2 out of 3 GitHub forks are completely empty - cool-RR http://blog.garlicsim.org/post/4472104984/2-out-of-3-github-forks-are-completely-empty

<comment><AUTHOR> Just because the repository is empty doesn't mean the forkers didn't modify the code. I've forked many a project, modified it locally, and not pushed it back up for a variety of reasons not limited to: laziness, abandonment, and shameful code that somebody would likely write a scornful blog post about. ;)

<comment><USER2> I've done this too. Let's me create a github repo where "master" is fixed at a known version (to me) and I can clone it to any machine without worrying about remembering a the hash for the tag I want. I can push/pull at will and merge in changes from upstream whenever I desire. Sometimes local changes stay local, sometimes they get pushed out.

Github and Bitbucket aren't only for working on code with other people, they also let us consume projects at the rate that we want to consume them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately, this "research" is flawed. If you pull in changes just right, the network view does not show the forks as branch off. I believe cherry- picking commits does this, and rebasing onto those commits may also do the same. Feel free to correct me, but that's been my personal experience.

<comment> cool-RR So... someone could make a fork, contribute code, and then not have his name shown on the Network view? Does this happen to actual contributors?

<comment><USER4> The network view is not really intended to give a complete list of all contributors. It is intended to show the network of the different branches/forks. And it shows only a small time window (starting with the most recent time). So if there were commits earlier by other people and they were merged in, you will probably not see them.

I think under commits, the contributors list should be the requested information.

<comment> cool-RR I'm pretty sure that the Network view is complete. I have around 3,000 commits over 2 years and they're all listed in my Network view:

<https://github.com/cool-RR/GarlicSim/network>

<comment><USER3> Thats not the same as you pulling in the commit in some way that obscures the contribution. I've done so on quite a few repositories (and I have enough repositories that all sorts of git nonsense has been tried). The big thing I try to conserve is attribution; I am not always the author of a changeset and I like to give credit where credit is due.

That said, you can also delete a commit from the Network view by issuing the command "git push -f". So no, I can't credibly say all your commits are listed, although I would hope you don't commit that unholy sin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think some people fork because they just want a copy of it in case it goes away. That's what I've been told at least.

<comment><USER6> Last I remember, on Github, when you delete a repository any forked repositories are also deleted.

<comment><USER7> Really?! That seems incorrect. I don't want my code disappearing because someone deleted their repository.

<comment><USER6> Well let's test it. <https://github.com/jonursenbach/fork-this>

Fork it, commit something to your fork and I'll delete my repo.

<comment><USER8> challenge accepted: <https://github.com/issackelly/fork-this/file-edit/>

<comment><USER6> Deleted my repo. Looks like your fork is still alive and no longer marked as a fork.

<comment><USER8> confirmed</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


U.S. court orders Symantec to pay $17 mln for patent infringement - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/06/us-iv-symantec-verdict-idUSKBN0LA2IF20150206 <comment><USER2> The plaintiff was Intellectual Ventures, the giant "Non-practicing Entity" founded by Microsoft Millionaire Nathan Mhyrvold. I.V. had apparently purchased the patents in question, not even inventing them itself.

It's not relevant to infringement, but what was the nominally infringed-upon idea? What did Symantec do to infringe? Did Symantec invent this "I.P." independently or actually rip off I.V.? That would also be a first, probably.</comment>


Stop Firefox leaking data about you - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amq/firefox-debloat <comment> dao- Seems like lots of FUD; how do Firefox Hello, Pocket and Geolocation "leak data about you" if you don't explicitly use them? How do DRM and Reader mode leak data at all?

Also, Safe Browsing, DRM, Search suggestions, Telemetry and Health report can be disabled in the preferences UI. Don't need sensationalist about:config protips for that.

<comment><USER2> Also, from the description of the Safe Browsing feature (as linked on the above page), it seems that it _doesn 't_ actually send (and thus leak) URLs; rather, it _downloads_ a blacklist from Google periodically (~30min), and checks URLs against it _locally_... [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how- does-phishing-and-m...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does- phishing-and-malware-protection-work#w_how-does-phishing-and-malware- protection-work-in-firefox)

(Though, for _file downloads_ , some meta information seems to be sent if I'm reading correctly.)

<comment><USER3> Note that it does indeed recheck against the remote copy on a blacklist hit.

So Google could indeed easily track URLs by adding it on the periodic check and then returning false on the specific check.

<comment><USER4> I'm quite late with this, but this is incorrect. At no time is the URL sent to Google; in fact, at no time is even the _hash_ of the full URL sent to Google. I'd suggest you re-read the safebrowsing protocol.

As ploxiln notes, if a hit is found with a matching prefix to the (canonicalized) URL, a request is made for all hashes of URLs beginning with that hashed prefix. The hash of the current URL can then be checked against that list locally.

<comment><USER3> I was oversimplifying, sorry. You are correct that the URL isn't ever explicitly sent.

However.

Generally there are only one or two URLs that start with the hash prefix that _is_ explicitly sent to Google. Which means in practice it may as well be leaking the actual URL to Google.

Especially as there are multiple hashes per URL (5 worst-case?).

If Google wants to track a URL, they can do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another thing worth noting is that if you are using Debian-rebranded Firefox (Iceweasel), you have a very unique user agent that is easy to track.

There is a bug opened ([https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=748897](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=748897)), but as far as I know, no simple solution exists yet. You can change the user agent with an extension to keep it identical with the most popular Firefox version, but then you have to manually keep it up-to-date.

<comment><USER6> If you don't want edit manually user agent, oscpu and platform in "about:config" then blender can do it for you: [https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/blender-1/](https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/blender-1/)

EDIT: seems that this extension need to be updated, sorry...

But I don't know, if you allow javascript maybe you will leak your real user agent?

I like to switch between iceweasel and seamonkey, and I'm "proud" of my different and unique user agent :) Speaking of privacy, actually I'm more concerned about referer, third-party sites, content delivery networks and so on.

<comment><USER7> > But I don't know, if you allow javascript maybe you will leak your real user > agent?

The user-agent provided to JavaScript is the same one sent via HTTP.

<comment><USER6> Good to know, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems like a bad idea turning off phishing notifications and browser warnings

[http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.safebrowsing.enabled](http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.safebrowsing.enabled) Firefox 2.0 incorporates the Google Safe Browsing extension in its own Phishing Protection feature to detect and warn users of phishy web sites.

<comment><USER9> I think using a blocker extension like uBlock Origin restores (at least partially) this functionality without involving Google.

<comment><USER10> Right, but then you're just changing _who_ you leak data to, you're not stopping the leak.

EDIT: wow, downvotes? Getting a list from EasyList is just as much a leak as getting a list from Google. _Someone_ has your IP either way.

<comment> glass- > Getting a list from EasyList is just as much a leak as getting a list from > Google. Someone has your IP either way.

The problem with SafeBrowsing isn't downloading the list, it's that it sends data back to Google if it finds a match. Malware lists with AdBlock plugins don't do this.

<comment><USER10> My understanding was that Google's malware list is a two prong approach:

      1: An all-in-one lump download of blacklists
      2: Optionally, "Enhanced" also sends hashed URLs to Google in case specific sub-pages aren't on the list, etc

Easylist, of course, only offers #1. Firefox, by default, uses both, which is less private, but seemingly still configurable to use only #1.

Citations:

[http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/safebrowsing/faq.html](http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/safebrowsing/faq.html)

[https://developers.google.com/safe- browsing/firefox3_privacy...](https://developers.google.com/safe- browsing/firefox3_privacy_faq)

[http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=124878.0](http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=124878.0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mozilla has an annoying pattern of removing items from the user preferences to "avoid user confusion", an excuse companies often use when deceiving customers. (Example: Microsoft dropping the "RT" designation. [1]) "Accept/reject third-party cookies", for example, doesn't always appear in the preferences any more.

Mozilla's new "social" features don't have a turn-off option in the Preferences. You can disable them by going to "about:config", creating the tag "social.enabled" (it doesn't even exist by default) and it to False. Mozilla provides no easy way to do that. This add-on takes care of those convenient little omissions.

Obviously, Mozilla is doing all this to tie users to their mothership and make it harder for them to leave. It's not like users were crying out for "Pocket" integration in the browser.

[1] [http://www.winbeta.org/news/surface-2-no-longer-has-rt- brand...](http://www.winbeta.org/news/surface-2-no-longer-has-rt-branding- attempt-avoid-customer-confusion)

<comment><USER12> Yeah, Google never does this with their interfaces (/sarcasm)

<comment><USER13> OP said nothing about Google. What Google does isn't necessarily relevant to what Mozilla does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Don't forget about this;

"media.peerconnection.enabled = false" WebRTC leaks IP when you use TOR/VPN, test it with ipleak.net

"beacon.enabled = false" Blocks [https://w3c.github.io/beacon/](https://w3c.github.io/beacon/) analytics.

Also recommend using plugins; uBlock, NoScript if you use VPN.

<comment><USER15> How can WebGL leak your IP? Did you confuse it with WebRTC?

<comment><USER14> Yes sorry ^_^ I meant WebRTC :) Edited!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Please for the love of god _do not_ disable the Google SafeBrowsing preferences. SafeBrowsing protects you from a lot of malicious websites, and does not leak much information to Google. For most people the security benefits of SafeBrowsing far outweigh the privacy concerns.

It is important to remember that malicious websites and malware in general may negatively impact your security and privacy in extremely harmful ways (malware compromises PII, website credentials, financial information, uses webcam and microphone to photograph/film/record you from blackmail/revenge porn purposes, ...)

For context, please see these relevant Mozilla bugs about SafeBrowsing privacy concerns: [0], [1]. tl;dr Firefox must set a cookie for SafeBrowsing, but it uses a separate cookie jar for SafeBrowsing so Google cannot tie the Safebrowsing activity to anything else you do related to Google or their services (which is the biggest concern here). They can learn a limited profile of your browsing activity, along the lines of "Random user x often uses their browser between 9am and 5pm on M-F".

The Safebrowsing implementation is specifically designed to be privacy- preserving. [2] It uses a Bloom filter to implement fast lookups in a minimally sized hash table of known malicious URL's. The only time a full URL (actually various _hashes_ of multiple prefixes of the full URL, including the full URL) that you browse it sent to Google is when a prefix of it collides with a known malicious URL, in which case the URL must be sent to Google to resolve the question of whether the URL you are trying to visit is actually malicious or just a false positive from the Bloom Filter. Yes, the hashes are unsalted so it would be possible for Google to check if you were trying visit some pre-determined URL ("were they trying to visit www.thoughtcrime.org?") but only if it collided with a known malicious URL.

It would be helpful to know what the average rates of collisions and false positives are to get a sense of how much of an average user's browsing history is leaked to Google through Safe Browsing - can anybody from Google comment?

[0]: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255) [1]: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=897516](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=897516) [2]: [https://code.google.com/p/google-safe- browsing/wiki/SafeBrow...](https://code.google.com/p/google-safe- browsing/wiki/SafeBrowsingDesign)

<comment><USER17> _Please for the love of god do not disable the Google SafeBrowsing preferences. SafeBrowsing protects you from a lot of malicious websites, and does not leak much information to Google. For most people the security benefits of SafeBrowsing far outweigh the privacy concerns._

I would never disable it for my mom, or any non technical friends. But I would hope the majority of HN users are pretty good at spotting, and steering clear of malicious websites.

<comment><USER16> They're _designed to trick you_ , so I don't think any population, no matter how sophisticated, should trust themselves to correctly identify malicious websites 100% of the time.

Additionally, some sites may potentially contain exploits that run as soon as you visit the site (vulnerabilities in plugins like Java or Flash, drive-by downloads, etc.) in which case it doesn't matter if you correctly identify the website as malicious and hit the "Back" button - it's already too late. Much better to avoid loading the content at all, which is exactly what is achieved with SafeBrowsing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How exactly does reader.parse-on-load.enabled leak privacy? Isn't everything parsed locally?

<comment><USER10> I too am curious about this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> While visiting google every 30 minutes or so is a way of leaking, you aren't leaking much more than ip and the fact that this up is in Firefox.

Isn't reader an offline functionality?

<comment><USER3> You're missing that any blacklist hits are rechecked against Google.

So it leaks a heartbeat, _and any hits against the blacklist_.

<comment><USER19> Is that new? Back when they started implementing they were saying that the did it as privately as possible, so that google couldn't track your browsing. It seems unnessecary. You do t get hits very often, so they could just redownload the entire list when there is a hit if they feel like double checking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't forget about WebRTC: [https://github.com/diafygi/webrtc- ips](https://github.com/diafygi/webrtc-ips)

If you have WebRTC enabled, any website can determine _both_ your local IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.1) and your globally-addressable IP address. The combination of these is essentially unique, and can even be better than cookie tracking or browser fingerprinting.

It's possible to disable WebRTC in Firefox, but AFAIK not in Chrome/Chromium[0].

As for Firefox Hello and Pocket integration, you can turn these off if you want, but I'm 99% certain that they don't actually send any data about you unless you actually use them.

[0] [https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/gJ8HF-...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/gJ8HF- yoG-Y)

<comment><USER21> You're really not going to like IPv6 are you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Recommends turning on Firefox's built-in tracking protection[0] (which matured in Firefox 37 or so), but has anyone compared this to uBlock? I guess the first thing to measure would be number of trackers blocked, but then of course memory and CPU usage would be interesting as well. uBlock has done this comparison[1] against AdBlock Plus, Disconnect, etc, so it would be very interesting...

[0] [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection- fir...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-firefox)

[1] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/#performance](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/#performance)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Important changes:

\- Reader mode is confirmed not leaking data. No need to disable it.

\- There is a way to stop leaking the browser history to Google while keeping Safe Browsing.

* both tested using Fiddler

</comment><comment><USER23> Most of these are enabled automatically with Tinfoil:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/tinfoil/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/tinfoil/)

[https://github.com/cohjam/tinfoil](https://github.com/cohjam/tinfoil)

</comment><comment><USER24> I guess there is a similar howto on various opt-out settings in Google account itself?

[https://history.google.com/history/](https://history.google.com/history/) and [https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements](https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements) etc.?

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't know but the DRM stuff is actually cool with me. I guess you can't convince the lawyers of nearly all media to turn on DRM for a few decades to come. But I still want to use things like Netflix. With the new DRM stuff you can at least have it running on a Linux instead of a Windows system. Step by step in the right direction, I'd say.

</comment><comment><USER26> Maybe I'll update my Firefox configuration: [https://bitbucket.org/snippets/cedricbonhomme/cbj6/firefox-c...](https://bitbucket.org/snippets/cedricbonhomme/cbj6/firefox- configuration)

</comment><comment><USER27> It would be awesome to turn it into an extension that makes it a single toggle.

<comment><USER28> I wouldn't use it since it:

\- Disables the malware and phishing lists/warnings.

\- Disables HTML5-video DRM (even if this has nothing to do with leaking data).

\- Geo location already brings up a popup (and thus disabling it seems petty).

<comment><USER29> >* - Disables HTML5-video DRM (even if this has nothing to do with leaking data).*

I would rather live in a browser without video support, than with DRM

<comment><USER30> Mozilla provides EME-free builds of Firefox: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534096)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com

127.0.0.1 www.hosted-pixel.com

The political candidates are the worst.

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow. What the fuck, Mozilla? Here I was, really hopeful that you were actually serious about honoring user desire for privacy.

<comment><USER33> Did you even check out the link? There is nothing sensational or exceptional about collecting/sending basic user data when using certain features, most of which can be easily disabled/not used.

<comment><USER32> "Easily disabled" for example like tweaking about:config? Yeah, that's _super_ easy and accessible for the average user!

<comment><USER34> The fact that he only lists the about:config way doesn't mean that this is the only way to do it. Many of these options have GUI prefs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Israeli cybersecurity company highlights potential of women in tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-cybersecurity-company-highlights-potential-of-women-in-tech/ <comment><AUTHOR> ""In this company I feel 100% equal," said Lital Mor, EverCompliant's director of customer success. Mor manages 17 employees and deals with customers on a day to day basis.

Mor believes the situation for women in high tech in Israel is better than in other areas, partly due to the military.

"The military is a huge part in really building personality and providing skills," Mor said. "It brings you to a certain level of equivalence."

Teicher concurs, saying the IDF prefers to have female soldiers in certain positions.

Lital Mor, EverCompliant's director of customer success. (Courtesy) Lital Mor, EverCompliant's director of customer success. (Courtesy)

"People leave the military with skills," Teicher said. "And also the understanding that they have equal skills so I think that is also helping afterwards in the workplace.""In this company I feel 100% equal," said Lital Mor, EverCompliant's director of customer success. Mor manages 17 employees and deals with customers on a day to day basis.

Mor believes the situation for women in high tech in Israel is better than in other areas, partly due to the military.

"The military is a huge part in really building personality and providing skills," Mor said. "It brings you to a certain level of equivalence."

Teicher concurs, saying the IDF prefers to have female soldiers in certain positions.

Lital Mor, EverCompliant's director of customer success. (Courtesy) Lital Mor, EverCompliant's director of customer success. (Courtesy)

"People leave the military with skills," Teicher said. "And also the understanding that they have equal skills so I think that is also helping afterwards in the workplace.""

US Tech firms should study and visit firms such as this one if they truly want to increase the representation of women in the firm.

All women as well as men are induced into the Israeli Army before college. A number of them learn computer programming and technology.</comment>


Show HN: Weekend project: Wanderling, a travel guide aggregator - <AUTHOR> http://wanderling.co <comment><AUTHOR> Resurrected a new years eve tradition of building something new (blog post here if you're interested: [https://blog.jennvargas.com/introducing- wanderling-%EF%B8%8F...](https://blog.jennvargas.com/introducing- wanderling-%EF%B8%8F-e24900043f86#.fp7o1h9ld))

My goal was to build a location-organized hub to surface all of the great travel content out there sourced from user submissions a la product hunt, reddit, etc.

Happy to answer any questions!

</comment><comment><USER2> How are you sourcing the travel guides? Manual submission or scraping?

Nice work though!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! A bit of both for the initial population. Shooting for it to be 100% user-submitted, though.

<comment><USER2> Nice - hope it goes well!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Chinese zhuyin input with devanagari - <AUTHOR> देवनागरी 注音輸入法
android keyboard to input traditional chinese with devanagari characters instead of zhuyin
screenshot https://mobile.twitter.com/raj29472/status/10201880226948218...
dl debug apk from 188.8.131.52/201807201315.html https site is self signed
app doesnt do frequencies yet so input is much slower than you get with current keyboards but still good for learning
based on https://github.com/reymondkao/android-zhuyin-ime <comment><AUTHOR> dl site link on new line

[http://22.214.171.124/201807201315.html](http://18.104.22.168/201807201315.html)

some more info: the app codebase is 8 years old but still worked great aside from a hardcoded path to the sqlite database folder

h/t to the original devs

all additional dev was done on an android phone with termux and ed and a vps for builds and took about a week</comment>


Russian Tea How-to - <AUTHOR> http://home.fazekas.hu/~nagydani/rth/Russian-tea-HOWTO-v2.html

<comment><USER2> What makes "zavarka" so important is that it's easy to measure how concentrated you want your tea to be. It's more difficult to achieve with a teabag. Though, I must note, hardly anyone here makes zavarka anymore.

</comment><comment><USER3> Russia is the land of hot tea, US is the land of iced tea. This must be the crucial difference between the two; the rest just follows...

<comment><USER4> Here in South Australia, it's often said (Wikipedia's source page from news.com.au is a 404 now though) that a particular brand of iced coffee out- sells Coke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like Turkish tea, which we drink at the office every day.</comment>


Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Welcome to the Finger-Wagging Olympics - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/79590/donald-sterling-kareem-abdul-jabbar-racism/

<comment><USER2> I'm such a big fan of his. He shows levity, humor, and makes sure to keep his eye on the ball - systemic racism. He's also got great advice for youngsters [http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/kareem-how-to-become-a- man](http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/kareem-how-to-become-a-man)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The first part of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's essay reminds me of Paul Graham's "What You Can't Say" ([http://paulgraham.com/say.html](http://paulgraham.com/say.html)).</comment>


Notifo (YC W10) now lets you send notifications to yourself - <AUTHOR> http://blog.notifo.com/send-notifications-with-your-user-account

<comment><USER2> I have a command-line utility I was using to send myself push notifications from the command-line. So to do a compile I would type

      make; phone

And poof! Instant push notification when it's done. Or I could

      ifconfig | grep ether | phone

No more need to write down those pesky ether addresses to walk across the office and diagnose something.

I was considering trying to build a product around it, but decided the market was too small. I considered OSSing it, but the barrier to setting up a push server, etc., was too high for it to be useful.

Now I will retarget my little command-line script to target Notifo over the weekend. Watch this space: <http://github.com/drewcrawford/Phone-Pipe>

<comment><USER3> I published my notifo notification code at <http://gist.github.com/377357> .

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Haha.. I'm guessing so many people were using Notifo for this purpose they decided to roll it in as a feature.

Thank you Notifo :). I like your UI, but having a dummy service account to send myself messages was slightly annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, many people were doing this, and others complained it was too much of a hassle. So, we took the feedback and made it easier for everyone involved :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I will integrate this into my company panel such that when there is a new sales report available, it does this.

Notifo remains my favorite YC service. Unpretentious and useful.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love how Chad engages with users and keeps pushing out new features. Every startup should do this.

</comment><comment><USER7> I put together a quick wordpress plugin:

<http://bitbucket.org/errant/wp-notifo>

Just chuck the php file into a plugins/notifo folder then activate it.

<comment><USER7> in WP Plugins as well: <http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-notifo>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks!! Already up & running: <http://twitter.com/bunsen/status/12726052992>

<comment><USER8> Update with a php script (from me): <https://gist.github.com/ff424b2ace303cd53d04>

& a PHP library (from jazzychad): [http://github.com/phrygianlabs/Notifo-API- Libraries/blob/mas...](http://github.com/phrygianlabs/Notifo-API- Libraries/blob/master/php/Notifo_API.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> so, does this basically serve as a free replacement to prowl?

<comment><USER10> prowl is free?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unrequested UX tip, Chad/Notifo: I was prompted to send myself a message before installing your app on my device or setting any notification preferences? (Does it default to sign-up email? If so, that was not explicit.)

Looks pretty cool so far!

</comment><comment><USER12> But can we have email notifications yet?</comment>


Ask HN: Would you move to DigitalOcean if they offered a managed DB service? - <AUTHOR> I'd really like to see DO offer a managed DB service.  DO is becoming something to be noticed in the hosting space and it's cost effective. If they offered a managed DB service (Postgre, MySQL, NoSQL) would you consider moving to them? <comment><USER2> I would like something that is semi-managed. In other words, I could have the option for a console with sudo access, but there are scripts I can click that install things for me.

I'm currently looking for a solution a step up from shared hosting, but my host is all managed and offers no sudo access for their VPS.

I've also looked into the cloud which I'm still in the process of learning. It's a few steps forwards, and a few steps back. I've figured out how to actually get it working, but the SSH access is iffy -- sometimes it connects, sometimes it says it cannot. Then I tried CyberDuck and SFTP, and while I can see the files and folders, I cannot actually access, update, delete, or do anything. Getting there, slowly!

If the cloud servers could offer some preloaded instances with preloaded software, that'd be pretty nice too. I want it all.. and total control! Muhahahahaha.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes but there are guys doing this and it's pretty expensive (hobby instance is cheap but then a major jump to next level).

[https://www.databaselabs.io/pricing/](https://www.databaselabs.io/pricing/)

</comment><comment><USER4> The managed db service I like at AMZN is DynamoDB because it is a super- durable database for control plane applications that are not particularly demanding that has a low entry cost.

The managed db services at AMZN get insanely expensive fast when you are talking multi-AZ, and you have to buy capacity in much bigger units, we are talking a difference between $5 a month and $50 a month or more.

</comment><comment><USER5> I just compiled Postgresql myself on DO.

I guess managed is easier, but I like full control.

Maybe some ansible scripts or something like that to perform common steps would be nice

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.online.net/en/ods](https://www.online.net/en/ods)

</comment><comment><USER7> DO is the most expensive now compared to other VPS providers like Linode and Vultr

</comment><comment><USER8> That depends on the pricing.</comment>


Tokyo proves that housing shortages are a political choice - <AUTHOR> https://www.citymetric.com/fabric/tokyo-proves-housing-shortages-are-political-choice-4623 <comment><USER2> Japanese also don't consider housing to be equity or investment, it depreciates in value every year. A house is just a house not something to speculate on or store money in. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan- economy-land/japan-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy- land/japan-average-land-prices-rise-for-1st-time-in-27-years-government- survey-idUSKCN1LY10J)

<comment><USER3> I believe this is partly a cultural artifact of Japan being earthquake prone. The severity and frequency of earthquakes used to make it difficult to build housing that would last.

<comment><USER4> People are downvoting you, but everyone I know here in Japan has told me this.

It's not that they're planning for complete annihilation from a massive earthquake, but there's bound to be some wear and tear when a relatively large one strikes every few years. Compound that with the absurd humidity and mold problem endemic to pretty much all of coastal Asia (trying to keep your house mold-free is a losing battle after a certain point and it's unavoidable) and the cost and effort of repairs far outweighs the ease of just tearing it down and rebuilding.

In the west, a 20 year old house is considered brand new. In Japan, 20 years old is bordering on junk territory. 30 years is junk and not worth the effort of repairs. You can search online and find 40 year old houses basically selling for pocket change since they're basically considered moldy death traps on the verge of collapse.

Now, though, Western-style homes built to withstand earthquakes are becoming common and they're expected to be a slightly better investment. How these houses fair against mold is something I'm not sure of.

A commenter below mentioned spirits accumulating in a house, but I've never heard of such a thing and it reeks of mysterious orientalism. But most people _won 't_ buy a house that someone committed suicide in or was murdered in. "Jikenya" (incident homes) are marked as such and sell for drastically reduced prices, if they can sell them at all.

<comment><USER5> > Compound that with the absurd humidity and mold problem endemic to pretty > much all of coastal Asia (trying to keep your house mold-free is a losing > battle after a certain point and it's unavoidable) and the cost and effort > of repairs far outweighs the ease of just tearing it down and rebuilding.

Worse than, say, the US South? Just make sure you have air and vapour tightness, with a good whole-house dehumidifier and you should be set.

Good building (science) channel from builder in Austin, TX, where humidity is a thing:

* [https://www.youtube.com/user/MattRisinger/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/MattRisinger/videos)

<comment><USER4> It's not just the inside that molds, but the outside. Going to an even more humid place like Hong Kong or Taiwan, you'll see most buildings, bridges, signs, and virtually everything covered in a permanent cake of black mold.

It's bad around the US south, but it's really far worse in Asia. Few structures are considered permanent.

<comment><USER6> _Few structures are considered permanent._

Not sure if this is meant as hyperbole, how do you explain Japanese buildings built during the 7th century still standing today?

<comment><USER7> They are reconstructed.

[https://blog.gaijinpot.com/problem-with-wooden-buildings- in-...](https://blog.gaijinpot.com/problem-with-wooden-buildings-in-japan/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Look at this. From the article it says Tokyo started 110,000 houses annually per year since 2003.

Population of Tokyo: ~9M.

Population of the Bay Area: ~7M.

The BA starts around 11,500 houses per year. Roughly similar in population -- _a tenth_ of the housing being built. Wtf.

<comment><USER9> because it is wholly under the domain of politics in the Bay Area. Most if not all special interest groups are linked back to either those in office or their party. the usual method is to form groups where you friends and family get nice part time advisement jobs pulling down 100k or more; we recently had a candidate in my state who part timed a get out to vote PAC for even more.

There have been many stories posted here and elsewhere how nearly every attempt to build housing is derailed, usually under the guise of setting aside for "affordable housing", followed by union workers only, followed by environmental concern; one was defeated for adding a few hours of shade to twenty percent of a play area/park of a school!; to finally architectural concerns because why would we want to impose on history of buildings barely a hundred years old. It comes down to money for politicians and those already there not wanting "those people" living among them.

Heck in my local metro area they have squads to clear out the homeless and undesirables every time a convention or big game comes in; a town which has been blue for most all this century and most of the previous. One where you will hear the politicians stamp their feet about how unfair it is and if only they had more power and money they could fix it, yet they never have. Instead a new stadium displaced an older black church, go figure.

<comment><USER10> > to finally architectural concerns because why would we want to impose on > history of buildings barely a hundred years old.

On the other hand, why do people need to build a new, ugly modern high-rise buildings in historical parts of the city? Is there not enough of other land?

Historical parts better stay historical forever and there should be no new buildings, I think. Because no tourist will ever come to see modern, ugly concrete buildings.

<comment><USER11> There can't be that many historic buildings in a city that burned to the ground in 1906, yet somehow we have historic auto-body shops, historic bars, historic music halls converted to comedy clubs, historic crab restaurants...

<comment><USER12> [https://i.redd.it/i3ndx7dhc5x21.jpg](https://i.redd.it/i3ndx7dhc5x21.jpg)

Historic, historic, architecturally beautiful, indescribably beautiful San Francisco...

<comment><USER13> Kind of a waste of such a nice street grid for such low density housing.

<comment><USER14> Waste of a lovely bayside location. Imagine how much better that water view would look contrasted against modern glass and steel skyscrapers: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/si-interactive/prod/ai-cio- com/wp-c...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/si-interactive/prod/ai-cio-com/wp- content/uploads/2017/09/05082506/iStock-511665488.jpg).

<comment><USER11> It could even be nice with two or three story buildings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I loved the beginning of a recent article on Japan on the London Review of Books:

"One can fly to Japan from anywhere, but from Japan one can only fly to the Third World, and it hardly matters whether one lands in Kinshasa, London, New York or Zurich: they are all places where one must be constantly watchful and distrustful, where one cannot leave a suitcase unattended even for ten minutes, where women strolling home through town at 3 a.m. are deemed imprudent, where the universal business model is not to underpromise and overdeliver but if anything the other way round, where city streets are clogged at rush hour because municipal authorities mysteriously fail to provide ubiquitous, fast and comfortable public transport, where shops need watchful staff or cameras against thieving customers, and where one cannot even get beer and liquor from vending machines that require no protection from vandalism."

[https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n07/edward-luttwak/friendly- relati...](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n07/edward-luttwak/friendly-relations)

If it's true, it sounds like there are a lot of "political choices" going in on in Japan that are completely unknown to the rest of the world.

</comment><comment><USER16> I really hate this trope that is wheeled out about Japanese accomodation; the flats that people talk about would be considered too small to live in by western standards. Most of them seem to be made of horrendous cheap plastic prefab; you get a corridor with a kitchen in it, a mezzanine to sleep on above said corridor that is too small to _sit_ upright, a 7'x'7 living area and a bathroom (including toilet) that is about 2ft x 2ft.

For this delight there are people being charged $1000 per month or more in rent.

Add in the fact that Japanese have an extremely different relationship to property culterally (and due to earth quake fears) means propeerties are often knocked down and rebuilt (the article notes this - 600000 new homes for an ageing population seems like most of those are going to immigrants).

A lot of people in Europe prefer the shared living, and it is better use of resources - you only need one bathroom/one living room per 3 people and those can be MUCH nicer than these micro appartments.

London and the west also have different cultural values about building high rise property and overlooking neighbours. It's fine that Japan doesn't mind a sky scraper being built overshadowing their homes but for Londoners or elsewhere this is simply unacceptable to suggest we can change our whole culture to Japanese values and magically solve housing problems.

<comment><USER17> I wish that regulators would stop assuming that "cultural values" are more important to me than paying half as much rent, and that I shouldn't be allowed to live in a cheap studio with a built in mezzanine.

<comment><USER16> They aren't, there are no regulations on this. I hope you get what you wish for.

<comment><USER17> There are usually quite a lot of regulations on dwellings, often including room size, layout, window placement, ceiling height, etc.

The specific "guidelines" for places I've lived are:

[https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/...](https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/80994/Apartment- Design-Guidelines-for-Victoria_August-2017.pdf)

[http://default.sfplanning.org/publications_reports/residenti...](http://default.sfplanning.org/publications_reports/residential_design_guidelines.pdf)

The San Francisco guidelines are particularly onerous, but the Victorian guidelines still set e.g. minimum sizes for bedrooms and living areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was in Tokyo last month. I think the city is under-estimated and not getting the praise that it deserves. It is true that you get less square meters in Tokyo, but the Japanese makes it up by quality, utility and accessibility.

Quality: Having stayed in relatively cheap locations, you get much better quality (especially clean) comparing to what you'd get if you were in New York, Hong Kong or "Paris".

Technology: Japanese care about technology and convenience. Toilets and showers are one example. Being able to store your luggage in several stations. Automated doors for practically any store. Small details that add up.

Accessible: There is a great transit system that makes the whole place very accessible. Even the most remote places are still accessible by train. The train stations are not the most modern in the world but at least smell good enough.

<comment><USER19> Why did you use double quotes around Paris?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > What Japan's inexpensive homes and its alternative policy approach prove is > that the housing shortage in British cities is not inevitable. Housing does > not have to be expensive in prosperous cities. The housing shortage is > something we have chosen to experience and can choose to change if we want > to.

Written for Britain, but this could be applied universally.

<comment><USER7> It is also meaningless. Yes, if you get to choose what to do, you can do whatever you want. But you don't, so affordable housing remains an unsolved issue in most places. Things haven't changed and aren't changing just because people become convinced otherwise.

<comment><USER21> There's a lot of people (in the US at least) that see appreciating property values as inevitable. Combined with views associating dense housing with urban ghettos from the 80s, it's one of the reasons people think building more houses won't make them more affordable.

<comment><USER22> That's weird. Don't we get enough stories about Rust Belt economic hardship and Detroit real estate horror stories to know that property values don't always go up? Have we already forgotten 2008?

<comment><USER23> But it don't have to take a depression to create sinking house prices. In Sweden we had shrinking house prices between 1931 to 1981, with only three years (right after the war) when prices increased. The same period is the most economically successful period we ever had.

Why? Because politicians built a shitton of houses (and tore down a lot of crappy housing too). Nowadays people here too think prices always go up, not realizing it is a political choice. It may very well be the right choice, but so many doesn't even understand it is a choice in the first place.

<comment><USER7> Right, but similar interventions are also completely unthinkable today. Which is why Stockholm have some of the most expensive property in Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In a less exotic location, Houston proves the same.

<comment><USER25> Houston and Chicago put the bay area to shame with populations over 2 million, high growth and super cost effective housing. The secret is no zoning laws in Houston

<comment><USER26> Topography also plays a role, Houston and Chicago can grow outward forever, something that pesky hills and water get in the way of in the Bay Area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Tokyo proves you need tremendous investment in infrastructure, not just unleashing developers to build without restriction.

<comment><USER28> Most (if not all?) of the transit in Tokyo is private. When you build densely enough, transit becomes highly profitable on its own, and someone will do it.

<comment><USER7> They are private in ways specific to Japan that, what I know, you pretty much won't find anywhere else.

<comment><USER11> Public-private partnership is not so "specific to Japan". The transit/retail connection is definitely a uniquely bright idea but it's something that many other jurisdictions could emulate.

<comment><USER7> Having that work is specific to Japan. If there is a single example of someone managing to do that successfully, especially with multiple companies, I would like to hear about it. Transit/retail or rail plus property is used in other places, like Hong Kong, but with government owned operators.

[https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-projects-and- inf...](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-projects-and- infrastructure/our-insights/the-rail-plus-property-model)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's amazing that this even needs to be published — no study is needed to prove the laws of supply and demand that have been known and obvious for centuries.

<comment><USER30> In the neighboring cities of Vancouver, the "known and obvious" laws are false. We have developers building skyscrapers full of condos which are selling for 500k-2M for a 1 bedroom. They're largely vacant because they're bought as investment properties. The ultra-rich can afford these places, but don't need to sleep in them. The demand isn't just people who need a place to stay, and rental prices are absurdly high.

We've got a new tax in Vancouver that's helping: the empty homes tax. But that's only Vancouver and not the outlying area.

<comment><USER31> They aren't false. There just hasn't been sufficient building allowed to take up the slack. If Vancouver took a page from Wizards of the Coast's tactics, prices would eventually go down. Namely: you have to convince speculators that you are willing to build (issue cards) until the value of speculative assets falls to the livable price for everyone else. If they were willing to allow unlimited building until the prices fell to the desired level, eventually speculators would realize that Vancouver property is a terrible bet.

Actually the presence of these investors is just a reflection of Vancouver's own unwillingness to allow said amount of building. If the speculators thought there was any chance of them building enough to meet demand, they would no longer view housing in Vancouver as a safe investment. So it's really a self- inflicted wound, not a violation of the laws of supply and demand.

That being said, an empty home tax does not seem like a bad supplemental approach. However, even assuming the tax is perfectly effective, if the population inflows outpace building, prices will continue to rise. And I would guess that is likely to be the case. The tax is a band-aid, but the problem needs stitches and cyanoacrylate.

<comment><USER30> The cities are all extremely friendly to developers (our "affordable housing" is $1700/mo for a 1-bdrm and developers are only required to build a small fraction of "affordable" units). I'm not sure how familiar you are with the area, but it doesn't seem like anybody is holding back on new development except for some weak and failing anti-gentrification efforts. Another significant factor in our local economy is a massive amount of money laundering, perhaps billions of dollars worth. It's been washed in real estate -- and laundry is one place where supply and demand break down: losses are acceptable.

What we're seeing is a huge demand for apartments, at rates that property owners can't afford, given the massively inflated value (hence tax). And homeowners (the upper-middle class), sensibly, don't want to see the market crash. So they don't actually want the government to act: new homeowners fear losing half of their investment. It's a vexatious problem all around

<comment><USER32> Looked up Vancouver ion Google Maps. Looks like mostly single houses. That needs to go if you want low house prices.

<comment><USER33> Yes, this. Six story 2x apartments per story + shared community space per 4 blocks = 48 units vs 4 units. The density also supports and drives community resources like shops, pubs, doctors and schools and makes public transport feasible. No need for 20 floor monsters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If you restricted London to 1% foreign born people you wouldn't see a housing shortage either - currently 37% of London's population was born outside of the country. The article quickly dismissed that political choice, but it seems more relevant to me.

Being an immigrant myself I'm not anti-immigrant, but it is important for things like housing policy.

<comment><USER35> So you think Tokyo is less than 1% foreign born?

<comment><USER36> 486K as of 2017. So around ~3%

[http://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Foreign_Population_by_Nat...](http://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Foreign_Population_by_Nationality_in_Tokyo_as_of_2017)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> How the heck can they deliver so many flats? Poland with 30% of Japan's population builds roughly 5 times less houses per year and trust me we're building new blocks literally everywhere. Yet flats are getting much more expensive every year, it's cheaper for Londoners to buy flats in London than for Poles to get something in Warsaw. I guess what works for Japan won't work for European Union as folks from Germany, the UK or France can buy Greek, Bulgarian or Polish flats easily...

<comment><USER38> > How the heck can they deliver so many flats?

> ...

> I guess what works for Japan won't work for European Union as folks from > Germany, the UK or France can buy Greek, Bulgarian or Polish flats easily...

This confuses me. Af first, you are impressed by the fast rate of construction in Japan and affordable prices in Tokyo. From there, it seems reasonable to speculate that if Poland increased residential construction to be more in line with that of Japan (proportional to population), Poland might also see a reduction in prices.

But you instead immediately jump to the conclusion that it wouldn't work because Poland is in Europe. Japan's system works well enough with a population of 125 million. Any particular reason it couldn't scale to support the 500 million in Europe?

If foreigners are eager to buy up Polish housing, this is only a problem if Polish housing is scarce. If instead, Poland increases construction until it has a surplus of housing, housing becomes just another export that can be sold at a profit, injecting money into the Polish economy.

So why wouldn't it be in Poland's interest to follow the Japanese model?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Think speak in the article :"Tokyo reformed its green belt twice" in fact Tokyo did not reform its green belt, it abandoned it.

Also, yes, it is good if single people can make the choice to live independently, but a far larger problem in my mind is that families are driven either into poverty or out of London. The reform that I would seek is that apartments should have three bedrooms, this would create desirable family homes as well as flexible share candidates.

<comment><USER39> What makes you think the market won't provide those 3 bedroom apartments? Why should those details be dictated? Isn't the the whole problem causing housing shortages in the first place - local government deciding how much luxury everybody must have, no matter how much they don't want it? Whenever there's a housing shortage, people start wanting to impose even more restrictions instead of allowing the people living there to drive the market with what they really want.

<comment><USER33> The market is providing 2 beds (one big, one small) because these are acceptable to young professional couples. When babies come (which is often what happens) then the apartment works for a short time, but then confronts the couple with a challenge. The second bed is inadequate, and if the babies are of different sexes then the law dictates that they can't share the room past 9(?) years old.

This causes the couple to seek a house (there are no 3 bed apartments) houses are very inefficient in terms of footprint, and affordability means that most young couples end up commuting.

Government has a role because developers just building things mean that the costs of the development are unanticipated and then later socialised as collateral damage. On the other hand if government manages development then the appropriate stock with appropriate infrastructure (doctors, schools, shops, transport) can be provided at the time and the cost socialised in the transaction and managed. This is economically much more efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I am not convinced. The attribution to the simple zoning system is surely not a complete proof, if any. Consider a counter-example: South Korea that has a very similar zoning system. Yet the housing price around Seoul soared roughly by 60% the past 3 years---so did rents (to a smaller but still significant rate). All the while the apartments supply has been at record high in 10 years. That zoning policy may be a factor but clearly not sufficient.

<comment><USER21> > All the while the apartments supply has been at record high in 10 years.

Has the number of jobs increased? Housing needs to be built in proportion to office/factory/commercial space in order to balance supply and demand.

<comment><USER40> The employment rate has increased by somewhat unnoticeable amount over the past 10 years [1]. The increased housing supply is mostly due to cost factors (tax breaks from the previous administrations, low interest rate) and the demand due to decline of small cities (demand gets concentrated around Seoul, the capital city; people buy houses around Seoul while living far away in another place on rent). As for the office/factory/commercial space, there has been a sharp increase in supply, and the vacancy rate (spaces that cannot find tenants) is 10-20% in major cities. Folks still buy buildings with a yield of 2.5-4% because the interest rate is so low. I am currently based in Cambridge, Boston. There are empty stores that have been looking for tenants for more than a year.

[1]: [http://www.index.go.kr/unify/idx- info.do?idxCd=4013](http://www.index.go.kr/unify/idx-info.do?idxCd=4013)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is bit overblown article. Certainly bad zoning laws can help inflate prices and there are several other factors like investors using real-estate for investment. However the major cause of real-estate price increase over long term is plain and simple: heavy urbanization of entire world. If you look at graph of population moving to urban centers over centuries it looks like literally almost vertical line in recent decades [1]. I'd heard that 90% of Earth's population is concentrated around just 40 urban centers! The real- estate in rural area has remained same or took nose dive while in urban areas it keeps going up.

Interesting question is how fat this trend will keep going? My guess is that this is black-hole effect, a larger city attracts even larger population towards it. Japan has recently became outlier because of economic issue as well as population decline.

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization](https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization)

</comment><comment><USER42> Kind of unrelated but also relevant. What is it like working as a software engineer in Japan vs. say San Francisco? How's the pay? The stress?

San Francisco is a filthy city but would are software engineers happier in that city or would they be in Tokyo?

</comment><comment><USER43> The difference here is that London has a lot of foreign and domestic real estate "investors" that I'm pretty sure won't be happy with affordable housing for everyone.

Who wants London's property market to crash?

<comment><USER44> "Who wants London's property market to crash?"

People who value housing as a place to sleep rather than a financial investment.

<comment><USER45> This should be about 100% of the voters right?

<comment><USER46> In the UK, since the early 1980's, it has been considered political suicide by a succession of both conservative and labour governments to not give money to the middle classes in the form of large increases in the value of their homes. This is one of the main reasons we have built about half as many houses as Canada since 1980, while having around twice the population.

<comment><USER47> Wouldn't this only work as a method of increasing middle class wealth if you owned 2+ properties? Otherwise, you have to live somewhere. You can't sell your house and unlock that wealth increase without spending it all on the next place to live.

<comment><USER46> People became obsessed with their home valuation. How much more money your house was worth since you bought it became one of the main methods of social boasting for decades, regardless of whether you were actually able to really profit from any of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The number of houses built is not the best metric. How many square meters of housing are build every year?

</comment><comment><USER49> Not mentioned in the article, but also significant is that in the last decade or so, commercial property developers have been required to provide housing too.

We can see many successful examples of mixed-use buildings in predominantly commercial districts such as Shinjuku and Roppongi.

<comment><USER50> That is not a requirement but rather an innovation first done by Mori Tower about thirty years ago.

Most large sky scrappers are still pure office towers. The mixed use developments are rare and lifestyle branded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Uk is not London

</comment><comment><USER52> Just a reminder that land is a limited natural resource that does not have a monetary value assigned to it except by political choice.

We could assign zero dollar value to land and allocate it democratically based on utility to the public and with an eye to preserving the environment. Allowing a market in land doesn't allocate it to the best uses (why do we have fancy hotels on the best real estate when there are homeless people?), just to the purposes of the people with the most money. If the people that own the construction equipment refuse to build when land is worth less, the public should step in and do it.

For the liberals out there, if we did this a certain person would not be president and the country would be a better, more egalitarian place. Imagine having nearly everything you pay in rent back in your pocket instead of being progressively squeezed more and more each year and spied on (given the increasing installation of monitoring equipment that you do not control).

If we could ban owning properties that you do not personally use, imagine how that would change the composition of cities. Gentrification would be vastly reduced. Shops, community centers, and other things that people love wouldn't get kicked out of town because the rent always increases.

That would be revolutionary.

<comment><USER53> Do you not consider yourself a liberal? You're proposing a socialist redistribution of land, which is far to the left of any major political party.

(I'm pointing out an inconsistency in your political labeling, not commenting on your suggestion.)

<comment><USER54> Real socialists very much distinguish themselves from liberals. If the labeling seems inconsistent, it's likely because the spectrum of American politics is so narrow the two get collapsed into each other. Socialist politics have been in a state of almost total collapse over the past 50 years, and most Americans are unfamiliar with its main tenets.

Having spent a bit of time trying to understand this band of the spectrum, here's my very rough mental model. Regarding economics, you can think of the left continuum as moving roughly from liberal -> progressive -> social democrat -> socialist -> communist.

* Liberals pretty much favor what you might call free markets, with some regulations against the worst excesses (pollution, fraud, etc).

* Progressives tend to favor a more Keynesian approach, with the government stepping in to try and tone down the amplitude of the boom/bust cycle, pursuing aggressive antitrust action, etc (think Elizabeth Warren).

* Social Democrats believe that capitalism fundamentally produces inequality, but also wealth, so to maintain social cohesion, markets have to be balanced with a strong welfare state, or safety nets (Sanders circa present day probably fits here).

* Socialists believe that capitalism is an inherently exploitative distribution of _ownership_ where an elite social class owns most of the necessities like housing, hospitals, factories, etc.[1] Socialists believe that that ownership is the result of workers being forced into a bad deal: having to sell their labor in exchange for access to those necessities, and that the remedy is for those workers to unite to wrest those necessities back from the owning class.

* Communists accept the same principles as socialists, but believe that the end goal for politics should be a society where all resources are collectively owned and distributed on the basis of need. Authoritarian communists believe that a strong centralized government is needed to make this happen (think Stalin or Mao), and that once the redistribution happens, that government will fade out of necessity. On the other hand, libertarian communists (also known as anarchists) believe that centralizing state power will only reproduce the exploitation of a capitalism under different owners.

[1] Not all socialists oppose markets, some think they're great, but that individual firms should be collectively owned by their employees, rather than external shareholders.

<comment><USER55> Amazing, down to the point explanation. Thanks a lot!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am surprised to read that houses in Japan are "inexpensive". They are very expensive, as is everything in Japan. Also I think there might be differences because the climate is relatively warm, the houses don't have central heating, which reduces the costs.

The prices in London are high probably because there are lot of rich people, lot of immigrants and therefore high demand for housing.

<comment><USER56> and those who live in London doesn't allow enough houses to be build to lower the cost?

<comment><USER33> The planning laws and social/physical infrastructure mitigate against initiatives and changes that would reduce the costs. One fundamental is that the rail gauge in the UK was the first one created, and this meant that tunnels and bridges were built unambitiously, consequentially there are no double decker trains in the UK. If there were double decker trains on the London commute lines London accommodation prices would be significantly reduced (I believe). That's just one small example of the complex confluence of issues that have driven the market in one direction though.

Everyone should remember that 60 years ago London housing was very poor as well as relatively expensive (although far more attainable). That's important as it shows that things can and will change over time in the market. We need to think about this because some of the reforms suggested will fundamentally alter the physical geography of the city in ways that will have consequences 100's of years into the future. Architects and planners have a very bad track record with respect to these alterations, for example see Birmingham, Portsmouth, Ipswich, Reading in contrast to Manchester, Brighton and Bristol where history has run differently (Bath is a really good story - the 60's got stopped in its tracks there).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I never understood this argument. Japan is one of the most different places relative to everywhere else. That you can't find a more familiar example almost becomes a counter argument. There is something about housing markets that makes people feel like their city is somehow unique and if they could just fix their local problem everything would be great. While pretty much every in demand major city in the world is having the same problems.</comment>


Quick iOS Prototyping In Flinto - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mengto.com/quick-ios-prototyping-flinto/

<comment><USER2> I emailed myself to check this out when I get back to work on Tuesday. Typically, I use Balsamiq to make mocks, but it was cool to see the mock-up work as a mostly functional app. I want to try it out and find out how much, if any, extra time there is in mocking up something using Flinto. Also, to what it extent is restricts me to stuff right out of the UIKit box.

<comment><USER3> Flinto doesn't actually provide any mock up tools. I wrote a blog post about that here: <http://blog.flinto.com/post/48225271974/what-is-flinto>

If you have mockups created in another tool, even photos of sketches, Flinto is the fastest way to turn those into an on-device prototype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We use Flinto at <http://artsy.net> \- and we like it a lot.</comment>


Show HN: GoCheese: Python private package repository and caching proxy - <AUTHOR> http://gocheese.cypherpunks.ru/ <comment><USER2> My work proxy is blocking the link, but anytime someone lists something about The Cheese Shop/PyPI I take the time to watch the Monty Python sketch.

For those of you who are lucky enough to get to see it for the first time, this video is why a Python package repository is called a Cheese Shop.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz1JWzyvv8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz1JWzyvv8A)

<comment><USER3> _" Not much of a cheese shop, is it?"_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gocheese?!

Pychesse wouldn't be better? A Think that this can avoid confusion.

<comment><USER5> It's written in Go which is why that is in the name.

<comment><USER6> That doesn't make it a good name or non-confusing.</comment></comment></comment>


SS7: Locate. Track. Manipulate [video] - <AUTHOR> http://streaming.media.ccc.de/relive/6249/ Tobias Engel demonstrates (amongst other things):<p>* How to find out the phone numbers of nearby cellphones<p>* How to track the location of a cellphone that you only know the phone number of<p>* How intercept outgoing calls of nearby cellphones <comment><AUTHOR> Actual talk starts at 00:16:00 into the video.

Tobias Engel demonstrates (amongst other things):

* How to find out the phone numbers of nearby cellphones

* How to track the location of any cellphone worldwide that you only know the phone number of

* How intercept outgoing calls of nearby cellphones (to record and/or re-route to a different number)

</comment><comment><USER2> I've learned more about how to efficiently seat people in an auditorium than I ever needed to know.

But on a serious note, conference organizers should play close attention to how CCC does stuff and replicate it. The pre-talk on screen information is amazing and useful.

<comment><USER3> The streaming set up is world class, they have a freaking _DECT_ setup for live translation inside the hall and the NOC is second to none. I'm very jealous of those attending.

<comment><USER4> They have a GSM network too: [http://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/wiki/Static:GSM](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/wiki/Static:GSM)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All TDM and Sigtran signaling links of world-wide SS7 network are configured manually peer-to-peer. The signaling traffic including SMS texts travels mostly unencrypted. Hence it's next to impossible to get a real SS7 Pcap log (requires an NDA), let alone access to the SS7 network, unless you work with a network operator.

<comment><AUTHOR> _it 's next to impossible to get access to the SS7 network_

Tobias claims the opposite in the video. He says you can easily rent access from a Carrier (e.g. Verizon) or buy a Femtocell[1][2].

Both approaches seem rather affordable ("hundreds of dollars").

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

[2] [http://www.thinksmallcell.com/Examples/where-can-i-buy-a- fem...](http://www.thinksmallcell.com/Examples/where-can-i-buy-a- femtocell.html)

<comment> at-fates-hands Apparently the attack vector is pretty small considering:

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/femtocell-verizon- hack/](http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/femtocell-verizon-hack/)

 _Fortunately for Verizon customers, the company has since issued a patch to all affected femtocells. Sprint currently offers a femtocell that is similar to the vulnerable models from Verizon, but the company has said it plans to discontinue the device. And while AT &T also offers femtocells, it requires an extra level of authentication that makes much of the iSEC Partner's findings irrelevant. Still, says Ritter, the femtocell vulnerability is a major problem._

And

 _Ritter suggests that all carriers that offer femtocells require owners to provide a list of approved devices that are allowed to connect to their femtocell. And also prevent customers' cell phones from connecting to any unauthorized femtocell._

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty small?

Verizon was just used as an example here, the same attack vector applies to every mobile carrier in the world.

<comment><USER5> The Verizon vuln referenced above seems has nothing to do with SS7. Femtocell is rooted, and only cell phones in a close proximity are vulnerable. I thought the presentation in Hannover deals with a much broader issue. And yes, femtocell may be potentially a gateway to the remote hacking of MSC, HLR, etc. Unfortunately I have not seen the presentation, so I can't be sure what it's about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Should be easy to transcode using VLC and post on YouTube, anyone not on Comcast able to do that for the rest of us?

<comment><USER7> What's the issue with comcast (with respect to these videos?)

<comment><USER8> Yes - please elaborate as to how access is different coming from comcast ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty shocking. Shame it is technical enough that it will probably not become mainstream news.

<comment><USER10> It has already been getting news coverage for the last week or two, including Washington Post:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2014/12/18...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2014/12/18/german-researchers-discover-a-flaw-that-could-let-anyone- listen-to-your-cell-calls-and-read-your-texts/)</comment></comment>


Bank account verification and transfers in just a few lines of code - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dwolla.com/bank-account-verification-and-transfers-in-just-a-few-lines-of-code/ <comment><USER2> I have a marketplace that uses Dwolla exclusively for payments. It has worked out great except for the fact that it excludes most of the world from participating (those outside of the US) but that is not their fault.

Bank account verification like this is a huge improvement over the we'll- deposit-some-pennies-in-your-account scheme. We require users to have a verified funding source in Dwolla... and the 2-3 day wait I'm sure has been a turn off for many, so this is a cool feature.

Ben Milne seems like a good CEO and the company seems to be run from a long- term perspective, which is refreshing. Their decision to completely eschew the credit card processors and provide no-cost online transactions and micro- payments is also a breath of fresh air.

<comment><USER3> Dwolla is completely unscrupulous and cannot be trusted.

They claimed for years their transactions were 'irreversible' and then went ahead and secretly reversed (read: just deleted them from the db and claimed not to know about them) a bunch of transactions that bankrupted Tradehill. Disgusting company.

[http://observer.com/2012/03/dwolla-was-just-sued-by- bitcoine...](http://observer.com/2012/03/dwolla-was-just-sued-by-bitcoiners- for-2-m/)

<comment><USER4> Give it a rest. This, if true, is an extraordinary situation. Using an online payment service for currency trading is not the best idea.

<comment><USER3> They _marketed_ their service as free of chargebacks.

1\. The fact that a payment company connected to ACH, a reversible payment method, would claim something like this demonstrates gross incompetence at best.

2\. If they didn't want high risk customers like TradeHill they should have politely kicked them off the service, not kept them on while silently defrauding them of their money and hoping they wouldn't notice.

> Using an online payment service for currency trading is not the best idea.

What, TradeHill should have expected Dwolla to violate their own terms of service (no chargebacks) and therefore it's their own fault? That's asinine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would think handing over your bank username and password is a horribly backward and insecure design.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure about Dwolla's offering, but on Mint when you do it, it functions similarly the same as an OAuth login.

<comment><USER5> Well, with oauth, you are not telling dwolla your password. You are telling the 3rd party, that dwolla (or whoever) can have an access token to your account, verified via popup to facebook, or a redirect to facebook.

Imagine if "login with facebook" meant "tell my startup your facebook password".

How is this considered OK?

<comment><USER7> > How is this considered OK?

If I might snark for a second:

Because banks say: "We're the bank. We're run by Masters of the Universe, we are the smartest people in the room, and you can trust us and our data- handling practices!"

To be serious: Having to disclose the same credentials that give you access to the web UI for your bank accounts to a random third-party in order to use _their_ service is _insane_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The whole "enter your banking credentials" thing is definitely a bit weird, but I understand why they do it.

A slightly different use-case, but does anyone know of a good service that replaces the need for nightly ACH batch processing that works with good old fashion routing number and account number (and maybe some other details OTHER than banking credentials)?

<comment><USER4> Visa Direct and MasterCard Send sort of do that. I believe, for example, that is how Lyft is offering "instant" payouts (through Stripe).

Curious how important same-day vs next-day is for you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great. If you are a subscription service or anywhere you need recurring payments, it's nice to provide this option to users because one of the reason lot of people stop subscriptions is because credit cards are flacky, expires or get cancelled. Also large transactions upwards few thousand dollars can benefit because many people don't have sufficient credit limit left. Are there any other scenarios?

I think Dwolla should go one step further. How about exposing APIs to get statements? Getting statements is one of the PITA with banks and many analytics application scenarios would open us with these APIs if they were easier to use than that of Yodlee.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is on their website.. <Quote> Dwolla, Inc. is an agent of Veridian Credit Union and Compass Bank and all funds associated with your account in the Dwolla network are held in pooled accounts at Veridian Credit Union and Compass Bank. These funds are not eligible for individual insurance, including FDIC insurance and may not be eligible for share insurance by the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund. Dwolla, Inc. is the operator of a software platform that communicates user instructions for funds transfers to Veridian Credit Union and Compass Bank. </Quote>

So they are effectively piggybacking on IFX calls on these bank servers and still using ACH (Account Clearing House?). This is a programmer friendly easily embeddable api for web sites etc. but still using the standard stuff. To call it "Transfer Platform" is a bit confusing to me. I would be damned if Dwolla is actually doing an IFX SignOn with those user name and password, for verifying accounts.

</comment><comment><USER11> How does Dwolla compare to Yodlee and Plaid?

<comment><USER12> Dwolla uses Yodlee or Plaid (I think Yodlee) to verify transfers and then moves the money. They're a payments service not the data side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very cool! Is this international or US only? Didn't see in the post and don't have time to dig for it.

<comment><USER14> looks to be US only, but banking systems in other countries may not need something like this. And with each country having different rules and regulations, it's probably a very big nut to crack for a single US based company.

In the UK, for example, I can easily transfer money to other people's or business's accounts and it will arrive within 2 hours, and generally it's immediate.

If you need to transfer between countries, then it gets more interesting and you get forex's involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I believe Plaid only does this for a handful of banks. Is there a list of banks this supports? All/most?

</comment><comment><USER15> How does Dwolla differ from Stripe?

<comment><USER16> Dwolla is an ACH transfer platform, Stripe isn't. Two completely different things.

<comment><USER17> Stripe is currently in ACH beta.

When Balanced shut down, they encouraged users to go over to Stripes private beta.

[https://www.balancedpayments.com/stripe/faq](https://www.balancedpayments.com/stripe/faq)

<comment><USER18> Stripe ACH service has been in "beta" for at least two years. I contacted them that long ago and was told it would be available by the end of 2014 and it is still in "beta" and not generally available. As the co-founder of an enterprise SaaS app startup where our average per use charge for a customer to use our app (we charge on a per use basis not straight subscription) starts in the hundreds of dollars and can run into the thousands paying the standard 2.9% + credit card fees for every payment vs. $.10 - $.50 max for an ACH charge is a complete non-starter for us and our customers. All of Stripe's competitors have had ACH forever including Balanced who we talked to but Stripe continues to drag its feet and not provide ACH. Clearly it isn't for technical reasons but because they make significantly more revenue and profit by not offering ACH where their transaction fee is much less. So while I respect what Stripe did early on to make integrating payments into an app much easier than the previous generation payment providers requiring a lot of up front fees, merchant accounts, etc. we will never consider them again unless and until they offer ACH and I'm sure there are lots of other enterprise app companies who won't use them either without ACH because customers demand it vs. having to run up huge monthly charges on their company credit cards. Too bad that Stripe management is proven to put their profits (and greed) ahead of providing cost effective solutions for their customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just enter your bank account and credentials... Dwolla Dwolla Bill Ya'll!!!!

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks familiar ;)

</comment><comment><USER20> Kind of misleading: this works with a few lines of code _if_ you use/include their libary. Nice nonetheless.

<comment><USER21> Is it really _misleading_? Where did you expect the integration with banks to come from? It doesn't even seem like a remote possibility that could be provided without using/including a library from _someone_. Now one is able to integrate this functionality as easily as one might add Stripe checkout. That's a win, isn't it?

This library aside, I've grown accustomed to every "Do complex thing X in a few lines of code" announcement to, as a rule, mean "as long as you're using our sparkly new library." So much so that it seems rather silly to even mention a library is required. Of course it is. The hard work was wrapped up into a nice interface for everyone to use.

As much as I've grown tired of the automatic developer default to include third-party libraries to do everything, things such as financial transactions seem like one area where it's unlikely one will ever be able to do anything without libraries in a few lines of code.

<comment><USER20> Yes, I do find the title to be misleading.

Pure checksum verification (used for some account number plausibility checks) can actually be done in a couple of lines of code. This is something different entirely.

Please don't get me wrong - this doesn't mean I don't appreciate the library. I just think adding "with our library" wouldn't have hurt.

<comment><USER21> Of course, "account number plausibility" != account verification.

<comment><USER20> You are correct. Guess I read too much into "verification".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Crowdsourcing the semantic web - <AUTHOR> http://lexandera.com/2009/04/crowdsourcing-the-semantic-web/

<comment><USER2> Vertical search engines which scrape a large number of sites already do something like this and some may already have the tools described in the article. That being said most use regular expressions instead of XPath because of malformed markup. CSS selectors are another option.

In my opinion the other side of the problem with uptake of the semantic web is that the tools and formats used to describe and access the data are kind of heavy weight. It would be nice if there was a simple way to define new data types as well as store and access the data. Perhaps something like Google Base with a bit of server-side JavaScript for scraping thrown in?

<comment><USER3> We're working on something remarkably close to what the article describes, but not taking the search engine approach you allude to. Rather, we're trying to make it into a useful multi-tool close in spirit to systems like Pachube, a component that coders/bloggers/site authors/whoever can drop into their projects.

And you're right. Semantic formats are very heavy weight. There are a lot of useful things that can be done with semi-semantic data before we achieve full linked-data across the web, if that even ever happens (you could argue for and against such visions, IMHO). Check it out at: <http://scrapmetl.com/> and give us a shout on Twitter @Maciek416 and @corban if you're interested in playing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also see <http://parselets.com> for an open source implementation of this from the guys (tectonic and I) who brought you SelectorGadget.

</comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of the W3C's annotea project -- <http://www.w3.org/2001/Annotea/></comment>


DNA Test Reveals Fertility Doctor Used His Own Sperm to Impregnate Patient - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/04/599531061/dna-test-reveals-fertility-doctor-used-his-own-sperm-to-impregnate-patient <comment><USER2> There have been a lot of stories like this in the news over the past couple of years, for example:

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9193014/British-man- fathere...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9193014/British-man- fathered-600-children-at-own-fertility-clinic.html)

[https://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/13/health/fertility- doctor-i...](https://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/13/health/fertility-doctor- impregnate-patients/index.html)

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4504648/Head- Dutch-c...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4504648/Head-Dutch-clinic- used-sperm-father-kids.html)

[http://www.rebelcircus.com/blog/fertility-doctor-used- sperm-...](http://www.rebelcircus.com/blog/fertility-doctor-used-sperm- secretly-father-least-19-children/)

[https://news.sky.com/story/dna-of-fertility-clinic-doctor- ac...](https://news.sky.com/story/dna-of-fertility-clinic-doctor-accused-of- using-his-own-sperm-can-be-tested-10902314)

Shocking how frequent this behaviour appears to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just heard a This American Life about something similar[1].

[1] [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/289/go-ask-your- father/act-...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/289/go-ask-your-father/act- one-3)

</comment><comment><USER4> That was in the 80s. These days one would think fertility doctors would know better than getting themselves on the hook for child support.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, that is bizarre and somewhat horrific

</comment><comment><USER6> How exactly did they get doctors DNA for comparison?

<comment><USER7> Perhaps he also tried to check his ancestry, and thus his DNA was on file.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but you'd think he'd realize that something like this would happen (assuming that this wasn't an isolated incident and like similar cases he'd been using his own sperm routinely).

<comment><USER9> People who have committed crimes make mistakes all of the time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Toolbox: From Idea to Launch in 10 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://sachagreif.com/the-toolbox-from-idea-to-launch-in-10-hours/ <comment><AUTHOR> Something that I haven't mentioned in the article is that for me, Hacker News is a big motivation when doing this kind of small week-end project.

Obviously a site can get popular without HN, but having an audience to launch to plus immediate feedback feels much more gratifying to me.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that is one of the many virtues of HN. The wide audience. Not only that, but the type of audience that can and will provide constructive input.

Nothing quite like it.

Also, congrats on the project.

Do you have an email to where I could contact you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, use <http://sachagreif.com/contact>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _When I finally got through to the WordPress admin, I immediately saw the problem: although the caching plugin was installed and activated, caching was turned off in the plugin's settings page. Talk about a dumb mistake…_

There are a few free load testing services that are good for catching problems with caching or concurrency. I've used <http://blitz.io/> before going live to tune my caching and have survived a few HN front-pages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll definitely use this from now on!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi, just a heads up, I think your site has the XSS vulnerability, namely parameter "s" - common in wordpress search function. To see it in action, try adding "/?s=aaa<script>alert(16354)<%2Fscript>" at the end.

<comment><AUTHOR> That didn't do anything for me. I'd hope WordPress escapes MySQL and JS code from query strings, that seems like a pretty big vulnerability…

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm kind of flabbergasted at how good that Construct theme is. I've looked at themes on ThemeForest and didn't see anything of that calibre for sale. Now I'm awkwardly wondering whether I can buy a theme for my Rails site instead of amateurishly hamfisting it myself. Arggh.

edit: Wonderful collection, so many of these sites look really useful and/or inspiring. Great work man.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're looking for great themes, I recommend Orman Clark's work: <http://www.themezilla.com/> The only problem for me was that his themes are not responsive.

<comment><USER6> Those look like Wordpress themes, though...my site is on Rails. Thanks for the suggestion nonetheless!

<comment><USER7> I often just rip the html from a Wordpress theme and use it for a rails site. Its a tiny bit of extra work, but totally worth it.

<comment><USER6> I've never bought a WP theme before - so it's not too hard to convert one for use in Rails? Just take the HTML, CSS, & JS and start putting it into the Rails structure? I'll seriously look into this option, then - thanks for the note.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So he used WordPress. Is anyone interested in a tool like WordPress with good support for easy-to-install plugins, but built on Node.js/CoffeeScript?

I ask because I have been working a tool like that for a few months and I'm pretty anxious about the reception its going to get, since I'm pretty much basing my whole life on it.

<comment><USER9> Is it open source? If so, I'd love to check it out. We've been working on an open source server for JavaScript developers, that has some of the modularity of Wordpress: <https://github.com/deployd/deployd>

<comment><USER8> Yes, everything is MIT (that I wrote). Deployd is really awesome, congratulations. I agree that having an easy way to do what looks like direct database manipulations from the browser is really useful and it seems like the rules and stuff you have set up to secure that is a very good approach. I also think that mongodb makes a lot of sense because of its flexibility and ease of use.

My thing really isn't ready to show anyone but its at <https://github.com/ithkuil/cureblog> at the moment. I have a bunch of stuff to do including most everything related to security. I think at first I am going to try to cheat with really simple rules possibly inserted into the everything.now function call if I can, or something. Really a lot of stuff to work out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Considering the time span you set this up in, you should consider doing a screencast from beginning to end setting something like this up. A lot of us could learn from that, seeing a full site from beginning to launch.

</comment><comment><USER11> What is the tool you are using for the responsive testing? [http://dun4nx4d6jyre.cloudfront.net/assets/toolb- xreponsive....](http://dun4nx4d6jyre.cloudfront.net/assets/toolb- xreponsive.png)

I've been using a mediocre plugin for chrome to do this testing but its flaky. That looks like exactly what I want.

<comment><USER12> <http://responsive.victorcoulon.fr/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for sharing and spending time to document all the steps. Impressive achievement in such a short time.

Will you continue to build on this platform or is this simply a side project?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! But I'm not sure how else I can build on it except add more sites… if you have any ideas I'd love to hear them :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Would love to see this done for "SaSS Apps" with the same approach - <USER2> "List of Doom".

Thanks for sharing your process...

<comment><USER15> <http://feedmyapp.com/> ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is an awesome article – thanks for explaining everything down to the detail!

</comment><comment><USER17> Added to the top of my existing bookmark folder called "The Toolbox"</comment>


The Locust Economy (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/04/03/the-locust-economy/ <comment><USER2> I don't always agree with, and I likely don't understand, a lot of what Venkatesh Rao writes, but he is always entertaining.

His outline of the modern corporation is fantastic:

[http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais- principle/](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/)

<comment><USER3> That series is fantastic, if a bit infuriating. It defines a language around concepts and dynamics I've seen, intuited or had other self-taught people attempt to explain at me, but due to the hollistic nature of theirs and my own education on social dynamics, never clicked for me. The one addition I'd like to see to it is advice for the person who understands the Game, but unlike the Losers (who just want to fly under the radar) and the Sociopaths (who just want power), wants to kill the Game for good. Someone who wishes for the world to work according to democratic principles where everyone is an equal, instead of the feudal lord - serf dynamic exhibited in pretty much all of recorded history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He predicted that blogging for profit would tank. It did.

<comment><USER5> how so? Aren't there bloggers who make money from their blogs?

<comment><USER6> Some or many maybe making money, but are they making a profit? At what "hourly rate" of "content creation"? Is that rate sustainable or merely supplemental or in addition to other sources of income?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can see how Groupon fits his analogy, but I don't see how he extends it to tools like Uber, where it's a one-to-one transaction that's not particularly exploitative. The only real insight here is that people become more exploitative when their resources become scarce, which isn't very surprising to me.

<comment><USER8> Uber is exploitative in that it can set prices in a completely arbitrary manner that has little to do with the way an auto-regulating market works. It's the classic "invisible hand", only in this case it's completely calculated and pre-meditated by a god-like entity.</comment></comment>