Is Brazil finally ready to fulfill on its destiny as the country of the future? - <AUTHOR> http://www.webiphany.com/2010/12/14/is-brazil-finally-ready-to-fulfill-on-its-destiny-as-the-country-of-the-future/ <comment><USER2> No, it's not. Most of my extended family is in Brazil so my wife and I decided to work remote from Brazil for a couple months this fall. It's hard to really understand how crippling the culture of bureaucracy and corruption is until you experience it.

Internet. $200/mo USD for a theoretical 1MB connection. That's assuming the power stays on. Lots of people use the internet (mostly at cafes) but it's only for games and social networking -- nobody thinks of it as legitimate way to make money.

Crime. In many parts of Sao Paulo and Rio people don't even stop at stoplights because the risk of getting shot and carjacked is too real.

Education. Completely broken. Cheating is so rampant most teachers don't even try to prevent it from happening. That's at the private schools where my cousins have attended-- public schools are apparently far worse.

Entrepreneurs. Most people literally don't even have a mental category for this. At best they make vague negative associations about you being a "capitalist." The dream job is either working for the government or getting an engineering position at some multi-national corporation.

All of this is unfortunate because the Brazilian people are really delightful and quite creative. My wife is a designer and she says some of the best design is coming out of Brazil right now. Unfortunately corruption and regulation has completely driven out the spirit of innovation and that is unlikely to change anytime soon.

<comment><USER3> "risk of getting shot and carjacked is too real"

check and check, when I was 17 and 20.

Your whole assessment is perfect, enumerating most of the reasons that made me leave.

<comment><USER4> Funny - same here, but 18 and 30.

<comment><USER3> São Paulo, or some other part of the country?

<comment><USER4> São Paulo. Stray bullet to the head (luckily just a scratch) and then having my car (and everything else I had with me) jacked at gunpoint.

<comment><USER3> I was robbed when biking, got me in the leg. Carjacked a couple of years later with ATM visit, clothes, wallet, etc gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> American, been following Brazil since I studied there in college. I am cautiously optimistic about Brazil's prospects, I believe a lot hinges on how quickly they're able to reduce their inequality and fix education. Bolsa familia is an innovative step and education, though terrible, is improving: <http://www.economist.com/node/17679798>. Right now most of their GDP growth is based on China's commodity demand so a lot depends on how stable that remains.

I see the corruption issue largely as a result of the massive inequality-- which, like the U.S.'s inequality, tends to fall along racial lines-- and politicians have been great at exploiting it to their advantage with help from the monopolistic mass-media. Ideally a shift towards internet and social media will increase transparency and reduce corruption and the social programmes will smooth out inequality in the long run. IMO the Brazilian culture of jeitinho, taking advantage of opportunity where it arises, is very close to the America entreprenuerial spirit but adapted for an environment with a weak rule-of-law.

So the optimism is because all the fundamentals are there -- a growing, young, tech savvy population that loves social media & open source and a government using a commodities boom to invest in education and social programmes. There are plenty of startups-- <http://www.predicta.net>, for instance, or follow this blog: <http://startupi.com.br/> Obviously it's all very fragile but I remain hopeful, the people are amazing and there's nothing I'd like more than to be able to go back.

<comment><USER6> I agree wholeheartedly with your point. China and India are in a similarly precarious position especially in regards to inequality. The urban centers and their peripheral regions in all three countries are lightyears ahead of the rural countryside. China as many before has pointed out has approx 200 million migrant workers. They have no permanent employment prospects in the cities they are migrating to and they are coming out of abject poverty to begin with.

India is in the same position. Cheating is of no consequence when they aren't enough schools to accomodate the population. And the disparity is not minor, it is catastrophic.

These middle income countries are all in a precarious position, so writing any one or all of them off is uneducated and foolish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Blaming a country's problems on its "culture" however you are defining that is a cop out. India has these exact problems at 5 times the scale. Have any of you tried to start an education company there, all the government officials I spoke to wanted a minimum 1 million dollar bribe, yet it would be idiotic to say that India is doomed when their rapid development is staring you in the face.

Brazil doesn't suffer from novel and "culturally" inherent problems. You would never say that Brazil is culturally inferior to another country because that is bigotted and ridiculous. The country is suffering the same developing bottle necks that others have and continue to face. Look at where the country has come from, look at where it is now, and I implore you to actually compare Brazil to the other (B)RICS etc. since they offer the best contextual comparison.

The most incredible thing about Brazil is that despite the insurmountable odds whether it is the wheels of capitalism, passionate people, or government involvement - or perhaps a hybrid - Brazil is not lost.

Cynicism has its place too, but in an objective analysis of Brazil's prospects on the world stage, leave it out. I respect your experiences and what you have contributed, but the points of information you have provided are without the global context necessary to understand Brazil's place.

Will Rio offer the world the next Silicon Valley? Only time will tell, but its clear to me that it has a damn good shot.

<comment><USER4> How long have you lived in the country, other than seeing 'articles' about it?

<comment><USER6> My father grew up in the favellas without parents, his mother (my grandmother) died when he was just a kid and he never knew is father, as is common in the slums. He was able to support himself through pickpocketing and any other way to feed and clothe himself. Sometime in his late teen years, through a gang connection, he was placed in a job at a factory. He worked his ass off at jobs like this for twenty years.

He has never told me how, but one day he left his job and started a small manufacturing business, partnering with the manager from his very first job who he had befriended.As soon as he could afford it, he took my mother and sister and moved to the United States.

I lived in Brazil for almost five years after grad school. My father passed away just last year, and I promised him to go back and look for entrepreneurs like him to fund with micro loans.

My father represents the entrepreneurial spirit that you claim is lacking in Brazil. I know that you are wrong when you say Brazilian culture cannot support a Silicon Valley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Easy answer: no.

Brazil has a lot of positive things going for it, but when you have a cultural background that's as rotten as Brazil's one is, you can count on everything to fail stupendously.

<comment><USER3> Brazil has been the country of the future for at least 37 years.

<comment><USER7> Once a friend of mine who happens to know someone working for the CIA said (and I quote) "this friend guy at the CIA tells me they see Brazil as 'the country of the future' and they are doing their best to keep it that way". I guess he was (partly) joking but, truth is, Brazil only started to recover when it stopped following the 'advice' coming from the IMF and started running the show on its own.

I hear the right-wing free-marketeers crying "regulation! socialism! welfare state! high interest!" and the rest. Yet, what works best for the US might not be what works best for Brazil. Just saying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm seeing a lot of (justified) negative feelings towards Brazilian culture, but I think dismissing the tech scene in Brazil outright is a bit like talking about the american redneck stereotype and forgetting about this little place called Silicon Valley.

I recall seeing an article a while back about some successful entrepreneurs from Brazil and I know a guy that is trying to get a VoIP startup off the ground there. If anything, I'd say that technology is Brazil's best chance at becoming the eluded "country of the future". I mean, voting machines and Lua came from there, so it's not like there isn't potential.

<comment><USER4> The techs are alright. Both things you mention are two prime examples (I'm still flabbergasted how well the voting machines thing worked out, because it had all the reasons in the world to fail).

But when you need to invest 4x more on hardware and software to have something that is 2 years older than standard hardware and software, all inside a bureaucratic state that adds dozens of legal impediments or delays to anyone who wants to make some honest money, it's easy to see why any potential entrepreneur has to tread much more dangerous waters in Brazil than it would anywhere else.

<comment><USER8> On the one hand I agree that there's a lot of complications on the non-tech side of things over there, but on the other I can't help thinking that many successful tech efforts had some non-trivial roadblocks to overcome, e.g. google (who needs another search engine?) and youtube (how are they possibly going to monetize that?) come to mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there any reason for the random hypenation? Its very distracting.

<comment><USER10> for some reason, the hyphenation does not show up in the source. Could be a glitchy javascript library trying to do intelligent line wraps.

<comment><USER11> It appears to only be glitchy on Chrome. I opened it up in Firefox and the hyphenations were only at the line wraps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> BTW, what the heck is it with all the misplaced hyphens? It's kind of annoying.

</comment><comment><USER12> The US should follow their energy independence stance... there is no reason why they can and we can't.

<comment><USER13> I don't really see why we should try to be indpendant in energy rather than copper or cars or anything else. Trade and specialization are important and its only nationalism to want to try to produce everything in one's own country. Now if you're saying that we shouldn't be dependant on the the particular countries that now produce oil I might agree, but what would be wrong with the US being dependant on Mexican solar energy or Brazilian sugarcane?

<comment><USER14> problem here is we choose to not depend on Brazilian sugar cane ethanol. we instead impose huge import tariffs to protect our possibly net-energy-negative corn ethanol lobby.</comment></comment></comment>


Funeral attendees included in gang database via photo surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2020/01/16/inclusion-in-texas-gang-membership-database-limits-gun-rights-might-violate-due-process <comment><AUTHOR> "On information and belief, Plaintiff alleges that EPPD included him in the TXGANG database in 2017. On or about August 2017, Plaintiff attended another motorcyclist's funeral at a Catholic church in El Paso, Texas. Law enforcement heavily surveilled the funeral and took almost 4,000 photographs of the funeral's attendees and motorcycles"

</comment><comment><USER2> How many are cops?</comment>


Euro to hit dollar parity in 2011, if still exists: analyst. - <AUTHOR> http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.b0320c064d1eb19c9176b234a046992b.911&show_article=1

<comment><USER2> For every analyst predicting a stock will go up there is one predicting the opposite. Guessing correct 50% of the time is probably an improvement to their past predictions. Till now using darts to pick stocks consistently outperforms these 'experts'.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder why it's always London-based analysts and think tanks who predict the imminent fall of the Euro. It's not like they have anything to gain from it…

<comment><USER4> Except to maintain popular support of keeping their own currency.</comment></comment>


Impaired Insulin Signaling and Chronic Inflammation in the Alzheimer's Brain - <AUTHOR> https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2019/05/impaired-insulin-signaling-and-chronic-inflammation-in-the-alzheimers-brain/ <comment><AUTHOR> Since there seem to be a strong interest in diabetes community.

Please also see:

Gum disease–causing bacteria could spur Alzheimer's (sciencemag.org) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18987015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18987015)

Association of Type 2 Diabetes with Titanium Dioxide Crystals in the Pancreas (acs.org) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17362137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17362137)

Some studies show an association between the herpes virus and Alzheimer's (theconversation.com) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18265115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18265115)</comment>


An antenna company that helps elephants and rocket cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42337050 <comment><USER2> Fun name choice [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynting_vector](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynting_vector)

</comment><comment><USER3> He only needs an "r" at the end of his name, as the far field radiation pattern of an antenna is essentially the Fourier transform of its current distribution.

Spot on though about antennas, essentially bending metal the right way.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. I've used an EM and antenna simulation tool called FEKO that is also originally from South Africa. Is there a university there with a strong electromagnetics focus?

<comment><USER5> I used FEKO for some time and it had the best interface for doing optimization out of the EM solvers in my opinion. The development team out of South Africa was also excellent in the brief times I got to work with them directly. Unfortunately after the company was acquired the new monetization scheme didn't work out with my office and we largely switched to CST.</comment></comment>


GOP thinks bashing tech companies will rally base - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/08/republicans-midterm-social-media-bias-strategy-659634 <comment><USER2> And it may just work. Big Tech has done itself no favors over the past few years, doing stuff that made it increasingly more disliked. But they thought it was okay because that stuff made them more money, so they must have been doing something right, despite all the criticism.</comment>


The Nokia N900 is better than the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.womworld.com/nokia/15439/n900-is-better-than-the-iphone/

<comment><USER2> Anything is better than anything else, at least for very specific values of "better". There is no objective measure of the quality of a smartphone. I guess "I prefer the N900 to the iPhone" doesn't get nearly as many clicks.

Also, the link is to an article about a linked article - [http://www.stochasticgeometry.ie/2010/05/10/why-the- nokia-n9...](http://www.stochasticgeometry.ie/2010/05/10/why-the- nokia-n900-is-fundamentally-better-than-the-iphone/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The N900 is definitely an awesome phone. Amazing browser. Nokia doesn't seem to want to market it much though.</comment>


Prominent Venture Capitalist Chris Sacca Retires from Investing - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-26/prominent-venture-capitalist-chris-sacca-retires-from-investing <comment><USER2> Other discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14202994](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14202994)

</comment><comment><USER3> Leave the Casino before the house has a chance to win. And don't look back!

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll miss him on Shark Tank. Hopefully Ashton doesn't become more of a regular

</comment><comment><USER5> Good for him. Ran into him at a startup school event in Boston a long time ago. Super interesting guy.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you made your money on bay area unicorns, I think its your responsibility to keep reinvesting a portion of it in high growth startups.

If this becomes a trend the bubble will surely burst. For this reason I think we should publicly shame him into keeping the doors on his VC open, or doing something else to contribute to the ecosystem, rather than using all of his money on zero sum political games.

<comment><USER7> So if you make your money working for some company (say Google), do you owe working for Google something? Do you owe them say, free tutoring classes after you retire for new employees? Free bathroom cleanings after you retire?

Why do you think someone owes someone else money, just because they are rich?</comment></comment>


Elevator Hacking: From the Pit to the Penthouse [video] - <AUTHOR> http://new.livestream.com/internetsociety/hopex1/videos/57102621 <comment><USER2> I remember the time I rode an elevator top to the attic of a university building where we found about a ton of mercury and an old radioactive waste storage area. That sent us to the building core of a building next door to sneak into the graduate lab and borrow a Geiger counter.

A few years later they cleaned the area out and moved the Latino studies department in.

<comment><USER3> So basically it was a small-scale model of what happens in city neighborhoods?

<comment><USER4> Well currently in many cities, shortly afterward some engineering department would move in next door and make that area prime spot for tech collaboration and study, and after a while the Latino Studies department would have to be relocated off campus.

<comment><USER3> ...but then the engineering department would start sending their people out to the new off-campus location to pick up their materials?

(alluding to the google bus fiasco)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The video can be downloaded here: [http://livestreamvod-f.akamaihd.net/events/000000000030c2ae/...](http://livestreamvod-f.akamaihd.net/events/000000000030c2ae/19d2ee6c-f8a5-4d3a-bc09-2d2d21c3912c_2096.mp4)

<comment><USER6> How'd you pull the video? There's a couple on there I'd like to cache

<comment><USER5> When you launch the video, the player downloads this file: [http://api.new.livestream.com/accounts/686369/events/3195566...](http://api.new.livestream.com/accounts/686369/events/3195566/videos/57102621.smil)

In it, you can find /events/000000000030c2ae/19d2ee6c-f8a5-4d3a-bc09-2d2d21c3912c_2096.mp4

And since the streaming comes from [http://livestreamvod-f.akamaihd.net/](http://livestreamvod-f.akamaihd.net/), I get:

[http://livestreamvod-f.akamaihd.net/events/000000000030c2ae/...](http://livestreamvod-f.akamaihd.net/events/000000000030c2ae/19d2ee6c-f8a5-4d3a-bc09-2d2d21c3912c_2096.mp4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone summarize this? I don't have 2 hours to watch.

<comment><USER8> * An elevator is basically an open door to a building.

* Every lift has mandated modes that allow an operator to take full control and override any building access controls.

* The security on these modes is poor.

* Don't do dumb things with elevators

I'd encourage you to watch it in full, as it is interesting and contains more detail than the above suggests.

<comment><USER9> Decent summary, and I'd also encourage the watch-in-full. Even play in the background without visual aids, as the presenters did a great job enhancing the data via presentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like the video was removed. Anyone have a mirror?

<comment><USER11> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzrJjdZDRQ&list=UUeUXM6fLbf...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzrJjdZDRQ&list=UUeUXM6fLbfvJuaIL0Puue3g)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is pretty cool!</comment>


CRAPL - Open source license for academic software - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/crapl/

<comment><USER2> I donno, I keep writing code and it _is_ often crap, but the MIT style license seems to be quite okay. I guess if there were more people using the code I write, I might think differently. ( Like the lab hardware control code I'm storing at <https://github.com/imrehg/labhardware> )</comment>


JS Ipsum: Get more JavaScript in your life. Put it in your mockups - <AUTHOR> http://jsipsum.lunarlogic.io/ <comment><USER2> tl;dr - It's lorem ipsum but the sentences are made out of developer vocabulary and a lot of JavaScript terms specifically, and it's built with jQuery.

The API is one simple endpoint with one query param (text length). Looks like you could curl it and grab #output like they do for your own automated setup.

Example:

> Compiler is a library that helps developers creating user interfaces based > on the Module Pattern. Falcor is a Node JS framework for dynamic web apps. > D3 . Transmitting information about the user's reading habits and browsing > activities to various websites. World Wide Web content production; the > majority of websites employ it and it is embedded.

</comment><comment><USER3> awesome design!</comment>


Nissin's ultra-nutritious instant ramen with "all nutrients your body needs" - <AUTHOR> https://soranews24.com/2019/08/09/cup-noodles-nissin-releases-ultra-nutritious-instant-ramen-with-all-nutrients-your-body-needs/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like the food from The Matrix. It too had everything the body needs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oEnJfZ9joY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oEnJfZ9joY)</comment>


Every time you search for a domain on Network Solutions, they register it themselves. - <AUTHOR> http://www.networksolutionssucksballs.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here, do some automated searching. Save as ns.rb and run as "ruby ns.rb" or do a +x...

\----- cut here -----

       #!/usr/bin/env ruby -w
       require 'rubygems'
       require 'mechanize'
       require 'digest/md5'

       search_form = WWW::Mechanize.new.get("http://www.networksolutions.com/").forms.first
       search_field = search_form.fields.name("domainNames").first

       1.upto 50 do |i|
           puts search_field.value = "#{Digest::MD5.hexdigest("#{rand(9999999999)}")}.com"
           search_form.submit
       end

<comment><USER2> This won't do anything but load their server slightly. They're using the 5-day cancellation rule, so they don't actually pay for the domains that they reserve.

<comment><USER3> Could be wrong here, but the point is to draw enough attention so that the refund policy is changed.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, but why would this help? Unless you can hurt their bottom line, you're unlikely to change their behavior.

<comment><USER4> If a few thousand people run this server a day or two before Q1 ends they'll have to explain to the press why they missed earnings projections by so much

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen A letter to the ICANN, courtesy of Network Systems:

[http://www.dear-international-corporation-for-assigned- name-...](http://www.dear-international-corporation-for-assigned-name-and- numbers.com) [s-and-numbers.com]

<http://www.i-couldnt-help-notice-that-network-solutions.com>

<http://www.buys-every-site-that-i-search.com>

[http://www.they-say-they-are-trustworthy-and-reliable- though...](http://www.they-say-they-are-trustworthy-and-reliable-though.com) [.com]

<http://www.they-say-so-right-on-their-front-page.com>

[http://www.you-have-to-scroll-down-a-bit-to-see-it- though.co...](http://www.you-have-to-scroll-down-a-bit-to-see-it-though.com) [m]

<http://www.anyway-could-you-please-help-us-out.com>

<http://www.so-we-dont-have-to-keep-giving-our-dot.com>

<http://www.businesses-silly-names-like-kuubite.com>

<http://www.that-take-ten-minutes-to-spell-out.com>

<http://www.and-hinder-word-of-mouth-growth.com>

<http://www.which-is-kind-of-lame.com>

[http://www.pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top-please-help-us- ou...](http://www.pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top-please-help-us- out.com)[t.com]

<http://www.yours-truly-daniel-cussen.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> Hopefully this exposure will seriously hurt their business, but I think ICANN is responsible for failing to administer the assignment of names appropriately. There should be no refundable period and applications like this made in bad faith should lose network solutions their accreditation.

<comment><USER6> An opportunistic leech already registered this domain, so seeing this domain doesn't really show much, except a bunch of ads.

The point is that after you search for a domain at netsol.com, you get a Network Solutions landing page: "This Domain is available - Get it Now!", they effectively squat every domain that's searched -- for presumably a 5-day refundable period -- and in the process lock-out every other registrar from selling it.

Here is another domain which is mentioned in the comment thread: <http://networksolutionssucksballs.com/> , someone searched for the name and it already has a Network Solutions landing page, and though you can buy it, its 'taken' if you try to buy it from another(cheaper) registrar.

You can try it out yourself, it takes around 15 minutes after you searched a domain for them to register it and appear with a NetSol landing page, instead of timing out.

And BTW, the person that bought the youguysseriouslyregistereverythingisearch.com domain to squeeze some Adsense clicks while its making headlines is registered to:

Campbell, Susan firstname.lastname@example.com 2085 Ryder Avenue Everett, WA 98201 US 425.3177143

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here is the Network Solutions official response:

Dear George Scott,

Thank you for contacting Network Solutions Customer Service Department. We are committed to creating the best Customer experience possible. One of the first ways we can demonstrate our commitment to this goal is to quickly and efficiently address your recent request.

We want to make sure that our customers do not lose the domain name to disreputable individuals (or entities) that snatch up domains after a domain search has been made. Network Solutions, along with many other registrars have received numerous customer complaints of domain names being registered by someone else, typically outside of the United States, just minutes or hours after someone else has conducted a domain name search at a registrar site, performed a WHOIS query, or typed a domain in the browser to see if there is an active Web site. The industry calls this practice domain name "Front Running."

To thwart the efforts of these sneaky individuals, Network Solutions reserves unregistered domains for up to four days from the date they are searched on our Web site. This customer protection feature provides our customers the opportunity to register names at a later date without fear that the name will be registered by the "Front Runners." If the domain you searched is available and one that you really want, we suggest that you register it immediately to ensure that you will not lose the name.

Please do not respond to this E-mail. If you have any additional questions, you can reach us via e-mail by completing our online form at [http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/help/service- request.j...](http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/help/service- request.jhtml) or by phone at 1-888-642-9675 and provide Service Request # 1-321287601.

Thank you for choosing Network Solutions.

Sincerely,

Arlan001 Network Solutions Technical Support Specialist

(c) Copyright 2008 Network Solutions, LLC. All rights reserved.

<comment><USER8> To protect our valued customers from the dastardly practice of "Front Running", we engage in exactly this practice but do not refer to it as "Front Running" when we do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had the same idea for a patent searching site...

</comment><comment><USER10> If they still let you register it for the same price that you'd get initially it seems significantly less evil than flat out stealing it. It's still evil though, because they're reserving domain names so other registrars can't offer them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you looked at their pricing chart?

[http://www.networksolutions.com/domain-name- registration/pri...](http://www.networksolutions.com/domain-name- registration/pricing-chart.jsp)

These folks charge $34.99 for a .com per year! Godaddy charges $9.99.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So how to we file a complaint with the FTC? Definitely some false advertising going on "This Domain is Available - Get it Now!"

How about a contest to see who can get them to register the funniest name?

Has this happened to anyone else?

<comment><USER12> I'd vote for <http://theguyinthepictothebottomrightfucksonthefirstdate.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The question is do they let you purchase the domain after they automatically register it?

If they do, this can simply be a very effective automatic reservation of pages, so they don't get grabbed while you fill in your personal info/credit card info.

If not then this really sucks.

<comment><USER14> They do. And they don't put any ads on the domains, and give the domain back to the pool after 5 days.

It's a fair deal to save you from the unwanted domaingrabbing through whois!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hah! networksolutionspissedonmyprivacy.com

<comment><USER15> Good one.

I went for the predictable; <http://networksolutionssucksballs.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been complaining about this for over two years.

It's just an ugly business practice. NSI should be drummed out of the market with a policy like that. What's next? hold the domain and put it up for auction?

</comment><comment><USER17> I like pcnames:

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

because it utilizes some nifty JavaScript, a kind of "search as you type" method regarding inquiries of domain names. It also (claims that it) doesn't log or record those queries.

That Network Solutions leeches queries and then charges $34.99 per year for registration is also insane. (Testing:) It really is quite unfortunate that they're @ number one of the list for a google search RE "domain name registration". . .

I guess there's always the BBB.

</comment><comment><USER18> You could make them lose money on this.

1.Search for a lot of domains that no one will ever go to (aebubibabaabaabaabba.com). 2.Hit the domain a lot of times, follow links 3\. network solutions will register the domain, pay their money, and no one will ever go to the site.

I wonder if there are safe guards, ie the program can only spend $50,000 a day to register domains. To give network solutions the least lead time, it would be best to flood the websites at the end of the 5 day period.

</comment><comment><USER19> They're standing behind the decision, too: <http://www.cio.com/article/170950> After Furor, Network Solutions Stands by Name Policy Network Solutions says it will take steps to better notify customers of its controversial policy of temporarily registering domain name searches.

</comment><comment><USER20> Network Solutions sucks! GoDaddy follows the same path. I moved to NameCheap (recommended) for a better service.

<comment><USER21> NameCheap is just an eNom reseller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What are they going to do next? Resolve all failed DNS lookups to their paid search engine?*

*This was done by VeriSign, but at the time, VeriSign owned Network Solutions.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen I had a feeling this could be done to exploit people...

I'm going to try searching a few dumb domains to get them to lose money in ICANN registration fees.

<comment><USER23> They don't lose money on that. They just cancel each registration after 5 days and get full refund.

<comment><USER22> I think the point is more that they never pay. If they were actually paying and then getting their money back, they really would lose money on this (in float), and it would be easy enough to write a script that would make them run out of money.

<comment> daniel-cussen Exactly. They would lose 5 days' interest on the money, and more importantly, whatever money they alloted to this scheme would be exhausted quickly. Then they wouldn't be able to keep doing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well I was wondering how long that would take to happen. (thought about that dirty trick years ago and hoped no one ever did it).

</comment><comment><USER25> And look! The domain tyhrwqblknklnlkandasdasdasd.co.uk is taken! /www.upload- images.net/imagen/357846aac7.png (and it wasn't me)

</comment><comment><USER26> Network Solutions has now become the world's largest domain squatter. They're really going to eat it after this mess up.

</comment><comment><USER27> someone smart figured out how to get a lot of clicks on ads!

</comment><comment><USER28> pretty shady - something I've always wondered about - thanks for cracking it open.</comment>


A performance comparison between Java and C on the Nexus 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.learnopengles.com/a-performance-comparison-between-java-and-c-on-the-nexus-5/ <comment><USER2> I've been an Android user since my first smartphone. I've heard several times iPhone users complain that Android equivalents of their iOS apps felt sluggish; though they couldn't pinpoint it exactly. If these numbers are true, it might well be true. Objective-C might not suffer from such a significant slowdown.

I think it is one of the things Apple gets right; they know what matters. As an outsider to the iOS/Mac ecosystem I've often felt that Apple makes trade- offs in productivity to achieve a better experience for the end user. While these tests aren't indicative of typical app performance (most apps aren't doing math in a loop), an order of magnitude performance difference is enough to show up on many apps.

I wonder if Google made a mistake by not choosing native code for Android apps. We have heard forever about Java (and other run-times) getting close to C in performance, but outside of specific test cases native code still runs circles around everything else out there.

<comment><USER3> While I'm sure Dalvik contributes, Android has had many more serious issues in terms of user responsiveness.

* Android devices have very laggy touch responsiveness in general, while this is something Apple has spent considerable effort optimizing [1]

* Only in recent revisions (Project Butter [2]) has Android made significant improvements to its general UI lag/smoothness issues. At various times, Google employees have gone into extensive descriptions of why the UI is so janky [3][4]

* Many of the default Android elements were for quite a long time, very unoptimized - this included calls w/ lots of overdraw, or lack of node recycling for lists. This forced app developers to take on the bulk of performance optimization. You can take a guess how often that is done well. [5]

Over time, Android the OS, SDK/API, tools have all improved but I believe your second paragraph gets it right. At the end of the day, people at Apple cared a lot about getting the first versions of iOS to feel great. No one at Google cared enough about about it. Even today, when you compare the iPhone to the latest Nexus devices, there's lots of hardware integration issues that will probably never get fixed (outside of community patches).

[1] [http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/19/apples- iphone-5-touchscree...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/19/apples- iphone-5-touchscreen-is-2-5-times-faster-than-android-devices/)

[2] [http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/07/12/getting-to-know- andr...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/07/12/getting-to-know- android-4-1-part-3-project-butter-how-it-works-and-what-it-added/)

[3] [https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x...](https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s)

[4] [http://lazytechguys.com/news/google-dev-explains-why- android...](http://lazytechguys.com/news/google-dev-explains-why-android-user- interface-is-laggy-while-ios-wp7-qnx-are-fluid/)

[5] [http://www.curious-creature.org/2012/12/01/android- performan...](http://www.curious-creature.org/2012/12/01/android-performance- case-study/)

<comment><USER4> > [4] [http://lazytechguys.com/news/google-dev-explains-why- > android...](http://lazytechguys.com/news/google-dev-explains-why-android- > user-interface-is-laggy-while-ios-wp7-qnx-are-fluid/)

Man that was a weird read. Guy spends a few months interning and all of a sudden talks about his profound connection to the campus, the fundamental flaws in the product architecture, but watch out! He may be biased since he will be interning on a competing product the next summer!

Regardless of the facts of the matter this seems like a very non-authoritative source.

<comment><USER5> It's like no one actually reads Dianne Hackborn's post (#3 above), which was in direct response to that guy's musings going viral when he had no idea what he was talking about.

edit: oops, that was the post that sparked the original specious musings. I meant this followup one: [https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/XAZ4CeVP...](https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/XAZ4CeVP6DC)

<comment><USER4> What drew me to #4 was the baiting headline (Google dev explains...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, yeah, when you start developing for Android you quickly find out that Dalvik JIT is kinda crap and it just doesn't do inlining and hotspot optimizations very well.

Which means that pretty much computationaly intensive tasks (e.g. image processing, crypto, etc.) are several orders of magnitude slower than what you're used from desktop JVM. That's especially noticable in Android's BouncyCastle crypto implementation, where standard algorithms like PBKDF#2 derivation function can take ages (e.g. 3 seconds for 10.000 iterations on Nexus 4). Simply just moving those algorithms to C library without any optimizations quickly gives you orders of 100-500x speedups just from the GCC compiler (the before mentioned OpenSSL implementation of the derivation algorithm runs about 80-150ms for same parameters and result). So now we do pretty much any crypto or bitmap algorithms in C and just call C library via JNI.

Of course... most apps don't really do anything computationally expensive so C doesn't give much benefits.

<comment><USER7> It's not just the tasks you list which are traditionally considered (relatively) computationally intensive, in my experience. I cringe at every loop wondering what the performance cost will be (it's not always clear or predictable). I'm almost at the point where I'd rather just write everything in C++, except for what absolutely cannot be.

<comment><USER8> > I cringe at every loop wondering what the performance cost will be (it's not > always clear or predictable).

Really? I think it's fairly easy to determine what would be expensive vs. what's going to be relatively cheap. I'd love a counterintuitive example to prove me wrong though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He keeps saying C but the source code he shows at the end is clearly C++, even if the file has a .c extension.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I see that confusion quite often.

<comment><USER11> It is quite annoying, especially since C++ was not a superset of C for a long time.

Those are two different languages that just happen to have same roots.

<comment><USER12> Technically, you're right, but practically you don't have to give up much to write C99 that is also valid C++11.

<comment><USER13> From my own experiences writing either language I have to disagree. C++ may be much (much much) more featureful than C, but if you skip constructs and behavior that aren't strictly a subset of the two you are still missing a lot of modern C, and it's exaggerated by C11. That's not just the obvious high level features like compound literals, designated initializers, VLAs, or anonymous structures/unions. There are a lot of creeping nits about what is defined and undefined in either language, a famous(ly misunderstood) example being type-punning via union, which is allowed in C but undefined behavior in C++.

Except for a few things C++ has imported from C like stdint and vararg macros the truth of your statement depends strongly on how far you personally tend to stray beyond C89 in either direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Proguard does a lot of optimisations ahead of time and is part of the standard workflow for Android development. It would have been a more fair comparison if Proguard optimisations were enabled (or mentioned if already enabled).

</comment><comment><USER15> An important aspect of mobile performance that this article doesn't really go into is memory. Its not just about CPU speed. Java performs quite close to C when excess memory is available, but performs poorly under low memory conditions. This is true of all GCed langs. The fact that iOS apps feel snappier is in no small part due to better memory management (ARC).

Source: Why mobile web apps are slow - [http://sealedabstract.com/rants/why- mobile-web-apps-are-slow...](http://sealedabstract.com/rants/why-mobile-web- apps-are-slow/)

<comment><USER16> This benchmark had nothing to do with low memory conditions. Also modern GCs do not add really that much memory overhead. Typical manual memory allocators bookkeeping/fragmentation have comparable overheads (~10-30%). Problems of Java being memory intensive lie elsewhere - e.g. lack of object inlining (too many pointers everywhere), wide-strings as default, lack of lightweight structures (two words overhead per object), the VM itself, huge OOP libraries (even if you need a single method you need to load a whole class into memory). 90% of memory taken up by my Java IDE is _code_.

BTW: Your link is about JS, not Java. Performance problems of JS have little to do with GC, there are much bigger problems first.

<comment><USER15> Modern GCs do not add much overhead when _excess_ memory is available. When the app itself consumes a lot of memory and there is little room available, the GC gets stressed and eats too much CPU time. The chart in the link (taken from some paper) depicts this. The problem is the GC under low memory conditions, not Java.

Yes, the link is about JS. But there are relevant pieces.

Quote from the article: "If you want to process camera images on Android phones for real-time object recognition or content based Augmented Reality you probably heard about the Camera Preview Callback memory Issue. Each time your Java application gets a preview image from the system a new chunk of memory is allocated. When this memory chunk gets freed again by the Garbage Collector the system freezes for 100ms-200ms. This is especially bad if the system is under heavy load (I do object recognition on a phone – hooray it eats as much CPU power as possible). If you browse through Android's 1.6 source code you realize that this is only because the wrapper (that protects us from the native stuff) allocates a new byte array each time a new frame is available. Build-in native code can, of course, avoid this issue."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Its very common to see people claiming that Java is faster than a native compiled application. But my gut feeling says otherwise.

I don't know the Java internals on Windows. But someone know why applications with graphical interfaces feels so slow ? My rough guess is that even if Java is fast for mathematical operations, it needs to call native libraries for drawing and this is expensive because of the isolation.

<comment><USER18> This is almost certainly questionable programming rather than an issue with Java performance in general. Java is the language most beginning programmers start with and they'll do things like create wildly inefficient methods that they proceed to call from the UI thread and so on. Additionally the most used Java UI library (Swing) is not exactly known for its snappiness. The JNI interface introduces overhead but certainly not anywhere near the sort of overhead that should result in UI rendering issues. Long story short, sluggish UIs are bad programming and not related to the programming language they were created in.

<comment><USER19> I'd add that there aren't many good reasons why UI programming should be slow in any language on any desktop machine around today.

You can draw tens of thousands of things on the fly in a _web browser_ and have it appear instantaneous to a human.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> No source code for the test framework; can't see how the code is called. If there are repeated calls through JNI, JNI transit time can often be a significant factor.

How many times through the benchmark? Did the JIT get a chance to warm up? Caliper provides a framework that can be used to properly assess performance.

There's no benchmark here without seeing a more complete picture.

<comment><USER21> Exactly. I wanted to play with the java code to try some possible optimizations but this is difficult without a test driver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Take home: Dalvik still sucks and ART isn't good enough to replace C++ for numerical computation on Android yet?

<comment><USER23> Solution: native numeric computing library in ART?

<comment><USER8> If you're doing this kind of computation, do it either in Renderscript or C and call into it from JNI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> i'm amazed and hurt that dalvik doesn't do inlining (but if JIT will need a few runs to get going... not unreasonable on a phone, if the app can stay resident in memory)

for my fellow perplexed: ART is a java runtime (dalvik alt) [https://source.android.com/devices/tech/dalvik/art.html](https://source.android.com/devices/tech/dalvik/art.html)

impressive improvement, x2 dalvik (on this one case...)

BUT for similar GHz (2.3 vs 2.6), intel is x2 to x8 times faster than ARM...

<comment><USER22> > dalvik doesn't do inlining (but if JIT will need a few runs to get going...)

Is Dalvik actually a JIT these days? I thought it was just a bytecode interpreter with a register based VM.

In any case, ART seems to be heading down the AOT path, which I think still makes sense in a mobile setting.

<comment><USER25> Dalvik has had a JIT since Android 2.2. It's quite limited relative to HotSpot due to memory constraints.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why do we often use graphs when displaying benchmark results? Because it gives us a way of avoiding sentences like this:

 _Even the slowest native build using clang is not more than 43% slower than the best native build using gcc._

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if he is using ProGuard. He mentions having to manually inline functions, so I think not. It is built-in to the Android build process, nowadays, though, and can be turned on with just a property setting.

<comment><USER28> Still, using Proguard optimization with Dalvik is ill advised.

<comment><USER29> Why do you say that?

<comment><USER28> "Dalvik performs many of its own optimizations, and some of the optimizations performed by ProGuard are incompatible with Dalvik, so to avoid hard-to- figure-out bugs (and because the net performance gain is usually small), the default configuration turns off optimization."

in [http://tools.android.com/recent/proguardimprovements](http://tools.android.com/recent/proguardimprovements)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd like to see if there's a difference in the output and/or in the speed of the C results without _-ffast-math_.

That option results some changes in the floating point math (see [http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.1.1/gcc/Optimize- Options...](http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.1.1/gcc/Optimize- Options.html#index-ffast_002dmath-555)) which Java is unable to set, but which may be okay for limited domain the DSP filter works in.

<comment><USER31> Actually -ffast-math is ok for vast majority of the applications, not just for minority of limited domain apps.

Java has an absolutely horrible floating point support. See [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/JAVAhurt.pdf](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/JAVAhurt.pdf)

Java code can thus never (in the current language spec) take advantage of vector instructions etc. While in raw integer performance Java might come near native code whenever you use floats Java is going to always lose.

The sad part here is that the decisions made on Java do not even save the programmer from the evils of floating point math. They just cripple the language.

<comment><USER32> I must say pointing to slides that comment on flaws mostly corrected in Java 1.2 with the strictfp keyword. And comments on concerns otherwise only applicable to people who actually do numerical analysis on their code. i.e. all those for who -ffast-math is most likely not acceptable. For those people who actually care about numerical analysis and stability java 8 (finally) gives them a way to do overflow safe code.

The second is that the a decent JVM i.e. not Dalvik do generate vector instruction streams.

I actually think that java code in the next 4 years will start to be much faster than equivalent C code, due to HSAIL and Graals potential to involve GPUs and specialized floating point hardware in an otherwise normal program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This test would only be valid if it ran for at least a few seconds. If the test just takes a fraction of a second then it doesn't give the dalvik JIT compiler a chance to optimize the code. The author doesn't give the running time, or show what value was used for the length parameter.

I'm pretty sure dalvik is NOT generally 17 times slower than native, and this test may just be showing the start-up overhead.

</comment><comment><USER34> This leads to the question: How soon until I can use Art as my daily driver?

<comment><USER35> I've been using ART as my daily driver since it was released.

It took Whatsapp two weeks to issue an update that made it work with ART. Nothing else and nothing since has posed any problem. In fact, I forgot I was using it until I saw your post.

<comment><USER36> I've been doing the same with spectacular results, although it's possible that some of the camera crashes (and maybe the IMDB crash I get from time-to-time) are ART-related.

<comment><USER37> They are not. I'm still on dalvik and the camera crashes and frequently uses 100% cpu in the background.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> When is Google going to support Go in Android?

<comment><USER10> When they ever bother to implement this 2012 open ticket.

[https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=39482](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=39482)

<comment><USER38> Maybe they're doing it behind the scenes for Android 5.0, and aren't telling us about it? Google isn't exactly doing community development of Android. One can hope.

<comment><USER10> Actually from the tone of last Google IO, I thought they might use Dart, given some hints about "upcoming stuff", which never materialized.

The original Android team had a few ex-Sun employees from the Java team, so it might also play a role there. Just guessing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As a developer, Andorid is like EJB, very badly designed for threads android.widget.BaseAdapter with panes and . Even Swing is better.

IOS has these nice loops, more like HMTL.

I hope Google copies Firefox mobile via Gentoo based ChromeOS. Their copying of Java took the worst parts.

'Andorid is the new IE'

</comment><comment><USER40> And this is one of the reasons the iPhone feels more responsive with the same (or worse) hardware

Sure, Dalvik may have a JIT but it's difficult to do miracles with a limited amount of memory (and the JIT needs to be fast as well)

<comment><USER8> > And this is one of the reasons the iPhone feels more responsive with the > same (or worse) hardware

This is making the assumption that any latency delta is because the system is CPU bound; I suspect this is one of the least likely cases. In general, I suspect apps are going to be I/O or fillrate bound, with some additional latency because touch controllers aren't benchmarked and are only starting to get more love from device manufacturers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's weird that the author chose to use field accesses (in every possible instance) instead of local variables in the manually optimized version.

</comment><comment><USER42> I thought that C on Android compiles to bytecode just like Java, rather than being a true native binary?

<comment><USER43> Nope, the NDK uses the same GCC and Clang that you are familiar with (plus some patches).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's interesting to see the saying "Java: compile once, run (slowly) everywhere", which has been around for about as long as Java has, still applies after all these years despite claims that somehow "better technology" in compilers will make the efficiency gap disappear.

You don't have to be a computer scientist to see that the fastest way of doing anything is not doing it at all --- and with Java's architecture, there will always be instructions executed which are completely unnecessary in native code. They can make huge sacrifices in memory consumption (e.g garbage collection that doesn't collect at all, if you have enough memory) to try to reduce things like allocation/deallocation cost, but in the end they're still wasting more resources.</comment>


Semantic Import Versioning is unsound - grey-area https://peter.bourgon.org/blog/2020/09/14/siv-is-unsound.html <comment><AUTHOR> I find it somewhat odd that Peter ascribes the valuing of stability and backwards compat to some weird Google-specific mindset, unheard of in other circles.

Instead, you can observe the same thing with many other ecosystems/platforms once they have reached a certain scale. Ask Microsoft's Windows team or the Linux kernel maintainers about the importance of keeping existing programs running. Or maybe the stewards of other programming languages like C or C++ can tell you about the difficulty of evolving a language when you have a gazillion lines of pre-existing code to consider. How long does it take the world to phase out support for obsolete SSL/TLS versions, even in the presence of well-known weaknesses?

It seems to me that the more users something has, the more thought has to be put into how not to break them.

Isn't programming in the large exactly the kind of thing Go set out to tackle? Placing a high value on stability appears only logical then.</comment>


Secure your MongoDB, Redis, etc - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@shahinism/for-gods-sake-secure-your-mongo-redis-etc-4f310cf1bed2#.m01e3zylf <comment><USER2> Having been the first 'DevOps' guy to hit the ground in a few startups I have seen interesting deployment and access strategies to databases PHP exec("echo $mysql_query | mysql -uadmin -ppassword"); is probably my favourite. For a lot of frontend or fullstack teams, the business shouting, get it done, trumps any damage they might take by a compromise. Also often they are just not aware of how insecure the defaults are, I feel like a lot more can be done to provide secure out of the box stacks for 'full stack' developers.

<comment><USER3> I'm staring down the barrel of a startup that "deploys" using an Internet accessible, passwordless Samba share to drag and drop PHP files from desktops to production.

Nothing surprises me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this the result of the no-ops movement? Did people forget how to deploy software? I find it hard to believe somebody would run a database on publicly accessible ip/port.

<comment><USER5> For some reason redis thinks it's a good idea to listen on all interfaces by DEFAULT so you can perhaps understand why this happens. But I mean come on, what year is this. How often do we need to repeat that you need to use SECURE DEFAULTS!

Short of that I find redis an nice piece of software, I only wish it was somewhat more sane in its default configuration.

<comment><USER6> In theory I totally agree with the concept of using secure defaults.

In practice, however, I have seen far too many developers spend hour after hour trying to unwind a byzantine labyrinth of iptables and strange network configurations, weird firewall rules and corporate policies, never mind mangled DNS, to think that the correct solution is merely "secure defaults".

At the end of the day, developers get paid to "make it work" and unfortunately that strongly incentivizes the "open by default" configuration mindset.

<comment><USER7> Maybe developers should get paid "not to put us in the headlines with 1 billion accounts breached".

<comment><USER8> Maybe developers should care about not having their companies in the headlines instead of just pushing things out as quickly as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Your database should not run on a server that has a public ip. Forget authentication (it's plaintext on redis), or binding rules, or using a uncommon port.

It's network isolation or you will be owned.

<comment><USER10> Tell this to Heroku whose Postgres instances all are publicly accessible (TCP- wise) outside of their network.

<comment><USER11> Yes, why not tell this to Heroku?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Have a read of the Internet Security Exposure report by @binaryedgeio, there is a section regarding Data Storage, mentioning Mongo, Redis, ElasticSearch, and some other. In Summary, it was found 627.7 TB of Data Exposed.

[http://blog.binaryedge.io/2016/10/07/internet-security- expos...](http://blog.binaryedge.io/2016/10/07/internet-security- exposure-2016/)

</comment><comment><USER13> In this day and age with breaches happening daily and publicly why hasn't mongo taken security seriously and enabled authentication by default?

<comment><USER14> This might be useful [https://docs.mongodb.com/v3.2/administration/security- checkl...](https://docs.mongodb.com/v3.2/administration/security-checklist/)

(But let's say binding on 0.0.0.0 or not having a firewall in the system are not only their fault)

In the same way people can trust local addresses in Pgsql

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is using spiped viable for redis connections? Can all the servers that need to connect to the redis server all connect via spiped using the same secret key?

</comment><comment><USER16> What about data in motion?

Is it viable to use an SSH tunnel with each service listening on localhost alone and using an encrypted tunnel to send data?

<comment><USER17> No it's not. It's secure but not reliable, your ssh tunnel will disconnect at some point. Use firewall and/or native security.

<comment><USER16> Thanks! I read somewhere that this was a good way to secure redis for compliances. Good to know it may not always work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The main problem is DigitalOcean does not offer a centralized firewall, so they assume users will and can setup iptables. If they had a centralized firewall and default policy of all inbound traffic blocked and then you specifically open ports on droplets it would make a huge difference.

<comment><USER19> Ok. Repeat after me, "I will not use Digital Ocean for production. They are not a real hosting company."

The why is left as an exercise for the reader.

<comment><USER8> Use Digital Ocean for simple production use cases. They are a real hosting company, they are affordable and they are simple to use.

Professional non-trivial usage should be on AWS/Google/Azure/SoftLayer.

<comment><USER19> Bzzzt! Wrong answer, try again. They are not good for anything remotely resembling production. Since your production should try and closely resemble everything else I'd say they are not good for anything at all. The tag line is "Cloud computing, designed for developers." They should be even more careful about good practices and sound design keeping in mind the kind of customer they are trying to get. Over the years they have done anything but that.

<comment><USER8> They are perfectly fine for anything production resembling a guy that wants to run 2 servers on the internet.

And they're certainly better than trying to run that on someone's home DSL connection.

<comment><USER19> Actually your DSL is probably more secure because it wasn't designed by complete muppets. Who thought it a good idea to put everyone on flat Layer 2 network. Remember the time they were handing out block devices without scrubbing. How is the new Ceph backed block service. What's the p50 latency? What about p90?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> stunnel. It's an incredible piece of software.

<comment><USER21> Do you have any thoughts / experience compared to spiped or ipsec? The author or Redis likes spiped: [https://redis.io/topics/encryption](https://redis.io/topics/encryption)

<comment><USER20> That's an excellent question. I've only ever used stunnel and I was blown away by how many different things it can do / ways it can work. It does so much for such a simple tool. antirez probably likes spiped because it does fewer things. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Down – The easiest way to get together with friends - <AUTHOR> https://www.down.life

<comment><USER2> >"What are you down for?" //

Unless you understand that particular vernacular this is a question as to why someone is upset/depressed. "Down" carries a lot of negative weight as a word; I'd consider a rename/rebrand. Of course it's perhaps trendy enough in a particular region/segment to overpower the negative association?

I don't see any differentiators in the page from a Facebook event listing; the "See who's down" could probably use some more info?

FWIW on app store page: s/show/shout, s/Beta/beta.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. I think Seinfeld would agree with you on the negative connotation :)

We chose the name Down because it's vernacular that we and a lot of our friends use really commonly. The first thing we think of when we hear the word "down" is that someone's excited to do something. It's possible that we're biased by who we hang out with though. Any ideas for a good name if we were to rebrand?

We kind of think of Down as a light-weight, mobile-optimized Facebook Events.

You can use Down for large, Facebook Events-size events. But you can also use Down to invite a friend to lunch. Or a few friends over to watch a movie. Those aren't really things you'd use Facebook Events for.

Down's also mobile optimized in that you can have a group chat with everyone who's invited. I think it's the fastest, easiest way to invite people to do something.

<comment><USER2> Funnily enough up and down both work - "what are you up for" and "what are you down for" can be synonyms. "What are you down for" can also be an enquiry in to what you signed up for ... isn't English great?!? Where I am we're more likely to ask "are you up for it"; though there's a slight connotation of meeting a challenge in that phrase.

Did you do any market research - perhaps ask people in the right demographic to write a tweet/text [ie SMS message] as if to invite you to an informal impromptu event and take your inspiration from there.

"Happening"? is all I got right now.

That bit you said about what Down does better - why isn't that on your landing page?

tl;dr sorry I don't really have any ideas what's better - if it resonates well with you then perhaps you're best to stick with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I laughed a bit when I realized this wasn't Bang With Friends [https://www.downapp.com/](https://www.downapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Mike - excellent work. It's been fascinating to see this idea go from idea to reality - honored to be part of that. I'm down for Down.

</comment><comment><USER5> Screenshots look cool but the obvious downfall of apps like this is getting friends to use it. Any plans for an Android version? Friends and I are pretty much split down the middle with half of us as iOS users and the other half as Android users.

Will keep it installed for a bit and see if anyone is "down to try it"

<comment><USER6> Hey, I'm one of the founders/developers.

There are definitely plans for an Android app, that's one of the first next things we will work on as we gain users.

Currently, the app text messages people who don't have it installed, including android and winphone users -- basically the same thing GroupMe does.

:) thanks for checking it out, keep the feedback coming!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This actually looks really useful.

</comment><comment><USER8> So... is this group text to contacts who are within some radius by GPS position?

<comment><AUTHOR> By default all of your nearby friends are selected when you go to invite people to do something. We've found that people end up using Down to invite friends who they'd like to hang out with, but aren't necessarily close enough with to text.

Once you send out invites, everyone you invited becomes part of a group chat about the event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Too much social networks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Down solves a problem that I don't think any social network has solved yet: making it simple to connect with friends in the real world. One of our friends called Down a "true" social app.

@andrewlinfoot put it really well - "We created Down because we want to make getting together with your friends as easy as checking Facebook. We find all of our best memories come from hanging out with our friends in real life, not sitting around scrolling through feeds on our phones. We think existing social apps are great, but they focus too much on replacing our lives with digital equivalents, and don't do enough to encourage actually getting together with friends."

<comment><USER9> You are right.

But still there are too many social networks. I hope yours replace all others.</comment></comment></comment>


Plants communicate, nurture their seedlings, and get stressed - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/77/underworlds/never-underestimate-the-intelligence-of-trees <comment><USER3> See also "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" (youtube.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698)

Michael Levin's lab are uncovering the physical scientific basis for what a lot of people have always known: _life thinks._

\- - - -

Now then,

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

> Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:

> 1\. The attitude of the "I" towards an "It", towards an object that is > separate in itself, which we either use or experience.

> 2\. The attitude of the "I" towards "Thou", in a relationship in which the > other is not separated by discrete bounds.

We need to learn to relate to Nature as I-Thou (not I-It.) The vast majority of our problem right now is our divorce from Nature and our attempt to relate to Her as I-It.

The good news is that it's fun and easy to return to Nature (and, as Geoff Lawton says, "You can solve all the world's problems in a garden.)

I recommend Toby Hemenway's (RIP) videos: [http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/](http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/) esp. "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Planet – But Not Civilization" and "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture".

<comment><USER4> Hi. Former Permaculturist here.

The problem with Permaculture is that it takes the classic "Anecdote is not data" misconception and turns it into a design philosophy. This can lead to some serious problems and you end up with a design philosophy that is completely divorced from the science.

For example, some of the key components of Permaculture Design - the use of nitrogen fixers and dynamic accumulators - stand on shaky ground. They're based on a limited number of studies. It's not clear whether dynamic accumulators actually add any nutrients to the soil. And for nitrogen fixers, it's not at all clear that the nitrogen they fix is available to the plants around them. It might not become available until they die back and rot.

This "personal observation" basis of the design philosophy that replaces careful experimentation leads to some pretty disasterous results - <USER2> Permaculturists being extremely laissez-faire about invasive species (which, after climate change and habitat loss is one of the top contributors to the loss of biodiversity world wide). I once heard a leading Permaculturist give this really fantastic lecture about the law of unintended consequences as it relates to human engineering, and then completely write off the risk of introducing invasive plants through novel ecosystem design. I mean, it's the same damned arrogance and mentality, just using plants in mimicry of nature instead of metal to dominate it.

So, personally, I've stopped encouraging people to listen to permaculturists. Permaculture is not the answer. Agroecology, however, the core kernel of Permaculture thought re-integrated with science, that holds _a lot_ of promise.

<comment><USER3> You make a good point, and I often substitute "applied ecology" to try to emphasize the scientific grounding that Permaculture originally had (Bill Mollison was an ecologist) and still has for a lot of people, myself included.

But I have to admit, I was once _laissez-faire_ about non-native invasive species. I can thank E. O. Wilson for writing a thing that set me straight.

(I gotta add that the "Permaculture Designer's Manual" is IMO one of the finest guides to design (any design, not just farming) that I've ever read. FWIW)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Except it's not really the trees, it's the trees and the mycelial network, well, mostly the mushrooms.

<comment><USER6> And humans are 1-3% microbes. Nothing stands alone in nature.

<comment><USER7> If by microbes you mean bacteria. Maybe we also contain fungus as well though.

And actually, if you're looking at cell count our cells are outnumbered by about 10:1, it's incredible!

<comment><USER8> Yes the human microbiome consists of fungus in addition to bacteria, protozoa and viruses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Is that an _emotional_ response? I guess it is. But I can hear my botanist > side saying, "That's not an emotion. That's just a response." But I think we > can draw these parallels. It comes down to language again, to how we apply > this language to look at these responses in plants. ... [W]hen you go and > whack off the top of a plant ... Its genes respond. It starts producing > these chemicals. How is that different than us all of a sudden producing a > whole bunch of norepinephrine?

> Indigenous people have long known that plants will communicate with each > other.

This is... postmodernist in the colloquial sense, and then straight-up Noble Savage theory?

I truly believe that we can't fuck-yea-science ourselves into better respecting and spending more time with trees and nature. This will never catch on, and I hope I'm right.

<comment><USER10> Would be great if TFA elaborated on just how they "knew" such a thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A company in No.Cal. (Santa Rosa) specializes in forest therapy. I think they've been expanding and doing special trips to places like the forest in Costa Rica.

</comment><comment><USER12> What is intelligence anyways? We tend to define it based on ours. But how about collective intelligence? Other forms of intelligence?

More specifically, there are two things that bother me with the way we usually look at intelligence: time scale, and individuality.

To assess intelligence, we often look at individuals, not at the group. And we tend to do it on our own time scales. But I wouldn't be surprised if the "individual" you have to assess is the ant colony, not the ants themselves. And who is to say that rocks aren't smart? Have you observed them over hundreds of millennia? (I'm just kidding about the last one, though the question is still theoretically valid).

<comment><USER3> You might like a couple of books by Gregory Bateson, "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" and "Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity"

He explores the idea that evolution and thought are the _same_ phenomenon, and that what we call "mind" is ambient.

<comment><USER12> Thank you, I will try to read them when time permits. I forgot to mention evolution in my post, but that's part of the point. Our genes seem like a very long-term memory, trough them species (including ours) can learn new strategies over millennia.

I asked my father the very thing I wrote above, and he answered that intelligence was the ability to reuse previously acquired knowledge in a given context. Which would seem fitting, if a bit stretching.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: See what Hacker News thinks of the book you're looking at on Goodreads - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/spookyuser/hacker-reads <comment><AUTHOR> This is a small extension I made to combine my love of Hacker News book recommendation threads and hate of Goodreads community reviews.

It uses the Algolia search API to find comments that match the title and author of a book page on Goodreads. Initially I wanted to use ISBN numbers but there are too many comments mentioning books on HN that don't use the ISBN number and for some reason Amazon links are rarely indexed without truncation by Algolia, which means the end bit of a long Amazon url that contains the ISBN isn't searchable.

The hardest part of this extension was figuring out how people write book titles. For instance, most people don't seem to write out full book titles rather they write out the title minus any subtitles. Because of this, if you search for the exact Goodreads title on Hacker news you won't find that many comments, and what turns out to work much better is searching for books without any subtitles.

Also worth mentioning that this is similar to [https://hackernewsbooks.com/](https://hackernewsbooks.com/) (which I enjoy a lot) except instead of seeing HN's favorite books you see all opinions good and bad, and you can also see them directly in Goodreads.

You can download it for Chrome [1] or Firefox [2] or see the source code on Github [3].

Hope you like it :)

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ohkekgnmihdgcfflhe...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ohkekgnmihdgcfflheadklfihdaibdcb/)

[2] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/hacker- reads-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/hacker-reads-for- goodreads/)

[3] [https://github.com/spookyuser/hacker- reads](https://github.com/spookyuser/hacker-reads)

<comment><USER2> Are you planning on a Safari extension?

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually hadn't planned on releasing the extension for Safari but I'll definitely look into it. If Safari supports the Browser Extension API it should be trivial to port.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Your Favorite Hack - <AUTHOR>

This is for all those people who have written more than one piece of software.<p> What was your favorite and why? <comment><USER2> A conductor I know, when asked what his favourite piece of music is, always answers with the name of a piece of music from the next concert he's conducting -- and then goes on to point out that as soon as the concert is over and he starts rehearsals for the next concert, he will have a new favourite piece of music. As he points out, if what you're working on isn't currently your favourite piece of music (or software), you're not giving it the attention it deserves.

In that vein, my favourite piece of software is my (not finished yet, but still very useful as it currently exists) "tarsnap" backup software (<http://www.tarsnap.com>).

<comment><USER3> Good post. This is an interesting story by Tolstoy along the same lines: [http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/tolstoy/leo/t65wm/chapter2.h...](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/tolstoy/leo/t65wm/chapter2.html)

A great king would make his "favorite man" the man right next to him. A worker would make his "favorite job" the one at hand. Now that is an extraordinary feat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hum, good one. I have a cool non-hack, actually.

In college, I worked for a while in the applied physics department. It was an undergrad research project, where I was supposed to work with parallel systems and cluster architectures. They use software that calculates "density functional theory total-energy". Part of my project was to make this piece of software run in multiple machines and speed up the simulations. That used to take days to complete, sometimes weeks, and they wanted to reduce the period of the cycle.

I never got to know the whole theory behind the software (I am a Computer Engineer) but I did get to take a look at the manual explaining some of the algorithms, while I was learning more about parallel systems using message passing libraries.

I was just getting started on the whole "implement map, reduce, filter, barrier" using MPI (in Fortran!) when I found a description of the software where it showed how each atom in the strutcture, IIRC, needed to have its plane-wave basis-set calculated. This calculation required a long list of functions and was called for _every_ atom in the structure. Also, the software consisted of long runs of this call, getting more approximate results at each run.

Basically, I found an unbelievably parallelizable (is that a word?) piece of code in a application that was mostly serial.

Let's just say this: it took me more time to find the place in the code that have the call and even more time to make changes in the Makefile in order to use Intel Fortran Compiler than the time it took me to add 5 lines of MPI code and get the problem solved.

When we saw the speedup was directly proportional to the size of the cluster (if we wanted double of the performance, just add the double of computers), I realized that the feat (changing significantly the behavior of an program with so little modification) would be hard to repeat.

It was no "major hack", but it made me value (a) proper documentation and (b) getting a complete view of the system that I am supposed to work on and modify.

</comment><comment><USER5> A metasearch engine, written in Javascript, that executed entirely on the browser. How? The page was hosted at d.o.w.s.e.r.bueno.org. o.w.s.e.r.bueno.org pointed to Google, w.s.e.r.bueno.org pointed to Yahoo, etc.

The XmlHttpRequests always appear to go to a root domain of the page, so it worked.

That one still makes me grin.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like that a lot! Use the DNS system to outwit the stupid XMLHttpRequest sandbox. Way cool.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, but while the restrictions on XHR are heavy, they aren't stupid. An unnamed party used the same idea to implement a LAN sniffer: each successive root domain pointed to the IP addresses of well-known routers, like 192.168.15.1. The script ran down the chain and attempted to log in to the admin page of the router, using default passwords.

<comment><USER6> The real point is that with enough smarts, you can get around the restrictions, so you might as well eliminate them altogether so that there's no false sense of security.

<comment><USER5> I feel that way sometimes when I can't do something cool. But it passes. No restrictions on user processes is a major reason why "Windows security" is a contradiction, for example. It doesn't work in an adversarial networked environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since 3 years I keep under my bed a hardprinted copy of the Solaris dynamic linker source code, and another of the AIX kernel machine-dependent (esp. the boot phase).

the Solaris RealTime Dynamic Linker code is available at: [http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv- gate/usr/sr...](http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv- gate/usr/src/cmd/sgs/rtld/common/dlfcns.c)

and the AIX kernel is available on your favourite peer-to-peer network. This is my bible. Look at the files under aix/bos/kernel/ml/, you will learn a lot about kernel-land and Power(PC) architecture.

I enjoy it as a real piece of poetry, each function as an unique verse. You can even appreciate some erotic pieces (especially if you try to compare your reverse IDA analyse with the source).

If you are more openminded you can read the Linux kernel bootcode files (under linux/arch/$ARCH/kernel/). The first time is still the harder one, and you'll always remember it. But it worst it.

<comment><USER8> s/erotic/exotic. Hopefully.

<comment><USER9> At worst, no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Back in the mists of time I wrote code in BASIC and assembly for the Research Machines 380Z/480Z computers. When they came out with their Z-NET network I reverse engineered (with a friend) the packet send/receive APIs and we built on top of it a reliable transport protocol that would enable us to guarantee delivery of about 128 bytes of data to a machine on the network.

The entire code was stuffed into an unused block of data within the operating system and when a packet was received the receiving code would get an interrupt and would promptly CALL the code in the packet. We were able to reliably deliver 128 bytes of machine code and have it execute on any machine.

This turned out to be very cool because it enabled us to build a complete package for network management and monitoring (we could do stuff like mirror the screen on any machine to another one).

John.

</comment><comment><USER11> a couple of years ago I was working as a lab assistant in a university computer lab. Part of my job was to check the printers hourly (in labs on 5 different floors) and see if they needed more paper. Being extremly lazy I wrote a program that would log into the printers web based panel. This panel displayed a paper level indicator as an image. I discovered tgat the image filenames contained the percent full as a number (0, 25, 50, 75, 100). I had my program regularly check all the printers, parse the paper level and alert me if any printer was at 25 or empty.

</comment><comment><USER12> A couple of years ago I took a course in Marine Ecology, for our final exam we have to do a lot of calculations using the Shannon-Weiner index (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_index>)

I wrote a program in my HP 48 calculator to solve it putting all the variables in a list, it's my favorite hack because I was the only one in the class who knew programming, so I finished the 2 hour exam in 30 minutes =)

</comment><comment><USER13> A tiny Win32 C program that would simply trigger print, then wait, then killed the app - used to call a "mission critical" app that always hung after print and thus couldnt be scripted, to automate the printing of hundreds of reports.

Fave b/c my manager insisted it could not be done, and it saved countless hours of babysitting. Showing up at the office next morning to see the huge pile of completed reports sitting there waiting was gratifying.

</comment><comment><USER14> My favorite hack was achieving the drop-down functionality seen in menus like those on Digg and Facebook in about 5 lines of jQuery. It was particularly satisfying because the jQuery plugin to emulate the effect is more than a couple hundred lines long. It also works in all browsers :)

</comment><comment><USER15> A few years ago I wrote a blackjack game for iPods. Since the iPod can't execute third party programs (without alternative firmware), However, they can display interlinked text documents, so I wrote a program in c to generate a document for each possible state of the game. Blackjack made this possible, since there are only 5 or 6 states in any game.

I don't think I ever actually used it except for testing, it was more of a "just because I can" project. To my amazement some people actually used it for fun. I think it got into MAKE blog and a few other cool places.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have to list three: DataVision (<http://datavision.sourceforge.net>) because it's in use in fifty countries, a version of Objective-C I called Subjective-C (1996) because it taught me about parsing and runtime stack manipulation, and a Java applet-based image manipulation package that let you apply makeup (eye shades and lip shades, with added gloss) to your own photo on the Web back in 1999, because it was ahead of its time.

</comment><comment><USER17> A heads-down flight display I built in the off-moments of a business trip. Surprisingly enough the most satisfying code handled text display (remember the text is constantly moving). Also, a python script to automate our build and unit tests; whenever something broke or failed a test it would look up the latest check-in and mail the error to the offending developer.</comment>


Show HN: My first mobile game for iOS & Android - <AUTHOR> http://twoguysandagame.com/games/crazy-miner-bob/

<comment><USER2> Couple of comments:

\- Awesome, you integrated OpenFeint

\- The art is cute, and the game doesn't seem to take itself too seriously

\- Picture 11/15 should be the first one, as it is the only time I figured out how your game played (at all)

\- Seems really simple and would be boring after 30 minutes or so

Best of luck with the game, hope I am wrong about how boring it is!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If any questions, don't hesitate to ask! Check the blog post for some technical stuff. I will add more of those later as I did write most of them during building, but they are unpolished etc.</comment>


Net neutrality bill in CA - <AUTHOR> http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB822 <comment><USER2> I know enough Internet history to recognize that ca.gov is a United States URL. However, I'd still like to request that HN headlines disambiguate California and Canada.

Edit: As of this writing the title is "Net neutrality bill in CA". I hope the title gets changed soon enough to make my comment make no sense to most of the people who read it.

<comment><USER3> As this is a US-centric site, the abbreviation CA means California. Always has. Knowing that .gov is US only isn't necessary to disambiguate.

<comment><USER4> I've seen this attitude twice this week now, and it's unnecessarily hostile towards the 695 million English speaking internet users outside of the USA. Is it really that much of an imposition to change CA to California?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are a number of different efforts in the CA legislature on this issue; SB 822, linked above, amounts to a statement of intent to adopt legislation with certain features, but doesn't actually do anything (it could be intended as an outline which will be amended to do what it suggests legislation should do, though.)

A more concrete net neutrality bill is SB 460, which both defines and requires neutrality _and_ separately requires state agencies to only contract for internet services from providers who commit, under penalty of perjury, to not violate neutrality.

[http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml...](http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB460)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's good to see this. Most of the time "states rights" ends up being used for something discriminatory "we reserve the right to tell women what to do with their bodies" or at best something that's just annoying "why do these laws have to be different, just to be different". In this case it is an example, that at least to me, justifies having that ability.

<comment><USER7> _Most of the time "states rights" ends up being used for something discriminatory_

[Citation Needed]

<comment><USER6> Personal impression mostly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really hope this trend takes off, but ideally I'd like to see both the states and the federal government enforce net neutrality, regardless of which party controls either entity.

</comment><comment><USER9> Somewhat related, Montana may have beat most states to the punch so to speak, but theirs was actually just an executive order (which can be reversed).

Washington, too, has already got a start on this, but unlike Washington, California looks to have acheived a rather small bill. This is a landmark for California, which is notorious for large bills.

Here is an article about Washington's bill: [https://www.geekwire.com/2017/full-text-heres-washington- sta...](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/full-text-heres-washington-states- legally-contentious-net-neutrality-bill-looks-like-close/)

<comment><USER5> > California looks to have acheived a rather small bill.

The bill does nothing, so it's actually quite big for what it does. The CA bill currently under consideration that actually does something about neutrality rather than making a statement of intent (SB 460) is much bigger.

<comment><USER9> Right, that was my suspicion hence my uncertain language about it.

Related to that is my praise of California. It's more mockery than anything. Our state does not know how to write concise legislation. ;)

<comment><USER10> Weiner's legislation is pretty concise. Check out one of his latest housing bills for instance - [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB827)

<comment><USER9> Incidentally, this is exactly the bill that [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dragonwriter](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dragonwriter) and I were talking about.

Once again, dragonwriter's comment is that this bill "does nothing", and I joked about it being concise, because that is rare in California politics.

Sorry I had to explain this to you since you seemed to have missed it, but I couldn't leave you in the dark.

Edit: Apparently I have it wrong, this is not the same bill. Multiple tabs open :/

<comment><USER5> No, GP is pointing to a housing bill that preempts local zoning restrictions in certain cases, not the "stating future intent to adopt legislation and use existing regulatory powers" net neutrality bill.

<comment><USER9> Ah thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Serious question: Is having state-level net neutrality laws actually good policy?

<comment><USER12> Another serious question: is having state-level net neutrality laws even Constitutional?

The FCC's repeal of net neutrality contains a preëmption clause preventing state and local governments from imposing their own inconsistent restrictions (1), and it will be using its authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to defend it (2). I understand their claim to be that it's impracticable to distinguish between interstate and intrastate network traffic, and that states would only have authority to constrain the latter. (3)

I'm not sure how my dear state of California is working around that, or if this action is just kicking off a ball that will be headed directly to the courts.

(1) FCC 17-166, [https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/201...](https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2018/db0105/FCC-17-166A1.pdf) , para. 195.

(2) Ibid, para. 197–204. (FCC's authority under the Commerce Clause is established in the Communications Act of 1934, updated under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. These and existing case law are cited as legal justification.)

(3) Ibid, para. 200.

<comment><USER5> > The FCC's repeal of net neutrality contains a preëmption clause preventing > state and local governments from imposing their own inconsistent > restrictions (1), and it will be using its authority under the Commerce > Clause of the Constitution to defend it (2). I understand their claim to be > that it's impracticable to distinguish between interstate and intrastate > network traffic, and that states would only have authority to constrain the > latter. (3)

Traffic isn't being regulated, packages of services offered to customers in pure intrastate commerce, however, are.

> I'm not sure how my dear state of California is working around that, or if > this action is just kicking off a ball that will be headed directly to the > courts.

The bill with actual content (SB 460) includes both a direct neutrality mandate (which will be challenged on the ground you suggest), and a prohibition on state agencies contracting for internet services from providers that don't make a binding (that is, "criminal to violate" commitment to adhere to neutrality in their offerings in the state.)

Of course, both the FCCs own order (already being challenged) and the laws in response (like every previous policy action on neutrality) are inevitably headed to the courts. That's not in question.

<comment><USER7> _Traffic isn 't being regulated, packages of services offered to customers in pure intrastate commerce, however, are._

Being the home to so many internet based companies, California is in a position to make such a law which will have a significant effect -- _perhaps_. How is intra-state defined? On paper, Apple Inc. is incorporated where? Is it really Cupertino? If so, then couldn't they redirect certain traffic to a subsidiary one state over? How would California fight against companies trying to get around their law using routing tables?

<comment><USER5> The law effects the service an ISP sells to a consumer. Routing tables and where Apple is located (physically or legally) have nothing to do with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe they wouldn't need net neutrality laws telling monopolies how to operate if they didn't outlaw Municipal ISPs?

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/isp-lobby-has- alr...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/isp-lobby-has-already-won- limits-on-public-broadband-in-20-states/)

If monopoly cable providers are the problem, who allowed them to become monopolies? Isn't that the real problem?

</comment><comment><USER14> A good start, though this isn't a bill legislating net neutrality. Rather, it's a bill legislating the possibility of legislating/regulating net neutrality.

<comment><USER5> It's not really a start, since the substantive bill (SB 460) was introduced _before_ SB 822.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just remember that if one state is allowed to nullify the federal regulation on net neutrality, another state could probably nullify federal environmental regulations (or any other federal regulation).

<comment><USER16> There is no federal regulation on net neutrality. They REMOVED the regulation a few months ago. You can't nullify nothing.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A neat solution to note taking on small screens - <AUTHOR> http://palmnote.github.io#download

<comment><USER2> This is interesting, especially the installation procedure (isn't that kinda insecure and out of Apple's policy?).

Data is saved on the mobile phone right?

ty

UPDATE: Can't install this on my iPhone unfortunately. Reports an error after the download is done.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a feature apple provides to beta test the apps but it requires registering users' udids. I have submitted it to the app store and put that there until they accept the app. Yep it doesn't work on non-jailbroken devices because their udids aren't registered.</comment></comment>


Neuroscience pioneer Marc Tessier-Lavigne named Stanford's next president - <AUTHOR> http://news.stanford.edu/features/2016/president-named/ <comment><USER2> Unrelated to Tessier-Ashpool. It's impressive how that 30-year-old story permeates my culture.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessier- Ashpool](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessier-Ashpool)

<comment><USER3> For the longest time I had this tickle in my memory when I crossed Armitage in Chicago and it finally dawned on me...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: JavaScript framework to mke a "windows-like" UI? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I want to create a Web app for data analysis that lets the user work with multiple movable, overlapping, resizable, and minimizable/maximizable windows. Each window would display a form a plot, a table, etc. Basically, it would look something like a Windows or Mac Desktop, but running in a browser.
Is there a javascript framework that provides especially good out-of-the-box support for this kind of thing? Most frameworks seem to be strongly grid oriented. I suppose it might be doable with standard popups, but I rarely see apps like this so I'm not sure if a typical framework would be limiting.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Check out Ext JS.</comment>