more of the transitive dependencies directly into the requirements file. And this isn't very scalable.

That on its own would be somewhat manageable. But if you start getting requirements to update "just one more module" for some specific functionality, you eventually end up at the point where it's not possible to provision a functional set of modules. That's where I ended up with 2.6, and 2.7 is likely to be just the same, in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> Transitive dependencies (or what I called inherited from other packages) can be solved with pip freeze in existing working environment; it will list them too.

New development, on the other hand, will be difficult. As it usually is, when you develop in something that has been obsoleted years ago. If you are still developing the system, instead of just keeping it running, shouldn't you spend some resources on python3 migration, too? The modules you need are already there.

<comment><USER4> No disagreement here from me!

The times we have had to update things have been when the existing modules broke. One example which comes to mind from the recent past is when urllib TLS certificate stuff broke and it needed updating. In that case, it didn't cause collateral damage, but we were forced to do it to keep things working. Externally-enforced changes like this could potentially cause breakage in the future if they drop python 2.7 support directly or indirectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently installed OpenSuse tubleweed. I'm not sure if I just had a weird installation, but both python 2.7, and python 3.6 were installed. That's great, but the "pip" command by default was pointed at pip3.6. Imagine how confused I was when I installed a bunch of packages using the "pip" command, but none of them were available from the default "python" shell.

I think the, let's be explicit about what we're installing approach isn't bad.

<comment><USER7> python3 -m pip install foo

It also works for python2. I try to avoid using python tools that installs their own scripts and go for calling the module through python. This also works for python3/2 -m venv venv

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great move. I recently experienced the whole Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Python 3.5 and 3.6 on my system and it is just plain messy. Yeah, they can co-exist, but now I have 3 versions of Python. How many people didn't know better and have have tried removing 3.5 and completely broke their install and possibly ruined their weekend or evening. It also sends a message. A proper / official way for distributions to deal with this situation is needed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Any current Fedora users want to tell me what all the Red Hat tools use? Eg is usr bin banana actually Python 2 or Python 3?

<comment><USER10> Red Hat-specific tools or just all the general system utilities nstalled on a RHEL host? I've got a ThinkPad sitting here running the beta of RHEL 8.

(FWIW, I don't think _either_ is installed by default, but maybe that was something else I installed recently?)

<comment><USER11> Neither ship by default. If you run a search for libpython you should find one hidden away in a nonstandard location. As far as I'm aware, only core tools necessary for a minimal install rely on it. Other packages in the repos can depend on an actual user space python version.

^ Needs verification

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "However, we do try to make it as easy as possible to get Python 2 or 3 (or both) on to your system." \- it just requires quite a long blog post to explain how easy it is.

<comment><USER13> Install instructions are right at the top and are typical `yum` commands that RHEL users should already know.

<comment><USER12> So RHEL been around for 18 years, and suddendly users need to be aware about the "install instructions", which "are right at the top" and read a blog post about it for RHEL 8?

<comment><USER14> Presumably with RHEL being around for 18 years users would be able to run "yum search python", see the packages are versioned, and yum install the version they want. All sans blog article.

It's far from the first time in 18 years a package name has changed with a major version upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Woo hoo!

</comment><comment><USER16> This is such a strange and annoying compromise to make. It's somewhat antithetical to the concept of RHEL versions being a standardized set of packages such that when someone says "I have RHEL 7", you can say "My software will work on that".

Now in order to support RHEL 8, you have to tell them to also have their sys admin install your preferred python.

A better and less bespoke to RHEL solution imo would have been to make an anaconda install or virtualenv the default python for each user.

<comment><USER17> Wouldn't you just specify the dependencies in your installer so it just works?

<comment><USER16> Most people in my field don't use installers or rpms, we just share the git repo directly. I'm kind of pissed off just thinking about how many build systems will break when '/usr/bin/env python' doesn't return anything by default.

<comment><USER18> I'm pissed almost daily at how many build systems break because they need 3.5.3 vs 3.5.4 or whatever, and at how many only work because they create a new virtual environment for every single script (Virtual environment ~= copy of python auto-downloaded from some random places).

Also, FFS, why can't pyc files have a bytecode format version number embedded in them, or at least be called .pyc3 by python 3?

The whole ecosystem needs to solve the packaging problem, or get replaced by some other language ASAP. Instead, it's breaking entire distros with its packaging tire fire.

For many python projects I've dealt with, it is easier to reimplement that dang thing in some other language than make the python build reliable, secure and redistributable.

<comment><USER19> Maybe Python should stop changing so often?

With C++ for example you are usually either targeting C++11, C++14, or C++17 (or if you're really unfortunate, C++03). The set of features in the language only changes every few years.

Granted it's still possible that someone could have an old compiler that doesn't implement the advertised standard correctly, but that's a _bug_ , not a deliberate design choice.

<comment><USER20> Thats not really fair. Python 3.2 was release in 2011 and Python 3.4 in 2014. Only 3.3 was released in the middle, I would not say it is only "so often" compared to c++. To be more general, C++ had 3 major versions from 2011 to 2017, while python had 5. Its more, but not significantly so (especially since very little compatibility is broken between 3.4 and 3.5 for example).

And if you are talking about which version is shipped with a distro, then RHEL7 ships with gcc 4.8, which support only parts of c++14, while for example the latest Ubuntu LTS ships GCC 7,3, meaning you get full C++17 support.

Don't get me wrong, the Python packaging situation is not very clean. But it is far from being an exception, and people complaining about it are just spreading FUD.

<comment><USER21> But the compiler is the same, so you specify the dialect you expect to use rather than running a different binary. Although to be fair, at least one distro decided to start shipping gcc like gcc-X where X is the version, so you can have multiple GCC's installed. I'm not sure that was the best idea, but its what they did.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are you applying to YC's next round? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
Just interested to know how many people are applying to the next round or have already started?
http://ycombinator.com/w2010.html <comment><USER2> On a realted note, any word when startup school will be this year?

</comment><comment><USER3> This: <http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html> suggests about 1,000 applications per round.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I was kind of going for the HNer's though. Not the actual number.

<comment><USER3> Interesting question you've got there, the intersection of the sets of applicants to YC and the users of HN. I'd expect that to be very close to 100%.

Not a good idea to apply to a VC that runs a board this well stocked without being a member and scoping out the situation, that would give you a much better chance at success.

<comment><USER4> I think it's more accurate to say that the set of YC applicants is close to 100% included by HN users, but I suspect that the set of HN users is much larger.

Does anyone have an idea of how many HN users there are? I know several users (in person) who have been around for several years, but have never applied to YC.

<comment><USER3> HN gets about 30K visitors / day I believe, and I think that most of those are 'repeat' visitors.

There are a significant number of 'lurkers' though, plenty of them have never logged in.

A good rule of thumb is 90/10, 10% of your users creates 90% of the content. If HN follows that then there should be about 3K active members logged in and at a minimum voting once every day.

You can apply the 90/10 rule recursively, and the leaderboard seems to confirm that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, will give it a shot...</comment>


The First Object Database for Node: Introducing Realm Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://realm.io/news/first-object-database-realm-node-js-server/ <comment><USER2> I think this would be particularly useful for Sandstorm applications. Since Sandstorm's grain-based model means that you have many small databases instead of a single big one (or a relatively small number of big shards), an embedded database like Realm seems like a particularly good fit here. I wonder if kentonv or any of the other Sandstorm developers have any thoughts on this.

<comment><USER3> I don't know much about Realm, but what you say sounds correct.

Generally we like Sandstorm apps to use sqlite because it is well-optimized for the use case of a "small" (100k-1G) database on local storage with only one process accessing the database at a time. In this use case it doesn't make sense to have a separate process dedicated to the database, clustering is irrelevant, etc.

If Realm has similar properties then indeed it would work great for Sandstorm apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Realm is very cool technology, but the lack of a browser variant is a show- stopper for us. Our clients want web, iOS and Android versions of the apps we build. We really don't want to build our own CRDT syncing, I'd love to evaluate your stuff.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the kind words and feedback! We are very interested in exposing Realm in the browser, especially in the context of Realm Mobile Platform to sync with mobile devices. However, right now we don't have any specific details. The Node.js SDK is first step in that direction since it can power REST API from Realm data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this a pure JavaScript implementation of realm, or a js wrapper around a realm process?

<comment><USER5> This is still using Realm Core: [https://github.com/realm/realm- core](https://github.com/realm/realm-core) but exposed via JavaScript API

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's the performance like? Hard to believe this could compete with SQL.

<comment><USER5> We haven't done any formal benchmarks against other SQL databases used server- side. Usually Realm is compared against SQLite since it is also an embedded data store. For example, you can see some benchmarks with our Android version here: [https://github.com/realm/realm-java- benchmarks](https://github.com/realm/realm-java-benchmarks)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure it is fair to say that Realm is the first Javascript object database. What about GunDB or PouchDB?

<comment><USER9> I think the key is "object" database. PouchDB is a NoSQL document database. It certainly predates Realm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this work with the new syncing stuff?

<comment><USER5> (Adam from Realm) No this version does not include sync functionality, it is just for use with Realm locally. We wanted to expose it to the Node.js community as we think it has value on its own--such as interprocess communication as mentioned in the article.

However, stay tuned more updates around sync very soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmm, interesting.</comment>


Google Ventures Leads $130M Round For Medical Software Company Flatiron Health - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/05/07/google-ventures-leads-130m-round-for-big-data-medical-software-company-flatiron-health/

<comment><USER2> This is a solid investment. I've been studing cancer informatics and health care for a long time, and there are some deeply imbedded inefficiencies in the area, which I suspect won't ever be addressed by the incumbents (companies like EPIC which sell EHR tech to hospitals, but actively make it hard to move data between health care providers).

i think it's interesting part of the investment will be used to acquire an EHR company. That's strategic.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow! How about that? Congrats guys - what a time to make a difference in cancer.

</comment><comment><USER4> Congrats to Zach and Nat. This is awesome.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. Congrats guys!</comment></comment>


JRuby - Quick and Dirty - <AUTHOR> http://www.logustus.com/2009/04/jruby-quick-and-dirty.html

<comment> andrewl-hn Disclaimer: I have a Java background :)

JRuby is great. If you're building an intranet application in Ruby you should definitely pick up JRuby and Glassfish to host it, that's a no-brainer. And I would also suggest to guys at Engine Yard, Heroku and others to take a closer look at this Ruby implementation. They could save a big buck on it, I suppose.

The startup time is noticeable sometimes that's why I personally prefer developing with MRI, but I use JRuby for deployment and continuous integration.

</comment><comment><USER2> Well, that is quite obvious that Java VM is good nowadays - as Clojure creator pointed out - no matter how goofy Java The Language is the JRE and JVM are just awesome. .NET less popular but I am sure it is of comparable quality.</comment>


Show HN: Your own Google Photos in all of your new tabs - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photos-new-tab/fpljkobkodmnmldgodfefnmjgjlljbjn <comment><USER2> Line 17 of main.js

        var WEB_CLIENT_SECRET = '<redacted>';

Doesn't this let anyone else make API calls as your app?

This may be helpful: [https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2UserA...](https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2UserAgent)

<comment><USER3> I'm no expert on Google OAuth, so this could be wrong, but my understanding is that this is totally fine.

The client secret is, despite its name, not necessarily intended to be secret. Client ID / secret pairs can be locked down to only work with specific referer headers or Application IDs. Also, they are only useful for purposes of quota and don't provide authentication. A malicious entity could make calls against the quota of this app (which is true for any app), but they couldn't easily distribute the key or use it for other purposes very well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I debated this quite a lot and came to the conclusion that it was ok to include. I put a comment in the source where I describe my understanding of the threat model (though not sure if it makes it to the bundled extension?) Here it is for reference:

      // I know this shouldn't be here but I've concluded based on a fair amount of
      // research that it is *impossible* to make a chrome extension that:
      //  1. Allows you to use accounts besides the default browser account
      //  2. Doesn't prompt for token/account renewal every hour
      //  3. Doesn't have any server-side code.
      // without including it here.
      // I figured I could obfuscate it, but no matter what it's going to be readily available
      // in the network tab anyways so I decided not to bother.
      // Here is some information about the threat model this exposes:
      // https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6819#section-4.1.1
      // In summary, the most dangerous thing is that people can use the renewal token
      // to get more access tokens to access your photos, if you've already approved this
      // and they get access to those things.
      // You can always revoke access via google at any time.

If it seemed worth it I could set up a server side proxy to keep the secret a secret at which point I could revoke the existing secret (which would break everyone's installed apps but whatever). However it didn't seem necessary based on my read and definitely not until I had validated that anyone wanted to use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not giving access to my photos to a random app.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's totally fair. As the author I can attest that it's not doing anything sketchy, and as has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread you can view the unbundled source to confirm that. But no pressure to use it from me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice concept, but I take a lot of photos so a high chance they could be one of the 'duff' ones or photos I don't really want to share with my office or whoever is using my machine if I only use this at home. Can you filter by folder or some other way of highlighting those you want to share?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah you can control which albums show up via a config page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is a great idea. However, I share kkotak's concern

<comment><USER7> Most people here (including myself) will have the same feeling. Would be great if it was open source.

<comment><USER8> Chrome plugins basically are though? It is just a bunch of HTML/Javascript- files and a manifest.json.

<comment><USER7> Good point

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > in all of your new tabs

This is a bit confusing. My new tabs are for opening new web pages. And I occasionally click on one of the recently opened page icons. Will those be gone?

<comment><USER10> This is just intended to replace the splash screen of when you open a new tab. Instead of the icons and links, you get a nice photo before you type in the URL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> OK idea but who uses google photos

<comment><USER5> If you have an android phone you likely do as it backs them up at full res (if camera is 16m or below) for free. Even installed on my iOS devices - as since it is free, then why not.

<comment><USER12> And google has phenomenal downsizing capabilities for the free unlimited storage. I backup my DSLR photos on Google Photos and I can print 5x8" without any noticeable loss in quality. Here are some examples a user posted to Reddit 2 years ago.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/37pfn5/ive_made_an...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/37pfn5/ive_made_an_album_comparing_original_files_vs/)</comment></comment></comment>


How I Became a Keynesian - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnr.com/article/how-i-became-keynesian?page=0,0

<comment><USER4> It's worth reading up on the author. Normally, the messenger is less important than the message, but check this out:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Posner#Legal_positions>

If you read his positions, he seems to me to take the worst elements of both political parties. He's like everything that's wrong with both views of government wrapped into one person.

He's described as generally right wing, but a moral relativist and moral skeptic. That means he believes right and wrong are relative to a situation (which invalidates the rule of law and turns it into rule of man) and moral skepticism (which means perhaps there are no moral truths or natural rights - which is frequently used as an apology for power and control). Helped set Bush Sr's antitrust policy. Opposes the right to privacy. Writes favorably of "efficient breach of contract" - that means breaking a contract if the damages are less than the losses of honoring it.

He argues that the ends justify the means vis-a-vis torture: "If torture is the only means of obtaining the information necessary to prevent the detonation of a nuclear bomb in Times Square, torture should be used—and will be used—to obtain the information. ... no one who doubts that this is the case should be in a position of responsibility." (note: I'm a firm believer that "ends justify the means" is always the route to totalitarianism and fascism, similar to how "we need to suppress free speech to protect the country" does too)

Finally, he both doesn't understand technology, and is proud to take a crazy stance on it: "Posner supported the creation of a law barring hyperlinks or paraphrasing of copyrighted material as a means to prevent what he views as free riding on newspaper journalism"

I'm generally somewhat liberal and modern - but the thing I respect most about American conservatives is that they draw strong moral stances and encourage them to be followed uniformly. Hell, they get a lot of their moral stances quite wrong in my opinion, but uniform enforcement leads to rule of law instead of rule of man. A stable, predictable, uniformly and equally enforced legal code is crucial to a healthy society. Moral relativism and moral skepticism are valuable in universities, but disastrous in courtrooms.

The author, Richard Posner, seems like an apologist for central power for any reason, and like a reasonably dangerous and bad person. So, the message deserves to be judged in its own right, but a quick understanding of the messenger might shed light on his motives.

<comment><USER5> Absolute right and wrong require a frame of reference that is unchanging, but there is no such frame of reference available to us. The most popular is that of a God, but if you're like me, you see God as a human construction too. Laws are made by Man; rule of law _is_ rule of man.

I believe natural rights exist within the framework of particular philosophies, and that these philosophies can be useful as tools to analyse various problems and scenarios. But we have no oracle of truth that can anoint the One True Philosophy.

I believe torture is as close to an absolute wrong as you can get, and in particular, it's always a wrong when you take humans as they are presently constructed as your relative frame of reference. However, I also believe that in the extremely unlikely scenario of a bomb in Times Square and someone available for torture who can deliver the solution, that person will be tortured and the torturer should be rightly condemned. Part of the heroism of the torturer, to coin a very unpleasant phrase (due to the extreme improbability) should be to suffer the condemnation of committing torture for the rest of their natural lives. Torture should be wrong, condemned, even when it is necessary for the survival of large numbers of people.

The real problem with torture, though, is that the ends don't justify the means. The means of torture creates its own ends: it breeds disgust and hatred, causes your allies to leave you, gives succour to your enemies and helps them recruit. The torturer is the enemy whom it is just to fight; the country that condones torture deserves to be defeated.

I believe ends and means is a valid moral calculus, and in fact is the only calculus that matters. But it is not a simple calculus, because decisions made using it must be considered for their effect always and everywhere.

FWIW, I consider myself modern, liberal (in the classical sense) and in no particular way conservative.

<comment><USER4> > Absolute right and wrong require a frame of reference that is unchanging, > but there is no such frame of reference available to us.

That's true, and that's why moral relativism/skepticism are useful for expanding your perception, building your personal ethics, and good for discussion. But you don't want two different judges interpreting the same laws very differently based on their philosophical structures. Some is inevitable, but the more random and persona-centric law gets, the worse off we are.

> The most popular is that of a God, but if you're like me, you see God as a > human construction too.

Another common criteria is the one used for "natural rights" - natural rights are basically the list of things that everyone almost universally agrees on. People almost universally want a fair trial, the ability to speak their mind, and associate with the people they want to. If you look at the U.S. Bill of Rights, almost all of them are noncontroversially things people would want.

(Tangent: The only two that there might be significant disagreement on now are right to bear arms and rights reserved by state, but you it's easy to understand why they'd be agreed upon near universally back then, before private militias, in a era of lots of global and some tribal warfare, and when "arms" were muskets, sidearms, swords, and knives. Also they'd just broken free from an empire, they didn't want to fall under imperial control again)

> Laws are made by Man; rule of law is rule of man.

From Wikipedia: "The rule of law, also called supremacy of law, means that the law is above everyone and it applies to everyone. Whether governor or governed, rulers or ruled, no one is above the law, no one is exempted from the law, and no one can grant exemption to the application of the law."

Same article: "Likewise, Aristotle endorsed the rule of law, writing that "law should govern", and those in power should be "servants of the laws.""

That means that servants of the law enforce the law as uniformly as possible until it is changed, and the interpretation and enforcement of the law is not subject to personal philosophies and relative morals. This is not completely possible, we are human, but it's worth striving for. Relativism in a courtroom is a dangerous thing.

I'm with you on the rest of it - I'm probably not universally against torture in the case of emergencies. But if you're not very careful, soon you're torturing anyone that's got a pretty good chance of something positive happening from torturing them.

Almost by definition, torture is extralegal (outside of the law). As long as we don't have laws legitimizing torture, then the judge is advocating the authorities act outside on the law on one of the most scarring, brutal things that can be inflicted on a human being. Actually, there are laws regarding torture - it's the Geneva Convention:

" The most serious crimes are termed grave breaches, and provide a legal definition of a war crime. Grave breaches of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions include the following acts if committed against a person protected by the convention: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments; willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health; compelling one to serve in the forces of a hostile power; and willfully depriving one of the right to a fair trial."

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

So we've got a judge saying publicly that for important cases, we can break international law, break the legal process, and torture (torture!) another human being who might produce a solution to the important case at hand. It would be scary if any influential American was advocating these things - <USER2> fact that it's a well-known judge is cause for even greater alarm.

<comment><USER5> I don't follow how you leap from non-absolute morality to dictatorship and otherwise capricious application of the law. I see the application of the law, its mechanics, as completely independent of morality. The actual content of the laws, yes, they are subject to conceptions of morality, but not their application - in so far as we aren't arguing the meta point of laws that govern application of laws.

Rule of law vs rule of [a] man, I see as an obsolete dichotomy in modern democracies. I think it's clear to everyone that capricious rule on whim by a single or handful of people is tyranny. I don't think you get there from moral relativism though.

As to judges interpreting law differently, well, that's unavoidable and in many ways a desirable feature of the common law system. As society changes, and views certain acts more or less harshly than others, the interpretation of various laws can change, setting precedents that become new laws indirectly. It's messy, especially when it's political, but I don't think there's an alternative. Lawyerly language as it is tries fairly hard to be unambiguous, but it's not machine code, and the law isn't as precise or as formally defined as a machine - and nor would we want it to be, since we aren't perfect enough to program it, and the world has too much ambiguity, too many unknowns - <USER3> unknowables - to produce certainty in judgements at all times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=843543></comment>


Show HN: Another Spaced Repetition Flashcard App - <AUTHOR> http://www.cardmonkeyhq.com/ Heavily inspired by http://kanji.koohii.com/ and Anki, I've spent the past few months putting together a web-based flashcard review app.
It's still very much a work in progress. If there's enough interest and the app provides enough value to warrant it,  I would eventually like to make it a subscription-based app. I'm perfectly happy to leave it free if as an example app in my portfolio if it doesn't take off.
Any and all feedback welcome, here's the blogpost with more info:
http://najafali.blogspot.com/2010/08/introducing-cardmonkey.html <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable URL:

<http://www.cardmonkeyhq.com/>

Heavily inspired by <http://kanji.koohii.com/> and Anki, I've spent the past few months putting together a web-based flashcard review app.

It's still very much a work in progress. If there's enough interest and the app provides enough value to warrant it, I would eventually like to make it a subscription-based app. I'm perfectly happy to leave it free if as an example app in my portfolio if it doesn't take off.

Any and all feedback welcome, here's the blogpost with more info:

[http://najafali.blogspot.com/2010/08/introducing- cardmonkey....](http://najafali.blogspot.com/2010/08/introducing- cardmonkey.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> "A web-based SRS app."

I am sure you can come up with a better description than this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, the landing page was a little rushed. I've added a little more text that should help make things clearer.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best iPad Browser? - <AUTHOR>

What browser do you use on iPad? Safari, or a 3rd party browser like iCab? I'd love to know which browser you think is best on iPad, and why. For me, Safari falls short since it doesn't cache pages very good at all, which makes you have to reload pages when you switch back and forth. I know iPad is best for one task at one time, but I really want better background tab/page management. Before I actually buy one, I'd love to know what your thoughts on iPad browsers are. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Browser+, naturally!

It's the browser reinvented for the iPad.

Full-screen, gestures, Visual History, swipe to search, Most Visited, and 'Open in Overlay' so you can open links on sites like Hacker News, read the article, close it, and be right back where you started.

Any feature requests, ideas, or comments would definitely be appreciated. Here's a walkthrough video:

<http://www.browserplusapp.com>

<comment><USER3> Your walkthrough video is compelling, I've just bought a copy.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just purchased iCab a bit ago, and am already impressed at how much smoother the tab-switching experience is in it than with Atomic or Terra. In my quick evaluation, Terra is the best free alternate browser for just smooth tabbed browsing. iCab's my first for-pay browser on iPad; we'll see how it goes!

</comment><comment><USER4> I use Atomic Web, which I like a lot (though I only used Safari on the iPad before this).

Atomic has tabs, a nice full screen mode, and a lot of useful preferences such as the ability to zoom fonts and save font sizes per site subdomain.

<comment><USER5> Yes, Atomic Web Browser is the just 99 cents and is the best iOS browser (iPad and iPhone) I've found. The tabs are well designed and it manages memory much better than Safari so you're less likely to get a reload when you return to a page. It has many fun options like ad block, set UserAgent, gesture support, screen dimmer, video out, save for offline, etc.

I have tried many others but this is the only one I use instead of Safari.

[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/atomic-web-browser- browse/id3...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/atomic-web-browser- browse/id347929410?mt=8)

<comment><USER4> And, they've released about 5 updates with new features for that 99 cents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You mean "browser skin", just like the IE skins of the early 2000s.</comment>


Nervous system manipulation by electromagnetic fields from monitors - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/patents/US6506148 <comment><USER2> Please note that one does not have to prove anything in regards to the actual functionality claimed. The patent office is perfectly happy approving your anti-gravity device if it is novel. Keep this in mind (if you'll excuse the pun) when evaluating designs found there.

<comment><USER3> I always felt like patents shouldn't exist for ideas, but only for implementations. Having the idea, while sometime novel, is always easier then coming up with the implementation of it.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, it can be hard to take an idea into production without some of the protection granted by a patent. Look at all the people who try to get their inventions manufactured in China, only to be beaten to market by a clone (not that a patent would help there, but ideally it would).

An inventor can't develop their idea if they can't talk to manufacturers without fear of getting ripped off.

<comment><USER5> Well, one could argue that this is how competition works. If someone else can manufacture the same thing at lower cost, they deserve the market advantage.

Of course, this idea doesn't give credit to the inventors and benefits copycats. I just wanted to mention the idea.

<comment><USER6> If someone else can manufacture the same thing at lower cost, then the inventor / patent holder is going to want to outsource their production to the lowest cost producer.

The lowest cost producer does indeed enjoy a market advantage in the market for manufacturing.

<comment><USER4> Want to, sure. But you usually sign a contract, you can't just change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The observed effects include ptosis of the eyelids, relaxation, drowziness, > the feeling of pressure at a centered spot on the lower edge of the brow, > seeing moving patterns of dark purple and greenish yellow with the eyes > closed, a tonic smile, a tense feeling in the stomach, __ _sudden loose > stool_ __, and sexual excitement, depending on the precise frequency used, > and the skin area to which the field is applied. The sharp frequency > dependence suggests involvement of a __ _resonance mechanism_ __.

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

<comment><USER8> What happened to _don't be evil_?

<comment><USER9> This isn't Google's patent, it's just linked to the actual patent via Google's patent search.

<comment><USER8> Ah good catch. The google link and google stuff all over the page defeated my ability to read the full patent application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> After attempting to read that, I'm _fairly_ sure it's not just talking the normal expected effects of watching things on a screen - porn makes you horny, scary things make you shit your pants, PowerPoint puts you to sleep, etc.

But the language is somewhat impenetrable, so I'm not _completely_ sure.

<comment><USER11> How come?

<comment><USER12> It's referring to humans reacting to what's on a screen but the actual document is using 'legalese' like language to make it seem more amazing than it is. For instance if pornography was displayed on screen sexual arousal would naturally follow. Like I said I'm not sure if this is a joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The patent holder appears to be an unidentified pseudonym: [https://www.quora.com/Who-is-Hendricus-G-Loos](https://www.quora.com/Who-is- Hendricus-G-Loos)

> "All devices are used for Mind Control projects run by CIA or other > intelligence agencies. A group of researchers (under the name Dr H Loos) > were actually a group of hired professionals for researching and inventing > such devices which could be developed and used for mass mind control, > PSYOPS, behaviour modification later by CIA."

<comment><USER14> I'm curious why they patented their research, rather than keeping it hush- hush.

<comment><USER15> Possibly because research elsewhere is approaching their work independently.

<comment><USER16> The US patent system accommodates classified patents: [https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s120.html](https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s120.html)

<comment><USER17> How can that work? You need a security clearance to read them? What if someone else invents the same thing before the patent expires?

<comment><USER18> > What if someone else invents the same thing before the patent expires?

Government will offer you a nice sum of "keep quiet money" and an NDA, you're getting hit with NSLs, your patent is outright seized by the state, you're getting threats e.g. of tax or immigration checks... the ways government can intimidate you are endless.

For the obvious, legal, way see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act)

<comment><USER17> So basically you're saying that any independent invention of the same thing is also classified.

<comment><USER18> As soon as you try to patent it, USPTO will look up if there's a similar thing - and if there is and it is "red-flagged", you're screwed...

<comment><USER17> But suppose you DON'T try to patent it. You just invent it and try use it or sell it. What then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As the idea is from early 2000, I wonder if this is CRT only. Modern screens have much weaker fields iirc.

<comment><USER20> Yes, CRTs used electric fields to accelerate electrons, no such things with LCD/LED displays. Not to mention those claims are probably bogus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pedantically speaking, all the text and images you see on your screen are electromagnetic field and are manipulating your nervous system.

[https://xkcd.com/722/](https://xkcd.com/722/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Well, that sure is terrifying.

<comment><USER23> It's probably bullshit. If there would be an effect that can be reliable recreated using only a CRT and certain modulations it should not be hard to setup a double blind placebo controlled study and become famous. I presume there was and is a lot of research regarding electromagnetic waves and their influence on the human body and if you exclude effects that are caused by very high energy electromagnet waves like heating tissue or effects on the brain when using a helmet and lot's of energy nothing was ever reliable shown that would work on a CRT.

Hell, if brown note was real don't you think in the last 50 years either bored students would have attempted to implement that on campus or law enforcement would use it to disperse crowds. If this would work reliably every facility that has access to equipment to create such waves would have probably a setup to expose the new guys/students to these effects for the amusement of all.

Maybe I'm naive but extraordinary claims warrant extraordinary evidence. If this works we would have heard about it by now.

But well - if you search for the patent you are pretty much in tinfoil hat land - no amount of scepticism or reason will help there.

<comment><USER24> It is not bullshit. You are naive.

<comment><USER24> [https://books.google.com/books?id=V7wt3Sqj_X8C&lpg=PP1&dq=su...](https://books.google.com/books?id=V7wt3Sqj_X8C&lpg=PP1&dq=subliminal&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=subliminal&f=false)

"Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior" By Leonard Mlodinow

...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sounds like something Facebook would be interested in.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd love to see the original research just out of curiosity. But it seems to me that even if externally generated electromagnetic energy did have an effect, by the time you had some behavior you could observe, it would be like trying to make a toy sailboat move by dumping water near it from a firefighting plane.

</comment><comment><USER27> A bit of off-topic but... Does anybody knows about some some good and relatively cheap service to apply for a patent on the US? Something on the line of: You provide the idea/description/explanation and they take care of the rest?

</comment><comment><USER28> There are a few relevant things this reminds me of. The most interesting thing in this list is actually preventing me from having a job, so if you only read one point, start at the big paragraph halfway down. I would appreciate it.

\- "Tempest for Eliza" ([http://www.erikyyy.de/tempest/](http://www.erikyyy.de/tempest/)) is a Linux program that shows rapidly alternating patterns of black and white on your CRT. If you sit a correctly-tuned AM radio nearby you can hear music. The latest version of this program can even transmit MP3s. Examples: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlVM9xqGKx8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlVM9xqGKx8) (original version, sound in 2nd half); [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xPfAnPW2wY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xPfAnPW2wY) (MP3 version - FLICKERING/FLASHING, epilepsy warning)

\- Van Eck phreaking has been mentioned elsewhere in here; I also remember a YouTube video of someone showing that it's possible to get _something_ out of an LCD ribbon cable via simple RTLSDR: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N1C3WB8c0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N1C3WB8c0o)

\- Mythbusters did a thing on the brown note concept. Myth.

\- I'm yet to play around with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats) at some point, but I don't have any headphones.

\- I've put the first thing this article made me think of last: EMR sensitivity. I have this, it drives me nuts. I'm using a laptop with Wi-Fi right now and I'm completely fine, but I can't use PlayStation 2s, and I have absolutely no idea why. My nervous system goes ballistic: I get incredibly anxious, I feel like I've been awake for 3 weeks without a break, I can't focus on anything because I'm so exhausted and everything feels like a chore, and most catastrophically, my cognition falls completely apart. I also have unbelievable amounts of doom/gloom (I feel like I'm dying from the inside out), either triggered from the other effects or as its own thing.

I would describe myself as reasonable, not particularly unhinged, and with no major emotional issues. Probably the most interesting/telling thing that's happened with this issue is that I once told a family member "I don't know what's going on, but I might need to get off the computer" one day - and then a little while later I coincidentally discovered that a DVD player that had not been turned on for years had been accidentally knocked and turned on (it had a push on/off mains switch on the front panel). FWIW, I've tried both the original and slimline PS2s, and the slimline one uses an external PSU brick - which I'm fine with, if it's not connected to the PS2. Hence my great confusion (I thought this was a simple "can't use power supplies" thing).

I had to stop using all technology for 4 years (2008-2012) after using a PS2 for about 3 days and it having a catastrophic impact; it was, of all things, _fish oil_ that made a quantitative difference and let me use computers every day again. I don't get it at all, but the theory I now have is that the myeolin sheathing around my nerves is somehow damaged. (Perhaps tellingly, at one point while writing this text both of my arms twitched upwards. My jaw sometimes twitches as I talk as well.)

I'm reminded of a TV show I saw years ago that was talking about how the repeated lapping of waves against an oil platform's pylons created resonance that caused the pylons to shatter. On a similar note, the wineglass thing also works (even with the human voice) if you use an amplifier.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I cannot work due to this issue - I have no idea _why_ PS2s, DVD players and other random devices cause this problem, so I can't tell an employer what I unambiguously can and cannot handle.

Unfortunately, I know of nowhere in Sydney, Australia that is interested in digging into it. If anyone wants a guinea pig or test case, I'm in. I'd like to get a job!

<comment><USER29> Let me be perfectly clear: You most likely have a real medical condition of some kind. I do not question or demean your experience in any way.

With that said... no one has _ever_ shown actual EMR sensitivity in double- blinded trials. Never. Not even once. When you hide the devices behind a curtain people who claim EMR sensitivity can't tell if the thing is on or off. Trials have been done out in the woods, inside faraday cages, and under all kinds of crazy conditions. It never matters. We can definitively say medical science has ruled out EMR sensitivity as a real thing.

You may very well have a nerve degeneration condition. It is even possible that fish oil helps this condition. You may be sensitive to electronic whine from power transformers which is a purely audible phenomenon; plugging in the power brick without the PS2 drawing any power wouldn't induce the same whine.

You might also have a form of epilepsy or similar condition triggered by 3D graphics. It could also be a form of motion sickness that some people get (typically much worse with VR rigs).

Here's the thing: our bodies are evolutionarily tuned to be wary of anything that might be dangerous. Any ancestors without that instinct were killed off long ago. If you hear something better to imagine it is a ghost and run. If it's just the wind, no harm done. If it was a predator sneaking up on you then that reaction might save your life. If you've ever gotten the flu after eating a certain food then felt repulsed by that food for months or even years afterwards: that's the same mechanism at work. Your lizard brain just knows "that food == sick". You can understand all the rational arguments in the world but your lizard brain still says "nope, not taking any chances: barf time". For our ancestors living in the wild this is a sensible reaction. Maybe those berries are poisonous, maybe you just happened to pickup a virus around the same time. Better safe than sorry.

Because you had a bad experience you attributed to EMR (specifically the PS2) your brain now induces those symptoms when you are around a powered-up PS2 even though EMR itself isn't real. I stress again that this is a real physical condition that you have little control over. I have zero doubt that it feels absolutely real to you and causes you huge amounts of stress. Just know that there are therapists who can help. You can learn to overcome that reaction.

I know this will offend some people but we have to face the truth. Eyewitness testimony isn't reliable. Anecdotes aren't data. Just because someone honestly believes EMR is real doesn't mean it is.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for the preface :)

I've wanted to do the woods/faraday cage/etc thing for ages, because I want to concretely debunk/prove this whole thing. If I debunk it I can say "look, I have a condition, and there's no link", whereas if I can prove it, I can be one of the few non-kooky testcases :) (as I noted, I used to be crazy kooky myself - it seems that this condition attacks the nervous system itself, so suddenly you have the situation where the "all systems okay" infrastructure itself is being compromised, and pandemonium - paranoia, persecution complexes, etc - ensue.)

I am very very curious how I'd test for nerve degeneration issues.

The PSU idea you suggested is compelling, but, the slimine PS2 used an external brick, while the original used an integrated supply. For me to feel _exactly the same_ using both indicates that I'm being exposed to something that is generating the _exact_ same frequency profile. The likelihood that the brick and the original PS2's internal PSU use a design that spit out identical RF/EM profiles is... I won't rule it out, but I'd argue it's low. The slimline PS2 just needs 8.5V (IIRC), testing an alternative supply shouldn't be hard, but it's not on my priority list due to lack of budget :P

About the 3D graphics idea: The PS2 has an on/standby button on the front, and a mains switch on the back. If I put it in standby, I still feel drained; it's the moment I flick the switch at the back I go "WHEW". (And, for completeness, if the PS2 is on but the TV is off, I also feel drained.)

Two things about the evolutionary thing: one, that whole thing is insane; it's responsible for innumerable superstitions, haha. Secondly, your theory is interesting, and I have a very relevant subjective experience - except instead of perceiving my body as going "nope, fight/flight time", I perceive "SOS, this thing is causing you more distress than you have the ability to handle, RUN" \- so essentially a 100% flight response, but not only that, it's a "flight with explanation" response, in the sense that I don't just think _run_ , I know _why_ I need to run. I can understand a "RUN AWAY" signal getting through from the lizard brain, but I find it novel that I perceive more than just a basic _run_ signal.

I've tried using the PS2 on exactly one occasion several years after my first experience - incidentally, when I spied a slimline PS2 at a 2nd-hand shop and took it home to test. Different PS2, same response. I turned it off after about half an hour (I didn't try the original as well).

The huge problem I have is that, the whole time I used the first PS2 for a couple days, I could distinctly feel that something in my head was breaking apart or being worn down (????). Also, at some point (around day 2 or so), something hit some kind of threshold, and after that I began getting the same symptoms from my PS2 as from my computers, which was why I had to stop using them. I still feel exactly the same "everything's breaking apart" thing when I turned the 2nd PS2 on. So, yes, my refusal to do extensive testing does create a self-fulfilling prophecy here, BUT, unless a doctor/practitioner can give me something (a drug/device/alternative thing/whatever) to reverse any impact, I can't risk losing access to the computer again.

(About the "something hitting some kind of threshold" thing, that's the doom/gloom I mentioned in my first comment. That reminds me, the "impending thing" sense is huge. I don't know what the impending thing actually _is_ , but it gets really bad.)

I will definitely note that my only exposure to 3D games has been from this PS2, with some minor exposure to things like Doom or Wolfenstein 3D when I was given some ancient DOS machines a few years ago. So I do have a very negative/depressed/pitiful perspective when I see gaming discussed, but that ties mostly into my circumstances (not being able to buy GPUs to test) rather than me seeing the PS2 as entirely at fault.

Another fun story from the 2009-2012 era: I found a Casio 9850GB+ graphing calculator in an op-shop a few years ago. (I since found a TI-83+ in a disposal store, and discovered I hated its interface compared to the Casio, lol.) This thing used a triple-layer dot-matrix LCD that could display three "hues": yellow, green and blue, I think because each film had a thin layer over it for that color. Anyway, after using this calculator one day, I happened to be staring at a wall and noticed all kinds of swirling patterns in front of my eyes. I blinked a few times to best weigh up what I was looking at, and concluded that there was something wrong with my eyes. It went away after a few minutes though.

That also reminds me - I used to have bipolar (I managed to find an alternative therapy product that nuked it completely, even after I stopped taking it) and exposure (if you could call it that) would tend to provoke bipolar manic phases (I had the minor/small kind, I forget what type it was). I don't know why; one theory is that my system would go "we need extra resources to cope with this" and trigger mania (why?!), another theory is that the nerve excitation itself would trigger it. I don't really know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Some credible research on the influence of magnetic fields on migraines is being done, iirc by Markus Dahlem. So while this may sound rather fanciful, I suppose it's not impossible?

</comment><comment><USER31> You need to watch the film, "Kingsman: The Secret Service" starring Colin Firth. Something very similar to this was used to induce people to murder others.

</comment><comment><USER32> Not that I think this would be abused or anything, but I remember when technology seemed sweet and innocent just a couple of years ago

</comment><comment><USER11> > Observed effects include [...] sexual excitement, depending on the precise > frequency used

I gotta get me one of these

</comment><comment><USER19> 1/2 Hz? I wonder if music with 120 beats per minute trigger that.

<comment><USER33> 1/2 Hz is one oscillation every 2 seconds. That would be 30 per minute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> (Published January 2003)

</comment><comment><USER35> This is basically talking about the type+frequency of "flashing" imagery that triggers photosensitive epilepsy—but more subdued, yes?

<comment><USER36> From what I understand, its the actual magnetic field produced by the monitor that when pulsated at various frequencies causes these effects. I don't think its related to epilepsy, but I don't know if the reasons why it works are known.

<comment><USER37> No, this is about the EM field. The magnetic field of CRTs is very weak (so weak that it is dwarfed by nearby rail power lines which have a rather weak M field as well; so weak that you have to recalibrate for monitor movement relative to earth's M field).

I doubt this works, at all, for a variety of reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> We haven't made sufficient "progress" until we have Blipverts. As "Bryce Lynch" said in that Max Headroom episode: _" It's not my problem. My brief was to find a way to stop channel switching. I mean, you know, I only invent the bomb, I don't drop it. Ha ha." [he gives that quick shrugging grin of an uncertain adolescent]_

The thing about going out with a bang vs. a whimper.. come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it will be a shrug.</comment>


Tether (USDT) price falling to $0.95 - <AUTHOR> https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/#charts <comment><USER2> I built this site in February this year in anticipation:

[http://www.untether.space/](http://www.untether.space/)

The spread between Bitcoin priced in Tether and Bitcoin priced in USD has been holding steady at <1% until now, but as I type this, the risk premium is at 8.4% and climbing. Looks like the Untethering has begun.

For the curious, source at [https://github.com/jpatokal/untether](https://github.com/jpatokal/untether) and also submitted as a Show HN at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219034).

<comment><USER3> $2,000,000,000+ worth issued without proof of backing? What value did Tether add that people were willing to deal with it as a middleman to dollars?

Side note: The graph could use some TLC. The colors are indistinguishable and there are no static historical charts on the page, just the graph since my visit.

<comment><USER4> A major use of USDT is that you can sell your cryptos when they're high, converting them to USDT, which holds it's value. Then, when the crypto prices drop, you buy in again, and repeat. By keeping it entirely in the crypto space, your country's tax system can't charge you for capital gains.

<comment><USER5> > _By keeping it entirely in the crypto space, your country 's tax system > can't charge you for capital gains_

This is blatant, willful and permanently-documented tax evasion, an amusing combination of illegality and stupidity.

<comment><USER6> No, it's not. It means you don't pay capital gains when you're merely exchanging one form of crypto for another. You have not realized any gains until you have converted your crypto into real assets. Converting from one form of crypto to another for the purposes of arbitrage only delays the taxes. It never eliminates them.

This is really no different than selling and buying stocks in an IRA account.

<comment><USER7> Crypto-crypto trades no longer enjoy the like-kind exchange tax treatment you're describing (in the US, as of 12/31/2017). The recent tax law narrowed that benefit to real estate only.

[https://www.coindesk.com/owe-irs-crypto-crypto- trades/](https://www.coindesk.com/owe-irs-crypto-crypto-trades/)

<comment><USER5> > _no longer_

On 31 December 2017, the IRS clarified that § 1031 does not apply to crypt- crypto trades. It did not say § 1031 applied to crypto-crypto trades before then.

The article you reference says "traders still _may_ be able to argue that their transactions undertaken in 2017 and prior years were not taxable under the Section 1031 like-kind exchange rules," but that "the application of the like-kind exchange rules to crypto transactions is far from certain" [1, emphasis mine].

[1] [https://www.coindesk.com/owe-irs-crypto-crypto- trades/](https://www.coindesk.com/owe-irs-crypto-crypto-trades/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A note on the price reported by coinmarketcap -- that is a price derived from computing the average traded price of USDT across all exchanges, including ones that have no path to converting directly to USD.

What this means is that this dramatically overstates the price of tether. If you navigate to "market" [1] and change the "Pair" dropdown to "USD" you'll see the three exchanges that actually offer the pair. Bitfinex is the sponsor of Tether, so will always say $1; but currently they are apparently having banking problems.

Kraken and Bittrex offer independent markets so are a better fair reflection of the price, in the sense of "if you have tether, and want foldin' money right now, this is the current discount". Kraken has somewhat limited withdrawal capabilities at the moment as well, so their price also reflects a premium for the latency.

[1] [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/#markets](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/#markets)

</comment><comment><USER9> It could have something to do with the arrival (soon to be a flood) of much- better financed and regulated stable coins such as the Gemini dollar:

 _To date, there has been no trusted and regulated digital representation of the U.S. dollar that moves in an open, decentralized manner like cryptocurrencies. Enter the Gemini dollar — a stable value coin (often called a "stablecoin") that is (i) issued by Gemini, a New York trust company, (ii) strictly pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar, and (iii) built on the Ethereum network according to the ERC20 standard for tokens. ..._

[https://medium.com/gemini/gemini-launches-the-gemini- dollar-...](https://medium.com/gemini/gemini-launches-the-gemini- dollar-62787f963fb4)

<comment><USER5> > _regulated stable coins such as the Gemini dollar_

I still don't see how they satisfy their anti-money laundering requirements.

You can't have a token which is (a) anonymously traded, (b) freely redeemable for hard currency, _and_ (c) compliant. Even if you modify (b) to "redeemable with approved KYC paperwork for hard currency," you still have the problem that you sold a token for cash to one person, redeemed it for cash to another person, and have no clue what happened in the middle.

One could completely remove (b), _i.e._ have a non-redeemable currency. But now you're closer to the precedent set by Liberty Reserve [1], in that the people who most want anonymous electronic dollars over real electronic dollars _are people laundering money_.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/nyregion/liberty- reserve-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/nyregion/liberty-reserve- operators-accused-of-money-laundering.html)

<comment><USER10> > anonymously traded

Where exactly does anyone claim that?

They have a team of lawyers and access to all the regulators by virtue of being such a huge exchange. Do you honestly believe they haven't consulted widely on this?

<comment><USER11> > They have a team of lawyers and access to all the regulators by virtue of > being such a huge exchange. Do you honestly believe they haven't consulted > widely on this?

I'll get back to you in a few days when I finish laughing... MtGox was also a huge exchange, I think the only sane thing to do at this point with Cryptos are to assume all exchanges are stupid, aren't solvent, haven't consulted lawyers, and/or don't know the law until it is proven otherwise. Exchanges that don't fit the criteria are the exception not the rule.

<comment><USER10> The sheer ignorance surrounding cryptomarkets is quite staggering. I'm first to call a good part of it a sham but simply writing off everyone is naive, low effort discourse.

Gemini is owned by the billionaire Winklevoss twins, its based in and regulated by NY, the most notoriously heavy handed cryptocurrency jurisdiction on Earth. Many exchanges won't even do business with customers from NY.

Think it's fair to say that they're not "stupid"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's a wave of full-reserve stablecoins with more careful regulatory strategies in the pipes. For example, Sila. * If you need programmable money, and also want access to US mainstream, then I think this is increasingly going to be where you go.

* [https://medium.com/@blog_53353/announcing-sila-building-the-...](https://medium.com/@blog_53353/announcing-sila-building-the-new-financial-world-78d818faac14)

<comment><USER13> [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/trueusd/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/trueusd/)

If it's true that tether is fraudulently printing tethers, then Bitfinex has already pulled one of the largest heists in history.

An important case law regarding these types of digital cash operators would be liberty reserve.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/nyregion/liberty- reserve-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/nyregion/liberty-reserve- operators-accused-of-money-laundering.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cryptocurrency investors discover _breaking the buck_ [0]. I wonder what painful lesson they'll have to relearn next?

[0] [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/breaking-the- buck.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/breaking-the-buck.asp)

</comment><comment><USER15> Isn't this an easy opportunity for arbitrage? Assuming it goes back up to $1. I thought that was the whole point of fiat-backed crypto?

<comment><USER16> The fact the Tether who issued USDT for presumably something around $1 aren't buying it back themselves for an easy profit should tell you something.

<comment><USER17> It doesn't tell you anything. Maybe they think the bitcoin price is going to shoot up 3xin the coming months so using their money to buy tether would be pretty stupid in that case no?

This is actually why it's so hard to tell from this whether or not this is something bad or just "normal" because tether price always reaches lower levels like this when people get out of it to buy cryptocurrencies, too.

<comment><USER18>
      Maybe they think the bitcoin price is going to shoot up
      3xin the coming months so using their money to buy tether
      would be pretty stupid in that case no?

For Tether to be backed by US$, for every 1 USDT they need to hold $1 in cash or cash equivalents.

If they have invested the fiat in bitcoins, they aren't backed by US$ any more.

<comment><USER19> This is right - Tether buying back their USDT means that they get to retire 1 USDT for 0.95c of their backing reserves, turning the remaining 0.05c into profit which they can then invest wherever they want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> reposting my comment on this issue from 8 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16182423#16183604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16182423#16183604)

</comment><comment><USER21> As tensions with USDT rise, my prediction is that MakerDAO decentralized stablecoin will take over the market in 2019. You can see how issued DAI market cap pumping up steadily all year long almost with no break:

[https://mkr.tools/](https://mkr.tools/)

So I'm accumulating position in MKR.

Here is YC interview with backer of MakerDAO:

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/blockchain-investing-with- olaf-...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/blockchain-investing-with-olaf-carlson- wee-and-aaron-harris/)

Andressen Horrowitz also increasing their position in MKR:

[https://medium.com/makerdao/a16z-crypto-purchases-6-of- mkr-b...](https://medium.com/makerdao/a16z-crypto-purchases-6-of-mkr-backing- stablecoin-vanguard-makerdao-ff410a692393)

[https://medium.com/makerdao/maker-sells-12m-of-mkr-to- partne...](https://medium.com/makerdao/maker-sells-12m-of-mkr-to-partners-led- by-andreessen-horowitz-and-polychain-capital-68b2b26548)

Although there are some concerns that it's economically impossible to create fully decentralized stablecoin. Historical example:

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

Failed stablecoin example:

[https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/nubits/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/nubits/)

We will see as time goes on. Anyway, it's very interesting economic experiment.

P.S. So YC HN readers keep downvoting me even if I give links to interview on YC. Okay...

</comment><comment><USER22> Except that Tether price often fluctuates and it has gone lower than $0.95 before, it is already on its way back up since this link was posted. As another commenter mentioned the coinmarketcap.com price is based on the average price of trades at various exchange, if there is a lot of sell pressure it will naturally temporarily fluctuate lower.

Don't get me wrong, I think Tether is up to something fishy but I don't think that they have billions of dollars less in assets than the number of Tether issued.

</comment><comment><USER23> This also caused the price of bitcoin to go up [https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2018/10/15/bitco...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2018/10/15/bitcoin- has-leapt-sharply-higher-heres-why/amp/)

<comment><USER13> That's not the true USD exchange rate, the "price" goes up on exchanges with USDT (tether) meanwhile any exchange with access to actual normal USD banking withdrawals have an abnormally lower spot price. If this activity persists, it would indicate the devaluation of tether which accounts for the vast majority of trade volume across the major exchanges.

Also note, the article you linked to is not Forbes but just a random blogger using the public Forbes blogging api.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There doesn't seem to be any particular new development, just a string of unsubstantiated rumors and hoaxes: [https://blokt.com/news/too-much-fud- bitcoin-pumps-tether-dum...](https://blokt.com/news/too-much-fud-bitcoin- pumps-tether-dumps-on-fake-news-bitfinex-temporary-withdrawal-pause)

That's not to say that Tether does not have major credibility issues and dubious liquidity, just that no new publicly available information would justify the movement. On the other hand, when a bank run is in progress, it's irrelevant if it was started by a rumor because the rumor becomes a self fulfilling truth, especially in the face of shaky financials.

<comment><USER25> > That's not to say that Tether does not have major credibility issues and > dubious liquidity, just that no new publicly available information would > justify the movement.

When a jenga tower topples over, it's not usually because someone played especially badly, but because almost any touch at all would make it fall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is a huge buying opportunity!

</comment><comment><USER27> I always found it amusing bitcoin needs to be backed by USD. Wasn't the whole BTC religion about how bad and unstable traditional currencies are? Meanwhile no central bank is trying to save Tether.

<comment><USER28> It's not about backing with value, it's about liquidity. Traders want to use USD assets on a market and be able to transfer them as a digital asset between exchanges with minimal 3rd party fees. Transferring USD through a bank account can be expensive.

<comment><USER5> > _Transferring USD through a bank account can be expensive_

I keep hearing this, yet can instantly and for no charge electronically transfer under $10,000 between various accounts, and with minimal (often waived) wire charges, much larger quantities more reliably (and with less risk) than using a "stable coin".

<comment><USER28> In my experience, wiring fiat USD from a non-US exchange to a a US bank account is slow (days) and has hidden fees (my bank, their bank, and someone in between).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Transfer from Wordpress to Posterous whilst retaining your links - <AUTHOR> http://deanbarrow.co.uk/from-wordpress-to-posterous-whilst-retaining <comment><USER2> Why would you ever want to do this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Migrate from Wordpress to Posterous?

I fancied a change..

<comment><USER3> Funny, I'd like to move more of my stuff to Wordpress. Though I've not used Posterous in quite some time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just fancied going down the hosted route for a change, less maintenance, no comment spam to worry about, besides I didn't need half the features Wordpress offers.

There are a couple of feature that Posterous could do with though, like custom slug, easier comment handing, javascript. I'll manage though, it's a nice change for now.

<comment><USER3> Purely out of curiosity, why Posterous over Wordpress.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't like the idea of paying for certain features, mainly to use my own domain. I'm not sure if it'll be a permanent move yet so didn't want to pay only to decide to go back to self hosted somewhere down the line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does this really read in an entire xml file of all your posts for every request, just to redirect? Seems inefficient. I think redis might be a good fit for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is pretty inefficient but I didn't have masses of posts to migrate so it made sense. If this were anything more than a quick and dirty script then a data store would be the best approach, maybe sqlite.</comment></comment>


Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21569674-aaron-swartz-computer-programmer-and-activist-committed-suicide-january-11th-aged-26-aaron

<comment><USER2> I think we owe huge thanks to Glenn Fleishman for the many, many accurate elements in this goodbye to Aaron.</comment>


Experiments with 'Static' JavaScript (using PyPy) - <AUTHOR> http://mozakai.blogspot.com/2010/07/experiments-with-static-javascript-as.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Later posted as <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523798></comment>