Gmaxwell's "prove how (non)-fractional your Bitcoin reserves are" scheme - <AUTHOR> https://iwilcox.me.uk/v/nofrac <comment><AUTHOR> The developer is Gregory Maxwell, aka nullc. Here's a very interesting thread in which he proposes that the bitcoin community should demand that every bitcoin exchange (and every other type of service which can hold bitcoin on your behalf, like webwallets) continually prove that they are not fractional reserve. In other words, proof that if every user of the service simultaneously tries to withdraw all of their bitcoin, then the service would be able to honor all withdraw requests: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yj5b5/unverified_p...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yj5b5/unverified_pastebin_gmaxwell_irc_log_mtgox_was/cfkze3p?context=1)

 _" I think that as a community we should start demanding these services continually prove that they are not fractional reserve. We cannot effectively eliminate the need for trust in these sorts of services, but we can certainly confine the exposure and eliminate a lot of this drama. With Bitcoin it's technically possible to prove an entity controls enough coin to cover its obligations— and even to do so in ways that don't leak other business information, and so we should. But this isn't something specific about MTGox, it's something we should demand from all services holding large amounts of third party Bitcoins. I wouldn't even suggest MTGox should do it first, rather— it sounds like a great move for their competition to differentiate themselves."_

Here's the takeaway:

 _" This would leak the total holdings, and some small amount of data about the number of accounts and distribution of their funds, but far far less than all the account balances. Importantly, though— it could be implemented in a few hundred lines of python."_

In case anyone from Coinbase is reading: you have a unique opportunity to be the first webwallet service to implement this, and thereby make the entire bitcoin community instantly fall in love with you. It would also set a minimum standard of quality for webwallet services in general, which would add a lot of value to the bitcoin ecosystem. It seems like this might be a pretty big business opportunity.

<comment><USER2> > The developer is Gregory Maxwell, aka nullc.

This guy seems to be everywhere! He's a prolific Wikipedia contributor (administrator + many thousands of edits), and was also the guy behind the dump of a ton of pre-1923 JSTOR documents to the Pirate Bay, which in part helped pressure JSTOR to un-paywall its old/PD articles ([http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/swartz- supporter-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/swartz-supporter- dumps-18592-jstor-docs-on-the-pirate-bay/)).

<comment><USER3> The guy was amazing on Wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Say you were a shady Bitcoin banker with 5000 BTC in deposits, and you wanted to steal 1000 while still looking like you're on the up-and-up by implementing this idea.

First, you announce that you only have 4000 BTC in deposits. Then you build this tree, and at the very bottom layer you add a node with a -1000 balance. You pair that node with your (or a conspirator's) real node holding more than 1000 so that any node above yours (read: everyone else) sees a positive balance at every point in the tree. Everyone can verify they're in the tree, the numbers add up to what you claimed publicly, but you're now successfully running a fractional reserve! And the only way to uncover such a scheme would be to publish all of the balances for every account.

Am I missing something?

Edit for clarity: the node you pair with is your own, so that no real user sees the negative sum.

<comment><USER5> Suppose the balance sheet is:

        [ -1000, 1000, 2000, 2000 ]

The Merkle tree is:

        [ -1000, 1000, 2000, 2000 ]
        [ 0, 4000 ]
        [ 4000 ]

You actually owe 5000 BTC, but it seems like you owe 4000 BTC. Seems so far so good. The problem is, what happens if you try to take advantage of this opportunity.

Case 1: other people withdraw first.

        [ -1000, 1000, 0, 0 ]
        [ 0, 0 ]
        [ 0 ]

Nobody knows that anything nefarious has gone on. However, everyone else has successfully gotten their money out so you've actually defrauded no one.

Case 2: you withdraw first.

        [ -1000, 0, 2000, 2000 ]
        [ -1000, 4000 ]
        [ 3000 ]

Now, the other 2 users actually can see that something is wrong, because the Merkle branch will have a -1000 BTC node sticking out.

So in theory, as long as there exist users who don't check their Merkle branches, and those users are identifiable, it probably is possible to run a slight fractional reserve undetected. So the protocol is suboptimal. But it's not really "broken". I do wonder if it can be improved though, perhaps with some kind of ZKP protocol.

<comment><USER6> Oh sure, you can sum and compare the balances under ZKP and even hide the total amount. But the problem is that as soon as you invoke a ZKP for general computation you take into the realm of barely practical moon math.

... And you still don't fix the problem that balances which are unchecked can be diverted.

In the IRC log I posted I went on to suggest that a service could have a rule that _permitted_ them to take your balance if you don't check it periodically— e.g. they could just withdraw it into their own pocket. You could prove you checked it (or that you tried and they wouldn't let you). By doing so you'd actually create a real incentive for people to check, though I suspect boobytrapped balances wouldn't be very welcome.

Regardless— it still confines the extent of fraud that is possible.

<comment><USER5> One way to defeat the "hide the negative balances inside a subtree of technologically clueless grandmas" attack might be to generate the tree using some easily verifiable deterministic algorithm (ie. alphabetic order of hashes of some user data), and perhaps even have several trees. It's not perfect, but it could help reduce the problems, although perhaps at the expense of some additional privacy.

> And you still don't fix the problem that balances which are unchecked can be > diverted.

Okay, I'll admit I might be missing something here; what do you mean by that? The exchange isn't storing each user's bitcoins separately; that requires one TX per user to maintain anyway. It should be storing them all under a single HD wallet and publicly releasing the MPK, so users can take the MPK and use it to verify that the exchange actually has 5000 BTC, the Merkle root says 5000 BTC, and their Merkle branch is correct. The exchange can't spend "unchecked bitcoins" or "checked bitcoins"; they're all just bitcoins under the same HD wallet, and spending any of them would trigger an alarm.

<comment><USER6> > > And you still don't fix the problem that balances which are unchecked can > be diverted.

> Okay, I'll admit I might be missing something here; what do you mean by > that?

Say Alice _never_ logs in anymore and the site has noticed this. The site can just go "oh Alice, her balance in now 0" and go and gamble away those coins— sure, their holdings go down, but so do their obligations. Since Alice never logs in anyone, she's not going to protest that her coins are all gone.

<comment><USER5> Ah okay, that makes sense. You're completely right that that's not really solvable in general.

Unless, of course, we finally switch over to a public/private key based login system and each user's balance sheet is composed of a set of authorized/signed deposits, trades and withdrawals (ie. a full blockchain, but centralized and "mined" only by the exchange's server). I wonder what possibilities that kind of setup would open.

<comment><USER6> Go read that IRC log. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not to discredit the very capable developers discussing this, but in the interest for giving credit where credit is due, didn't Peter Todd suggest this back in his Bitcoin 2013 presentation on off-chain transactions? I seem to remember him explaining something similar on a rooftop patio in Toronto last spring after a Bitcoin Toronto meetup.

EDIT: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d3LA8KpdMQ#t=6m45s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d3LA8KpdMQ#t=6m45s)

<comment><USER6> I believe this was most extensively discussed as part of a long chat that Peter Todd was a part of, so no surprise that you've seen him talk about it. Off-chain banks stuff has been a long term pet interest of his.

In that discussion we applied a merkel-sum tree data-structure— a pet datastructure that I'd previously proposed for making compact proofs of blockchain invalidity in Bitcoin (in order to make a future bitcoin world where no one runs full nodes safe from inflation and theft by miners)— to PT's bank fraud proofing application.

You may find the log interesting: [https://people.xiph.org/~greg/bitcoin- wizards-fraud-proof.lo...](https://people.xiph.org/~greg/bitcoin-wizards- fraud-proof.log.txt)

Search for "auditable off-chain transactions" and "Merkle-sum-tree"

(I left in a lot of unrelated stuff since it makes the meandering conversation make a bit more sense. Though a lot of this continues a long running dialog about cryptographic-wankery that has been going on for years)

Ultimately these schemes require the use of a jamming free broadcast network of some kind... otherwise they run into the same problems certificate transparency has where you can substitute the commitment on the fly. Fortunately, Bitcoin provides a global consensus mechanism which could be used to directly attach the commitment to the coins being spoken for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone is interesting in helping, I'm going to spend my evening trying to implement this here: [https://github.com/ConceptPending/proveit](https://github.com/ConceptPending/proveit)

My email is in my profile, and I'm happy to Skype chat with anyone who wants to help.

<comment><USER8> The basic implementation is now complete.

I'll flesh it out a bit better tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Or, just use a system like we use on Bitalo, where fractional reserves are impossible because of use of multi-signature Bitcoin addresses, which means funds are specifically tied to user wallets and exchange operators cannot use them without user's signing all transactions by himself.

<comment><USER10> The blockchain can't handle the transaction volume of currency exchanges; that just won't work.

<comment><USER11> Wait, the blockchain can't handle the transaction volume of the trades happening today?

What happens as businesses (overstock, etc) start accepting bitcoin? Will bitcoin never be able to handle to volume of an amazon or walmart?

<comment><USER10> Exchanges don't trade on the blockchain, only deposits and withdrawls are on chain. Off chain transactions make up the bulk of transactions as the blockchain can currenly only handle around 7 transactions a second which is about twice as much as it's actually being pushed so there's still room to breath.

The same applies to overstock, coinbase is doing their transaction processing and it's likely most of those are off chain as well as coinbase is a broker and has plenty of coin and dollars in house and is likely where purchasers in the US got their coin anyway as well is also likely being the users online wallet; they settle up daily with an exchange to keep their supply at necessary levels.

Bitcoin isn't ready for mass adoption yet; the infrastructure is still being put into place and the 7 transaction limit has to be removed and exceeded by quite a bit to grow the point of being able to handle large volume kind of stuff. In the meantime, and probably even after, off chain transactions will likely be how most scale is achieved.

<comment><USER12> I don't think we are anywhere near the blocks being half full, lots are less than 100kB except for Eligius. Is there anywhere displaying this metric?

<comment><USER10> I wasn't trying to put a hard number on it; I said about half because that's the number I keep hearing repeated when discussions occur.

[https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per- block](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-block)

Lots of other interesting charts there. In any case, it doesn't really matter as to the main point that exchanges don't do on block trading, the volume would be far too great for what the network can handle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> At first I was worried of what would happen if the exchange introduced fake nodes with negative balances at the bottom of the tree, but there would be no way for them to hide that without the first real customer up to the root finding out (there would have to be a negative node that he/she could see). This sounds like a great idea!

<comment><USER6> Unless the negative valued customer and the surrounding customers never logged in... But thats a limitation of the scheme that can't be avoided. If a user never logs in you could just steal just their balance (and correctly set it to zero).

You also must make sure that all customers are seeing the same root, and that you can't do funny business like constantly update it to swap out which customers you're robbing. (e.g. it should be a daily or weekly updated thing).

<comment><USER13> You've got a point, the root of the tree could be made available to the main charting sites.. or even weekly written into the blockchain.

As for the negative values, I wasn't thinking of robbing anyone, but just pretending you are solvent when really you're not. I'm not sure I see what you mean by "swap out which customers you're robbing", could you expand?

<comment><USER6> E.g. say you have two customers with a balance of 100. You report the total is 100— so 100 BTC has gone missing.

When customer A logs in you give them one root and show them their balance (and B has a balance of 0). When customer B logs in— oops balances just update— you show them a new root, and in that one B has a balance of 100.

So you need to pin the commitments strongly enough so that the prover can't swap them out at will.

<comment><USER13> Thanks, I get it now. Hadn't thought of that.

Of course, if many people were connected at the same time, this would quickly become perilous gymnastics for the exchange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The big problem with this is convincing businesses to publicize their total customer deposits, which is extremely interesting information to competitors.

Though it could be a good way for new/small exchanges to differentiate themselves and gain trust of the community, which could force larger and larger exchanges to do the same until it's common practice (as mentioned has happened with provably-fair gambling sites)

</comment><comment><USER15> Fractional reserve? I don't like that. It's like building a house of cards or a ponzi scheme. You shouldn't be able to say you have 10x of the value you actually have.

<comment><USER16> Right? Banks making loans? It's _preposterous_.

<comment><USER17> Full reserve banks are possible. You just have to maturity match everything, meaning every loan of term t has a matching deposit with a maturity of t. Deposits in demand accounts could not be lended.

I have no idea whether this is a good idea or if it would work as a business.

<comment><USER18> That's sort of the idea behind securitized mortgages, except once the bank makes the loan the bank leaves the picture (except perhaps as a custodian responsible for payment collection sometimes.) This is one reason securitization of mortgages led to lower interest rates and was generally considered a good thing for a while.

In the alternative scenario, economists describe loaning from demand deposits (at a higher interest rate) with a phrase like "the bank is selling liquidity".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What bitcoin exchanges do HN readers trust?

I've been using [http://coinmkt.com](http://coinmkt.com)

I regrettably used MtGox.com. I'm kicking myself now.

<comment><USER20> If you want to buy coins to use I'd go with Coinbase at least to get started. If you want to day trade Kraken looks really promising if they are supported in your jurisdiction. Bitstamp has a decent track record though their local give me pause. Coinsetter is also pretty well put together if all you want to do is pair trade but you can't do true exchange on there.

I've tried coinmkt but I don't like it. Their fees aren't great their deposit and withdrawal methods are limited and there are fees on deposits and withdrawals at least there were when I gave it a try.

<comment><USER21> >Bitstamp has a decent track record though their local[e] give me pause.

I'd say Bitstamp has a very good track record, and what's wrong with Slovenia? It's probably about on the level of the Czech Republic in terms of economic freedom, development, level of corruption (relatively low), output, business practices, etc. Would doing business with a Czech company make you nervous?

In business culture, Slovenia looks toward Germany more than toward the former Eastern Block (of which it was never a part).

I mean, Bitstamp's owners are public people. I feel pretty confident that they're not going to run off with their depositors money. Is there something else that you're concerned about?

But I agree, if you want to just buy coins, Coinbase is a good start. And Kraken is looking very good, too, particularly if you're a serious trader (that's who they appear to target).

<comment><USER20> I don't disagree my reservation is more about having to do an international wire transfer to get money in and out of Bitstmap. Also since they are outside of the US you are going to have to submit FBAR paperwork to the US government if your account with them ever gets over 10k at any time during the year. In the unlikely chance something did go wrong legal remedies would be more difficult since they are outside the US.

<comment><USER21> Ah, ok. So it's more because they're outside of the U.S. (your jurisdiction). That makes reasonable.

I thought the "locale" comment was about Slovenia, a country that not many people are informed about and unfairly associate with former Eastern Block crime syndicates.

And yes, the international wire fees do add up. Do any U.S. exchanges currency offer ACH?

<comment><USER20> Coinbase is ACH, CampBX took personal Checks up until 3 weeks ago. My primary bank offers wires within the US but not internationally. Doing wires is just a headache you typically have to call the bank on the phone and it just doesn't give me a confident feeling in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This doesn't give you a way to validate your dollar deposits. In other words a dishonest exchange operator could misappropriate your dollar deposits and this scheme wouldn't tell you anything about it.

<comment><USER22> The hash-tree scheme described here would work equally well for non-Bitcoin currencies, if I'm understanding it correctly. The only thing missing is the ability to prove ownership of the actual funds backing that tree. So what you're really complaining about is that there are no banks that offer digitally-signed attestation of account balances.

<comment><USER21> >no banks that offer digitally-signed attestation of account balances.

Why is this? Seriously, that alone could prevent so much fraud and misuse of funds. Every public company could have a digitally-signed bank balance, updated in real time.

<comment><USER5> Because then any guy with a laptop and coding skills could use the API to set up almost any kind of fiat currency-based money services or currency exchange business, and we can't have people doing that without million-dollar MSB/MT licenses!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can't all of this information be found in the block chain if you know the addresses the exchanges are using?

<comment><USER6> No. In theory if you know all the addresses you know how many coins they have— but to know the exchange is not fractional you must also know something about its obligations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It turns out that MtGox used all the deposits to buy Magic cards. They now have the world's most excellent cube. We all should have seen this coming.

</comment><comment><USER25> sweet!

already pleading it to brazilian exchanges.</comment>


Wordpress Hosted Blogs are Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/wordpress-hosted-blogs-are-down?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Centernetworks-+%28CenterNetworks+-%29&utm_content=Twitterhttp://www.centernetworks.com/wordpress-hosted-blogs-are-down

<comment><USER2> The big mass of PHP spaghetti has finally become self-aware -- and it killed itself. And people say artificial intelligence isn't...

<comment><USER3> Either that or it's secretly constructing Wordpress T-1000

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My lolcats. Nooooo!

(Sadly, I did discover the outage when I opened my morning read of Fail Blog / Graph Jam / I can haz cheezeburger / Oddly Specific / Photobomb / WTF Pictures / Ugliest Tattoos / Failbooking. Does admitting that mean I'm no longer qualified for HN?)

<comment><USER5> For what it's worth, Oddly Specific didn't go down, as that's where we're testing running Wordpress on the Windows Azure platform.

-Martin from Cheezburger

<comment><USER4> I can confirm that actually - when I opened all the links, the others stalled while Oddly Specific did load. Good to know why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I'm surprised TechCrunch is included in this, you would think they have a bit more of a redundant setup.

<comment><USER7> Why would any website which gets few million hits a month not have a redundant system is beyond me. If you consider the amount of money they make the cost of a redundant setup is really nothing.

<comment><USER8> I was under the impression that people used Wordpress VIP hosting so that they wouldn't have to worry about using a redundant system (meaning that Wordpress VIP should take care of it).

<comment><USER9> You can't outsource your liability.

At a certain point (a point which TC passed quite a long time ago) you simply have to own your own infrastructure. That does not make it bullet proof, but it puts it under your own control and you can respond accordingly and better control the outcome of any outage.

I know that in Web2.0 everybody wants to think that they can outsource all the messy bits of running a website to the lowest bidder, but that approach has never worked.

When you get REALLY big (like facebook and google big) you move from a self- managed server in a carrier-neutral datacenter to building and maintaining your own datacenters.

For some reason people think it's perfectly normal that facebook builds its own datacenter, and yet also perfectly normal that a large blog (Techcrunch) take no ownership of the very equipment that makes their site go.

<comment><USER8> Why would TC want to spend the money on a datacenter, staffing, bandwidth, etc for their blog when there are services out there that will do all of that stuff for them at a fraction of the cost? Private datacenters have outages as well, they wouldn't have been immune from outages if they were hosted internally. If anything, they are somewhat shielded from liability because _everyone_ knew Wordpress was down.

It makes sense for Facebook and Google to build and own their own data centers because they deal with volume on an hourly basis that is magnitudes larger than TC probably sees in a week (or possibly even a month). Techcrunch is a blog. That's it. That doesn't require owning your own datacenter. It requires a hosting company that can keep the lights on. Wordpress is about as good as you're going to get in that situation.

<comment><USER9> _Why would TC want to spend the money on a datacenter, staffing, bandwidth_

I don't think they should/would do that. They are nowhere near large enough in traffic volume to justify that. But they SHOULD have more direct control over the servers that run their blog so that WHEN something happens (again, I never claimed that maintaining your own server made you immune) they can directly control the outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Of course this happens just hours after we launch a new video and are getting lots of traffic from hackaday.com (which is apparently WP hosted)...

<http://www.nerdkits.com/videos/digital_calipers_dro/>

So looking at our server logs now, we're largely seeing hits to that page from Google Reader (I guess it cached their RSS feed?).

<comment><USER11> I think that's how Google Reader works, or at least I hope that's how it works. They do the polling for the feed and then store it somewhere to serve to anyone who's subscribed through Reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This means that Techcrunch is down, and @arrington is gearing up for a nervous breakdown after his 4th or 5th provider switch in 2 years.

Eventually I would think that they would belly up to the bar and implement a redundancy solution that involves multiple solutions. Then again, I am an infrastructure architect, not a blogger, what do I know?

<comment><USER13> That... or maybe he'll just move it over to tumblr.

<comment><USER14> But if they take back or "steal" his subdomain the how will he blog about the injustice?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: The Bathroom Game – proving that NC's bathroom laws are unenforceable - <AUTHOR> http://thebathroomgame.com/ <comment><USER2> I always thought the argument was that it's about genitalia more than anything else... aside from the few super crazy people most I spoke with just don't think it makes sense for someone with a penis to be using a woman's bathroom and vice versa. Especially if they don't look like the socially, generally, and visually understood gender the bathroom was meant for. Meaning that if someone who most people would identify as a man walks into a woman's bathroom that might make some woman feel uncomfortable, and men had the same reaction, they would feel uncomfortable if someone who visually looks very similar to a woman walked into a men's restroom they would feel pressured very uncomfortable.

<comment><USER3> I highly doubt this, since genitals only really determine if you can use urinals effectively, and non-urinal toilets are also found in the same bathroom as one that has a urinal, as they're needed for other stuff. Therefore, there is no need to legislate genital-to-bathroom mapping (regardless of your political and/or social beliefs) as the capabilities of your body will sort it out.

On the other hand I can _better_ understand the argument that people's appearance causes us to make certain assumptions about whether they are of a particular gender, which causes us to make certain assumptions about their sex, and that presence of the opposite binary sex in bathrooms has been historically considered taboo, or unwelcome, or creepy, or [insert visceral reaction here]. This is real meat of the debate, because it pits people's self-identification against others' profiling, and one group of people's right to privacy to a different group of people's right to privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only reason this is an issue is because you still have bathroom stalls in the US with very little privacy. Why not just have private rooms for all toilets for everyone, like everyone have in Europe? Then none of these things matter.

</comment><comment><USER5> Point well made.</comment>


Show HN: Essential Munich – Essential Information for People Moving to Munich - <AUTHOR> https://essentialmunich.de <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all! Two of my friends are moving from London to Munich. So I made a small compilation of things that should make the move easier.

Just wanted to share it with you and get some feedback!

The website is open source & open for PRs, see [https://github.com/markusdosch/essentialmunich](https://github.com/markusdosch/essentialmunich)</comment>


Facebook's E-mail Censorship is Legally Dubious, Experts Say - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/05/facebooks-e-mail-censorship-is-legally-dubious-experts-say/ <comment><USER2> _"Facebook private messages are governed by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which forbids communications providers from intercepting user messages, barring limited exceptions for security and valid legal orders."_

Are private message systems in apps generally governed by this or is there something about facebook that makes this a special situation?

<comment><USER3> I'm genuinely curious about that as well. I'm hoping it isn't. How would you prevent spam from bringing down your site's usefulness? How would you prevent that swearing overtakes an otherwise family friendly site?

<comment> _-TIMMY-_ Google does the same thing [at least as of my last attempt, ymmv]. Just try an send an .exe or .dll through gmail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Heh... I just got bitchslapped by Facebook for simply mentioning "The Pirate Bay" in my status. Here's the beginning of an e-mail I received:

We have detected suspicious activity on your Facebook account and have reset your password as a security precaution.

etc...

<comment><USER5> This is exactly why I don't use Facebook. They are so busy trying to get advertisers that they are making their site worthless. All so you can see more ads.

No thanks.</comment></comment>


California judge rules early cell phone termination fees illegal - <AUTHOR> http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/99655

<comment><USER2> I don't think the government should be in the business of invalidating contracts that violate no one's rights. Those that don't like the terms don't have to get cell phones - I don't have one for just that reason.

Just because I don't like someone else's terms does not give me the right to bring the government in to give me a "better deal". The moral principle (not the business situation) does not change even if there are hundreds of millions of people that feel the same way.

Would you like it if one of your customers or acquirers agreed to do something in writing and then came back a year later to sue you for better terms? The fact that the cell phone companies are bigger and more established does not invalidate this principle.

If you want quality and value straightforward dealings as highly as I do, be principled and don't buy things you don't like. Try to to change the culture by reason rather than through the coercive force of the government; do it this way, and what you fight for will last far longer than some bullshit court ruling.

<comment><USER3> "Those that don't like the terms don't have to get cell phones" -- Well, cellphones operate in public space. There is limited amount of spectrum available, and the companies that decide to use it, must obey to certain rules. If these companies don't like the terms, they don't have to use the spectrum.

I'd like the goverment to get involved more into allowing fair access to devices, and allowing third party aplications to be installed in devices, without the need of the "blessing" of the carriers.

Imagine, if every piece of software you installed in your computer, have to be "aproved" by your ISP. Well, that's how it is the current state in the mobile world, and that's why there is a lack of real inovation there.

There is no limit to the amount of greed. In this case, there is clear tacit collusion between carriers, as all of them seem to have early termination fees.

When you have few players in a market (restricted by the limited amount of spectrum), there is a great chance that free market rules wont apply anymore, and just saying the goverment should not get involved, is a way to say let the companies rape the customer as much as possible.

ETF do actually hamper inovation on the device space. All cellphones have to be bought and aproved by the carrier (who resell them at discounted rates), while hampering the adoption of inovative devices. Everytime you pick a verizon phone, and look at the ugly UI the carrier forced the device makers to use, you know the market is not working right.

THe problem, is that the customer is still getting raped. You end up paying higher monthly fees for voice/data/sms messaging, to make up for that device subsidy, yet the customer has less choices on the devices they use.

Look at Europe. They have much more rules in the wireless space to protect the customer, yet usage and the industry is booming there. A lot of inovation going on there (even the SMS was invented in Europe, not here).

<comment><USER2> "If these companies don't like the terms, they don't have to use the spectrum."

That's right - they don't. But the current owner of the spectrum - the FCC - is an illegitimate one:

Read Declan McCullagh's June 7, 2004 column for news.com, "Why the FCC should die" ([http://news.cnet.com/Why-the-FCC-should- die/2010-1028_3-5226...](http://news.cnet.com/Why-the-FCC-should- die/2010-1028_3-5226979.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news))

If you really want more competition in the telecommunications industry, you'll find the FCC standing in the way. They don't serve any technical purpose anymore (except to keep technology down and to allow old radios to work), but they sure as hell get in the way of new companies that might compete with existing ones.

Keep in mind that without companies to build the radios and service the networks and so on that make the spectrum valuable, who would be able to use it, other than a few thousand engineers? What good would all the oil in Saudi Arabia do you if _someone_ didn't know how to get it out of the ground, how to refine it, and how to build cars to use it? Remember that when you declare something like spectrum public, you inherently lose the ability to maintain everyone's rights.

"There is no limit to the amount of greed."

Not true - at and above a certain price for any good or service, customers won't buy. This is econ 101 stuff.

"limited spectrum" - you would do well to take a signals processing class. Spectrum is only limited in the physical sense (the electromagnetic spectrum is what it is), but beyond that, there are many ways to transfer more information across the same spectrum through additional processing. Surely you know about things like DSL and 802.11, neither of which were possible before cheap processors became commonplace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The fact that the cellular industry still has ETF policies and hardware lock- in is really sad. I mean, imagine if you had to buy your computer from your internet provider, and then it only worked with that provider. Switching from Comcast to Verizon would mean buying a new computer, and agreeing to some two year contract.

The fact that the iphone would cost $399 instead of $199 is not a valid argument in favor of the ETF lock-in. I'd rather actually own my hardware, instead of what basically amounts to leasing the hardware with a modest down- payment and a hefty penalty if you try and switch carriers or end service.

Just like with cars, some people may find it more advantageous to lease their hardware. Good for them, let them lease and make an ETF part of the agreement... but give us an option to 'buy the car' (or iphone).

<comment><USER5> You already have that option with pretty much every phone except the iPhone. Every carrier will let you buy the hardware at an "unsubsidized" rate, and then get a contract with a higher monthly price, but no lock in. It's just that no one does it, because it is so much more costly.

<comment><USER6> Er, if you buy an unsubsidized phone you should get a _lower-priced, non- contract_ plan. But you probably don't, which I guess is the point.

<comment><USER7> I was very frustrated when I bought a Nokia N82 so that I could have an unlocked GSM phone, only to find out that the only service that works in my area is AT&T anyways. But hey, I already bought my phone, I should just be able to get a non-contract plan, especially if I'm willing to pay the full (phone-subsidizing) price each month, right?

Nope. You can't get a normal monthly plan without signing up to at least a one-year contract. I even had to pay for the freaking sim card, not to speak of the activation fee. So I paid something like $500-550 for my phone, sim card, and activation fee, and I'm _still_ in a one-year contract, all for the same monthly rate that I would be paying if I had gotten a plan that came with a free phone.

Something is wrong here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is based on CA state law, and (from the _Mercury-News_ link in the post):

 _Whether Sabraw's ruling will stand isn't clear. Experts say an appeal is likely, and the Federal Communications Commission is considering imposing a rule - backed by the wireless industry - which might decree that only federal authorities can regulate early termination fees._

3e-3 cheers for the FCC. Sigh.

<comment><USER9> Do FCC rules override state law? I've read a few cases involving FCC rules, and the FCC nearly always loses.

If the federal government wants to restrict states' rights, they need to amend the constitution, not pass "FCC rules".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Eventually I think the carriers will be forced to replace the contract+ETF with a standard loan, which isn't that different from a prorated ETF anyway. It will still allow subsidized phones and plenty of revenue for carriers, but it's a more familiar concept.

</comment><comment><USER10> So does this mean it's time to buy a Sprint phone (or even iPhone, if the ruling applies to all carriers) in California on a long-term contract and then break it immediately? Before they change policies?</comment>


How Big Tech Swallowed Seattle - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-30/how-big-tech-swallowed-seattle <comment><USER2> I know people like to hate on Amazon for the gentrification of Seattle, but as someone who has studied and worked in urban planning, I absolutely believe Amazon did the right thing by betting on an urban campus in the heart of Seattle. They could have built another suburban Microsoft or something like the monstrosity that Apple is doing, but Amazon didn't.

I'd like to say that this comment is totally unbiased, but it's not. I recently started at Amazon (I speak for myself / opinions are solely mine), and I'd be lying if I said that the urban campus that I can walk to wasn't absolutely part of my calculus. I could not imagine commuting to Redmond for Microsoft, or Kirkland for Google.

I moved to Seattle a decade ago and biked through SLU on the way to my internship at the Seattle Department of Transportation downtown while in my masters program. I am still amazed by the changes in SLU. I absolutely feel the disparity and displacement, but I cannot blame Amazon or Vulcan. The reality is that Seattle has simply not permitted, incentivized, and built enough residential and public transit capacity to accommodate the growth that was forecasted to be huge. Affordability has suffered.

And that is a matter of political will. People like to blame planners, but the planners saw most of this coming. Change is hard, and Seattle has done pretty well in spite of everything. We're not the Bay Area, and we can be proud of that.</comment>


Supreme Court allows climate scientist's defamation case to proceed - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/supreme-court-allows-climate-scientists-defamation-case-to-proceed/ <comment><USER2> The blog post Mann is suing over is [https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/football-and-hockey- ma...](https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/football-and-hockey-mark-steyn/) . I think it should be protected by the 1st Amendment. In arguing that the Supreme Court should take up the case, Justice Alito wrote this:

"Climate change has staked a place at the very center of this Nation's public discourse. Politicians, journalists, academics, and ordinary Americans discuss and debate various aspects of climate change daily — its causes, extent, urgency, consequences, and the appropriate policies for addressing it. ... The core purpose of the constitutional protection of freedom of expression is to ensure that all opinions on such issues have a chance to be heard and considered. I do not suggest that speech that touches on an important and controversial issue is always immune from challenge under state defamation law, and I express no opinion on whether the speech at issue in this case is or is not entitled to First Amendment protection. But the standard to be applied in a case like this is immensely important."</comment>


Ask HN: Best practices for creating API - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to build API's for a website . I would like to be referred to documentation which would help me use best practices for creating my API. <comment><USER2> I've found the video RESTful API Design by Apigee to be very practical and interesting to watch [1]

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpAhXa12xvU>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This came up a few weeks ago: <http://mattgemmell.com/2012/05/24/api-design/></comment>


Candid Intern at MongoDB - <AUTHOR> http://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/intern-spotlight-elle-morris

<comment><AUTHOR> Q: What do you love most about MongoDB? A: There are a lot of implicit assumptions in that question. . .</comment>


The world's most popular goals - <AUTHOR> http://www.43things.com/zeitgeist/popular_goals <comment><USER2> Free startup ideas! Get your free startup ideas here!

Taking the first ten, for example:

# lose weight 37862 people

\- dieting website \- exercise website

# stop procrastinating 27741 people

\- 8aweek \- rescuetime \- leechblock \- your-own-twist \- iPhone app with random advice on meditation and focus.

# write a book 27115 people

\- writer's editor. \- A way to make money off content without publishers

# Fall in love 25192 people

\- dating website

# be happy 22707 people # Get a tattoo 20911 people

\- tattoo directory! \- Design-your-tattoo online, and book with our range of licensed artists

# drink more water 19639 people

\- Subscribe to bottled water deliveries online!

# get married 19348 people

\- Dating website \- Wedding organiser

# travel the world 19122 people

\- travel tips \- low cost online travel agency

# go on a road trip with no predetermined destination 19098 people

\- Worldwide mobile phone packages \- Post-to-email service \- travel tips again

etc etc

<comment><USER3> _"drink more water"_

This is the most puzzling one for me. How can this even be a goal?

Are all those people chronically dehydrated? Perhaps they drink soft drinks instead of water? Is it a North American thing? Mysteries...

<comment><USER4> The last time I went to the dentist he pointed out that I was drinking enough soft drinks that it was causing noticeable damage to my enamel. I found it surprisingly hard to stop drinking them. In fact, I haven't stopped, but I have reduced it substantially.

<comment><USER5> It's hard at first but it's definitely worth the effort of going cold turkey. After a month or so the next time you try a soft drink your stomach will feel all gassy and terrible and the drink itself will taste pretty bad.

Or at least that's what happened to me. I used to drink 3-4 cans of pepsi and maybe 1-2 of mountain dew every day. I went from that to nothing and two months later I had the above experience. I've had soft drinks maybe a half dozen to a dozen times over the past year and it's never a particularly pleasant experience.

<comment><USER6> I've quit soft drinks cold turkey on a few occasions. I've gone from drinking them almost exclusively to having none for months at a time.

My experience was that they were even better than I remembered them. The only thing that I can relate to you is that if I haven't had a Coke in some months, drinking a large amount does upset my stomach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> wtf, 100 goals and mine isn't even there...

I want a user "shaking with excitement".

I've had lots of happy users, but I don't thing I've ever had one shaking with excitement to use my software.

I got this new goal after reading this article about patio11's Bingo Card Creator:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/what- mak...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/what-makes-a- great-teacher/7841/)

 _Next, Mr. Taylor announces it's time for Multiplication Bingo. As Mr. Taylor reads off a problem ("20 divided by 5"), the kids scour their boards, chips in hand, looking for 4's. One girl is literally shaking with excitement. Another has her hands clasped in a prayer position. I find myself wanting to play. You know you're in a good classroom if you have to stop yourself from raising your hand._

<comment><USER8> That is the most inspirational thing I've heard all week, perhaps so far this month!

Thanks for that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While not surprising, I still find it interesting the number of generic, immeasurable, and fantastical goals at the top of the list like "be happy", "stop procrastinating", "fall in love", etc etc.

Perhaps they're the most frequent because it's much more difficult to measure them and thus harder to fully achieve, or perhaps it's telling the same inherent set of goals that's instilled in us as we grow, or maybe it explains the feelings of a large percentage of people.

Any way you look at, data like this aggregated across a population is always interesting. I love the trend of startups publishing things like this now.

</comment><comment><USER10> If by "world", you mean the female population of San Francisco, I guess this is pretty accurate... I mean... "Kiss in the rain" in 14th position? Really?

</comment><comment><USER11> Just did a quick check and found that just 9 of them are available as domain names, while 91 are already booked !!

Those available are : goonaroadtripwithnopredetermineddestination.com havebetterposture.com wakeupwhenmyalarmclockgoesoff.com decidewhatthehelliwouldliketodowiththerestofmylife.com spendlesstimefoolingaroundonthenetandmoretimeactuallyworking.com stopcaringwhatotherpeoplethinkofme.com figureoutwhatiwanttodowithmylife.com goonaroadtrip.com identify100thingsthatmakemehappybesidesmoney.com

When you prefix _HowTo_ you still have around 48 left.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't even fathom having "watch grey's anatomy" as a goal. I don't even...

<comment><USER13> no doubt, how does this make the top list???

<comment><USER14> Poor sample size/selection?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oddly enough that list seems to correlate with: <http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/>

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd like to see that grouped by country. And another interesting thing, if you click on an item you can see on the right the average time the users needed to check that activity as completed.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, apparently it takes 9 years (avg) to fall in love but it takes only 8 years to get married.

<comment><USER3> <http://xkcd.com/310/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That's a little depressing. I'm visualizing most of these people keeping these "goals" at arms length, or further, until their deaths.

Most of the crap on that list I wouldn't consider as "goals." Write a book? I've done that, twice, and am currently writing another. For some reason, I don't register "book" as the goal, even though that's the outcome I expect to eventually reach, after the hundreds of tasks and the mind-bending logic that goes into completing the book.

</comment><comment><USER19> I did it all and can tell you from my experience most of them are not worth it.

I think it's actually a sad list, lot of things people think will make them happy, but instead of just trying them out the fill lists with goals. It's actually like a really long business plan ... after reading 20 pages you just start thinking "just do it!".

</comment><comment><USER20> Aren't many of these goals vague, aspirational and banal? I would like to take this as evidence that setting goals simply doesn't work.

Better is to try to identify one's mistakes. That's how progress is truly made.

</comment><comment><USER21> Take a look at the some of the "How I did it" people (and what they're concerned about 'doing').

This strikes me as a strange (not to mention unappealing (to me) ) population. "Lowest common denominator" comes to mind.

I'd have to see some better-analyzed data and learn something about this population's income, likelihood of following up on their 'goals', etc. before I made any business decisions based on this.

</comment><comment><USER22> uhh, someone care to tell me the diff between 15. take more photos and 99. take more pictures?

also doesn't anyone find it ironic that people wan to write books more than they want to read more books?

<comment><USER23> Photos are composed, planned, things you would frame and hang on the wall. Pictures are random things that might end up on facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Kiss the rain???????

</comment><comment><USER25> That list is hilarious, and not just because of the title. The _world_ that is made up of 100,000 people? Really?

<comment><USER26> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_%28statistics%29>

100k people is quite a large sample. Conclusions about the world have been made from much smaller samples.

<comment><USER27> It's 100k people with internet access that speak English. Most likely US and UK based, likely to be using broadband. They clearly have aspirations beyond the basic necessities (read more, run marathons, learn languages), suggesting they perceive a certain level of free time available to dedicate to such pursuits. Heck, Grey's Anatomy is in the top 100.

My point is that this 100k sample is likely to not be representative of the world.

<comment><USER26> I will agree that the sample is skewed, but I wasn't trying to make the point that the particular 100k people in question constitute a representative sample of the world. I was replying to the sentiment that because the world doesn't consist of 100k people, you can't call 100k people's goals the world's goals. I may not have expressed that as clearly as I could have.

I agree; this represents only a certain type of person in the world, but again, conclusions about the world have been drawn from more specific types.

I just feel it's petty to focus on the title of the article, when the word "world" is consistently applied in narrower senses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Out of all the goals, the only one not worth pursuing is getting a tattoo.

Parenting is failing somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER29> Most popular languages to learn on the list: #1 Spanish #2 Japanese #3 Sign language

<comment><USER30> Actually, French pops in at #24, right before Japanese at #30.

Hence #1 Spanish, #2 French, #3 Japanese, #4 Sign Language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Lose weight? Maybe someday, after I finish my book and fall in love..

<comment><USER32> I can think of a more efficient order to get a romantic partner.</comment></comment>


Miami, Tech Hub of the Americas. Really? - <AUTHOR> http://brazilandusbiz.com/emerge-americas/

<comment><USER2> Yeah Miami is really picking up speed.

It's not close to Silicon Valley, but it's working to be established at the tech hub for Latin America.</comment>


An Open Source Author's Lament - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/issues/2864#issuecomment-15159370 <comment><USER4> We seem to be forgetting the explicit reasons git was created - to remove the technical commit restrictions and make it a social committing ability - <USER2> is the social leader of the project only needs accept commits from people he filters

And we are forgetting the long lessons of bug tracking in the wild - don't overload the use cases

1\. Can github explicitly limit the people able to make a issue to those who have ticked the box saying I have read the Commiting.txt file

2\. Have a PEP style improvements process - want to make an improvement - great write up a 1000 word doc saying what and why with working code. Don't make a paragraph of a suggestion. Put working code behind the proposal.

3\. Write that in big letters in committing.txt

4\. In committing.txt require a issue has x number of +1 from different accounts before you even look at it. The must be some api hacks to help that

5\. in committing.txt require people submit a bug using your own test harness output - at least you know they ran the test harness

Edit: on kernel mailing list Torvalds explicitly warned maintainers of the dangers of just this - I cannot find the link but iirr it went something like "you can spend 12 hours a day on email but eventually you will burn out - <USER3> maybe, will- so just find five people you can trust and only pull from them - and they find five they can trust and so on"

This is (mostly) voluntary effort so killing ourselves for it is foolish - plus it is highly unlikely random joe comment will produce the next great coffee script improvemt. - so focus on a tight group of devs and keep writing great code

Good luck

<comment><USER5> I'd like to piggy-back on your mention of Linus. It reminds me of a recent video I saw wherein he talked about how the work on the kernel works within a natural hierarchy.

The whole video, IMHO is worth a watch, but the relevant snippet is here, you can watch from about 15:57 to about 18:20 to get the idea:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA#t=15m57s>

I especially liked his comment at the end of this section:

 _"The way people work ... is inherent in our brains ... the whole development process ... works really well ... we used the hierarchy that just worked on its own, and that turns out to be the right hierarchy."_

<comment><USER4> Thank you - had not seen that.

no swearing either :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A big problem with the Github issue tracker is that there are no priorities. Ideally what you want is someone to do the triage of new reports, prioritise them and then have the main team see them. Sorting by priority then gives an idea of outstanding work (or probably sorting by milestone and then by priority).

Bug tracking in general in volunteer communities is terrible. There will be languishing items, duplicates, missed items, really terrible reports, average ones, and a few very good ones. It is hard to be happy with the state no matter side of the reports you are on. (It hasn't been too different in some companies I've worked either.)

Hopefully someone can figure out how to solve the problem. I'd imagine some combination of stackoverflow (voting, commenting, karma), trello (visibility and sorting), mailing lists (most communication) and reporting tools all combined would work.

<comment><USER7> What choice to you have besides getting somebody else to do the triage?

I think the problem is that users do not consider this a fun activity to help their open source project.

<comment><USER8> > What choice to you have besides getting somebody else to do the triage?

I was going to say; if Jeremy has trouble wading through hundreds of issues, he should level up as an OS developer and start asking for help, him becoming the project leader, the underlings distributing the workload of going through issues, escalating the actually important ones to the boss.

This isn't exclusive to OS development either, it's what happens and should happen in real life with management and whatnot. Of course, overdoing it causes five levels of management between Joe Developer and The Boss in the corporate world.

tl;dr: delegate

<comment><USER9> This isn't an "issue": it is a "discussion"; people are using his issue tracking system as a discussion forum for ideas. This is the kind of thing that for most projects would happen exactly as he describes: on a mailing list or on IRC, not inside of the issue tracker. I feel like claiming he needs to "level up" is kind of harsh: I'd argue what he's doing right here actually is "leveling up"... as a moderator, directing people to the right place to have different kinds of interactions.

<comment> mh- I don't think the parent commenter intended the 'level up' to be disparaging at all.

It seems you interpreted it as something like 'up his game', but I believe the commenter meant something like:

He needs to recognize that may no longer be a good use of his time; that he might need to be 'above' that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whoa there mods -- please put the title of this back to the original "An Open Source Author's Lament". It's linking to a specific comment, not to the ticket in general.

 _Edit_ : Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER11> I can so easily relate to this. Although I deal with only a fraction of the GitHub traffic that Jeremy does, it's still demoralising at times, and dominates the effort I spend on OSS. It's the equivalent of every widget owner having the CEO's home number, and it being culturally normal to call to discuss any problem or even idea for minor tweak.

One possibility I've wondered about is making the GitHub issues list read- only, except for project maintainers. Then bug reports and feature requests would go initially only to the project's forum or IRC channel, which has much less maintenance cost, because threads or conversations don't need to be "closed". If they attract enough attention (because they describe a painful bug, or a really good idea), then a project maintainer is likely to notice and choose to file an issue.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it really that hard to get people don't write open source to solve _your_ problems? What state of mind makes people believe they are entitled to someone else's time?

When I write software, I'm solving my problems. When I write open-source software, I'm still solving my problems, but I find whatever I'm writing may be useful to someone else, so, feel free to use it and, perhaps, even join the effort to continue better solving _our_ problems. I will not solve _your_ problems for you.

What's wrong with these people?

<comment><USER13> If you're doing it only to solve your own problems then why open source it?

Obviously, the motivation to help others, contribute to something as a community, show off your skills, etc. are drivers besides just solving your own problems. For some developers, solving their own problems has very little to do with why they work on open source projects.

<comment><USER12> Contributing to a community or showing off my skills would also fall under "solving my problems". It's perfectly logical to assume I may want better communities and recognition and the lack of either to be problems I may be inclined to solve.

<comment><USER13> So your original post is meaningless since you decried solving other peoples' problems... but solving other peoples' problems could completely fall under the set of "solving your problems".

"Is anything we do truly altruistic?" is a fun question philosophically, but makes for really circular/meaningless HN comments.

<comment><USER12> I'm not solving someone else's problem unless it either is also my problem or solving it solves another problem I have.

In this case it's obvious adding the requested feature solves no problem of the maintainer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In one message, @humanchimp says:

        Ok thanks for closing my issue.

@humanchimp's very next comment:

        The sarcasm is not appreciated, [...]

<comment><USER15> It's the 'my' that rang the alarm bells in my head. Feelings of ownership are often followed by entitlement, and that's never a good mentality.

<comment><USER16> I guess you don't like Perl much then. _ducks_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps contributing.md should be embedded above the new issue form in the same way that readme.md is embedded on the project homepage.

<comment><USER18> Great idea. Stack Overflow uses the same concept when you're asking a new question on the site, and I believe it helps the quality of answers tremendously. Making contributing.md visible when creating issues would be incredibly helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Issues need a priority/voting system a lá reddit.

People who run the project could set a minimum for getting notifications about issues.

Different maintainers could have different minimums.

<comment><USER20> Issues 1.0 had voting, but it was removed in Issues 2.0

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Github needs an option for repo owners to replace the "Please review the guidelines for contributing to this repository" text on the issue submission page. Or maybe even an obnoxious interstitial page where you have to confirm that you've read the repo-specific notice before being taken to the page with the issue submission form.

<comment><USER22> Chrome bug tracker (crbug.com) recently added a wizard for new issues, where you have to check a box that you've searched through existing issues as well as provide some background info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Perhaps a queueing or escalation system in GitHub Issues would help with this. Joe Blow developer creates a new issue, and it goes into a queue that does not make a notification appear for Jeremy, but for some other project developers he delegates to. If these other project devs determine the issue from Joe Blow to be worthy of Jeremy's time, they mark it to be added to the main issue queue and Jeremy gets a notification. If not, they direct Joe Blow to the proper channel for his issue, if applicable, and close it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's the author of this issue being touchy in another thread: [https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee- script/issues/2836#issue...](https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee- script/issues/2836#issuecomment-14944179)

> Before blaming me further

This reminds me of DHH's "Rails is Omakase" post. [http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2012/rails-is- omakase.htm...](http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2012/rails-is-omakase.html) "But there's a fine line between a friendly suggestion and a belligerent diner." That's exactly how humanchimp is acting – belligerent. It's one type of annoying behavior that's easy to recognize but hard to defend against.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wish the bugs were tracked in Git.

a more-or-less simple text file with the bug and various metadata could make use of the distributed nature of Git.

Submit all bugs as pull requests to subsidiary repositories, important ones get merged upstream (along with their fixes, preferably)

An example of this sort of 'subsidiary repo for special purposes which is merged to upstream' is the docrails repository:

<https://github.com/lifo/docrails>

This does require the subsidiary repository to have more liberal commit access (probably 'all users of project with a github account'), but hey, it's subsidiary.

</comment><comment><USER26> Isn't this just a failure in the art of delegation? Having every maintainer read every ticket clearly doesn't scale...

<comment><USER10> I wish it were. Unfortunately, not all projects are blessed with such lovely and helpful maintainers like Sam, Brad, Tim (for Backbone), and Nami-Doc, Michael, and Demian (for CoffeeScript), just to mention a few.

In practice, you'll rarely find a jQuery ticket (for example) that doesn't have to be read in the end by Dave, and you'll rarely find a Bootstrap ticket that doesn't have to be read by Mark:

<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/7334>

<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/7333>

<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/7325>

<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/7320>

<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/7324>

<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/7312>

<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/7302>

<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/7296>

<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/7290>

<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/7282>

<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/7279>

<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/7265>

... and those are just a random smattering from the past week!

<comment><USER27> I upvoted the original submission because I think this is an interesting and important problem for maintainers of large OSS projects.

It would be nice for Github to provide some administrative tools or interface changes to make maintainers' lives easier. However, I am tentatively in agreement with the posters who suggest that this is largely a management problem.

I've read the examples you linked, Jeremy, but I don't see why those issues (and the majority of issues on large-scale projects) require review by the head maintainer/BDFL. Most of these issues are chaff - either they're not reproducible, poorly explained, or requesting features which have already been discussed and dismissed. It shouldn't need Mark's or your time to say "nope, works for us" or "already decided we're not doing that".

At Coffeescript/Backbone/Bootstrap/etc levels of activity, you have a huge, vibrant community. Out of all those thousands of developers, surely there are a couple of active contributors who can't commit to the project at the "core dev" level but who have to skill and time to take on the role of "issue maintainer"?

<comment><USER10> That's entirely right.

This is more of a problem with the _current_ workflow of the _current_ implementation of GitHub Issues, for large projects -- it's absolutely something that can be solved.

<comment><USER28> Maybe a kinda "Flag for close" button on the github interface would help with this. Than the community would be able to flag issues and the core devs could de-prioritize the flagged ones or if there are flags from enough members they can just close it without reading it assuming that many member is probably right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In your .md file, specify that issues should be researched, follow a certain formatting and include certain key words.

The formatted research should include the search terms used when looking for previous issues and list the results found, including a short reason for why those issues didn't apply.

Any issues submitted that didn't include the formatting, research, and key words are put into a bin where volunteer users can go through them and correct the problems.

Basically, I'm saying to demand better from the people you're looking to help, automate as much as you can, and delegate some of the work to those who can't code but can contribute in some way.

</comment><comment><USER29> Many developers would be glad to have 75 pull requests a day on their open source projects, it doesn't seem to make sense to complain about it. I can understand his frustration but maybe he just needs to delegate more work, give commit access, find reliable moderators, etc. it shouldn't be that hard with so much interest in the project.

<comment><USER30> Indeed. For me as open source developer, the most frustrating issues are the ones that demand functionality _without_ code attached. Especially if they are worded in a way that the creator is somehow entitled to have his issue solved (without offering any compensation).

Then again, I have never been in a project that got 75 new pull requests per day...

<comment> grey-area The issue in question had no code attached, it was a vague request for a syntax change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Google Code uses stars, Codeplex allows votes... that seems to be the minimum effort to support crowdsourcing bug prioritization. GitHub's issues haven't gotten much love.

</comment><comment><USER32> >dfkaye

[https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee- script/issues/2864#issue...](https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee- script/issues/2864#issuecomment-15160136)

Is that guy serious?</comment>


How the World Closed Its Eyes to Syria's Horror - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/14/world/middleeast/kimmelman-images-of-aleppo.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER2> This is far from true. There are reports of incidents, but many people have been allowed to leave.

The real problem with Syria is simply that it got caught in the cross-fire of Russia's attempts to hold on to a semblance of it's prior global power and American Imperialism (call it the "Post-Cold War", if you like). Of course there is a third party, whom I won't name, subtly coaxing both of them on.</comment>


Show HN: We're making covers for stability balls. Supplement your standing desk. - <AUTHOR> http://www.myball.co/indiegogo

<comment><USER2> Awesome idea. I need a ball cover for my stability ball chair at work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool.</comment>


History of computers : My Collection - <AUTHOR> http://kishorekumar.net/blog/2010/07/history-of-computers/ <comment><USER2> The first personal computer was not created by Steve Wozniak at Apple. What computer was the first depends upon how you define personal computer. The first microprocessor based computer targeted to a non-commercial market was the Altair.</comment>


WakeMate has refunded all paypal deposits - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wakemate.com/2010/08/06/paypal-refunds-complete/

<comment><USER2> PayPal is just poison for your business. They do stuff like this with such regularity that it's nearly impossible to run a business on their payment system.

Any minor change you make exposes you to their review process, which often means they'll simply shut down your account while you jump through their hoops. In the meantime you can't pay your bills or collect payments or otherwise use your account the way you've been using it for years.

They're coming out with some truly interesting services that I would love to use, but frankly I can't afford to expose my business to the risk associated with their review process.

<comment><USER3> Didn't they have to refund the money because they haven't shipped the product yet and Paypal has a time limit on transactions like that... I don't really think its Paypal's fault that they took payment for something 9+ months ago and the members still haven't received it.

I'm a bit user of Paypal, it allows me to sell easily to almost anyone in the world, I'd argue that Paypal makes it easy for anyone to get started with a webapp be it for payments, donations, subscriptions.

Sure they have there issues but I've always being able to get them on the phone and sort it out.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, they help you get off the ground in a hurry.

The big issue I have with PayPal is that they don't let you set up a new account for a new bank account. They tie everything you do to a single SSN or tax ID, so there is no way to separate one product from another.

As a result, if you put a new product live, they'll review it when it bills its first credit card. And often that means they'll freeze your account, thus killing _all_ your businesses dead until you resolve it. Worse, if they decide to shut down your account, it's permanent. For you. As in, you as a human being can never set up another PayPal account. As in, you quickly need to reimplement payment for every one of your products. And figure out a new way to pay your overseas suppliers.

It's just not worth the risk.

It's a shame too, since they do make some cool stuff. If they let me set up a new account to try it out, I'd definitely do so.

<comment><USER4> What do you use? Are there any other good gateways? I haven't been able to find anything that doesn't require a huge setup fee (for my volume of business).

<comment><USER2> Amazon is great for getting the same sort of hosted checkout experience up and running with zero hassle. They don't mind you setting up as many accounts as makes sense for your business, even if more than one of them point to the same bank account.

For a proper merchant/gateway experience, I'm with Braintree now, and they are everything you'd want. Granted, you need a real business bank account behind it, and they'll charge you about $100/month as a baseline. But their API just plain makes sense, comes with all the bells and whistles if you need them, and drops right in to your app without a single fist-shaped dent in your keyboard.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the info, I'll give Amazon a go. Hopefully they'll be less fascist than PayPal, thanks again!

EDIT: It seems that it's only available in the US, back to PayPal I go, I guess :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a trip! Good luck to the Wakemate guys. People who wrangle hardware are like the badasses of the startup scene. I have much respect.</comment>


Securing your Linux web server - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dbclin/securing-your-linux-web-server-2be683c223eb <comment><USER2> No mention of restricting access to keypairs and removing access via password login? This is the #1 thing I do with all servers I deploy.

<comment><USER3> At the top of the article it's mentioned that the blog post is an excerpt from a book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a little checklist I use to cover the basics:

[https://drewdevault.com/new-server.html](https://drewdevault.com/new- server.html)

<comment><USER5> I'm a generalist project manager.

When you say "Disable password login via ssh", what is going to be the login method from this point onwards? Via a personal certificate? Tks

<comment><USER6> You should be using public key authentication: [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to- set-...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-ssh- keys--2)

If you insist on using passwords, make sure you at least install something like fail2ban or denyhosts to block the compromised machines which are hammering your server trying to guess passwords. Clients can see which authentication methods are allowed so they know which machines to attack (i.e., yours, if you allow passwords).

<comment><USER7> Or for something even cleaner than a program trying to parse plaintext logs you can use a PAM module. [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pam_abl](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pam_abl)

<comment><USER8> How would you compare it with fail2ban?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here are the basics of users and groups!

And now, here's containerization and complicated awk commands!

I get that it's Chapter 9 in a book, so there is missing context. But I'm also wondering why users and groups seem to be getting intro'd in Chapter 9. And why the author thinks that a person who is learning about users and groups is in any position to consider containers.

</comment><comment><USER10> A minor nit, I suppose. Formatting of cli commands has mangled them to the point they cannot be used. For example

# dpkg — list

will not work. The correct command is

dpkg --list

I suppose I'm particularly sensitive to this because I ran into a problem copying some commands from a terminal window into a Google Document and then copying/pasting them back to the command line. Google Docs had changed some of the spaces to something that looked like a space (both in the doc and in the shell) but was not and caused inexplicable error messages.

Anyway... I prefer stuff where I can copy/past directly to a terminal window and have it work as the author expected.

</comment><comment><USER11> One of the things that I'm super happy about is that for basic stuff I don't need to manage servers (static sites / web apps hosted on S3 etc., FaaS for basic Code) and when I do need to have full on servers, I can use something like GKE/EKS/AKE to just deploy containers and not manage the underlying infrastructure.

It's super awesome when working on personal projects! (although in a way I did enjoy doing all that in the first place)

</comment><comment><USER12> I am so glad nowadays to get websites for my hobby projects going, I just have to do a Github page, and don't have to worry about all that stuff (and don't have to pay, either). Github pages + Static content generators are among the best advancements in the recent years.

<comment><USER13> Back in the day we used to call that "Shared hosting" and it was looked down on by the in-crowd.

<comment><USER14> In my experience shared hosting was looked down upon (and still is) not because we were high-and-mighty better-than-thou you-know-nothing toffee-nosed snobs about the entire idea[1], but because of the many (the majority?) of hosts who were absolutely terrible at security (and stability, and performance both generally & through silly levels of over-selling, and everything else, but security is most important).

In this case the hosting is by a company with the technical skills and infrastructure to properly secure and support the service, not some inexperienced kid living with his parents who thinks a simple cPanel installation (that never gets updated for some reason he doesn't notice or can't be bothered to diagnose) is a great almost-zero-effort way to sell hosting to make a bit of extra pocket money over the school/college/other holidays.

Also the lack of control made using certain things impossible, you were usually held back on an old version of mySQL & PHP, and little else to if you wanted to use postgres or python or anything other you were stuck. That is the same here of course: this probably gives you even less control because it is not trying to be shared hosting it is a hosting-platform-as-a-service.

[1] I may actually be a high-and-mighty better-than-thou you-know-nothing toffee-nosed snob, but that is beside the point here!

<comment><USER12> Years ago someone I used to know ;-) used to upload php scripts to traverse the ".." dir to shared hosts. You can do that with 9 out of 10 smaller shared hosts. It was hillarious. There is a whole lot less of attack surface when it comes to static content generators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The old advice to have separate machines for isolation is still valid in spectre and meltdown times.

</comment><comment><USER16> In case anyone else was wondering: "Shipyard" is a mothballed Docker compose project [https://github.com/shipyard/shipyard](https://github.com/shipyard/shipyard)

<comment><USER16> Meh, sorry. I meant this as a reply to a comment downthread which referenced [https://www.codelitt.com/blog/my-first-10-minutes-on-a- serve...](https://www.codelitt.com/blog/my-first-10-minutes-on-a-server- primer-for-securing-ubuntu/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is that the entire chapter? Seems a little... "thin", I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER18> My go to:

[http://www.codelitt.com/blog/my-first-10-minutes-on-a- server...](http://www.codelitt.com/blog/my-first-10-minutes-on-a-server- primer-for-securing-ubuntu/)</comment>


Ask HN: What's your favourite sci-fi/fantasy book? - <AUTHOR> And why? <comment><USER3> Almost anything by Vernor Vinge. "A Deepness in the Sky" in particular is amazing. I was/am particularly impress by how he handles the idea of fundamental limits on the scope of human achievement, and by how he weaves that into the story so that it's there at all levels.

"Diaspora" by Greg Egan has a great story, huge ideas, and probably the most cogent explanation of sentience/sapience ever written.

"The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" and "Accelerando" have already been mentioned.

"Reteif!" Made me laugh out loud. Larry Niven's "Destiny's Road" points out the difficulty of interstellar colonization. "Ringworld" blew my mind. Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Syn" taught me to pay attention; "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" by Douglas Adams reinforced the lesson.

There are a lot of good ones; I could go on for ages...

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep)

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

It's easy to categorise these as wonderful and well written space opera, but that undersells them. Their author (Venor Vinge) _invented_ the idea of the Singularity, and worked as a computer science professor. Both won both the Hugo Award.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender's_Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender's_Game)

As good as people say it is.

Most of Richard Morgan's works (esp the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeshi_Kovacs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeshi_Kovacs) series). Not his fantasy books though.

For fantasy books, Patrick Rothfuss is doing good stuff. The Kingkiller Chronicles is excellent. Read his other books _before_ "Slow Regard of Silent Things", though, because that is one _weird_ story.

From more recent SciFi books:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl) is excellent.

I'm currently reading _Ancillary Justice_ and I'm really enjoying it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_Justice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_Justice)

</comment><comment><USER5> Bruce Sterling's Distraction. He touches on net-smart nomads, technology- driven disruption and the resulting unemployment, gridlock in congress, something similar to the Occupy movement in DC, a trade war with China that ended when they dumped all US IP online, a war referred to as 'Iraq 3', etc.

This is seriously impressive considering that it was published in 1998. My current hypothesis is that he's a time traveller messing with us.

<comment><USER6> +1 for Distraction, and indeed most of BruceS's works. Incredible, visionary stuff.

"Heavy Weather" is probably the book of his that's most similar to Distraction - also very very good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin

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

</comment><comment><USER8> I have two ultimate faves:-

Accelerando (Charlie Stross) - truly epic, hard-scifi, from near to far future, truly hardcore

Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson) - awesome tale, plenty of nanotech, almost fairy-tale-esque

[Edit: formatting]

<comment><USER9> Diamond Age is one of those awesome books where what you get out of it depends on where you are in life. I read it both before children and after children. I enjoyed it both times. But it was a different experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really like the ideas from Greg Egan, so any of his books.

I still love Gibson, even his later books.

I want to say one of my favourite books is "Salt" by Adam Roberts. I love the characters and description of political views and the way the war between factions plays out. Roberts' other books are pretty good too.

I loved REAMDE - I could have done with a bit more inside the game and a bit less tramping through the woods. I love Stephenson's other books too.

Finally: Bruce Sterling seems to be under-appreciated. Hard to recommend one of his books.

This question is perhaps a FAQ. Has anyone on HN ever scraped the answers posted to the various threads, added information about number of mentions or votes; with links to Amazon (and other book sellers)?

Having some carefully chosen adds and duplicating all the links with affiliate links would turn this into a mostly passive income project.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have read and enjoyed many of the classics that others have mentioned. I would give a shout-out to Wasteland of Flint by Thomas Harlan. I enjoyed it for how it incorporated alternate history in our relatively recent past - imagine a world in which the Inca and Imperial Japanese kingdoms became the dominant superpowers and led the industrial revolution, Europeans were conquered and fast forward into far future world with aliens, FTL space travel all mixed with what the Inca and Japanese cultures might have evolved into in that context and how those of European descent were seen as the lower caste. Some interesting cultural reversals and twists mixed in with future technology and ancient alien technology.

</comment><comment><USER12> A single book? Impossible. I don't think I could even name my favorite Zelazny or PKD. Many of the works of both are in the running. As is "Dune", for sure. Possibly "Snow Crash". "Protector" might not quite make the cut, but comes somewhat close - from my recollection it _was_ my favorite Niven (not counting short stories)... I'm currently finally getting around to "The Mote In God's Eye". Further back, "Foundation" was pretty amazing, and I've a bit of a soft spot for "Childhood's End". Bester's "The Demolished Man" is well worth a read, but I think also doesn't quite make the cut.

</comment><comment><USER13> _The Mysterious Island_ \- Jules Verne

 _Neuromancer_ \- William Gibson

 _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ \- George Orwell

 _Perdido Street Station_ \- China Mieville

 _Snow Crash_ \- Neal Stephenson

 _Ender 's Game_ \- Orson Scott Card

Foundation series - <USER2>

among others...

</comment><comment><USER14> "The Golden Age" by John C. Wright - just awesome, and I agree with the values of the main character

"Chronicles of Amber" by Roger Zelazny - for imagination and badassery

Favorite short story is "Understand" by Ted Chiang - mind-expanding ;)

Also in general the lesser known Heinlein books are amazing. Not a fan of Stranger in a Strange Land. Named my current company after a reference to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" As someone who simply cant sit down and read a book this was the first book I have ever read and reread. First comedic release, is littered everywhere in the book. Recurring jokes for those who pay attention to detail are little nuggets of gold. There are social commentaries that ring true today. Lastly all the characters are believably absurd.

</comment><comment><USER16> A great one that haven't already been mentioned is "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein.

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

It's one of those books that just takes a while to digest after you are done reading it. I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER17> Very good book and the one that got me started on Heinlein. I probably own most of his hard sci-fi books now as a result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Lord of Light by Zelazny. It's on another level really and I love the Buddhist, Hindu influence combined with the technology.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for this. I have read the Chronicles of Amber and really enjoyed Zelazny's writing. I will put this on my list of books to read.

<comment><USER12> Lord of Light is a harder read than Amber. If you trail off partway through don't kick yourself, just try again later. I think it took me three tries to get into it, but once I did it's definitely high amongst my favorites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Ice" by Jacek Dukaj

Every time I read a novel written by Dukaj I start feeling smarter. The ideas presented by characters are always worth considering and eye-opening.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_(Dukaj_novel)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_\(Dukaj_novel\))

</comment><comment><USER20> One great book that hasn't been mentioned so far is the Forever War by Joe Haldeman.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really enjoyed reading Snowcrash. It's no literary magic but it's a fun read.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hard to say... had you asked me this question 15 years ago, I would have answered without hesitation, The Hobbit and Ender's Game.

Today, it's a bit less clear, but here is what comes to mind.

Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke

Worthing Saga - Orson Scott Card

</comment><comment><USER22> Cryptonomicon, it's by FAR the best I've read!

EDIT: Come to think of it, I don't know is in the right category as Sci/fi. Well if not cryptonomicon, then SnowCrash probably :-P

</comment><comment><USER23> The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner is still my favorite novel while A Ticket to Tranai by Robert Sheckley is my preferred short story.

</comment><comment><USER24> Some I have enjoyed:

The Left Hand of God Trilogy The Bad Company series Iain M Banks Sci-Fi Philip Jose Farmer Riverworld

</comment><comment><USER25> Ubik by Philip K Dick.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hyperion Cantos is my personal favorite.</comment>


Major power failure affects homes and transport - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49300025 <comment><USER3> There was confusion on Twitter how a frequency drop could cause a power outage. It's the other way around: loss of power/a plant leads to a drop in frequency. Here's why:

Imagine a generator spinning at 50 rpm (for the sake of simplicity). Now if the load on the generator is larger than the power it can provide, it will be slowed down and the frequency goes down. If the load is lower than the power output of the generator though this surplus goes into spinning it up, raising the frequency.

There are plants that can more easily vary their output which are used to manage these fluctuation and providing frequency control.

A pretty new and fast one is the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia, based on Tesla Powerpacks which can react in milliseconds, instead of seconds and minutes.

<comment><USER4> I'm not an expert - but I understand that while this is true (generator loss causes frequency to drop), this drop in frequency can in turn trigger actual "power outages" for users.

Automated systems respond to sagging frequency by shedding loads - <USER2> the demand for power, so that the frequency can increase and a new equilibrium can be achieved. The goal is to avoid an uncontrolled cascade across the power network as demand outstrips supply; this is substantially harder to manage than a short interruption.

The UK does have battery-powered frequency management services, but it looks like it was quite a large and sudden drop in generation capacity that caused this deviation, and it took several minutes before it was back to normal. Not totally sure what it was yet, but sounds like a gas turbine generator suddenly tripped, along with a nearby offshore wind farm, taking out about a gigawatt of capacity that normal frequency stabilisation couldn't handle, resulting in load shedding.

<comment><USER5> Weather has been unusual as hell today, sunny one minute 50mph winds and torrential rain the next.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's some information: [https://mobile.twitter.com/upsideenergy/status/1159870347618...](https://mobile.twitter.com/upsideenergy/status/1159870347618865152)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Given the frequent reports we get about the insecurity and fragility of the US power grid, is the UK grid as bad and is this going to be just a business-as- usual oopsie or something more sinister?

<comment><USER4> (Not an expert)

The UK grid is actually pretty well maintained and resilient - and controlled power outages can actually be a positive thing in this sense. It looks like a couple of generators failed within a short period, causing a sudden loss of about a gigawatt. When the frequency drops as a result, automated systems start tripping to prevent a more widespread collapse - it's much easier to restore power to customers who have been isolated than to recover after a more widespread collapse, like the US northeast blackout in 2003.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, apparently these power outages only lasted a little under an hour for the folks affected. The big disruption came from it taking out heavily-used sections of the train network during the evening commute and the operators seemingly not having an easy way to bring those back into operation.

<comment><USER8> The problem seems to be that individual trains have faulted and apparently cannot be restarted without a visit from an engineer. With multiple faulty trains blocking lines, nothing can move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The headline (which has since been updated on the BBC) is somewhat misleading, in that the power outage has affected a large area of the UK and is not specifically affecting transport infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Major power failure affects homes and transport"

Is a HILARIOUS headline! In a region with many electric trains it's double- funny! In the future they'll be able to make homes levitate on electrical power (just because they can, and for views and breezes, neighborly one- upmanship etc)and power outages will have even more spectacular effects!

And it will be funnier still!

</comment><comment><USER11> I link a few old news with it : First there was a news that electric grids are hackable. And Russians might be after those. Then there was a news that White House called for some of the power transmission switches be turned manual, which are now automatic. Next there were a bunch of large and sudden power failures in large cities all over the world. And now this.

Maybe there isn't a link. Just a possibility.

<comment><USER12> More likely that the huge storm sweeping the south of england is the cause

<comment><USER13> Imagine I were a hacker who had hacked into a big gas turbine power plant.

To create maximum damage, I am going to want to time my attack within moments of another generator going down. The UK grid can tolerate one big failure, but not two at the same time.

So I sit... I lie in wait... For maybe months... As soon as I see another big generator fail and cause a sudden change in frequency, then within a couple of seconds, I trigger my exploit to shut down my powerstation too.

The storm might have caused one outage, and a hacker the other.

Any decent hacker with this plan in mind will try to hide their tracks. They'll inject a 'glitchy' sensor reading to trigger the failure. They'll make sure all their malware auto-uninstalls itself within milliseconds of the incident, so any investigation sees a glitch in a sensor reading and can't track down the real cause.</comment></comment></comment>


Rocket Slides and Monkey Bars: Chasing Vanishing Playgrounds - <AUTHOR> http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/chasing-the-vanishing-playgrounds-of-our-youth/ <comment><USER2> > When they published their guidelines in 1993, they suggested most existing > playground surfaces, which were usually asphalt, dirt, or grass, needed to > be replaced with pits of wood or rubber mulch or sand, prompting many > schools and parks to rip their old playgrounds out entirely.

Growing up and doing most of my playground playing in the early 90's on a playground almost identical to this wooden masterpiece [0], I feel like some of those older/dangerous playgrounds should've stayed.

Kids can still go iceskating, even though it causes lots of injuries and you have to sign a waiver [1], why not let kids play on the better/dangerous playgrounds after their parents sign a waiver?

[0] [https://playgroundology.wordpress.com/category/wooden- playgr...](https://playgroundology.wordpress.com/category/wooden-playgrounds/) [1] [http://deserticecastle.com/wp-content/uploads/Skater- Liabili...](http://deserticecastle.com/wp-content/uploads/Skater-Liability- Waiver.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> We had these swings by my childhood house and they were a lot of fun:

[http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a275/Liquidrubies/Never%20...](http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a275/Liquidrubies/Never%20Never%20Land/122441266_459aaa7bbf.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER4> One complaint I've always heard about mulch and rubber is that, unlike asphalt or dirt, it's excellent at hiding things like broken glass, used needles, dead animals, and other fun things kids don't need to be surprised by.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, I remember the big metal slide at my elementary school would get hot enough to scorch flesh. That didn't stop us from using it, though.

<comment><USER6> As a kid (90's) we had a big metal slide too. It was placed at the top of a hill and in the winter we would pack snow at the base of the slide to connect it with the hill. The hill would then get turned to ice from all of us kids repeatedly packing the snow down. It was great, the slide was maybe 12 feet tall but the hill added another 20 feet or so.

I still have nieces that go to the same school and that whole area has been re-graded and turned into a parking lot. I suppose it is a good lesson in the impermanence of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unless there are two of them, that rocket slide was in Rapid City, SD. I grew up there and played on it as a kid.

<comment><USER8> There are many of them, you can see the catalog entry in the article. Many towns ordered them.

<comment><USER7> That's what I get for skimming. Missed that, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looking for a playground nearby?

Playground Buddy is an iOS app for that - it's pretty great if you e got a toddler!</comment>