Popular dark-web hosting provider hacked, 6,500 sites down - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/popular-dark-web-hosting-provider-got-hacked-6500-sites-down/ <comment><USER2> I am confused: is this seriously saying that over 30% of "hidden" services were being hosted on the server of one guy named Daniel?... that in a world where the entire point is that you don't know where anything is hosted and you are using tons of indirection through Tor to ensure there is no obvious place to hook all of the traffic or even see packets for timing attacks, it turns out there was a _one in three_ chance that the traffic was being hosted by this one guy named Daniel?

<comment><USER3> No. That would be like someone taking GeoCities down in 1998 and claiming you took down 30% of "The Internet. You would have gotten a bunch of stuff, but obviously not 30%

At _best_ they took down 30% of hidden web services with published addresses at aggregator sites like Hidden Wiki.

It's not that you don't know where its _hosted_ , it's that you don't know who is using it or where they are. That includes publishers with hosted content, even from the host itself. 5Eyes couldn't just drop a tap in front of Danial's Host and see anything useful, just intermediate nodes with no idea what was on the other end. (barring a >51% attack where they own the first and last nodes in the circuit.)

<comment><USER2> Your second paragraph is not, in my understanding, the goal of a hidden service: that is merely the goal of Tor itself and would apply to a non-hidden service being accessed via Tor. The goal of the hidden services feature is to allow hosts to have the same level of anonymity as users, making it nearly impossible to shut them down or know where to tap their traffic (for timing attacks).

<comment><USER4> Onion services can have various goals. Hiding the server is a very common one, but it's not always the case.

For example facebook runs an onion server for their service, they don't need to hide the service itself. So they configure their Tor relays with no anonymity on the service side (HiddenServiceSingleHopMode 1) and get better performance.

Such non-anonymous onion services can have many goals, for example: * Reducing load on Tor exit nodes * Providing users a secure, authenticated connection without depending on the CA system (assuming you got the URL through a secure channel the first time, you know only the key holder can provide service on that host). * NAT traversal for services that otherwise have no need for anonymity

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Man, why do people insist on using others to host their tor hidden services? It seems like the last thing you'd want or need to do. It's super simple to set up a hidden service from your home computer and host. I've been putting all my clear web sites on tor as well for years. Lots of bot traffic but never any problems and plenty of real traffic too.

<comment><USER6> The same reason people host their emails, websites, photos somewhere else or host their infrastructure in the cloud instead of colocating. It's not hard but just another thing you have to care for when your real focus should be on what you provide not how you provide it.

<comment><USER7> If secrecy/anonymity is important enough to put something on the dark web, using the same assumptions as you might on the public internet is silly.

<comment><USER8> People _are_ silly. We look for silver bullets all the time. Political figureheads who look and sound good while lacking any depth, moustache- twirling villains to blame the bad times on, silly rituals which start because they accidentally coincided with good times, investment bubbles, and hubris followed by victim blaming.

There's nothing which would cause an otherwise competent business leader to even realise they don't understand the limits of any given security system, never mind knowing who to ask for advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I were going to attempt such an .onion hosting setup, I'd use a couple levels of isolation between users. Maybe setup several KVM domains, to help limit damage from a compromise. And within each domain, put each website in a Docker container. Given a custom Docker-optimized kernel for the host, and XFS storage, I gather that it's possible to set hard limits on CPU, RAM and storage for containers.

Given that Docker containers rely on kernel namespaces and cgroups for isolation, they're not as secure as using full VMs. But they're _far_ lighter, and much better isolated than these late .onions. Alternatively, one could maybe use FreeBSD jails with Docker.

And about backups. I get his argument for not backing up. But maybe a setup with relatively fast rotation, and thorough deletion of old backups, would be secure enough. I'd use LUKS with dropbear for server FDE. That's still vulnerable, sure, but attackers would need to take some care while impounding the server. Also, I'd keep backups on another server, with only .onion-.onion connections (maybe OnionCat).

<comment><USER10> Containers are not at all a security thing. If you really need that caliber of separation, you are looking at VMs at the very least.

<comment><USER9> Really "not at all"? Isn't that more secure than chroot?

I do agree with you that VMs, at least, would be more secure. But hosting thousands of VMs takes substantial resources. And when there's free shared hosting available, few would understand enough to pay the premium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Winzen said his priority was to do a full analysis of the log files

I wouldn't have thought a darkweb hosting service should have any logs?

<comment><USER12> It's a server just as any server, instead of serving content through apache or nginx, you are more likely to serve it through thttpd or savant.

<comment><USER13> Why do you say that? Genuinely curious.

Though I'm not familiar with thttpd or savant, after briefly looking them over they appear to be http servers just like apache or nginx.

What would make them more appealing for a dark web host? They dont seem to be particular "dark-web-centric" with what i could read at face value. though most times dark web stuff has tons of other info thats not found 'at face value'...

<comment><USER14> "Though I'm not familiar with thttpd or savant, after briefly looking them over they appear to be http servers just like apache or nginx."

Not your parent, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that "dark web sites" are using thttpd ... it's a very simple, lightweight, dependable web server. The major downside - the lack of SSL - is perhaps not an issue as you are running over an encrypted channel anyway.

If I just needed to throw something up - perhaps on a remote or throwaway host - thttpd would certainly be my first choice.

<comment><USER9> Also, thttpd[0] is fast, doesn't fork, and is resistant to DoS attacks. The downside is that it's no longer in many repositories, and it can be a pain to compile.

0) [https://acme.com/software/thttpd/](https://acme.com/software/thttpd/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't get Daniel Hosting... Why did he offer free hosting? What was the business model? He said, you are not allowed to host illegal content according to German law, i wonder how he managed to maintain this state with 6.5k pages up. In the end it would be quite easy to raid him for some CP, quite a risk for what gain?

<comment><USER16> Because why not? Not everything is a business and if you believe Tor as a right of privacy in the digital age and you wish to make it available to everyone, why not?

Censorship comes in many forms, and technological literacy in the form of running a LAMP Stack and knowing how to modify apache is slim in the world, php/mysql, forget about it.

6.5K pages is not a lot of data, especially for interactive and probably non- rich dynamic pages. Consider it as a geocities in the 90's.

What probably happen was there was an jail escape that enabled a live shell and that person killed it. From who knows whom -

As for running a tor site, the most suspicious thing about it is being a tor exit node.

<comment><USER15> Not everything is a business but many other hobbies have a way lower probability to put you in jail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Backups? Forget it. This is the Dark Web. Winzen told ZDNet that there ain't no such thing as backups on Daniel's Hosting, by design:"

I'm wondering why encrypted backup is not an option for them?

<comment><USER18> For the same reason why the NSA siphons up all data from the net, encrypted or not, and stores it. They know one day they'll be able to crack todays crypt. Being able to decrypt a backup 5 or 10 years from now will still provide a lot of useful data, whether it came from the darknet or someones icloud backup while it was in transit to Apples servers. Encryption really only protects you from "today", not what will happen to it in the future. It's one reason I kind of chuckle to myself when people put such high regard into companies that proclaim to be more self conscious about protecting user data and what they do with it. It doesn't really matter if the data is still being collected and stored for later decryption. It's basically just a "delay" of when it can be read. The only thing stopping them, currently, is not having enough qbits in a quantum computer. Things are going to get, strange. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNV_3PkA9WM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNV_3PkA9WM)

<comment><USER19> Just xor bit by bit against real random noise,embed it in a massive stream of other pure random, remember the offset, if it's really that important..

<comment><USER20> Don't roll your own crypto. If that was much better encryption, everyone would be using it.

<comment><USER21> I think we all agree rolling your own crypto is dangerous, but what siliconunit described is just a one time pad. Assuming your key data is truly random and unknown to your attacker, isn't this kind of the gold standard for uncrackable cyphered communication?

<comment><USER20> If interpreted that way, storing the noise and memorizing the offset, it amounts to having a privately stored one-time pad to be used as key... with a passphrase with as many bits in it as the offset. That's probably not a lot of bits. You are better off storing the data, encrypted with a real pass phrase, wherever you would have stored the random noise stream that is needed to read the data in any case. Don't roll your own crypto.

<comment><USER22> Using a one time pad isn't "rolling your own crypto".

It is also provably secure unlike every other cryptosystem.

<comment><USER23> Sure, except now you have an equal amount of data that needs to be stored somewhere. The pad is as long as the data. Either you have to encrypt _that_ using some other means, or you do the weak "store offset" method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [https://github.com/Bo0oM/PHP_imap_open_exploit/blob/master/e...](https://github.com/Bo0oM/PHP_imap_open_exploit/blob/master/exploit.php)

This seems to be the exploit they used?

<comment><USER25> Sanitize your inputs...

<comment><USER26> It wasn't just inputs, it's not enough, weak types. Using == instead of === they could brute force guess a session, it took multiple exploits to escalate till they got shell access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Background info on the exploit used at: [https://antichat.com/threads/463395/#post-4254681](https://antichat.com/threads/463395/#post-4254681)

<comment><USER28> (nb: page is in Russian)

<comment><USER29> [https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=h...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fantichat.com%2Fthreads%2F463395%2F%23post-4254681)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> >a PHP zero-day vulnerability. Details about this unpatched vulnerability were known for about a month

I find this to be a very upsetting attempt at technical clickbaiting. Feels like a journalist trying to appeal to semitechnical readers with hackerman slang.

If it was known for a month, it's not an 0day.

<comment><USER31> Huh, doesn't making it publicly known before patching it in PHP constitute a 0day? Or by unpatched did they mean patched upstream but not here?

<comment><USER25> This is one that people have been getting wrong for decades.

"A zero-day (also known as 0-day) vulnerability is a computer-software vulnerability that is unknown to those who would be interested in mitigating the vulnerability (including the vendor of the target software)" Patching and knowing about the vulnerability are different things.

And so, this is not 0day.

<comment><USER32> No idea why you are getting downvoted, since this perfectly acceptable explaination of a 0-day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > there are no backups.

Interesting. If I were into this kind of activity I would love to have backups designed, implemented and maintained the "dark" way. It seems to me that by just running the services you are not 100% into this business. You'd have to come up with the whole "dark ops" approach.

<comment> S-E-P What would you define as a "dark" way.

The "dark" way is to assure that any and all traffic and interactions are anonymous as possible. Keeping a record of communications/behaviors is the direct antithesis of this.

The "dark" way is to never backup

<comment><USER33> I always thought that communications/behaviors are not a problem once parties remain anonymous or unidentifiable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I guess that all of the private keys for the onion services will be gone too. Even if they aren't, they can't be used anymore anyway as they should be assumed to be compromised.

I hashed for a month to get a vanity one, others have done longer. Did this hosting service allow custom private key uploads?

<comment><USER35> Also, if private keys were obtained, it's trivial to republish to the same onion address with any changes you want. This is that one scenario where an EV cert that can be revoked has value if you're a non-anonymous hoster. There are other alternative-factor identity verification techniques (e.g. DNS, Alt-Svc HTTP header) but the querying aspect reduces anonymity.

<comment><USER34> With the DNS and Alt-Src, are you saying that the Onion site identity can be verified by visiting the non-onion version of the site, and then relying on the header/DNS record to take the session onto Tor?

Then when the onion service private key is breached, the site operator just changes the header and DNS record to a new, non-breached one?

As you say though, querying these does reduce anonymity.

<comment><USER35> Yup (well, automatically with Alt-Svc when using the Tor browser, some kind of manual TXT record I would guess with DNS, I don't know of anything standardized)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It will be interesting to see a followup in a few months, in particular, to see how many sites come back online.

My expectation is that a good number will look to an alternate service, though the ones who are willing to try again would be more likely to have recovery plans.

</comment><comment><USER37> Would it be possible or feasible to compile a site into a single binary? Within binary there would be, say 1GB encrypted file system and embedded SQL lite could write data to it and embedded http process would be able to serve and store static content.

On startup you'd enter password and decrypt a baked-in filesystem.

I guess this would still be possible to break into as long as the app is working since decryption key would be saved in RAM but as soon as server goes offline data would be inaccessible.

Then you host this, say, in Russia or China and you should be safe from USA authorities.

</comment><comment><USER38> "30% of the dark web was erased." More like "what was loosely estimated to be 30%"

<comment><USER39> And 30% of accessible addresses not 30% of traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> You can't ever get anonymous layer 1. To the point of other commenters - percentage figures are unreliable on tor.

<comment><USER41> This isn't true. Wireless mesh networks could make for an anonymous medium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Well, hopefully the dark web version of google kept a nice cache of what was important

<comment><USER43> I'm sure the NSA and China has a backup someone could use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> s/hidden service/onion service

Pedantic, but is the preferred nomenclature today.

</comment><comment><USER44> So, lots of pages, on one hosting site.

<comment><USER45> I don't think so. More like one hosting platform, with many (.onion) domains hosted within it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Give it about...a month and there will be 13,000 onion sites to take its place.

<comment><USER35> What do you mean? Can you elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This looks like a good old "Kill the problem and frame him later" type of a take down. The owners (or some users) angered the wrong people, and now they are even the biggest pedos of the whole wide world...

<comment><USER25> They probably were the biggest pedos in the world. That's the only sane reason to host a platform like this, if you have any sense of self-preservation.

Moreover, its predecessors, Freedom Hosting and Freedom Hosting II, were both the biggest purveyors of CP when they were taken down. If it walks like a duck...

<comment><USER47> Yeah, and the biggest users of cryptography are criminals. Only the guilty lock their car doors, right?

<comment><USER25> You and the other commenter are missing the point. I'm not stating either of those.

The motivation for hosting something like this is to hide what you're hosting in a bunch of noise. Legal or illegal. Your goal is to make it hard to gather metadata about the service. There are perfectly legitimate reasons to want that...

That said, it's a foregone conclusion that if you host a service like this, people who want to distribute child pornography are going to flock to it. If you don't police the content, that's even more true.

In fact, in the case of Freedom Hosting II, the host was allowing the pedos to circumvent the normal limitations of the platform, in theory because they were paying cold hard cash, as well as allowing scammers to operate on the platform, also for cold hard cash. It's been suggested that as much as 50% of the content hosted on Freedom Hosting II was child porn.

If you knowingly allow people to use your service to distribute child pornography or commit other crimes, you're every bit as culpable as your customers. This type of platform costs not-insignificant money to run -- it's a business. Nobody is hosting this many services out of a sense of altruism.

And honestly, in the case of CP, if you're hosting it, including running a service that facilitates the hosting of it, you deserve to serve consecutive life sentences in prison and whatever harm befalls those in prison who get found out as pedos.

<comment><USER38> They were not hosting any CP. That is not proven. As it stands, this is a simple service takedown. Actually, this is speculation added by the sensationalist [https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com) website, the original source doesn't even mention it.

I mean, they even believe this is a zero day attack, I can't simply trust the quality of any information there.

Edit: they updated the link, here's the old link - [https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/11/21/hacker- erases-65...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/11/21/hacker- erases-6500-sites-from-the-dark-web)

<comment><USER25> Again, if it walks like a duck.

Freedom Hosting was the biggest service and it served CP. Freedom Hosting II was the biggest service and it served CP. Daniel's Hosting was the biggest service -- what do you think it served?

CP is the reason Operation DarkNet et al target these platforms for destruction.

<comment><USER38> Yeah, and if his skin is dark and he has a hoodie, he's probably a criminal. This "if I think they are guilty it means they are" will never work.

That's the problem with prejudices, the people who have them can never see beyond them.

<comment><USER38> They did not welcome, protect, support nor engage in child pornography.

<comment><USER25> hosting that very sort of platform welcomes child pornography as is demonstrated by every such sort of platform or service that's come before it and I'm not talking about just the history of Tor hosting here. We used to find the same thing with free hosting, chatrooms and shell accounts in the 90s.

It's already a matter of law (in most western countries) that hosts have some amount of responsibility for what users of their platforms distribute and that's why other hosting services aren't structured this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Sophos blog spam for actual ZDNet report from over the weekend: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/popular-dark-web-hosting- provi...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/popular-dark-web-hosting-provider-got- hacked-6500-sites-down/)

Maybe a mod can replace the link with the actual source.

<comment><USER49> Thanks! We've updated the link from [https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/11/21/hacker- erases-65...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/11/21/hacker- erases-6500-sites-from-the-dark-web/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Why?

</comment><comment><USER51> My bad. I signed up for my Free Dark Web Scan, and said my name was Philip'); DROP TABLE customers;--

<comment><USER52> I've done that to sms spammers. I don't know if it worked but I tried ten or so variations. I stopped receiving those messages. I was getting 10 a day at the time. I doubt I actually did any damage but I really hope I did.

<comment><USER53> Haha! That reminds me of when I once edited my web browser's user agent to something similar, but then I forgot about it. Later, when I was browsing, a lot of the websites just blank screened or returned 500 errors or displayed an SQL error. The other browser worked fine. I finally realized it was my user agent! So yes, a little SQL injection can come up in many unexpected situations as you may have observed :-)

Another time, I set my user agent to an XSS string, just because I was testing something, but forgot to set back. A week later, I noticed that my colleague was baffled by a popup coming up each time he was browsing the logs. Oops, that was my XSS user agent... I'm guessing a lot of places don't sanitize logs.

You'd be amazed how many places these things work :-)</comment></comment></comment>


It's not about the features - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/10/25/its-not-about-features/

<comment><USER2> One of, if not, the most important lessons first time entrepreneurs should learn.</comment>


Two Tap (YC W14) Wants to Fix Mobile Checkouts - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/20/two-tap-makes-online-shopping-easier-with-global-shopping-cart-two-tap-checkout-on-hundreds-of-sites/

<comment><USER2> Don't really see anything distinguishing it from PayPal. You can generate a PayPal button and slap it on your site for products and have it track inventory quite easily, and far more people have PayPal accounts so they won't have to register for a new service.

<comment><USER3> Two Tap is different than PayPal because:

* publishers/app devs can sell products from retailers inside their apps (users don't have to hit the merchant website). this is incredibly valuable, especially on mobile.

* merchants don't have to do anything to integrate us, and all the hard work is in on our end.

* TwoTap is a replacement for the whole checkout process, not only the billing part.

This means we can provide a unified buying experience on all platforms, at all points of sale, and provide a truly universal wallet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Like the new name; 'two tap' checkout definitely sounds like something I want.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We love it too!</comment>


Show HN: IntercoolerJs – A Declarative Ajax Framework - <AUTHOR>

Hey All,
It isn't 100% complete yet, but I've decided to cut a 0.0.1 release for IntercoolerJS:

  http://intercoolerjs.org/
 Intercooler is a Partial View Controller framework, where AJAX responses are HTML fragments (partials) that are swapped in for existing content, based roughly on the Basecamp 2 approach.
If anyone else is interested in working on or using the project, please let me know: there is still tons of interesting work to do (e.g. back-button/pushState() support)
I think that, for many apps, this might be a good way to get 90% of the UX advantages of a thick Javascript MVC framework, at a fraction of the complexity. <comment><USER2> This is really great, I imagine I'll be using it often. I do however feel a bit cheated seeing that the demo isn't actually AJAX.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want to see actual ajax requests in flight, you can take a look at the rails demo app up on heroku:

[http://intercoolerjs.herokuapp.com/](http://intercoolerjs.herokuapp.com/)

It's only running on one dyno, though, so it might be slow depending on traffic.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, that's what I was looking for!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! Why didn't someone think of this years ago?!</comment>


Show HN: 20 Most Important Java Programming Interview Questions - <AUTHOR> http://gradestack.com/web/download/downloadGuide/3826

<comment><USER2> Most people are reluctant to give up their email addresses without having a good sense of what they will get out of it.

A little more social proof could really help this landing page.

\- Maybe share an example of one of the questions so I can get a sense of what the contents are?

\- Who are the "java experts" who have contributed to these questions?

\- Do you have any testimonials from people who have been able to get a job with the help of these questions?</comment>


Britons abandon Facebook as usage plummets by more than a third - green-eclipse https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/07/06/exclusive-britons-abandon-facebook-usage-plummets-third/ <comment><AUTHOR> > The number of online interactions made on Facebook's mobile app in the UK > plummeted by 38pc between June 2018 and June 2019, according to the > analytics firm Mixpanel.

I find it hard to believe that Mixpanel has any kind of insight into this kind of information.

> Interactions, which occur when users click on a web link or advert inside > the Facebook app, declined in seven of the last 12 months, with an average > monthly fall of 2.6pc.

I think a more likely explanation of the decline is the following if all they're doing is tracking link clicks (I assume these are aggregate figures for all their clients):

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2018/01/11/f...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2018/01/11/facebook- focuses-news-feed-on-friends-and-family-curbing-the-reach-of-brands-and- media/#69089e8a5b69)

</comment><comment><USER2> "Mixpanel tracked impressions of linked content down significantly, likely meaning how people use Facebook has shifted very modestly."

Is a boring, but much less misleading title for this report. 30% declines would be unreal.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the past year, Facebook has significantly deprioritized article posts in the news feed and prioritized posts from friends (and ads). I wouldn't be surprised if the monthly active users stayed the same or increased over the past year, but the number of interactions (link clicks) fell.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there an unencumbered version of this story?</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to dump mongo data into Hadoop? - <AUTHOR>

I have a large amount of data in a mongodb database and I want to utilize apache hadoop (not mongo map-reduce) to analyze this data. Does anyone have suggestions/tutorials/etc. on what the best way to do this is? (i.e. export mongo data to the HDFS) <comment><USER2> I was at a meetup where the Foursquare data science team spoke about this problem. If I recall correctly, their solution was to have jobs that would take the data from Mongo and store it in flat files that would then be used by the Hadoop jobs. They found that the performance gained was worth the additional storage costs. They have a pretty well defined Hadoop process though so were able to optimize for it. If you plan on having a variety of Hadoop jobs it may not make as much sense.

Note that this information may be outdated so just treat it as a data point. I'm sure others will have better ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> i was looking at this presentation, but cant really make sense of the two slides on "BSON Data ..."

[http://engineering.foursquare.com/2012/06/22/our-hadoop- stac...](http://engineering.foursquare.com/2012/06/22/our-hadoop-stack-at- foursquare/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is this: [http://api.mongodb.org/hadoop/MongoDB%2BHadoop+Connector.htm...](http://api.mongodb.org/hadoop/MongoDB%2BHadoop+Connector.html)

And a generic connector as well: [http://blog.mongodb.org/post/29127828146/introducing- mongo-c...](http://blog.mongodb.org/post/29127828146/introducing-mongo- connector)

</comment><comment><USER4> Should be trivial since document stores are less relational and the data should be relatively isolated.

You really just need to learn the subject matter, there is no magical wand for loading data from one to the other.

You understand one, then you understand the other, then you understand how to port and grapple with the data.

Just start reading.</comment>


Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life? - <AUTHOR> Which books do you wish read when you were younger?
Alternatively:
Which books that you read while younger do you wish you'd followed more closely / taken to heart more? <comment><USER3> It's funny how western (probably American) HNers are mentioning the "how to succeed everywhere" books all over this thread. This is silly, methinks. I would mildly suggest those people to take a bit wider look at where they live and why they consider those books important to be read as early as possible.

For me, I don't regret about not having read anything, I'd rather regret about having read too much and nothing substantial at all at the same time. But regardless of the fact that I've read a ton of bulls*t books and virtually nothing fundamental, I don't see a need to catch up. No haste = no waste. We can live very productive, moral and full lives without reading anything.

<comment><USER4> Western civilization is based on merit and it is based on being very competitive. (It's true in your mates, your social standing, your financial situation, etc) That's the reason for the improvement books.

<comment><USER5> > Western civilization is based on merit

This is one of the larger falsehoods I've read in a while.

It's based on money, connections, favors, historical precedent and power. And it's not the only one.

<comment><USER6> The book Moneyball talks about this. Well I thought it would be about baseball, but it was kind of about our ability to judge merit. It's hard even in a measurement driven sport like baseball. Sports are arguably the purist meritocracy, yet scouts were routinely missing on their evaluation of talent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug, Second Edition

The book changed the course of my life. It allowed me to build a sustainable business, that at some point became my full-time job.

The magic of that book comes from the fact that it allows you to gradually develop a compassion. For your customers, prospects and all other living beings in this world.

Having that compassion embedded, you start to see a lot of subtle things. The most impactful experience for me was to comprehend that the world is a place full of pain and hardships. Not only for me, but for all others too.

Once you see it, you immediately understand there is plenty of space where you can bring the value to others.

But that's not all. The story does not end there. It turns out that bringing the value to others brings value to you.

People start to write you things like: "you are legend", "if you ever come to Chicago give me a call", "here take my money". And this is a tipping point where things start to work as a good business. It starts to shape your life. At some point it becomes evident that you should charge a prime for your product and develop the whole thing even further. While helping other living beings along the way.

That's an awesome position to be in. I thank Steve Krug, the author of the book, for bringing his findings to other people like me.

<comment><USER8> Would you recommend reading it even if not particularly interested in web usability?

<comment><USER7> Absolutely. The product I've made is not even web-based. Treat web usability just as an example; you can extrapolate the results to much wider areas of life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ask HN Threads with similiar topics/recommendations:

* Books you wish you had read earlier? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14477851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14477851)

* What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15155833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15155833)

* Books on specific topics that have applied to many areas of your life? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14477851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14477851)

* Books with a high signal to noise ratio? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10027102](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10027102)

<comment><USER10> Damn you! Geez, I downloaded 31 books yesterday from these lists. :-) As if I didn't already have a huge backlog from other book mentions on HN... So much great stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Four Hour Workweek. It showed me:

1\. How to make a business without "experience" 2\. A model of how to make an automated business

Changed my life and led me to create a mostly automated business that is still going seven years on.

Note: this book often rubs people the wrong way, and requires caveats.

The four hours refers to maintenance work, in my interpretation. I could maintain my business on four hours. But, it would gradually atrophy. So, I grow it. But, with the liberty to take a lof of time off, when I want.

For those allergic to Tim Ferriss, Start Small, Stay Small by Rob Walling is an excellent read.

But, the four hour week was the book that hit me like a ton of bricks and changed the course of my life.

The business, if anyone is curious: [https://lsathacks.com](https://lsathacks.com)

<comment><USER12> What it hit me the most is about what the worst thing that could happen if you try your venture, it blows my mind back then and it really boost my confidence. I'm guessing it's related to the author stoic perspective

<comment><USER11> I did the worst case scenario exercise he gave, exactly as described. Then I went on a long walk, decided to leave law school and try business.

I still have the paper I used.

Briefly, the exercise was:

1\. What's the worst case outcome of trying 2\. What steps can you take to mitigate it?

In my own case, it was taking a year off law school, and using up some savings + possibly needing to get a job before starting law school again. Not a giant risk. (Not zero, either, but having it quantified really helped)

The other part of the exercise was measuring the worst case against potential gain. In my case, it was permanent, long run freedom. Which, I got! So, well worth the risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A Short History of Nearly Everything

I read it at ~18 and can easily draw a direct line between it and going into research, but I wish I had read it a few years earlier and became interested in science sooner. Maybe I would've actually done my homework in high school.

<comment><USER14> I agree. This book changed my perspective. Up until I read this book, I largely accepted the stories told by my family and religion. It wasn't until I learned the painstaking work and effort that went into scientific research that I began to trust it. This book does a great job of describing some of science's greatest discoveries and the people behind the effort to uncover them. It's also lightweight and sort of fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A Mathematician's Lament, by Paul Lockhart. Also, i'm not completely sure about this, because i had to have my eyes a bit open to understand it. But would be nice to had readed it in my sixteens.

Basically, one of the important ideas i saved was; If you want to learn something, don't just simply study. First, find a problem that care you, then try to solve it, last, study how to actually solve it, maybe existed a better way that you could use for your next try, making easier to you to understand everything related to that problem and say with confidence you learned; maybe didn't existed a better way, and you can share and discuss your solution achieving a better one.

Find problems, solve them, make them easier, learn.

Then, make that general for all your life problems, not only those science related ones.

</comment><comment> alok-g Dale Carnegie, How to win friends and influence people. The book had opened my mind on how people react to criticism.

Human Relationships, Steve Duck. Relationships are so important in life, and not at all obvious for everyone, yet we are all left to ourselves on them.

<comment><USER16> From my standpoint, this is one of the most overrated books of all times.

I stopped reading it somewhere in the middle because it did not tell me anything new at all.

I understand we are all different and have our strengths and weaknesses, what is totally obvious to you is probably a new concept to me.

<comment><USER10> "Most overrated" \- means that you've heard from a lot of people who liked it a lot more than you, got a lot out of it.

I read a lot of movie user reviews on IMDb, and often people rant angrily about incredibly overrated movies, with the impression they're saying something about the movie and not about themselves. Maybe they feel smarter or better than the people who liked it. As if not being able to appreciate something is a virtue.

Anyway, why try to stop people reading a book millions have learnt something from?

<comment><USER16> > Anyway, why try to stop people reading a book millions have learnt something > from?

That was not my intention, to stop someone from reading it. I explicitly said that:

> I understand we are all different and have our strengths and weaknesses, > what is totally obvious to you is probably a new concept to me.

<comment><USER10> Sure, I understand. But a comment saying just "I learnt nothing from that book." wouldn't be worth posting on here, not substantive. People talking about overratedness sound like they're on a mission to right a wrong. I appreciated your change of tack; originally I had sentences in my previous comment saying your first sentence read like you wrote it before you read the book, and your third like you wrote it after, but I deleted them. :-)

It is fascinating though how the most common subject in lists like this on here seems to be _How to Win Friends_ and people saying it's great, other people saying it's overrated, not worth reading. Another thing I learnt from those movie reviews was that someone writing about why they love something is usually far more worth reading—is for much better reasons, says more about the thing—than someone not liking it, which often depends on arbitrary personal factors - not being advanced enough to appreciate it, being too advanced, feeling misled by the advertising or word-of-mouth, preferring or being used to a different style etc

<comment><USER16> I thought about my comment and also yours, you made think about why I wrote this.

I probably want other readers to remind that they should not blindly trust recommendations from HN.

Edit: If everyone agree's on something, new readers will more likely accept the fact that this book is worth buying, but if a few say the opposite, the reader has to evaluate before buying.

I once bought the book 'garry kasparov - how life imitates chess' because of HN reviews, It was probably the worst book I've ever read, full of obvious things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Right off the bat, here you go:

1\. The 7 habits of highly successful people (Stephen Covey)

2\. The Miracle Morning (Hal Elrod)

3\. Business Model Generation (Aelxander Osterwalder)

4\. The Art Of War (Sun Tzu)

5\. The E-myth, why most businesses don't work and what to do about it (Michel Gerber)

6\. Made In Japan (Founder of Sony, Akio Morita)

7\. How to win friends and influence people (Dale Carnegie)

Probably I missed a few more, but I think these ones are a good start.

<comment><USER18> Just to plus one - also really enjoyed "The Miracle Morning". Great way to think about structuring your day, and a short read. Earlier may or may not help, but should be read at a time when you are striving to improve yourself, but maybe not finding the success you wish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. It's astonishing to get useful, relevant advice on how to conduct yourself across two millenia. I recommend the translation by Gregory Hays, which removes the academic feel of other translations, and so makes them relevant and, at least in my case, actionable.

<comment><USER20> Couldn't agree more. This book truly deserves the "timeless" epithet. A book to revisit every few years at minimum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Count of Monte Cristo and East of Eden.

I'm happy to have had the chance to read these books twice (first in my early 20s, again in my late 30s), but I only wish I could compare my experiences with a first reading during my early teens or pre-teen years.

<comment><USER22> East of Eden...so good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Nine Hundred Grandmothers_ by R.A. Lafferty. Timeless and immortal: [http://www.conceptualfiction.com/nine_hundred_grandmothers.h...](http://www.conceptualfiction.com/nine_hundred_grandmothers.html)

Anything on vision therapy/improvement, e.g. [https://gettingstronger.org/2016/03/faq-for-vision- improveme...](https://gettingstronger.org/2016/03/faq-for-vision-improvement- by-hormetism/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Grit by Angela Duckworth [1].

I wish I read this back in my high school days. It's a different thing learning hard work and grit from a book than the constant "nagging" I get from my parents. The latter came in on my left ear and went out the right ear almost instantly. I was a lazy kid back then despite getting relatively good grades in school. I've learned to become grittier on my current day job (there's always something to fight for, especially as part of a startup riddled with uncertainties), but I kinda wish I could go back and pick this book up if it was available/released back then. Would have helped me better understand college applications too.

[1] - [http://a.co/gJnmxfR](http://a.co/gJnmxfR)

<comment><USER25> does her book talk down on you? every interview I've heard her on turned me off from wanting to even look at her book. also from her interview she cherry picks a lot of examples.

</comment></comment><comment> nils-m-holm The Stranger by Camus, because it introduced me to the complete lack of objectivism in society, a revelation that explained a lot of things I had experienced in my life. In fact I did read it in my 20's, but it took me years to comprehend it.

Then, every CS textbook I have written, because there was nothing like these when I needed them.

</comment><comment><USER26> Trust Me, I'm Lying by Ryan Holliday

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

I read both a couple years ago and was fascinated (and annoyed) by how many of the little tricks and tactics I recognized in sales, in the news, and really in every day life. Reading them didn't make me immune to any of it but now I'm aware and try to think more critically about what I see and hear.

<comment><USER27> another Cialdini fan!

You're going to love "How to lie with statistics"

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Anthem by Ayn Rand. It's really short and a tad trite but really made me rethink things. Still the only book I have read in a single sitting.

The Art of UNIX Programming. 10 years ago me really could have used it, feel like I wasted way too much time figuring out things this would have explained. Honestly I don't know if I had been ready to hear it though.

</comment><comment><USER29> Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity by David Allen. Whether as a recent graduate toiling with life decisions or as a recent graduate student juggling life, work, and school, I read this book about 2 to 5 years too late.

</comment><comment><USER30> "Letters from a Stoic" by Seneca

"The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins

"Deep Work" by Cal Newport

"Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond

<comment><USER31> +1 for The Selfish Gene, one of the best books I've read. If you have any interest in the process of evolution/natural selection, I highly recommend it. It's not as "political" or explicitly atheistic as some of Dawkins' more recent work either, so people who have a negative opinion of that sort of thing shouldn't be turned off by his name being on it.

<comment><USER32> It really is sad how many people would use a man's political leanings in the 2010s to dismiss the scientific book that made him famous in the 1970s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Godel, Escher, Bach. I hated math for most of high-school, but I read this book between semesters and it changed my career choice.

</comment><comment><USER34> The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

It changed the way I think and most of my existing ideas.

<comment><USER35> This book didn't exist until that long ago, so it doesn't seem like a fair choice for "I wish I had read this when I was younger".

<comment><USER36> In my opinion the goal of a thread like this isn't to share missed opportunities but to highlight potential opportunities for readers today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I read many books on philosophy, sociology, and tons of literature when I was young. I wish I would have read Algebra 1-3, Analysis 1-2, Mathematical Statistics etc.

<comment><USER38> I daresay the former stood you in better stead. There's enough time for learning statistics when you really need it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> there is something to be said for finding the right book at the right time.

<comment><USER40> ^ this. I read Paul Graham's, What You'll Wish You'd Known when I was in high school and it was like "okay great I get it" and only now after reading it again recently has it become "wow, now I feel it."

And for me it seems to boil down to feeling the message rather than knowing it. Someone can tell you to work out and stay in shape, but sometimes it takes hitting a personal low to make a permanent change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Meditations. Its passages have become a sort of canon for my life.

</comment><comment><USER42> 'Impro' by Keith Jonstone.

It appears, superficially, to be a handbook about the art of improvisation in theatre. But it's actually a book packed with wisdom about the ontology of creativity, the facilitation of learning, and how most human interaction is an interplay of "statua transactions".

The chapter on status is alone worth reading, and something I wish I were aware of as a younger man.

</comment><comment><USER43> Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

The Richest Man in Babylon - George Samuel Clason

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

This is such a beautiful thread!

</comment><comment><USER44> The Psychopath Code [1], by Peter Hintjens. You can download a free legal copy.

Psychopaths and sociopaths are out there: they're about five to ten percent of the population. Once you've had your life intertwined with one, you'll never see the world the same. Know how to identify them and deal with them.

I learned about Peter Hintjens and his book when his death was reported here on Hacker News.

[1] [http://hintjens.com/blog:_psychopaths](http://hintjens.com/blog:_psychopaths)

</comment><comment><USER45> Slaughterhouse-Five, Galapagos, Sirens of Titan

Basically, any Kurt Vonnegut book that isn't Cat's Cradle (good but overrated).

Bias note: I'm still young, but these shaped me easily.

</comment><comment><USER46> The Divided Self + The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise + The Politics of the Family - all by RD Laing

Civilization and its Discontents - <USER2>

Capitalist Realism - Mark Fisher

Gateless Gate - Mu-men? Very old Chinese mystical text that somehow resonated w me considerably..

Neuromancer - William Gibson

Snowcrash - Neal Stephenson

Inherent Vice (currently reading and enjoying a lot! - loved the movie so much I got the book but I think I enjoy the book way more even) - Thomas Pynchon

</comment><comment><USER47> I have 4:

-Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography - you can download it for free

\- Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell - A bit simplistic but it opens your eye to the fact that talent is a small part of being successful in whatever you want to achieve.

\- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie - You need people to succeed. Making enemies or just treating people indifferently is a bad move.

\- 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen R. Covey. People put it down because the advice seems to be common sense but it's only common sense if you know it but not everyone knows it.

\- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius- this is a lifelong guide. Read it until the pages fall apart and then get another and do the same.

All these books can be read multiple times and you'll learn something new so get hard copies if you can.

</comment><comment><USER48> Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

</comment><comment><USER49> Here's a brand new one, from a famous history podcaster, Mike Duncan of The History of Rome fame.

The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

It would have been great if everyone had read this in the 80s, 90s, 2000s...

An under-analyzed period of Roman history.

<comment><USER50> I'll echo Duncan's tHoR podcast. It is _really_ good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff. How much of what you read is really true?

</comment><comment><USER52> _Moby Dick_

I'm halfway through it. I'd held off on reading it for years just due to its reputation but I'm finding it incredibly enjoyable, humorous, and in many ways not at all what I was expecting.

<comment><USER53> I read it earlier in life, and I don't think I got as much out of it as if I'd read it later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I was so stubborn that any book, even one that foretold my exact future, would not have gotten through to me. Even now I struggle to impart any pearls of wisdom into my daily life.

</comment><comment><USER55> _The Fountainhead_ \- Ayn Rand

 _Atlas Shrugged_ \- Ayn Rand

 _The Selfish Gene_ \- Richard Dawkins

 _How To Win Friends And Influence People_ \- Dale Carnegie

 _The Game_ \- Neil Strauss

 _The Four Steps To The Epiphany_ \- Steve Blank

... among others.

</comment><comment><USER56> The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. An easily digestible summary of information and key figures in its history.

Turing's Cathedral (or as my brothers call it: Von Neumann's Cathedral). An awesome account of the history of computation, and the obstacles that had to be overcome.

Cryptonomicon. Hilarious

The Strangest Man, by Graham Farmelo. A biography of delightfully awkward Paul Dirac.

The Library of Babel, by Jorge Luis Borges. Thought provoking and profound.

</comment><comment><USER57> My five year old is a _voracious_ reader. I feel like this is one of the most important educational tools you can give anyone. We stress to her that if you can read, and comprehend, there's nothing you cannot learn. That's why I included the first two on this list.

How to Read a Book - Mortimer Adler

How to Read Slowly - James Sire

The Personal MBA - Josh Kaufman

The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham

Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

</comment><comment><USER58> "The Logic of Failure" by Dietrich Dorner. Sort of an applied "Heuristics and Biases".

"The Moral Animal" by Robert Wright. It unlocked the reasons why my impulses and aspirations were at such odds.

"The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin". Very practical advice for how to better oneself.

Caveat: Reading them earlier is one thing. Appreciating them is another.

</comment><comment><USER59> Capital by picketty, and Dictators handbook

</comment><comment><USER60> Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

It appeals to a certain type of thinker. For me, it was for confirmation that there was another individual in the universe whose brain worked like mine. This alone was a revelation, even aside from the book's profundity.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is ongoing practice: Zen mind, Beginner's mind [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Mind,_Beginner%27s_Mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Mind,_Beginner%27s_Mind)

</comment><comment><USER62> The Book and The Wisdom of Insecurity, both by Alan Watts. Then I could have inoculated myself from the myopic obsession with eco-consciousness promoted by the rest of the books in this thread.

</comment><comment><USER63> The Drunkard's Walk by Mlodinow. Really reshaped how I perceive what happens in the world, in my job, in my life in general.

</comment><comment><USER64> Technomanifestos by Adam Brate. I never had any introduction to the history of information technology until I read this book.

</comment><comment><USER65> * Total Freedom by J Krishnamurti

* Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

* Wit and Wisdom from Poor Richard's Almanack by Benjamin Franklin

* Influence by Robert B. Cialdini

</comment><comment><USER66> The one I'm about to finish: The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development [1]

Wish I had read this years ago! I think every developer can benefit greatly from understanding these principles. Plus if they were more widely known and adopted it would be easier to get other managers to go along with them.

[1] [http://amzn.to/2GL17hs](http://amzn.to/2GL17hs) (affiliate link)

<comment><USER67> I would give your post a lot more respect if it wasn't an affiliate link.

non affiliate link: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1935401009](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1935401009)

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> In Fifty Years, We'll All Be Chicks, by Adam Carolla.

I should have read fifteen years ago, but it hadn't been written yet.

</comment><comment><USER69> The Dice Man - Luke Rhinehart once you hand over your life to the dice, anything can happen

</comment><comment><USER70> The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. Debatable but opened up a new perspective for me.

<comment><USER45> Could you elaborate on the new perspective for you? What was the previous one?

I was intrigued by the title and looked up the book and found this review, and it seems to bring up some good points.

[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/102880724?book_show_ac...](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/102880724?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1)

<comment><USER70> I felt drowned in pessimism from media, culture, and family for most of my life up to that point, and this book opened up an optimistic perspective on global prosperity, health, violence, education, work, inequality, environment, etc. It makes rational arguments for this general optimism rather than hand- wavey optimism. I think it can be summarized as: "Things aren't so bad for the average human and are improving in most of the important ways. We've hit on patterns (science, markets, etc.) that seem to work, and we should continue to work at making things even better."

<comment><USER45> Thanks, appreciate the detail :)

I very much agree with that philosophy and would consider myself a rational optimist if I had to label, hence the intrigue.

While optimism is good, I think it needs to be paired with equally important perspective. As that review points out, the general trend doesn't mean we can't go backward for long periods of time in multiple areas. That optimism needs to be paired with a push for improvement over complacency, which I think is the easy comfort optimism can give.

Sorry if this is preaching to the choir, but hopefully someone gains value out of this.

Edited because I just trailed off in the middle of a thought on my first go round.

<comment><USER70> Just responded with a separate reply on the critique. I agree we have to be careful with excessive optimism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> A Mind for Numbers - Barbara Oakley

I spent a lot of time studying, but not learning effectively.

</comment><comment><USER72> "The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch

</comment><comment><USER73> Wish I read earlier:

The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

Musashi, by Eiji Yoshikawa

</comment><comment><USER39> the art of living - Epictetus, Sharon Lebell

</comment><comment> timellis-smith Fiction

War and Peace

Crime and Punishment

Count of Monte Christo

1984

God of Small Things

Paradise lost

Divine comedy

Non fiction

Selfish gene

Meditations

Madness explained (the best book I've encountered for explaining how the mind works)

The Red Queen

Tao te Ching

</comment><comment><USER74> Simulacra and Simulation

</comment><comment><USER75> "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion", by Sam Harris

</comment><comment><USER76> I wish I hadn't ever read Ayn Rand's books. They were a waste of time and a distraction for too many years. I'll say this though, I'm glad I grew up and I'm glad that when I got to the end of the Fountainhead I had already figured out what was wrong with her. If not for that, I wouldn't have recovered.

<comment><USER77> I've heard this, too. For those of us, like myself, that don't realistically expect to read her books, what was wrong with her and why do you regret reading them?

<comment><USER45> This links to a lot of good stuff:

[https://nintil.com/2016/04/09/why-ayn-rand-is-not-and- ought-...](https://nintil.com/2016/04/09/why-ayn-rand-is-not-and-ought-not-be- taken-seriously/)

As a philosophy / ethics person who has studied and read a lot of philosophers and never her, even from basic argument structures of hers there are fallacies galore that show no sign of being addressed.

I think the view is a magnet towards selfish people looking for justification of their views. I think her arguments, when viewed objectively (ironically), have the effect mentioned in the top level comment of pushing people away from the pitfall conclusions she makes.

<comment><USER78> An interesting counter argument:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/2014/05/13/ayn-rand-was-not-a-defender-of-the-rich/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


About "Qt offering changes 2020" - <AUTHOR> https://valdyas.org/fading/software/about-qt-offering-changes-2020/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is an excellent in-depth opinion piece on yesterday's Qt company announcement by one of the developers of Krita. It discusses, among other things, the inevitable forking of Qt 5.15 for an ongoing 5.xx open source version.</comment>


Engineer defends concept circular runway idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-39643292 <comment><USER2> As an airline pilot flying Boeing 757 and 767 I think this concept is really cool but it does overlook some fundamental principles of the unreliability of weather in order to be practical.

This week I have landed in variable winds gusting up to 45 knots and then every inch of wingtip clerance counts, a drawback of this design.

What if the aircraft makes a long landing (floats) and suddely faces a different wind component that subjects it to a tailwind.

Also, the full circle would only be useable on zero wind days which makes me wonder about the economical reality of having a large part of the pavement be unusable most days.

<comment><USER3> I am also a pilot. I'll add to this by explaining a couple of basic principles in flying aircraft.

The #1 reason this is a very bad idea is it is not compatible with flying what's called a stabilized approach, which is fundamental to safe landings. What this means simply is you fly your last (final) leg of approach on a straight line aligned with the centerline at a shallow glide angle. The moment before touch down you reduce engine power and flare (bring the nose up) and stall the wings just above the runway. If you are flying into a crosswind, you crab (fly with the nose angled into the wind to stay on centerline), then kick out of the crab angle just prior to touchdown (you control the rudder with foot pedals). A banked circular runway is totally incompatible with this. If you misjudge your approach a bit and land long, you miss the runway. You have to go from wings level to a banked turn at exactly the right moment. Lots of potential for things to go wrong. It's just a bad, unsafe idea.

Another reason this is bad, higher landing speeds. If you are flying in a banked turn, your wing will stall at a higher airspeed. Heavy aircraft already land fast, and anything that adds to that creates problems, wear on tires and brakes, etc.

These people also seem to be unfamiliar with basic geometry. A "circle-ish" runway configuration would do the job while retaining long straight runways. For example, just arrange eight runways in an octagon configuration, with the airport terminal etc in the center. If you have enough land area to work with, this is easy. The problem, of course, is that land in large metro areas is expensive, so you end up with compromises such as intersecting runways as you see at airports like San Francisco (SFO).

So while this may be fun as a flight simulator challenge, it is a bad, unsafe idea for the real world.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you need to "go from wings level to a banked turn at exactly the right moment" for this. There are two ways to make it work.

As proposed, the runway is banked. You bank your aircraft well above the runway surface. You fly above the runway, possibly following it as your holding pattern prior to landing. You can keep going around, banked already. When it is your time to land, you continue around in that bank and descend to the runway.

Alternately, it could be unbanked with straight landings. This makes the circle considerably thicker. Landing is quite normal, aside from the runway markings.

BTW, your "kick out of the crab angle just prior to touchdown" method may be standard, but it is pretty bad. The B-52 gets this right, with 4 pairs of wheels that touch the ground at the same time and are all capable of being rotated.

<comment><USER3> The whole point of a stabilized approach is to avoid unnecessary maneuvers in the final moments of flight, and to simplify decision making. Your approach is a straight in powered glide. If you like where you end up, you cut power, flare and land. If you don't like the situation, you apply full power and climb straight ahead, then turn according to the rejected landing procedure for the runway or ATC instructions.

What you describe needlessly adds complication to the approach, which adds risk, which will certainly result in accidents and fatalities. It's just a bad idea, and there is a reason airport designers never considered this (it is not as if the idea of banked curved roadways is new).

Sorry as a pilot, I can say this is not just a bad idea, it is a lethally bad idea. A fun simulator challenge, but not something that will work in the real world. If you are doubtful, I would suggest you try circling around a point in IFR conditions within 50' lateral tolerance above a circular runway. Be sure to add zero visibility and a 10-20 knot cross wind to simulate doing so in the clouds above the runway as you descend.

<comment><USER5> > Be sure to add zero visibility and a 10-20 knot cross wind to simulate doing > so in the clouds above the runway as you descend.

With a circular approach to a circular runway, aren't all winds cross winds (and, also, headwinds _and_ tailwinds)?

<comment><USER3> That was a trick suggestion. Also while dealing with flying the airplane, also be sure to keep track of whether the landing pattern is clockwise, or counter- clockwise, or was it clockwise, and which heading you are currently on and how that relates to your rejected landing turn in case you need it, which you probably will. I don't see what could possibly go wrong.

All I'll say is if I was the head of the programming committee for the air transport association conference, I would invite the designer to keynote, as comic relief.

<comment><USER4> I don't see why a human has to do this.

Even if they do, I don't see why it can't be done with an awareness system like the F-35 helmet. That would let you see the outline of the runway through arbitrary fog.

There is no special "rejected landing turn". You rise up just a bit, keep following the runway, and retry when you wish.

<comment><USER6> > I don't see why a human has to do this.

Because a human driving the plane has a vested interest in surviving the landing.

A person who writes buggy landing software, or an operator "piloting" it from the ground can get another job if they fail.

<comment><USER7> The Romans would put civil engineers underneath newly-built bridges, then march the army over. Very few low-quality bridges were built, and nobody built more than one low-quality bridge.

This sort of thing works for planes too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > If someone one hundred years ago would have said that we would be > transporting as many passengers in aircraft as we would in trains, people > may have thought , "a steam engine would never fit in an aircraft made of > wood and ropes".

That's such an eloquent way of highlighting the need for conceptualisation in engineering but also the struggle to convince others (investors perhaps) that you're not a complete nutcase when you think outside the box.

<comment><USER8> If you're struggling to convince others it's best to leave the Galileo fallacy out of your arguments.

Just because something was thought to be ridiculous in the past and now we know better, that doesn't mean that your seemingly ridiculous idea is just as misunderstood and underestimated as that other idea was at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Opposite Opinion: REALITY CHECK: CIRCULAR RUNWAYS [http://theavion.com/reality-check-circular- runways/](http://theavion.com/reality-check-circular-runways/)

<comment><USER10> Not to disagree with anyone, but just thinking out loud, some of those arguments seem valid only because the current means of flying assumes straight runways. Like the ones about how existing instrument systems and procedures, made for straight runways, will be inapplicable to circular runways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Under one of the original articles, in the comments section some military pilot pointed that lateral forces on big airliner on this runway would break the fuselage and gear of the plane. I'm disappointed that this argument wasn't addressed in todays article.

<comment><USER12> Given a radius of a curve and bank angle it is simple to calculate what the minimum required speed is to have 0 lateral force

<comment><USER3> If only airplanes all landed and took off at the same speed. Actual take off and landing speeds will vary depending on the aircraft's characteristics, fuel/passenger load, wind conditions, and density altitude (which varies depending on temperature and humidity). So the idea that you could build a runway with a bank angle that produces 0 lateral force for all aircraft is just not possible. Sorry.

<comment><USER13> Why couldn't the runway adapt to these conditions? Why not arrange gigantic superfast hydraulic jacks all along the track, to vary the runway's tilt, according to the needs of the current aircraft? Oh and very flexible and strong runway materials to handle the change in circumference. As long as there were no power failures, this would be a piece of cake.

Frankly, the circular design isn't ambitious enough, as initially proposed.

<comment><USER6> Yeah - make a huge rotating disc of a runway that rotates at a constant speed, so the pilot can stick the landing at whatever radius has an angular velocity equal to groundspeed.

Then slow down the disk enough to allow taxiing toward the center exit drain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm thinking if we ever figure out a way to reduce airport foot prints it could drastically drop housing costs. There are hundreds? Of acres of prime urbanish land.

Look at Boston for example. I wonder if they take the opportunity cost of having an airport there into the cost of flying? That land could be worth 100 billion??

<comment><USER15> It's a drop in the bucket if you look at the percentage it would add to total available land, and also considering that the ground isn't usually the most expensive part of construction, and that most airports are outside the cities they serve.

One interesting data point in that regard is Berlin's Tempelhof Airport (which you might remember from Indiana Jones 3). It's extremely central because it was one of the first commercial airports and was shut down a few years ago.

It's a park now and will probably remain–the plan to build even a few houses was killed by a referendum. It's also a really fascinating place, because it feels entirely unlike a normal park. There are very few trees, so it's much more open. The runways remain unchanged, and it's quite an experience to jog there, with all the history that place has seen always on your mind. ([https://email@example.com,13.3994616,3a,75y,279...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,13.3994616,3a,75y,279.09h,101.14t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-JSQQRTZZliQ%2FVgVCFvx_gYI%2FAAAAAAAABVs%2F5u0jXkkv8qQ3cr2XinPhV6iuJBez0G4vQCJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh4.googleusercontent.com%2F-JSQQRTZZliQ%2FVgVCFvx_gYI%2FAAAAAAAABVs%2F5u0jXkkv8qQ3cr2XinPhV6iuJBez0G4vQCJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no- pi-0-ya110.74613-ro-0-fo100%2F!7i8704!8i4352?hl=en))

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For any given approach, with a circular runway there's exactly one point tangent to the runway to land. Landing short or long isn't an option.

Things are conventional because they tend to work well. And part of working well is being resilient to errors and non-optimal situations.

</comment><comment><USER14> Im still suggesting my rho shape variant of this idea. You have a straight runway with enough distance to land but then have the circle for slowing down once landed.

<comment><USER16> That won't work. Normal small airports that only have one runway use the runway in both directions, depending on wind direction. You never land with a tailwind, and you never take off with one either. A rho shape wouldn't work here because the circle is only at one end, preventing bidirectional use.

<comment><USER14> But for larger airports it would.

<comment><USER16> I don't see how. I don't see how this would result in better land utilization at all. You could have a big circle around the airport (like in the original circular runway idea), with a bunch of straight "stems" protruding in all directions, which can then be chosen based on prevailing winds. Then airplanes can land on these stems and then enter the circle after their speed has greatly dropped, so it's really like a big circular taxiway of sorts. And departing planes can accelerate in the circle some, then proceed onto the appropriate stem and increase to take-off speed and take off. This might actually increase throughput, I dunno. However the land usage would be atrocious, because you probably aren't going to have any productive use of all that land between the stems, and the overall area used when you account for the maximum extent of the stems is going to be enormous. The traditional layout of having a number of parallel runways really makes more sense as far as land-use efficiency.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An Evaluation of Go and Clojure [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.colorado.edu/department/publications/theses/docs/bs/robert_stimpfling.pdf

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but slightly outdated, Go has made huge progress in the last year.</comment>


Elena Programming Language - <AUTHOR> https://elena-lang.github.io/ <comment><USER2> OK, we see a dynamic, late-binding, object-oriented, interpreted language with a VM.

If I were to try and make this language interesting to the HN audience, I'd start with two items:

* What is interesting in Elena, compared to Python?

* What is interesting in Elena, compared to ES6?

* For bonus points: What is interesting in Elena, compared to Smalltalk?

Without answering this questions, I don't see why I should take a look. And there must be some differences, e.g. around the concept of first-class messages, which apparently are related to Smalltalk.

<comment><USER3> The overview section in the programming manual perhaps answers the bonus question:

> _Why not to treat the message like a normal language element with which > different operations are possible : loading, passing, modifying, > dispatching? Could we do it without using reflection all the way?_

I don't know how the guts of smalltalk are implemented, but, if there's a lot of reliance on runtime reflection involved, then maybe there's your answer.

I _think_ , then, that the answer to the first two is, "It's like Smalltalk."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there anyone that doesn't immediately scroll past the elevator pitch to the code examples when looking at a new language?

<comment><USER5> Yep, that was the first thing I did.

For me, "Yeah it sounds cool, but let's see some code" is my usual response to new programming languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems the language (at least in implementation) is closely coupled with Visual Studio and Windows?

<comment><USER7> The website may be out of date; current binaries are supplied for Linux and Windows... but only x86 32-bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone describe a use-case for "first class messages"?

<comment><USER9> I think it's similar to partial function application. First class message is a partially applied function with some parameters bound and some "parameter holes" left unbounded. When the message is sent to a target, the rest of the parameters are filled in to build the full message to be sent.

In that case, complicate messages with lots of parameters can be pre-built with parameters partially filled in. The pre-built messages can then be repeatedly used subsequently.

I think that's how it works. OTOH, I could have completely misunderstood the first class message idea. Someone more familiar with the language can probably explain better.

<comment><USER10> Although, could this message thing not be modelled with lambdas taking remaining "holes" as arguments, "formatting" the message, which are given as arguments to functions?

The gain seems smaller than the gain from first class procedures, but it is an interesting idea, which might avoid some lambda wrapping in the code.

<comment><USER11> I don't think I have to explain this to you (hello fellow guiler!), but in a language with first class procedures and proper macros there doesn't have to be any lambda typing overhead.

I implemented "megacut" in guile, which is a clojuresque lambda shorthand: #%(+ %1 5 (* %2 4)) => (lambda (%1 %2) (+ %1 5 (* %2 4))) in about 30 lines of code (unhygienically, though, but that should be a small fix in a psyntax- based scheme)

<comment><USER10> Hehe, you are correct, indeed I did not think of macros in the moment.

We do have some megacut wrapping overhead then though ;)

Can you post a link to the macro on the Guile user list? Perhaps someone can rewrite it to a hygienic macro. Some people there very proficient in macrology. I am not that proficient in macrology.

I am also trying to maintain a list of libraries and things for Guile, which I could add this too.

<comment><USER11> I have written enough macros to be able to do it (among others, the guile-for- loops macros). There are some issues with a macro like this. I can make it quasi-hygienic by hygienically checking for megacut (right now I am just comparing symbols, as returned by datum->syntax).

Doing it in another way than "Any binding looking like %n and %& will be captured and shadowed" is pretty much unsolved using any standard scheme. I could probably hack something together using syntax-locally-bound-identifiers, but then I would have to implement local macro expansion (which is possible. I'm just lazy!).

The link is [https://hg.sr.ht/~bjoli/megacut/](https://hg.sr.ht/~bjoli/megacut/)

Btw, the link for guile-for-loops should be updated in your list: [https://hg.sr.ht/~bjoli/guile-for-loops](https://hg.sr.ht/~bjoli/guile-for- loops)

<comment><USER10> Thanks! I'll get to it later : )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > ELENA supports rich set of object-oriented features:

> abstract classes, interfaces, singletons, class constants,

> named constructors, variadic methods / constructors and

> class extensions.

Half of these are anti patterns that I appreciate other languages (Go, Rust) leave out (non-virtual inheritance, singletons, ...). Elena announcing them as features makes me wary.

</comment><comment><USER13> Front page doesn't say whether it has obligate GC, which nowadays I guess means yes.

<comment><USER14> I can't imagine a modern language without GC. So yes, it has. Destructors are not yet implemented,though I do plan them.

<comment><USER13> I can. Do you consider Rust not modern?

Destructors are usually hard to support cleanly in the presence of obligate GC. Given destructors, GC turns out to be unnecessary. Lacking destructors, managing non-memory resources becomes foolishly difficult, particularly across library boundaries.

<comment><USER14> as much as I can see, Rust is a special case. So I mean most of the modern languages. After all I consider C++ modern as well :)

<comment><USER13> OK then! I will be interested to see how destructors are reconciled with GC.

Where I have seen GC used in C++ runtimes, it is confined to specific, graph- like structures, where tracking cycles would be messy; or provided to obligate-GC languages being interpreted. In both cases it is always clear whether an object's lifetime is tracked, and the C++ runtime does not see the objects.

<comment><USER14> I know there are problems with destructors. That's why I didn't implement them yet. But in C# they do exist. And after all you may always use explicit finalizers. I don't think that it makes the concept of obligate-GC invalid.

But after all I don't care much. I'm more interested in other parts of language designs :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From a quick read-through of the docs, I really love that the language is providing a fresh take on things without the super-junior promise of trying to "solve everything". I'm impressed and will take a closer look.

</comment><comment><USER16> "A variable name can contain any UTF-8 symbols (except special ones, white- spaces; the leading character cannot be a digit) and is case-sensitive."

This is terrible.

<comment><USER17> How is this terrible? Isn't this pretty standard in all big languages?

<comment><USER18> I know you can use emoji as variables in Ruby. Unsure if you can in Python.

Imo it's fine to allow Unicode. Latin will still be the de facto standard character set, but it allows international users to code natively and allows for Easter eggs.

<comment><USER19> Since PEP 3131 ([https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3131/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3131/)) Python supports unicode in names, but only letters, not emoji. I have occasionally used variable names like ϕ when transcribing a formula in toy code.

The unicode is normalized. That can be used for trickery in rare circumstances. "global" is a keyword, but "𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥" isn't, so you can use that if you absolutely require an attribute called "global".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From a PL design perspective, I'm interested in finding out what new ideas it introduces to an already crowded field?

Rust is good example of a PL design that introduces new concepts (around ownership.)

Pony is another good example of PL design, for the same reason as Rust, but it differs in important ways by introducing Reference Capabilities. I tried to get some attention to it the other day: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24201754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24201754)

What new ideas does Elena introduce?

<comment><USER21> I heard a good podcast about pony recently: [https://corecursive.com/055-unproven-with-sean- allen-1/](https://corecursive.com/055-unproven-with-sean-allen-1/) \- it's about how Wallaroo Labs came to use it. They talk about using it to deal with some really interesting engineering challenges. One of the things that I found interesting is their comparison to Rust was that at least at the time Rust didn't have a comparable runtime to Pony's high performance actor based one.

<comment><USER22> It's a shame Pony does not get enough attention as it's a very nice language that as you say, introduces truly innovative ideas.

I wrote some code in it and it was extremely fast, in the same order of magnitude as Rust/C. But it was quite complex to write, unfortunately, compared to the Rust version (which also guarantees no deadlocks and safe concurrency). On the other hand, the code looked quite a lot prettier due to its Python-like syntax.

Anyway, it's one of those tools I keep in the shed, hoping to one day find a good use for it... just hope it continues evolving (specially running Actors on multiple machines would be a real killer feature - making Pony like a typed Erlang with beautiful syntax).

<comment><USER23> Any language with an explicit `end` keyword can't claim beautiful Python-like syntax :P

Pony is still pretty cool though

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> TLDR; >Supported platforms

>

> Windows

> Linux

Sorry guys, not for me ...

</comment><comment><USER25> New languages would better be written on the JVM or at least on the coreclr, otherwise they loose all hopes of seamless interoperability with existing production ready ecosystems and therefore loose most hope of success.

<comment><USER23> It seems like languages which compile to C have better interoperability, nearly all mainstream languages have some form of C-FFI

JVM languages are in a silo off to the side where they only interop with each other</comment></comment>


In Brain's Electrical Ripples, Markers for Memories Appear - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/in-brains-electrical-ripples-markers-for-memories-appear <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625817)</comment>


Removing Fish from a Surreal Abandoned Shopping Mall - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015/01/removing-fish-from-a-surreal-abandoned-shopping-mall/384569/

<comment><USER2> The number of fish swimming past the escalator each minute could be modeled as a random variable with a Poisson distribution.

<comment><USER3> Can someone please explain this joke to someone not versed in statistics?

<comment><USER4> Siméon Denis Poisson was a French mathematician.

Poisson is French for "fish".

<comment><USER3> Bah! Should've seen that. Nice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks more like harvesting rather than relocating the fish.

<comment><USER6> Technically they are being relocated, probably several times.

<comment><USER7> Seems like an immense waste of money for a country that would have no problem doing a big fish fry for the community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if the fish actually ended up helping with the mosquito population?

<comment><USER5> Yes they would. Tilapia fries would definitely eat mosquito larvae in the water. There were likely smaller species like guppies that would totally keep the mosquitos in check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Something I always wondered whenever I saw pictures of that mall is _why_ was it abandoned. I've turned to google multiple times but there doesn't seem to be anything about it.

<comment><USER10> It is stated in the linked article:

"Located in the city's Banglamphu district, Thailand's Supreme Court ordered a partial demolition of the shopping center in 1997 when judges determined that seven of the 11 floors were built illegally"

There have been other large retail collapses in Asia[1] so it is good to see this happen.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampoong_Department_Store_colla...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampoong_Department_Store_collapse)

<comment><USER11> What part of it exactly makes it illegal? Is it some missing permits or code violations that make it unsafe that would be cost prohibitive to correct?

<comment><USER12> I would guess not built to code, or perhaps missing things like fire escapes.

Probably sub standard building material or technique, given that it was ordered to be demolished instead of retrofitted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's incredible to see the escalation of global mall closings in recent years. There is a huge opportunity hidden therein. Thanks for the ::goodnews.

</comment><comment><USER14> How were they able to keep the water inside the mall?

<comment><USER15> I am only guessing, but I think it is implied in the article: With the rainy weather common to southeast Asia and an open roof, the mall just became a basin of water, fantastic for breeding mosquitos. Unable to remove the water (or prevent water from entering), enterprising locals stocked the basin with fish to eat the mosquitos.</comment></comment>


Brands and Advertisers need to care about wearable tech - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/cdaadd177f38

<comment><AUTHOR> "Wearable tech will disrupt mobile."</comment>


Which job to chose?(have 2 hours) - <AUTHOR> Maybe you guys can help me out... Been learning ruby for a few months. Go looking for job. Have 2 choices - Junior at ruby comapny or internship at python company. Still dont have offer from ruby, but have from python and python is pressing me to accept so i have 1-2 hours. Friends at python company, so i know good crew, but more chill. Ruby team is 4 ppl and python is big company and i dont know if ruby team is good, but more money as junior. What do? <comment><USER2> If you are starting I think it really doesn't matter, I like Ruby and did for a long time, but if you like the Python company and you say is bigger and you have friends there, then you should probably go for that offer. Plus Python is a nice language to learn too.

This is very important: Money should not be your priority at this stage, go for the company where you think you can learn the most, later you can find a better job or even consult, as you'll gain a lot of experience.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> This is good advice. I'm a biased Pythonisto. Keep in mind that Python is used for much more than web stuff. Ruby is quite a bit more boxed in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> choose anything. It won't matter that much. JUST DO IT.</comment>


What Makes Us Fat: Is It Eating Too Much Or Moving Too Little? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/08/04/336337337/what-makes-us-fat-is-it-eating-too-much-or-moving-too-little <comment><USER2> Usually either or both: Calories In > Calories Out</comment>


Microsoft's acquisition of  Skype is a done deal - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.skype.com/en/2011/10/acquisitionclose.html

<comment><USER2> Any update on Skype's stock-options scandal ([http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/26/skypes-worthless- employee-s...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/26/skypes-worthless-employee- stock-option-plan-heres-why-they-did-it/)) ?

I can't find any recent news. Did some employees fight back?

</comment><comment><USER3> I am hoping that Microsoft will roll out a virtual PBX system based on Skype. Where employers will get a separate account for that organization. Advantages of this offering would be,

* Zero setup cost. Architecture is already built. No need for setting up complex telephony system.

* Reliability. No questions about that. It is so much reliable that even news channels like BBC and Aljazeera arrange video conferencing with Skype.

* Security. From the first day Skype was focused on security of their phone calls/connection. It's P2P architecture also leverages that.

* Able to call everywhere. With Skype you can make phone call to major countries. They have contracts with telcos in many countries.

* Cross platform. Skype is available for windows,linux,OSX, Android, iPhone, Symbian. I mean virtually every platform. It is a great advantage.

Also it is a very good brand name known to everyone. Overall I think Skype is a great purchase deal for Microsoft.

<comment><USER4> I thought that's what Microsoft Lync was - <http://lync.microsoft.com>

<comment><USER3> Yes that's right. But if Microsoft embeds the brand of Skype instead of live it has good chance to attract more businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see a big box telling me to install Silverlight. Seriously?

Can't wait for the next Skype for Linux release.

<comment><USER6> It took me a while to realise it wasn't a screenshot he was using in the post.

<comment><USER7> I have to admit I didn't realize it wasn't a screenshot until I came here to see what people's comments were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hopefully they will announce a Kinect enabled version of skype soon. That would be a killer application aimed at taking the bite out of Cisco's consumer business.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't know what it is, but ever since this started, they were updating more and more - and it wasn't getting better. I've had more dropped calls, more connection problems, more updates I don't want, plugins I didn't ask for and generally been less satisfied with skype as a product. I just noticed in the newest version they automatically put on my computer that I can't even adjust the volume of my calls anymore.

<comment><USER10> Out of curiosity, what OS are you using? I'm on OSX Lion and I have found that lately, the quality and reliability of my Skype calls has increased significantly. I haven't had a dropped call or poor voice quality in a long time, whereas problems used to be quite frequent. Of course, it could just be that I've hit a lucky streak or that the problems were more related to my ISP.

<comment><USER9> Windows XP/7. ISP is generally pretty bad (comcast) but no more than usual, and this has been a long trend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If only this gets integrated with the windows phone, I will be so happy. With the FB chat integration I have already dropped my sms plan as most of my messaging is now via FB. If I get skype, I will go on bare minimum voice plan too.

<comment><USER12> Ditto on the WP7 integration, think it would be a killer feature. Would fit perfectly with the model they've taken with 3rd party platforms; merging account details from multiple sources (e.g. twitter, facebook), so click on a contact and "Call with Skype", rather than going into a seperate app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very interesting how many Apple products are in their video about the merger - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ByWVVovdDg>. I'd imagine plenty of Apple products would naturally be in use on Skype's campus, but seems like Microsoft would have wanted to play up the PC part of the equation, making Windows look essential to Skype's success. Perhaps they're trying to reassure people that Skype will stay cross-platform?

</comment><comment><USER14> The infographics data is deceptive.

1.8 Billion Minutes of Video calls (All people minutes on skype for year); 916 hours of movies made per year (movies made by production house); 9 years of average time spent on watching TV (Time spent by a single consumer)

How these things are related are beyond my understanding. It looks like somehow the 1.8 Billion had to be made appear bigger , so they put some filler data along with it.

<comment><USER15> If they compared it to "Minutes spent on cellphone/landline" it wouldn't look quite so impressive.

I did a quick look for some statistics on cellphone/landline usage, but I'd expect it's a few added 0's on the end of Skype usage still.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is great because it means google voice is going to be free for years.

</comment><comment><USER17> 42% of calls are video. Impressive trend. This is the drive for Skype's high valuation.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wouldn't be surprised if it gets packaged into windows/office.

<comment><USER19> coming soon, skype editions, starter with no video, professional up to 2 people, enterprise, and 90 days trial edition.

<comment><USER20> and all current skype will be called skype express, with 5 minutes call limitation.

<comment><USER19> or skype name will be changed to, microsoft windows video and call manager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How ironic would it be if the catalyst for an actual decent Linux Skype client is Skype being bought by Microsoft!

...not that I'm holding my breath.

</comment><comment><USER22> I still have Skype 2.8 and refuse to update, because even before Microsoft got involved, the newer versions of Skype were so inconsistent in communicating with other versions of Skype.

But lately, I've noticed Skype freezing on opening. It's probably my 3 year old MacBook Pro, but I like to think it's Microsoft somehow. :)

</comment><comment><USER23> So I guess Skype for Android will never get Video on my Galaxy Tab :-(

<comment><USER24> Skype on my Galaxy Tab already does video. The problem is that it only uses the rear camera. So you can see the person you are talking to and they can see your feet or you can show your face but can't see any of the controls or the person you are talking to. Maybe a periscope would work :)

<comment><USER23> Galaxy Tab 10.1?

<comment><USER24> Original 7"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Social Networks Are Eating The World - <AUTHOR> https://globality.be/blog/Social-Network-Are-Eating-The-World

<comment><USER2> I was interested until I realised they were selling me something.

<comment><USER3> I just signed up for free. They're not charging anything at the moment at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So friggen true: "If social networks are eating the world, then they are serving up fast-food-style, processed connections."

</comment><comment><USER5> How did this make our to number one position?

<comment><USER6> I'm not positive I understand your question, but it only has 9 points. New posts are scattered on the front page so they can get some traction (or downvotes) initially, so the fact that it was at the top at one point has little significance.</comment></comment>


At Behest of Judge, U.S. Shortens Man's 57-Year Mandatory Sentence - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/nyregion/at-judges-behest-us-shortens-mans-57-year-mandatory-sentence.html

<comment><AUTHOR> _Prosecutors offered him an 11-year plea deal that he turned down after his lawyer persuaded him that he would be acquitted at trial. Mr. Holloway lost.

For the first conviction on the gun count, the law required Mr. Holloway to receive five years. But for the second and third convictions, the law required 20 years for each one, served consecutively, in accordance with the stacking requirement."_

I frequently hear an argument from people on HN who insist that Aaron Swartz did not face a long prison sentence, and that the use of "stacking" makes it seem longer than it really is.

Here's a counter example of stacking resulting in a long prison sentence.

Also - more on the use of "Stacking" by federal prosecutors:

[http://rt.com/usa/swartz-computer-law-cfaa-010/](http://rt.com/usa/swartz- computer-law-cfaa-010/)

<comment><USER2> I've made that argument, but I feel compelled to point out that the vast majority of stacking/mandatory sentencing provisions apply to violent crimes, and exist specifically to deter violence and the use of weapons in commission of crimes, as well as to deter drug crimes (which is not to say that this deterrent effect works in practice - I don't think it does, much).

I'd be happy to discuss this but we need to refer to some better source than Russia Today, whose journalistic standards are execrable. Take this quote for example...

 _The CFAA, said Auernheimer, was written and approved by then-President Ronald Reagan "at a time when he was so senile" that he thought Hollywood's interpretation of compute hackers was an accurate portrayal._

Reagan signed the CFAA, but the idea that he wrote it is ludicrous. Then again, Weev loves to troll.</comment></comment>