Understanding Memory Cards - <AUTHOR> https://photographylife.com/understanding-memory-cards <comment><USER2> This is an extremely verbose article, but for most people I would highlight the most important things (for SD cards at least):

Buy a real brand: people have there own opinions on this, but to me this means Sandisk, Samsung or Verbatim. Had a bad experience with Lexar once but as always ymmv.

Buy from a real retailer: this means B&H or Adorama or a not-shady brick and mortar store. Amazon will happily ship you counterfeit cards that will crapp out when you need them most, like ebay will. This is coming from someone that chooses to buy a ton of their electronics from ebay, Aliexpress or street hawkers.

<comment><USER3> > Buy a real brand: people have there own opinions on this, but to me this > means Sandisk, Samsung or Verbatim. Had a bad experience with Lexar once but > as always ymmv.

I've had always bad luck with Sandisk, both CF and SD/microSD cards.

<comment><USER4> Buying from Amazon? You're likely getting fakes. Genuine SanDisk memory cards are top notch.

Sure every brand will have lemons, but if you're seeing consistently bad "SanDisk" cards.. you are pretty certainly not getting genuine product. Find a reputable supplier (which is absolutely not Amazon)

<comment><USER5> The general advice for buying off Amazon it to make sure that it's actually coming from Amazon.com, not CheapMemoryAmerica1999.

<comment><USER6> From what I understand, Amazon comingles their own inventory with third party sellers so although the cards they buy might be legit, you're not necessarily guaranteed to get what they bought vs what CheapMemoryAmerica1999 contributed even if you buy the ones from Amazon

<comment><USER5> I read that as well. But Amazon does have a good return policy with respect to that, and if you read recent reviews it seems like the problem is mostly over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am surprised they didn't mention that microSD and SD cards are electrically compatible and have passive adaptors. If you want to write a comprehensive guide, that's a useful thing to tell people.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's such a ridiculous dark pattern to only advertise read speed when in almost all cases write speed matters more. Also, the SD speed class notation is almost totally obsolete and anachronistic because these days even the fastest class 10 has a minimum speed requirement so low it tells you almost nothing about the card's performance.

<comment><USER9> > Also, the SD speed class notation is almost totally obsolete and > anachronistic because these days even the fastest class 10 has a minimum > speed requirement so low it tells you almost nothing about the card's > performance.

There are higher speed classes past class 10.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card#Class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card#Class)

<comment><USER10> Not in the sense of a "C" surrounding a larger number than 10. Instead, you get a card marked with all of "C10", "U3", "A2", "V60", or some crap like that.

Give me 4 numbers: Read and write speeds, each in terms of minimum sustained transfer rate and minimum random IOPS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Odd to see such a long article with no mention of MMC, TF, or xD.

Also worth noting that these cards (with the exception of xD, which is just a packaged raw NAND flash) have a complete embedded system in them too: [https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554)

</comment><comment><USER12> Unfortunately it hasn't updated anything for almost a year, but cameramemoryspeed was always my go-to for actual speed tests of card/camera combos.

[https://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/](https://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/)

</comment><comment> Const-me I wonder which of them, if any, contain a controller chip that does wear leveling? All PC SSDs have them, even very small ones like M.2 2230.

<comment><USER13> They all do. It isn't always a discrete chip though. Like in the case of a MicroSD the memory and controller is all integrated. You can open up some full size SD cards though and the memory and controller will be separate chips.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there any real difference between SD, SDHC and SDXC, aside "SD uses FAT, SDHC uses FAT32, SDXC uses ExFat"? These cards does not have filesystem controller on it, it's not "FTP over wire", it's block-based storage device. If I format ancient SD from early 2000s with exFat, will it become SDXC?

From Wikipedia (marked with "Citation needed"):

> The SDHC format, announced in January 2006, brought improvements such as 32 > GB storage capacity and mandatory support for FAT32 filesystems.

How dumb storage device can refuse to support FAT32?

Fun fact: SD cards support SPI interface and can be easily connected to cheap microcontrollers.

<comment><USER15> SD and SDHC differ in some material ways. SD uses byte-level addressing and is limited to a size of 2 GB. (The spec could theoretically support 4 GB, but is limited by spec to half that, possibly as a hedge against implementation errors.) SDHC uses sector-level addressing, lifting that limit to a theoretical 2 TB.

SDHC and SDXC are identical at a protocol level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> bunnie wrote a great article about fake MicroSD cards back in 2010:

[https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022)

<comment><USER17> there is also this blackhat 2018 talk 'Reversing a Japanese Wireless SD Card - From Zero to Code Execution' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA7GW9XkXBU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA7GW9XkXBU)</comment></comment>


iOS 8 Debugging Case Study - <AUTHOR> http://www.objc.io/issue-19/debugging-case-study.html

<comment><USER2> This is a really great read, especially for new iOS developers who haven't picked up a ton of debugging tricks from experience alone.

In particular the section "Calling Conventions 101" contains a lot of very useful information that isn't documented very well in any of the iOS resources provided by Apple (AFAIK). Commit it all to memory, you'll be glad you did :)

<comment><USER3> Apple uses the standard calling conventions for the CPU architectures they use, so there's no real need nor expectation for Apple to document those aspects beyond saying "we use the standard conventions," which they do say if you go digging. In some instances they also replicate the documentation for the conventions.

<comment><USER4> It's not obvious that you can meaningfully talk about to "the standard conventions" on i386, x86_64, or armv7, as there are at least two widely-used conventions for each. arm64 comes the closest to having a single "standard", but Apple uses a (documented) tweaked version.

<comment><USER5> > It's not obvious that you can meaningfully talk about to "the standard > conventions" on i386, x86_64, or armv7, as there are at least two widely- > used conventions for each.

x86_64 has the System V AMD64 ABI calling conventions which are as standard as can be and used by almost everybody. Microsoft being their usual assholes does not mean their ABI is anything other than their ABI.

<comment><USER6> Plan 9, and therefore The Go Programming language use a different one, which is the same across all architectures supported by Plan9's assembler. (It's one reason why cgo call's are not cheap)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone else feel like maybe the entire iOS development experience is batshit insane?

<comment><USER3> There's a lot of extremely frustrating and stupid aspects to it... but none of those are in any way related to anything discussed in the article, so I find your comment a bit odd. What makes iOS development so frustrating to me is the constant struggle with code signing, device provisioning, Xcode crashes, random failures to install or run programs, and all the craziness around App Store review.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I just started to learn iOS development at my current job (around 4 months), and configuring with code signing & XCode configuration is a pain in the ass.

<comment><USER9> I struggled with those, but after a few years doing iOS dev, it isn't so bad. It all eventually sticks.

And autolayout is freakin awesome imo, though I hear a lot of people groak about it.

<comment><USER10> Autolayout is horrible in the sense that when something isn't working, it's really hard to figure out what went wrong. My personal favourite is when you forget to set translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints to NO on a container view. A whole bunch of implicit constraints pop into existence that conflict with your actual programmed constraints, and the error message that tells you that you have constraint conflicts really doesn't help you in figuring out where the constraints are coming from. Eventually you figure this out, and you don't get caught out by it any more, but in the learning phase, it's quite painful.

Something else I really dislike when it comes to constraints - they don't play well with animations, at least in my experience. I recently created a view that had a variable number of square buttons in it that were laid out in a grid two rows high. Making a nice animation when you add a new button, fading in the new button, and sliding the others out of the way was nigh on impossible (ie 'not possible without writing more code than if I had just done the layout manually). And yet, this seems to be the perfect use case for auto layouts...

<comment><USER11> This is exactly why I don't use it. I do iOS development since the first SDK public release, I have a love/hate relationship with Interface Builder. I used to use it a lot, but now I use it only in small projects. Storyboard is awesome for small apps.

But for my big projects I do 100% of the UI in the code, if the UI use a lot of custom control, it just not worth it to use IB, the end result is that what you see is not at all what you get. BUT it improved a lot with Xcode 6, because now it can render custom views live in Interface Builder.

Auto layout on the other side.... it's just broken.... Every time I try to use it I got what you mentioned in your first paragraph. And I do a lot of animations in my apps, and playing with 10 constrains instead of a simple frame is just .... too much of a burden.

Again, for big custom apps I don't use it, but I love those functionalities for small & simple apps.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley's ideal entrepreneur is about 20 years too young, research shows - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/26/research-shows-older-entrepreneurs-more-successful.html <comment><USER2> Maybe they get the "hit" at 45. (happy that I'm 45 now) But it's a good education to fail fast, screw up, make mistakes, start lots of things and basically prepare yourself through experience to be good to go when you're 45. I'd be interested to see if there are people at 45 "hitting it out of the park" that didn't ground out to shortstop 4 times in their 20s and 30s.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with the research here, but I still categorize this in the same category as entrepreneur porn, if it was that easy to just classify winners or even gain success in entrepreneurship, venture capital wouldn't be such a hit- or-miss game. Age and experience is only one factor that can drive success because entrepreneurship is truly unpredictable.</comment>


Don't Just Build An App. Build A Mobile Business. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/don't-just-build-an-app-build-a-mobile-business/

<comment><USER2> A quick note about business models. As he is an Admob guy, he is categorizing app business models to two main category

"Decide whether you're providing a one time, high value experience that favors the pay-to-download model or if you plan to reach a large audience and continue to engage them over time, in which case an ad-supported model often makes more sense."

However, with easy mini-payment options (in-app purchases, cross-promotion between apps) mobile is currently strong a business model that is potentially much stronger than either of these: get a (large) audience and sell more stuff to them. It's working for games (half of the top grossing apps in App Store are freemium), it's working for navigation apps, I'm pretty sure that it will work for many other categories too.</comment>


Automating My Newsletter Generation with MailChimp, Google Sheets and AWS Lambda - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/kylegalbraith/automating-my-newsletter-generation-with-mailchimp-google-sheets-and-aws-lambda-1n11 <comment><USER2> Great writeup. I look forward to trying this as my first lambda exercise/lesson.</comment>


Flutter Overtaking React Native on Stack Overflow - <AUTHOR> http://sotagtrends.com/?tags=[react-native,flutter]&relative=true <comment><USER2> And it's my fervent hope that Flutter for Web will overtake React/Angular/Vue/etc eventually as well.</comment>


Why have contestants on "The Price is Right" become so much worse at guessing? - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/03/05/what-one-game-show-reveals-about-the-american-economy <comment><USER2> _Technology may play a role. Reaching for a smartphone is easier than recalling a fact from memory. Who remembers phone numbers anymore?_

I wouldn't guess that memory is the issue so much as less exposure to this type of information in the first place. We no longer aimlessly browse stores checking everything out; now we just search for specific items, buy them, and move on.

I can probably recall the prices of things I've actually purchased about as well as past generations, but anything beyond that is basically a wild guess.

As someone who's been keto for just about my entire adult life, the humor of "I mean it's one banana Michael. What could it cost, $10?"[1] was almost lost on me.

1: [https://youtu.be/Nl_Qyk9DSUw](https://youtu.be/Nl_Qyk9DSUw)

<comment><USER3> I agree. I can recall the historical prices of staple groceries almost immediately, because I buy them every week and base my dinners around what is on sale.

When it comes to durable goods, I have no clue anymore. Put a 65" TV and I'd bomb it...somewhere between $400 and $1500?

<comment><USER4> > Put a 65" TV and I'd bomb it...somewhere between $400 and $1500?

that's actually not bad. I researched TVs recently, and an entry level 65" does cost about $400, while $1500 is upper mid-range. of course, it can be double that or more for a really good 65" oled.

if I had to price a specific model, I'd be in trouble.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't help when every box store has a slightly different model number with a slightly different price

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I shop for my family's groceries every week, and I couldn't tell you the price of 3/4 of what I buy. I just know what a usual weekly total looks like. If there's significant change I can usually tie it to one or two items that were special that week (or that great sale that I chose to bulk up on). I tend to just put things into buckets of $1-20, $20-100, $100-250, etc. Most things at the grocery store are in that first bucket, so while I'll grab an alternate if there's a sale on, the only prices I really pay attention to are steak/large cuts of meat.

<comment><USER7> It's actually a rough indication of your wealth; there was an article the other day that categorized people by wealth based on what purchases they don't really have to think about (can't find it in quick order). Not having to nitpick about common groceries puts you comfortably in the middle class; the next step would be the ability to just go on vacation several times a year without really worrying about it. Then it's stuff like cars and big purchases like that, then houses, then idk, yachts? Elections? Countries?

<comment><USER8> Stewart Butterfield discussed this when he was on "How I Built This"

[https://www.npr.org/2018/07/27/633164558/slack-flickr- stewar...](https://www.npr.org/2018/07/27/633164558/slack-flickr-stewart- butterfield)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly)

Confusopoly (aka Dilbert's confusopoly) is confusing marketing designed to prevent the buyer making informed decisions.

(...) The term has been adopted by economists. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray, championing meaningful regulation for the financial industry, used the term confusopoly to refer to large financial institutions (Cordray 2014, 4'04"-4'26") :

"There's actually an economic term for this; it's called "Confusopoly." If [the sellers] can confuse the consumer enough then the consumers won't necessary know what choice they're making and they can be talked into just about anything." — Richard Cordray, 2014/01/08

<comment><USER10> I love this concept. This perfectly describes the state of pretty much all consumer markets today, and one of the biggest pitfalls of free-market capitalism. Also, it feeds in to my always-shouted-down argument that advertising/marketing is generally a counter-productive economic broken window (not counter-productive for a given business, but counter-productive as a whole).

<comment><USER9> I wish I could PM this to you because it's third time I post the link:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20577142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20577142)

Advertising is cancer on society. Very thoughtful points.

<comment><USER10> Added to my reading list, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I gotta admit. I was / am always amazed that they are as accurate as they are.

Like outside of a couple products I probabbly can't tell you what most groceries or consumer products cost. There's just so many to keep track of, and that's saying something as I shop / cook a great deal.

I seriously would dramatically under or overbid on a can of soup.

<comment><USER12> (Wasn't able to read the article through the paywall) Does Price is Right use MSRP or what? Because I'll usually just look at my options and choose my lowest one - I have no idea what I should be paying for something.

<comment><USER13> > Wasn't able to read the article through the paywall

Try turning off javascript.

<comment><USER14> [https://remove-js.com/https://www.economist.com/united- state...](https://remove-js.com/https://www.economist.com/united- states/2020/03/05/what-one-game-show-reveals-about-the-american-economy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd say it's more indicative of the randomness of contestant inclusion than anything else. Are the rates of "regular watcher" contestants decreasing? Have the producers changed the type of contestant they decide to include?

To be truly effective at these games, you needed to be watching what the accepted _show_ price of items were...you never could assume your local store price or dealership price.

</comment><comment><USER16> For me, the prices can vary widely depending on what store you shop at. A can of Classico spaghetti sauce at my local store is $3.50. But the same can, volume, and flavor on Amazon is $1.99.

<comment><USER17> Yes but on Amazon you are buying "Classico" versus at the store you are buying _Classico_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Going with their mentioned larger number of products but also throw out that manufacturers are good at creating similar products that have minor differences to benefit certain large retailers; some of which could use this to avoid price matching. throw in confusion between MSRP and actual pricing and not knowing which price they use would add to the confusion

</comment><comment><USER19> The prices of things fluctuate so much. The price of the same product in different stores or the same product in the same store on different days can vary wildly. How many things these days have fixed prices? Iphones? Teslas? Mail order mattresses?

</comment><comment><USER20> Can't get through the paywall, but some of it is that the Price is Right has deliberately made it harder, which I think is something you can't ignore:

[https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a7922/price-is- right-p...](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a7922/price-is-right- perfect-bid-0810/) :

"Terry Kniess studied prices. He saw that virtually every prize on The Price Is Right, from a pack of gum to the flashiest car, repeated. He and Linda memorized their values the way Terry had learned to count cards. When they felt they were ready, they made their way to California.... "Actual retail price, $23,743," Carey said. "You got it right on the nose. You win both Showcases.""

"The producers no longer rely on Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup; now they have different soups. They have different everything. They've built more luck into the games, dumb luck, and they've started doing sneaky things like changing the options on the cars — adding floor mats, taking away the stereo system — to mess with the prices. And they've started adding more luxury items, like Burberry coats, the sorts of things for which ordinary people who have lived their ordinary lives would never have clipped a coupon."

You can study for the Price is Right right now: [https://quizlet.com/218097429/the-price-is-right-study- guide...](https://quizlet.com/218097429/the-price-is-right-study-guide-flash- cards/)

Though I don't vouch for how accurate that's going to be after the changes.

Based on what I could read of the article, and what other people are saying in response, I suspect the article is basically ruined by the fact that it was deliberately made harder. Of course after it was deliberately made harder, people did worse. There's not a lot of conclusions to be drawn from that data point, even trendy ones like "addiction to cell phones", which may ruin 90% of the people's memories but another fraction may be using their cell phones to run SRS programs to memorize everything. (You can waste a lot of time on cell phones, sure, but they can be powerfully turned to the light side if you take a bit of time to figure out how.)

<comment><USER21> I think you have the reason exactly right. The producers got lazy on the prices and only recently have gone back to more difficult pricing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Maybe technology is to blame but in a different way. Its well accepted now that a person will be offered two different prices for a product or service depending on a wide number of factors.

Included but not limited to: New/repeat customer, country of connection, device used to connect, previous purchasing or even searching habits.

You can test this in the UK by searching for a holiday. Do it once on an android phone using your normal account and then do it again via a macbook as a guest of the site.

</comment><comment><USER23> Related from 3 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21623599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21623599)

and from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15986984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15986984)

</comment><comment><USER24> The article was behind a paywall, but in the past few years, the show has been getting away from staple goods to make it more difficult for contestants to win.

The Perfect Bid ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdFKZtZop7A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdFKZtZop7A)) went over this in more detail after a player and long time watcher (Ted Slauson) managed to win both showcases. For years, the show had used a set of household goods that had a consistent price. Ted memorized all of the prices and won both showcases at the end.

The producer freaked out over the incident and started to use more items and ones that add-ons that made guessing the price more difficult. They did that because they didn't want their winnings budget blown out. In recent years, they have been using more generic items like 'free utilities for a year' to make it more random.

<comment><USER25> Turning off JavaScript disables the paywall.

<comment><USER26> I noticed that it actually flashes the full content for one second before loading the paywall. If I quickly pressed the "reader view" button in my browser I could read the whole article without the paywall.

/ hacker skillz /

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In addition to other good comments here, "prices" don't exist as inherent attributes anymore. Everything is variably priced and has multiple discounts applied, so no one knows the meaningless "retail price" of what they buy. They just see what the offer is on the day they shop.

TPIR is a very US show. In most of the world, especially going back to when the show began, the idea of a product having "a" price is laughably absurd. Everything is haggled over.

</comment><comment><USER28> For me, The Economist is the prime example of the Murray Gell-Mann amnesia effect. They are so off on topics I happen to know about. And yet I feel like I can trust them with whatever wacky eye-catching theory they conjure.

<comment><USER29> It really is. I read it cover to cover for ten years before I caught on (I'm a slow learner).

This podcast episode is about the history of The Economist. It's really interesting:

[https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-98-the-refined- so...](https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-98-the-refined-sociopathy- of-the-economist)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Maybe they are less piece conscious than before. There seem to be less coupon cutting with data analytics applying constant sales to attract buyers. Prices are skewed this way.

<comment><USER31> That's true, also food makes up a lower portion of people's expenses these days, with housing taking a higher amount.</comment></comment>


The mathekniticians and their amazing woolly maths creations - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2016/oct/03/meet-the-mathekniticians-and-their-amazing-woolly-maths-creations <comment><USER2> This is related to the work of Latvian mathematician Daina Taimina from Cornell University. She has been using crocheting as an educational tool for illustrating hyperbolic space.

Her TEDx Talk about this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1TBZhd- sN0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1TBZhd-sN0)

Her Wikipedia entry: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daina_Taimina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daina_Taimina)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are some interesting patterns in there, and I think that presenting that kind of information visually can be useful in a teaching environment; there are a few subjects which seem to turn people off, but a lot of it is that it's presented in a particular way, and a visual representation of some patterns in maths can be useful in terms of understanding.

I teach Music Tech, but as part of the course I have to look at how computers store audio, which leads us to binary. Every time I present this, I'm expecting glazed expressions and people switching off, but I try to present it in an interesting way, solving the "problem" of why computers have to count in binary. And it seems to work; most years when I do that class, I get people switching "on" and saying something like "Oh, THAT's why we see those same numbers over and again" (i.e. powers of 2). I'll definitely be using the binary representation in the article when I teach it next year... (If I'd seen it this time last week, I'd have been able to use it!)

</comment><comment><USER4> My wife made a Sirpinsky quilt a few years back.

Edit: pic [https://www.flickr.com/photos/94816668@N00/2801479427](https://www.flickr.com/photos/94816668@N00/2801479427)

</comment><comment><USER5> Related: My Prime Factorization Sweater, by Sondra Eklund.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3905733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3905733)

</comment><comment><USER6> No crocheted Klein bottles, or other woolly yet non-orientable surfaces? I remember those going round the lecture theatres, when I was doing my maths degree, more than ten years ago.

<comment><USER7> You should ask Cliff Stoll[1] about those!

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pat and Steve are regulars at my annual MathsJam gathering, their work is wonderful, and they are such enthusiasts.

Lovely people, lovely write-up.

</comment><comment><USER9> Similar, but in 3d: Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes, Daina Taimina, [https://www.amazon.com/Crocheting-Adventures-Hyperbolic- Plan...](https://www.amazon.com/Crocheting-Adventures-Hyperbolic-Planes- Taimina/dp/1568814526)

</comment><comment><USER10> Jacquard Loom's revenge</comment>


Ask HN: Advice for finding high quality freelance web developers? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
Has anyone had a positive experience with hiring a remote web developer(s) and advice for how to go about it?
Here's my situation:
- I work fulltime (70 hrs M-F) but have been using my weekends and holiday time to work on a web app on the side to help me with a process I regularly do for one of my hobbies.
- My development has hit a stand still because I have encountered a problem that I can specifically describe and I know would probably be trivial for an experienced web dev, but I'm not quite sure how to solve it.
- I tried using Upwork to hire a freelance web developer to implement this specific component I'm having trouble with, but I had an extremely poor experience (the developer charged me for 10 hours of labor and then sent me back code that they had taken from an open source repository on GitHub that also didn't even meet the specs I had described - I literally just Googled the first line of code bc it looked fishy and the repository popped up ).
I want to hire a web developer who I can pay to work ~10 hours a week for me and I essentially act as the product manager - I am comfortable reading and writing code, I just don't have enough time to make this app the way I want to, though I know someone out there can.
Has anyone been in this situation before? Any advice? <comment><USER2> I haven't, but...

I'm (currently) a freelance web developer. I've worked at and with y-combinator companies (including one as the first employee), and am currently working to get my own project off the ground, and would like to extend my run rate a bit.

I may not be able to compete with Upwork in regards to hourly rate, but I'm at the top of my game developing MVPs and solving tricky web development problems. My last corporate job was developing the world's first IDE for DNA programming.

If you are interested in talking further, checking out my github/linkedin bio, recent work etc, let me know, and we can set up a time to talk about your project, and the specific problem you are having. You can reach me at jon at elbizri dot com

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi,

I've been on both sides of the table. I've worked as a freelancer, and currently, I'm a part of an agency that offers remote webdevelopment services. Whenever you plan to hire a freelancer or an agency, take a good look at their credentials, reviews, past work and most importantly if they are a good culture fit. Do as many calls, video chats to see if their is a synergy. Hiring is a time consuming process, don't let anyone pressure you into speeding things up. If you require a remote developer, PM me, lets take it further from there.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've hired a lot of developers on upwork and my success rate is close to 0, even when paying $50-80/hr

\- 6/10 just can't code to the mockup. I think they use a fixed library of components or something and get it as close as possible as quickly as possible, but there would be major visual issues (ie. things would be functionally broken) and I have to go back and forth 5+ times to get it right. At that point it's just a waste of time.

4 others I had some limited success with:

\- freelancer 1 could code html/css to spec, but it was very clear that he specialized in "psd to html" work and couldn't handle a more complex vue component. He then ghosted me in the middle of work.

\- freelancer 2 was amazingly good, implemented the component without problems, did not require any hand holding and everything looked great the first try. Surprisingly he was also the cheapest of the 10. I expressed that he did a great job and wanted to continue, but a week later he said he had some personal problems to deal with and couldn't continue. I offer more money, to be ghosted again..

\- at this point I was tired of looking and just wanted someone experienced, if more expensive. freelancer 3 had a great upwork track record, relevant experience and a good portfolio. He worked on my project for several days before telling me that my api was broken and he was trying to debug it for CORS issues. I was confused because the api only took a few standard POST form variables. After trying to figure out the problem myself, I realized that he didn't know what a post variable was - he assumed all POST requests were json blobs in the form of {postvar:value} and didn't know sending it in a different way was possible. Instead of communicating this to me he assumed it was a CORS issue and spent several days trying to fix it without result.

\- I then decided that experience was not a great filter and hired freelancer 4, who seemed smart and curious based on github projects. This person did pretty well overall, but had trouble with English communication. He would frequently come back to me to tell me X was impossible because he had never seen it before, and I would have to tell him that X was indeed possible, then walk them through the implementation step-by-step.

anyways, the search continues..

</comment><comment><USER5> 40 hours a week is full time. 70 hours a week is suicidal.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't really have an advice but if you can explain your problem in an email email@example.com - I can work for free for 10 hours and give you the work. Any further work is paid (including a fee for the first 10 hours).

Thinking about it- _that_ is the advice, establish the freelancer's credentials first.</comment>


Anyone going to the "Invite only" Y-combinator 'wannabe' programs? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Some of you who applied to other programs besides the Y probably got invites during the summer to meet up with those people and other entrepreneurs. Anyone going?

If so, we should hold a mini get together or something. It'll be fun. Three trips planned in one summer, its a lot of money but it's not everyday you get the opportunity to meet exciting people

<comment><USER2> Instead of wasting your money on visiting people that rejected you, why not spend that time and money on your startup?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> At SXSW Kathy Sierra asked a good question: why are we all here? We're in the industry that's supposed to create software to help eliminate F2F meetings and liberate the global workforce. What is the true benefit of F2F nowadays?

</comment><comment><USER4> What are the invite-only YC-wannabe programs? I haven't heard of such a thing.</comment>


Honest opinion on API first mail hosting platform - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone,
I'm Pavin Joseph, founder and Systems Engineer at Mailcheap (mailcheap.co). Signed up since I saw a post on IndieHackers that to get the "Hard Truth" I should "launch on HN", so here I am...
Mailcheap has been in business for almost 5 years now but the platform was completely overhauled last month after more than an year of work on an API-first mail hosting solution.
I appreciate any and all feedback :) <comment><USER2> This should qualify for [https://news.ycombinator.com/show](https://news.ycombinator.com/show) where founders/makers present their product and ask for feedback. It gets a bit more visibility, especially of the first comment is like yours "founder here, happy to answer questions or such". Just add "Show HN:" to the title.

Concept to run the mail backend for resellers sounds great. Friends use a German reseller company ending with .org. Not naming them here, I assume you know whom I'm talking about, probably a competitors, and they're not happy with their API, constant trouble, hard to test, after many complaints the support got unresponsive. I'll point them to your service.

</comment><comment> tony-allan Great idea but email sending limits are too low for my use case of outsourced email for small apps.

An API to simply send and receive emails would be great. Perhaps even webhooks.

Or perhaps JMAP [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8621](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8621)</comment>


Ask HN: Grandma's computer compromised by scammer, how to assess risk? - <AUTHOR> EDIT: I apologize for removing initial desc., I uploaded a document I sent to her son which explains, what i could grok about what happened. I edited the markdown file quickly and uploaded it to gdocs. I put bullets of major stuff. the public link for more info with some pics is here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3-pXTFbLBkHUldDQ1JVSnNvd00/view?usp=sharing
I apologize for adding link but this is a quicker explanation with a few images rather than max the char limit. Notable things:
* probably pop-up initiated 200+ redirects broke back button.
* she called scammers(decent/good job copying look of chrome maliscious warning except with phone number and login)
* there are 3 hours before i arived where she was speaking with them intermittenly and she downloaded logmein.com, citrix software and gave them full access to computer.
* phone num lead me to website which is now 100% gone and "alex smith" had a seriously thick foreign accent as she described it.
EDIT [2.1]
There was a dir called [sons name] on the desktop (she thinks it might have been there always but not sure) with:
* 5 year old full Experian credit report
* some old job applications(a super quick look didn't show his full SS but I only looked very quickly, did see last 4)
* info about a p&s of some land he sold.
and he got the job 4 years ago now. Is branch manager of a financial companies office. He is concerned his information could have been downloaded and he is at risk. Trying to assess what I should tell him. Downplayed risk a bit short term so he doesn't flip on his mom, but understandably he is concerned about professional & personal ramifications.
edit 3:
I called te non-emg police line(haha first time ever) and asked if it was worth reporting in case needed to build narrative for ID theft in future. They said to do ic3.gov. I am more concerned with getting the paperwork incase i neeed to build narrative, than actually expecting them to find the people. <comment><USER3> I feel really bad for you, and for her. Is there any chance she had a document (government application, tax forms etc) with social on there? Did she store anything online in dropbox and google drive and were those passwords stored?

I would do the following:

\-- Cancel all credit cards

\-- Change all bank accounts

\-- Put a credit lock on her social security number

\-- Change all passwords, prioritizing any kind of banking software or software with access to wires and accounts

\-- Change all the email and online files

After doing that you can file a few forms with the local police and this federal ID theft site.

Then when the credit people start calling in a few months (hopefully the credit lock will prevent this), you can present the information.

<comment><USER4> After doing this, on the technical side:

1\. Disconnect the hard disk, and image it using a clean host machine. Since the attackers had full admin-access, you'll want an image in case they deleted anything (and to perform forensics if you care).

2\. Wipe the hard disk and re-install Windows 10, there is no other best practice here. As others have said, there are too many places to hide trojans and malware, and all bets are off now that the machine was compromised.

<comment><AUTHOR> hahah thanks. It's funny, i look at it the same way. I am _fairly_ technical. I feel confident I could fix the issue technically(install new reformatted HD & RAM, security programs, ect) but I am more concerned with:

* Was this the whole attack? Or was this stage 1, and they are going to sell/use data for identity theft.

* Use contacts info to try and scam friends/family

* Worth reporting to build narrative for the future if needed to prove identity theft leter?

* What a 'typical' scammer business model is

* If there is a simple way to check if they have active malware installed.

I could never be comfortable with the old hardware, but I would suggest credit monitoring ect if I could verify 100% they either downloaded all the data or backdoored it. I could do this on mac/linux and probably figure it out on windows, i just don't want to freak her out. Do you think it is worth trying to tcpdump and look at the sys logs and stuff and trying to diagnose that they did more than just scam? If I _knew_ they did, I would get lifelock for her or something, but when the friendly support rep(the hacker) told her there were 26 hackers currently on her computer and he was fixing it for her, she was obviously super concerned.

<comment><USER4> You can always re-use the hard-drive after you've created an image of it - <USER2> the image gives everyone peace of mind if you ever need to recover/investigate something after the hard-drive is wiped.

This way you can also put the image on a flash drive or Blu-Ray so you don't have to keep physical possession of hard drive/data which sounds like it is important.

I believe tcpdump only helps you if the attack is ongoing, since this is after-the-fact, having an image you can analyze later is probably your best bet.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah that was my thought. I don't have a sata, but I do have a compatible HD with a windows install laying around, so I put as much of her data as I could into the cloud and maxed out a MS OneCloud 5gb for backup, then swapped drives. she couldn't handles the windows 10 upgrade, so I had to swap back, but I was thinking that keeping the drive as a backup/diagnostics would be best bet.

Also, I wanted to replace the ram chips incase they persisted malware to them, but I was holding off to see how serious everyone on here thought it was. What is the windows equiv of stuff like:

        $ tcpdump
        $ ps aux

ect. and the system level process directories like

        /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools
        /Library/LaunchDaemons

ect. I guess, i'll just take a peak now. It would be worth spending an hour or so if I could know without a reasonable doubt that they did install malware. If I can't find something obvious, I'll still do clean install.

<comment><USER5> Definitely no need to replace RAM. Reading cold RAM chips is a valid attack, but it doesn't apply in your case. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some links, from HN. None were _particuarly_ helpful. But if anyone finds this later in the same situation, I will try and make it a bit easier for them as this sucks.

1\. What to do about ID theft (2 comments / 2009) 2\. MS Phone scam(1c, 2014, not very useful) 3\. Phone Scammers(3c, 2013) 4\. Guardian link about Indian callcenters/phone scamming(0c, article)

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=695415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=695415) 2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9241168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9241168) 3\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8136782](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8136782) 4\. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/18/phone-scam- india...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/18/phone-scam-india-call- centres)

edit: will add more useful info, as I find them

<comment><USER6> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7868166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7868166)

A link to a BBC Radio programme that contains a bit about a woman who responded to telephone scammers. She lost £15,000.

<comment><AUTHOR> oh man. That is terrible but helpful. That is similar to what happened and it was ($260 CAD, but we are US based), so it sounds like this is ongoing, and exactly what i wanted to know. They will likely call again to retarget her as it was successful the first time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems that it would be safer to block that credit card entirely and request a new number.

The OS should also be reinstalled from scratch, after backing up any pictures or documents and reformatting the disk.

<comment><AUTHOR> I cancelled all cards and did what i could for the finance company. putting a freeze or security on her investment account required her to have to go to a bank(or other official notary accepted by the firm) and verify her identity and then mail a letter to the company to authorize transfer. so all the accounts were cancelled/cards reordered but freezing her account would be a huge impediment as she makes transfers every few weeks to live. the cards/ect from initial breach i am not particularly worried about. but to your second point:

> The OS should also be reinstalled from scratch, after backing up any > pictures or documents and reformatting the disk.

I removed both ram cahces and replaced them as well as the harddrive with another entirely reset windows 10 install i had laying around.

HOWEVER, she is reasonably tech savvy for 80 uses computer everyday, ect, but she was having trouble adapting and begged me to put win7 back on. I simply swapped hard drives back, so there has been 0 diagnostics run on the current drive except a single full system scan done by the microsoft virus program, although, again, she said they installed it (it does look like real MS) but maybe they just added an exception. I figured I would do damage control, and let her use current OS for now(told her not to do online shopping haha) while I try to assess full risk.

<comment><USER8> This is a terrible thing to do; there's no way she won't be back in their system at some point. Seriously. If need be, buy her a chromebook and walk her through what she needs to learn. But, Windows 7, and previously compromised together is not any kindness.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. This was my concern. I have mitigated short term risk (next 2 weeks ish) so I am just trying to assess whether it is worth freaking her out and dumping the whole system. i already did but as an 80 y/o she didn't adjsut super well to having hackers breach her PC, have all new passwords for her stuff, and trying to use a new OS. So i removed the HD with windows 10, and put the old original HD back in with win7. wanted to know how serious others thought risk was before I escalated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Get Grandma a Chromebook.

It won't stop 100% of all scams, but it does eliminate a whole class of malware.

I converted my 88-year-old father to Chromebooks 3 years ago. He loves it, and my support calls have tapered off :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> Wiping the hard drive is pretty good, but I wouldn't even trust that. It's possible to hide malicious code in many other places which would survive a wipe of the HDD. I've heard of malware which can be installed into the graphics card firmware, or the BIOS, and I imagine that anywhere else which can be written to is a possible location to hide.

Personally, I'd chuck the computer away and buy a new one, but I'm paranoid.

<comment><USER11> Back in Win XP days, I caught a nasty virus that installed itself in the master boot record of the hard drive. I formatted the partition, reinstalled everything, and the damn thing kept coming back. Paranoia made me switch to Linux for a while after that.

<comment><USER12> Is it possible that an OS could be the one loading Linux, and thus would effect your Linux instance?

edit: I used to get really paranoid after using Windows for an extended period of time. Still do sometimes, but learned to live with it. I feel like I have no control over what services are listening on 0.0.0.0, the firewall is completely unusable compared to iptables.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For incident analysis, I would clone the drive and obtain a list of files created or modified in 24 hours. I would do this under my Linux recovery environment. I would also undelete all files. One of those files will likely be the log of file transfers that happened using commercially available remote support software. Logmein and Citrix may have additional logs available if you are ever able to find the right person.

Cached website is likely recoverable from the disk image. I used that technique a few times to get into some clients' accounts with their consent.

Anyway, assume total compromise and apply nuclear option. It is possible to track down the perpetrators because they use toll free numbers.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is helpful. there was a total dump of Chrome on the desktop, which I thought was pretty bad, but if i understand correctly what youve said, that would indicate an attempt to get the accounts right there.

Either way, for sure has to be totally reformatted, super shitty thing to do to someone. there is being a skilled hacker and social engineer and then there is scamming an old lady. thanks for info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just re install the OS if the goal is to get it back to a safe state.

<comment><AUTHOR> I could never, myself, be comfortable not doing that as someone who was at best a total scammer and at worst a hacker/affiliated with hackers and carders, had full system and admin access for several hours. However, i did what I could because she didn't like the clean win 10 frsh install, but my chief concern is not the computer right now as I can fix it.

My chief concern is more the shape of the attack/this sort of scam. I don't know what a "typical" attack is, a scam or they follow on by bundling up the data and selling it to the more specialized identity theft/hackers online.

I am not super familiar with windows (mac/linux) so I wouldn't be as comfortable using powershell to look at internal processes. I didn't want to freak her out, but I do want to know if it would be "normal" for this type of scam to include downloading the hard drive data and selling it/using it to commit ID theft ect.

<comment><USER13> There is a reason windows experts recommend full wipes: They know there are lots of places for nasty stuff to hide and it is not worth the time to try and find it all. Set your ego aside and wipe it.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, it is probably possible to recover, but it just doesn't make sense to spend the kind of time it would take to be sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have 2 clean compatible ddr3 ram caches and a new HD which I originally installed post breach (what I would do if my system) but I swapped back to orig hardware short term as she couldn't figure out new OS. Do you think it is likely that they installed backdoor(maliscious code)? I am not super familiar with PC but i would want to run the tcpdump equiv for powershell ect. I am just not familiar enough to know wheere files/daemons/ect are and how to diagnose it. Even if I would never reuse this HD, I would like to verify what happened. For me it would be i guess the same result but it would be better to know: if the computer was likely running malware or certainly running malware.

in terms of actual actionable steps, they would really be the same fix. however, if i found active system processes sending data to random IPs, i would obviously excalate my concerns.

<comment><USER14> Who knows, man? If you aren't a Windows system administration/Windows internals wizard you can't really hope to untangle it all.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. i am capable, but i don't want to "untangle" it. I would always treat that system as maliscious. I just want to know if i should _confirm_ it was maliscious. I could, in fact, run some program diagnostics. The impediment is less technical skill than a cost/benefit of me taking her computer back and freaking her out more.

<comment><USER14> I don't understand the distinction you are making. If you are capable of identifying all the malicious software that's most of the way toward removing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to clarify, securing a system from this caliber of attack is fairly trivial:

* replace/reformat hardrive

* replace RAM sticks for good measure, as I have them already.

* config firewall

* put on standard windows security settings, remove remote access to computer, ect. lock it down.

* shes a grandmother. so essentially, just put a fuckton of addons on chrome and delete/hide other browsers. highest chrome security settings, httpseverywhere, adblock plus(not putting uBlock on, consider target user), ghostery, ect.

* explain some high level steps to her about protecting herself, all popups are scams ect

* if possible block incoming calls from 800, 900, international, and business numbers. Possible, but could impact her UX of life.

* tell her to call me if she has questions first before doing anything.

HOWEVER. A confirmation of malware would mean that the attack vector changes _significantly_. If a confirmation they actually actively did data harvesting or otherwise intend to go after her and her son's IDs or financials. I would escalate. I have already:

* changed all card numbers, the router and ISPs passwords,

* placed notes of breach in all accounts, ect.

* confirmed no suspiscious activity on investments and also secured them to the best I could via that companies policy without needing a 3day verified letter to execute a transfer or change in postion of the portfolio.

* replaced debit cards

* reset investments login.

[ I am aware that allowing her to use the likely compromised hard drive is a risk. but, I believe that between the security measures I have taken and the holiday weekend, I have some time to consider how I fix the issue technically ]

But if I actually found proof of maliscious code, it wouldn't be likely they were going to continue scamming: _it would be a near certainty_.

if the attack vector becomes securing any hole in America's horrible financial system, I would have to also set up account/credit monitoring, consider a credit freeze and take further measures. These are things I would _possibly_ do to some extent for myself if this was my own system/life.

however I am a technical user with a background in finance and tech, and I worked at a fintech startup where we were trying to sell to banks. So i am not an expert, but have MUCH more knowledge about the industry than the victim here. So I am doing cost/ben on how much I need to do here (also of my own time to some extent) to secure everything while still allowing her not to need to do 2 factor authentication and call her bank everytime she needs to buy groceries. She is 80, so for her demographic she is highly technical. Compared to even a 65 year old, she is certainly not and does not have the technical or peripheral knowledge to execute/do tasks we would consider basic:

* make a change from win 7 - win 10

* use a password manager not already set up in chrome

* understand seperation of technological concerns. for example, she didn't want to change to win 10 because her passwords are prefilled for her in Google Chrome, and the new operating system would require her to not have them. I am aware of how chrome accounts work, this is an example.

<comment><USER13> I don't think it is currently possible for a stick of ram to hold a virus. Where are you getting this info?

<comment><AUTHOR> i am not a security professional and i am recalling what i have read before. as mentioned some malware targets the bootloader and is persistantly loaded at startup. i am not sure what is technically correct, so maybe someone will chime in, but i don't believe ram is typically cleared after shutdown. i think it is called memory only malware. either way, i have 2 comparible 4gb ram sticks and there is only one on the pc now. so i would simply swap it for newer sticks i have to get more ram if simply performance as the storage is HDD.

<comment><USER15> The bootloader resides in the hard drive so if the bootloader is infected, it will get transferred to ram at boot. Ram cannot contain a virus, you are wasting your time by replacing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is the reason I feel chromebooks are the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER17> Vonklaus - the link you posted with the details is coming up with errors in viewing for me, FYI.

Technically, you've clearly got an understanding of the fix, so I won't waste a lot of time on that. I wanted to speak to the rest though, as I've had personal experience with identity theft in the past few years. Really, anyone should just operate from the assumption that their SSN is compromised. Too many places have used them and too many places either don't even realize when they've been hacked or hide that fact when it's discovered. Her son should do the stuff written below whether they actually got his info from that folder or not. (Also, they did freeze the payment they made to the scammers, right?)

First off, do check if your local police have a place to file a report online. My local police dept. has a website where you can report identity theft and immediately get a report number and printout. If someone uses their information to file a fraudulent tax return, they'll need that report as part of their package to substantiate the issue to the IRS. If you want to do IC3, too, that's fine--but get the traditional police report (and don't wait until some problem comes up as a result of the breach). It is a good idea to build a narrative with corroborating evidence--the IRS was apologetic to me, but having a evidence of a reported incident and efforts to follow up is a nice preventive to potential pushback at a later date from a private entity that wasn't careful.

I'd also recommend filing a tax return early, as soon as they receive their W2. Fraudsters try to get their fake returns in before the legitimate one, because the IRS will issue their refund without questions unless you've already filed.

Getting access changed for all of their accounts is a first step, but I would recommend also getting 2-factor set up for any account it's available for. 2-factor makes any future breaches that much easier to mitigate. Additionally, they should check any account settings for additional recovery emails or in email accounts settings for any forwarding addresses added to the account. All the remediations in the world don't help much if they can still trigger a change in a few months by getting the password reset sent to firstname.lastname@example.com. This should additionally include making sure that anyone they have an account with has a fraud notice and ID check that doesn't rely on information in their credit report. For instance, my security question answer to "What is your mother's maiden name?" is to the effect of "a(DH?BMBNOrcumb#72tT". Use a password manager to keep those straight (I just keep them in the Notes field and cut and paste as necessary).

The son should have a fraud freeze with the credit agencies, so that they can't use the experian report to create new accounts, and he should make sure he's changed his passwords (if there was a folder of his on the computer with his job search files, it is also likely he's used it for browsing and there could have been passwords saved somewhere). I'm not sure what his concern is professionally, but he could contact his company's information security office about potential safeguards.

I've had no other identity theft issues from my information being out there aside from the fraudulent tax return, which makes sense. The IRS cut the douches a check for $8582, which, had they not fat-fingered the 16-digit prepaid Visa card number they tried to have it deposited onto, would have been a much more lucrative payoff than trying to run a couple of fraudulent credit card charges that Visa would quickly flag. Once you've triaged actual account access, keeping the credit agencies locked down is really the main thing to keep an eye on, since that would flag any attempt to use the information further. They should be reasonably vigilant, but my experience has not been that this was an apocalyptic meltdown of my financial identity and taking reasonable precautions while hardening their accounts should give them some peace of mind. I've heard mixed reports of Lifelock's effectiveness, but if they're anxious types Lifelock won't _hurt_ them--it just might not be more than a placebo against worry.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you for posting this.

i realized this earlier in the day, your comment only became visible to me in the last 10 mins pr so. i noticed replies ceased several hours ago and emailed HN support.

the link had been flagged by several users and was restored by dang a few minutes ago. i dont have infor but i assume it was the horrible title which i submitted after charring out on mobile 3 or 4 times, amd i didnt want to rewrite/lost the original post which has since been restrictured.

thanks again dang, and also i appreciate this write up as there wasn't much on HN about dealing with this. it ia clearly written up exatensively in the media but there is so much spam and incorrect info i looked here for better reaources and experiences like yours as there are technical, financial and privacy considerations and as any good security professional knows, missing even one thing can have huge consequences.

<comment><USER17> You're definitely welcome. My folks have been through this recently, as well. Smart practices like using a password manager to segregate all accounts with different passwords can help to protect ourselves from poor security practices by other parties, like banks or vendors, and making sure they never link a bank account directly to a pay vendor rather than a credit or debit card (looking at you, Venmo). The main thing for the folks you're working with (aside from dipping that hard drive in bleach) is to protect access to their existing asset accounts and then keep a fraud alert on their credit. I think leaving those avenues of attack open is where the identity theft horror stories come from (or just basic overtrustfulness from people like the women in the BCC article below), so closing those off is a good idea even if you don't know there has specifically been a breach.

On a side note, the amusing part about having my identity stolen is that identity management at the enterprise level is what I do professionally, so I am well aware of the flaws in identity management that make id theft exploitable and now have a really good story to drag out when someone gives me pushback. Also, when the IRS guy was apologizing to me about all the inconvenience, I stopped him and said "don't apologize, I think this is hilarious. I have his refund check, he'll never get it, and I know he's trying to find out what happened because every time he pretends to be me and files an inquiry with you guys, the IRS response letter gets sent to _my_ address since that's what's on the return. I'm probably the only person in America who laughs maniacally when I see a letter from the IRS in my mailbox."

For those who are so inclined, I found the approach the guy in this article took to be pretty intriguing, and have a to-do project of figuring out how to do this in a virtual machine:

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/3030216/windows- pcs/fed...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/3030216/windows-pcs/fed-up- with-bogus-computer-support-calls-man-turns-tables-on-scammers.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Found Footage Offers a New Glimpse at 1906 San Francisco Earthquake - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/14/us/san-francisco-earthquake-film.html <comment><USER2> What I continually find neat and attractive in these old videos, specifically the one before the earthquake, is how multiuse the roads were.

People walking in the middle of the street, carts, horses, etc. The street hadn't yet been given completely over to the car. We've swung so far away from this now to make it illegal to jaywalk for the efficiency of cars getting around without them needing to worry about other forms of traffic.

It's definitly safer now, but at the cost of giving over significant portions of our cities to cars. We put the onus on the pedestrian, cyclist, scooter, et al, to fight for getting access back to the street, but it hasn't always been this way.

Edit: spelling.

<comment><USER3> And there's actually a great article about this that was on HN in January -- the history of the term jaywalking:

[https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking- history](https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history)

Basically, automobiles were killing people in the streets, so manufacturers lobbied to get people off the streets and turn them into car-only thoroughfares, and invented a new term for their campaign -- jaywalking, where "jay" back then used to mean "hick" or someone from the country.

<comment><USER4> There's an interesting thought in there somewhere. Something about maybe that hick from the country wasn't as stupid as he was made out to be and people bought into the derogatory term to their own detriment. Seems some modern era people might consider that from time-to-time.</comment></comment></comment>


File Signatures Table - <AUTHOR> https://www.garykessler.net/library/file_sigs.html <comment><USER2> If you want to find out a file type on the command line there's the file command on linux/macOS:

[https://linux.die.net/man/1/file](https://linux.die.net/man/1/file)

<comment><AUTHOR> NB: the file command tries to identify file types via file sigs (magic numbers) stored in /usr/share/file/magic, for more mysterious file types or partials, you'll need to use one of the other methods.</comment></comment>


Gmail back soon for everyone - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/gmail-back-soon-for-everyone.html <comment><USER2> "If you were affected by this issue, it's important to note that email sent to you between 6:00 PM PST on February 27 and 2:00 PM PST on February 28 was likely not delivered to your mailbox, and the senders would have received a notification that their messages weren't delivered. "

That's pretty scary to me. I would've hated to have gotten any e-mail alerts or payment due date reminders during that time.

<comment><USER3> Since they got a warning that the email address was temporarily unavailable (at least that's what they should have received) any well configured mailserver should have resend the email.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, scary would be no bounce, no delivery. Bouncing is relatively graceful.

<comment><USER5> even more graceful would be keeping track of bounces for 24 hours so you could at least tell someone what they missed if there's a cliche like this.

<comment><USER5> glitch!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How on earth do they backup all that to tape?

Must be a massive amount of tape.

<comment><USER7> If you look at [http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers- storage/storage/ta...](http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers- storage/storage/tape-storage/index.html) it talks about the reduced cost of ownership for a 20PB tape library, so there are tape products available for large volumes of data. The SL8500 supports 500PB of raw storage.

<comment><USER8> If everybody filled their mailbox, 500 PB would back up 66.1 million Gmail accounts. Since they don't, we're probably looking at everybody on Earth: 73.8 MB per mailbox, which sounds like a pretty good shot at an average.

Looking at the SL8500, I think I'd intentionally lose data just so I could play with it to restore it.

<comment><USER9> Would 74 MB really cut it? I'm probably "above average" but mine uses 3 gb.

<comment><USER10> Consider de-duplication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> i love how they keep mentioning "0.02%" so you think it's some insignificant number, but it's actually something like 150,000 accounts.

<comment><USER4> 150,000 accounts out of SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY FUCKING MILLION had trouble accessing email for LESS THAN A SINGLE DAY on A WEEKEND. No accounts or emails were deleted.

I'd argue that is an insignificant number.

<comment><USER11> you'd probably have a different attitude if it were your account.

<comment><USER4> Why? Because I'd need to wait 20 hours to get that critical life-changing email? If it was critical, someone could call my home phone, my cell phone, text me, actually have the local police stop by my apartment, etc.

This winter was pretty bad here in the US. More people (and much higher percentage of some company's user bases) lost power for longer periods of time in freezing temeratures.

More people die in a single day than the people who temporarily lost email access.

Sure, It'd suck in that period where I thought I lost all my emails, but all's well that ends well. Lets keep things in perspective. This was more of a "SHIT THE CABLE'S OUT" issue than a serious life changing problem for anyone affected.

<comment><USER12> It turns out that I was hit by this issue. And guess what - it was a big deal. For starters, it is a MONDAY here in Australia. There was no support information on this, and no help from Google.

Secondly, the login message was "Your account has been disabled". If I could log in, and there was a message that my email was being restored from backup because they had a failure - fine. That wasn't the case. They had disabled my Google Apps Administrator account (same account as my email), email was bouncing, and I couldn't log in to my email OR the administration interface. The "reset your password" and "unlock your account" links failed to unlock it.

Comparing an email outage to people's deaths is poor form. Of course they aren't the same. That doesn't make it an issue when email is a super important communication tool.

<comment><USER13> I've spilt out my admin and day-to-day accounts. I couldn't articulate why I thought it was a good idea but you've given me at least one!

<comment><USER14> So what if your admin account would be affected and your personal is not? Slightly less trouble, but still!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "We released a storage software update that introduced the unexpected bug, which caused 0.02% of Gmail users to temporarily lose access to their email. When we discovered the problem, we immediately stopped the deployment of the new software and reverted to the old version."

Some bug!!

</comment><comment><USER16> It is worth noting that this is the first significant data loss issue that I am aware of involving gmail. As much as the incident sucks for those involved, that is a pretty good record overall.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is great, last night I went to bed thinking "How could Google just walk away from this problem without fixing it, don't they have backups, what about corporate users?"

And this morning "we have backups, we're restoring, oh and we're trying to fix what caused it in the first place"

</comment><comment><USER18> Would it be safe to assume then, that Google tests it's software upgrades with 0.02% of it's gmail account? (However many thousands clients are affected, it's probably better than affecting ALL their clients).

I wonder how they choose their 'test' client base.

</comment><comment><USER19> I can't remember having this sort of problem with yahoo mail. Then again they don't build their own filesystem.

<comment><USER20> Yahoo is far worse. When they lose your mail, it's gone.

Yahoo Mail lost _two_ of my accounts over the years. The first time was early in the service, and they seem to have lost _all_ their accounts at once. Suddenly you couldn't log in, and there was an apology message saying that you'd need to create a new account. And that you couldn't get the same email address back, which is why my @yahoo.com address had a 2 at the end of it for several years...

Until they locked me out of it one day. As in, I checked my mail at night, then in the morning my password didn't work anymore. Since they have no human beings working for them, an entire month's worth of attempts to get access back resulted in nothing but a big pile of form letters and links to the Forgot Password page.

So no, you're mistaken. Yahoo does have this problem. If you have an account with them I'd strongly advise you to back everything up. Then switch to Gmail.

<comment><USER21> Yahoo also charges a monthly fee for access to pop3. Their web interface is slower and buggier than gmail's. There is free unlimited storage, but a smaller limit on file sizes. The virus scan on outgoing messages is usually slow; if gmail is doing virus scans, it's on the backend, it does not delay the user.</comment></comment></comment>


Most of the Google Walkout Organizers Have Left the Company - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/most-google-walkout-organizers-left-company/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have said it before that your best option when you discover the company you work for no longer (or perhaps never did) shares your values about what is right and what is wrong, you only have two choices; work from within to see if the rank and file the same way and try to change it before you get fired, or leave on your terms.

I found this comment in the story kind of ironic, _"I'm certain many in leadership—who learned what Google was and why it was great over a decade ago—don't truly understand the direction in which Google is growing. Nor are they incentivized to."_

I don't know Meredith so I don't know how she reasoned to this statement but my experience was that many in Google's leadership understand _exactly_ which direction Google is growing in and they _like it that way._ I had to poke and prod to get around the way things were presented to get to the actual reasons, and those reasons and actions are remarkably consistent.

<comment><USER2> I'm assume that you say 'only two options' as a rhetorical device to deny the validity of third option. It's different thing to say that worker activism is not proper than saying that it's not effective. I think your opinion is former but you try to argue the latter.

Creating larger bargaining unit from current employers is more effective than working as an individual. As these big tech companies have increasing number of workers who do not fear losing their job, it will create political power that is most effectively used collectively withing companies. This can work as traditional unions or just plain political activist groups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I was subsuming the option of unionizing into the choice of 'stay there and see how many people agree with you before you get fired.'

In my experience at Google it was clear that in Mountain View there was a program of 'managing out of the company' people who created problems. The sorts of problems they sought to minimize were disagreement or discussion that made actionable criticisms of management decisions.

As much as I dislike the actions of James Damore, his case, if it proceeds[1], has the potential to put a lot of this activity on the part of leadership into the public record. I personally think they will figure out what it will cost to buy his silence and make the case go away which won't serve the interests of the current employees.

[1] [https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/07/google- discrimination...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/07/google- discrimination-case-first-brought-by-james-damore-can-proceed/)

<comment><USER2> As a outsider I have never understood how the Google culture can work for long term.

It looks like there are platforms where informal power is gained or lost without responsibility. People who are active or vocal or member in informal groups and cliques may get into positions where they can influence corporate decision making or HR policy. Yet they are not responsible or chosen by their peers to represent them.

Damore case is good example. Allowing random individual to soapbox is not the right way to implement workplace democracy or openness in my opinion. If you want to involve workers in workplace democracy, you better have a organization for it where issues can be separated from people.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple under fire for allegations of controversial business practices - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XneTBhRPYk <comment><USER2> Wow, quite eye opening.</comment>


Summon Up Remembrance: Mnemotechnics and the Visualization of Memory - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/summon-remembrance <comment><USER2> Great article, but I was bummed it didn't cover Giordano Bruno. Most famous for getting burned at the stake in 1600 for his ideas. He wrote:

"I got me such a name that King Henry III summoned me one day to discover from me if the memory which I possessed was natural or acquired by magic art. I satisfied him that it did not come from sorcery but from organised knowledge; and, following this, I got a book on memory printed, entitled The Shadows of Ideas, which I dedicated to His Majesty. Forthwith he gave me an Extraordinary Lectureship with a salary."

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

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an incredible summary in the history of the art of memory. Into mnemonic history, and the Chinese medicine hand mnemonic is new to me.

Funny how until recently, study of the art of memory was increasingly designated as occult, with periods of resurgence.

Also amazing how thin is the line between what most people would consider writing and techniques such as the lukasa. Viewed through this lens, math is both a language and remembrance technique for scientists and other practitioners.</comment>


Snapchat, a growing app, lets you see it then you don't - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/technology/snapchat-a-growing-app-lets-you-see-it-then-you-dont.html?hp&_r=0

<comment><USER2> Until you install PicArchiver from the Cydia store.</comment>


Are Elite Colleges Biased Against Poor Whites? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2010/07/yes_elite_colleges_are_biased.html <comment><USER2> I'm not sure they do anymore, but elite colleges and elite prep schools used to have a hillbilly quota. In this sense they are biased against poor whites, and they know it, so they provide(d) an "affirmative action" program for some of them. My father was born and raised in a town of about 1000 in Montana and received full-ride scholarships to Philips Andover and Princeton, which he believed were mostly due to this quota. He turned both down because he was into football, and eventually received a full-ride scholarship to play college football.

<comment><USER3> I doubt they do any more. America's "elite" seem to have lost all respect for America's poor whites; they're "rednecks" and "white trash" who live in "trailers" or "McMansions" and shop at Wal-Mart and watch NASCAR and blah blah stereotype stereotype. If you're a poor non-white you're a victim of society, but if you're poor and white you're an ignorant hick. Poor whites are pretty much the only group upon whom it is socially acceptable to look down, nowadays.

<comment><USER4> This seems to be a fairly popular view among people who see "reverse racism" in America, however I think it is mistaken to assume that poor blacks have it easy and that the so-called "elite" only look down upon poor whites.

Btw several powerful establishment figures seem to think of "rednecks" as far more important than the so-called "elite". Sarah Palin and mother politicians use Redneck jokes to endear themselves and identify themselves with their core constituencies. It is hard to imagine someone like Obama or Deval or some other mainstream black politician use n-word jokes for political benefit or to describe themselves.

<comment><USER5> > I think it is mistaken to assume that poor blacks have it easy

Good for you, but no one is assuming that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The book seems to say a fairly obvious point, which is:

If you attempt to diversify by socioeconomic status (including race), those that are overrepresented be SES and race will appear to be penalized. This is due to the fact that admission to elite colleges is a zero sum game. There are X number of spots. If you somehow diversify to get Z more members of group A then there will be Z less spots to go around.

Not really rocket science.

To me the two big questions really are: 1) Are race and SES the right things to seek diversity, if anything at all? This is oft debated. 2) Is merit the right measuring stick for admission in general? This is rarely debated.

<comment><USER7> You've missed the point. The "fairly obvious point" would be that ALL whites are disadvantaged by providing a certain quota or advantage to non-white applicants, but that's not the point here.

The significance of the recent research is that low-income, rural, red-state whites face discrimination relative to high-income, urban, blue-state whites. That is, given two white students of equal merit, the admission is more likely to go to the one born in Manhattan than the one born in Iowa.

The tragic thing is that apparently this is new information to some people, when everyone in the midwest has known this for years. I was valedictorian of my high school, had very high standardized test scores and a dozen extra- curricular activities with leadership roles.... but I didn't even both to apply for any Ivy/prestigious schools because I knew being from a small town in the midwest I had no chance. How's that for institutionalized discrimination (or bias inherent in the system)?

<comment><USER8> This isn't new, and has little to do with diversity programs. Frankly, it's not the unqualified poor minority students keeping you out, it's the unqualified wealthy legacy students. That group is almost certain to gain admittance to a prestigious school, while the minority group member has to fight just as hard as you did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The thing is, there is a substantial bias that _aids_ poor people in general, not in the admission process, but in the process of actually going to school.

Even though the private colleges have price tags up in the $40k+ range, the average middle-class family will end up paying around $20k, and truly poor people generally pay as much if not less than they would for a state school.

The admission process is a crapshoot, and I don't really see any reason to whine about arbitrary stuff like this. They have to rule some people out, it's mostly random once you get past a certain point, and even if it isn't, I don't think it's particularly harmful. Not everyone can get in.

</comment><comment><USER10> I agree that class should be more important than race in making these decisions, but it's also true that, on average, poor minorities have more disadvantages and more to overcome than poor whites.

<comment><USER11> That is an interesting assertion, what is it based on? My experience working for a year in Appalachia (late 90s) tells me that rural poor whites have a pretty rough time of it, my experience tutoring in Cabrini Green (when it was still enormous, early 90s) taught me that poor minorities have it terrible as well.

I have no idea how to compare the disadvantages each has to overcome, let alone quantify one set vs. another. I think the experience of the rural poor in this country is often overlooked compared to the inner city. They are in my experience both utterly pathological societies, I cannot imagine having the sustained discipline to escape either one.

<comment><USER10> Like I said, I think it should be based on class primarily (if not exclusively) instead of race.

But there is still racism in this country and it overwhelmingly is against minorities.

<comment><USER12> >But there is still racism in this country and it overwhelmingly is against minorities.

The only racism I have ever experienced in the US has been _from_ "minorities" (i.e. non-white people), usually directed _toward_ white people.

<comment><USER8> That's because you are not a minority, and of course you don't see it on a daily basis. Out of curiosity, what sort of racism have you experienced?

<comment><USER13> "That's because you are not a minority, and of course you don't see it on a daily basis. Out of curiosity, what sort of racism have you experienced?"

Right. There's so much racism in the US. Every job I have ever had has had a mix of different races among its employees (not to mention the president of the United States).

I've experienced racism first-hand as someone who is a non-minority. A couple of years ago, I went to a big boy in Atlanta, Georgia. The majority of the staff and patrons were black. It took them 45 minutes to an hour to get my food (people that clearly were there after me got their food much earlier). I also got a lot of stares.

If this was the reverse, Al Sharpton would have been picketing outside to get the waitress fired.

When will it end? I'm wondering when the minorities in this country will end their self-segregation.

What I want in this country is equality (everyone has an equal shot at getting into things like universities IE: no extra points on the SATs/quotas based on race), but I don't think this will ever happen.

It's also funny that Greek organizations are allowed to have entire fraternities based on race (asian, african-american, etc), but if a caucasian frat was founded, it would be considered racist. This isn't equality.

<comment><USER14> Without addressing your points specifically, you sound angry about the situation of race in America. Many people of all races have issues with the status quo. Some people express it directly, like for example taking longer to get your food. In America, it's safe to say that if you cross racial boundaries enough, you'll eventually run into some racism no matter what race you are. So yes, there is much racism in America, and you've seen it yourself.

Only problem is, it's asymmetrical. You experienced it at a restaurant. Other likely places for someone like you might be at the laundromat, at school, at a party, at the post office. But it's unlikely at places like, at the bank, at a job interview (for a good job - not McDonalds), driving down the highway, etc. Because even though in America anyone can be racist, the people in positions that matter are more often white.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The 4H example in the article was odd. If you are president of 4H and want to go into some sort of agricultural field, what they hell are you going to do at Harvard or Yale anyway? You aren't even applying to those schools. You are going to a large land grant university, where the top agricultural programs are located. In a sense the deans at these elite colleges are correct. The odds of the 4H President being happy at Harvard are probably quite low.

<comment><USER7> And why the heck would a kid in band go to Harvard? He should be getting in a van and going on tour. And why would a kid in the chess club go to Yale? He should be playing chess. And why would a kid on the baseball team...

The typical over-achieving student is going to be in dozens of activities, none of which necessarily correlate with their future career. Agriculture might seem really weird or foreign to you, but for much of America being in FFA/4H/Eagle Scouts/whatever is just as normal as band, chess or sports.

<comment><USER16> Actually, I seriously doubt a good baseball player is going to be going to an Ivy League school, for a simple two-word reason. Athletic scholarships. Ivy League schools have none.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not to mention the fact that the rich/urban whites admitted to elite colleges are actually mostly Jews: [http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Connelly- Harvar...](http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Connelly-Harvard.html)

Also see this excellent article on the same subject: <http://theoccidentalobserver.net/tooblog/?p=2923>

"When lower-class whites are matched with lower-class blacks and other non- whites the degree of the non-white advantage becomes astronomical: lower-class Asian applicants are seven times as likely to be accepted to the competitive private institutions as similarly qualified whites, lower-class Hispanic applicants eight times as likely, and lower-class blacks ten times as likely. These are enormous differences and reflect the fact that lower-class whites were rarely accepted to the private institutions Espenshade and Radford surveyed. Their diversity-enhancement value was obviously rated very low."

<comment><USER18> Really? A link to an article that opens with a quote from Kevin Macdonald? I knew that the comments for this one would probably be a minefield but this is absurd. Take the antisemitism elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks like a legit organization but it appears to be a project of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

<comment><USER20> So, because it's a conservative thinktank talking about the issue, poor whites are _not_ in fact being discriminated against? I _wish_ I could cancel issues just by getting a partisan organization to talk about it!

I mean, the point is simple math. If you have a certain number of people you are going to admit, and you give bonuses to certain groups, you are equally penalizing others. People shouldn't be permitted to pretend otherwise because that's disingenuous; if you're going to do that, do it forthrightly and honestly. The fact that it's a challenge to forthrightly and honestly say "We want to discriminate against poor white people" sounds like a feature to me, not a bug.

<comment><USER10> No, it is not that simple. The question isn't "Does a poor white applicant have the exact same odds as a poor black applicant?" The question was, "Are we _biased_ against poor whites?"

If you believe, as many do, that there are fewer minority applicants because of institutional racism and therefore you decide to weight their applications higher is that biasing you selection process? Or is it cancelling out bias present elsewhere in the system?

<comment><USER21> If A and B are two rivals that are the same modulo one factor, but A has worse odds than B, then we must conclude that the system has a bias against subjects with that particular set of properties. You may justify it as an attempt to cancel out some other bias, but it seems mathematically incontrovertible that a negative bias exists with a set of numbers like that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are Senior Software Engineers Paid $500K and More? – Compensation Guide [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q1GGW04hjw <comment><AUTHOR> Hello all,

I've just published an analysis of software engineer compensations. It compares junior vs senior compensations and gives you a rough idea of what your compensation could be based on location. If you want to check it out:

* YouTube (video with narrative + examples): posted above

* Article: [https://quanticdev.com/articles/senior-engineer-compensation...](https://quanticdev.com/articles/senior-engineer-compensation-guide)

Hope this helps attract more people to (software) engineering field. All feedback is welcome.

If anyone wants to clone or contribute to the written version of this guide, it is on GitHub: [https://github.com/soygul/QuanticDev/blob/master/articles/se...](https://github.com/soygul/QuanticDev/blob/master/articles/senior- engineer-compensation-guide.md)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed article link: [https://quanticdev.com/articles/software-engineer- compensati...](https://quanticdev.com/articles/software-engineer-compensation- guide)</comment></comment>


Libreboot Leaves the GNU - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Libreboot-Not-GNU <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what to make of this. Leah Rowe is apparently alienating core Libreboot developers:

[http://zammit.org/libreboot-screwup.html](http://zammit.org/libreboot- screwup.html)

Now she is making statements about the entire Libreboot project -- the thing which the other developers asked her to not do -- and mingling it with strongly worded statements against the FSF.

(While those accusations should be evaluated based on their merits, what good does it do us to fight amongst ourselves so bitterly?)

<comment><USER3> I'm completely neutral in this entire thing, not affiliated with anyone involved, but Leah Rowe's response to the message you linked is quite dubious to my eyes and makes me think I should take the rest of her statements with a pinch of salt.

Selectively quoting (read the full response at [1]):

"The article complains that there was no consensus among developers in the libreboot project, but this isn't actually true. Or, rather, it is true in a different way. In reality, most people in the project are neutral about the issue, or were actually supportive of the decisions taken. Leah simply decided to take the morally correct action, in exposing corruption at the FSF."

Just seems to hide behind moral rhetoric and vague statements about alleged consensus without addressing the actual issue Zammit appears to raise, which is that no one except Leah appears to (be allowed to) speak for the libreboot project on a policy level. Zammit states that Leah appears to misuse her leadership of the libreboot project for her personal views and her response (Leah simply decided to take the morally correct action, in exposing corruption at the FSF) seems to confirm that.

[1]: [https://libreboot.org/gnu/](https://libreboot.org/gnu/)</comment></comment>


CSS Houdini Today by Una Kravets - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ-HpepLIY8 <comment><USER2> I used to do camera work at my church. We hated when the preachers would move around like her. Just stay in one place please! :-)</comment>


Y Combinator reality tv show - <AUTHOR>

Daniel Loewenherz's post on the full story behind Breakup Notifier (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2348702 or http://dlo.me/breakup-notifier/) got me thinking that it would awesome to have a web-based Y Combinator reality tv show or channel. Where viewers, from around the world, could literally see what it takes to create a startup.
I, for one, am tired of all the music, food, fashion, dieting, dating, celebrity, etc reality tv shows which currently exist and would love to learn something useful for a change. I've also observed that people enjoy watching "behind the scenes" footage. A look at the comments on any of the TechCrunch Cribs videos (http://bit.ly/gvEObR or http://tcrn.ch/g2i21X ) confirms this.
A tv show can also be beneficial to the startups themselves (just look at what Idols has done for musicians) Creates brand loyalty and early adopters of products You can get direct feedback from your audience during product development Viewers could give you advice or make suggestions if your stuck … you don't have to do it alone!
[An incentive to the Y Combinator team, the show could make money from both subscriptions (per episode/weekly/monthly/year) and advertisements, think about it]
How many of you guys would, would be interested in watching such a show? What would you want to see during the show? What reality show format would be best for Y Combinator? (try and give an example of tv show) <comment><USER2> We've got an example of it operating here in Canada called 'byteclub'. They showcase a few different companies each season -- it's worked well, and I follow it semi-religiously:

<http://www.lifeforcetv.com/byteclub>

I looked into investing in them a few years back but at the time it would have required something like $12k a season to bankroll. They went another direction shortly thereafter and started allowing the companies showcased to fund some of the episodes, which luckily didn't affect the quality of the show overall.

Enjoy watching it myself. Wouldn't mind seeing something similar in the U.S.. re: techstars -- they've got an advantage of having everyone centralized into one location, so production costs easily scale down significantly vs. flying people around.

Either way, there's definitely a market :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree and thanks for the link

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You'll like Startup Junkies

<http://www.hulu.com/start-up-junkies>

It only went one season but you get to watch the day-in-day-out activities of a startup for 8 full episodes.

It's kind of a hybrid startup in that they operate online but their service revolves around the postal system. It gives you a good idea of the ups and downs a startup goes through during it's lifetime.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link, unfortunately we can't access Hulu videos from Finland

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem with this idea is visuals. You can only have so much footage of people sitting at computers before viewers would get bored.

<comment><AUTHOR> true, but YC involves more than just coding. There is scouting for location, getting the right h/w and s/w, hiring people, registering the company, not to mention the weekly dinners with other YC staff, investor days, presentations, meetings, seeking advice from previous participants etc <http://ycombinator.com/atyc.html>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would like to hear what advice investors and founders from established companies give to startups. As for show format, I prefer the "follow the founders/business" and watch it grow from week to week rather than the "your fired" model.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.techstars.org/thefounders/#logo>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link, looking forward to watching it :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Free legally-valid timestamps for your intellectual property - <AUTHOR> https://www.claimby.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all,

I'd like to share a decentralized app I built a couple days ago as part of the #24hrstartup challenge on Product Hunt + Twitch.

Claimby helps you protect your intellectual property by creating a blockchain timestamped proof of existence for any file or piece of text. Basically, it generates a unique SHA-3 hash of your file & writes it to the Ethereum blockchain. While it isn't the same as filing a patent or copyright, it is still proof that you possessed that file or idea at that exact moment in time. This can be useful evidence in any type of intellectual property ownership dispute. As of recently, China and many U.S. states (Arizona, California, Ohio, Tennessee, Wyoming) have ruled blockchain timestamps as court-admissible evidence & valid e-signatures. Many of these ruling are recent (within the last 2 months), so it seemed like the perfect time to build this.

Hope you like it!</comment>