Apple VP: The FBI wants to roll back safeguards that keep us ahead of criminals - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/apple-vp-the-fbi-wants-to-roll-back-safeguards-that-keep-us-a-step-ahead-of-criminals/2016/03/06/cceb0622-e3d1-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html <comment><USER2> This is what good PR looks like.

In cases like this it is always FBI and the govt. which usually have the PR upper hand. They wait to find a most abhorent crime that nobody sane would want to defend (terrorism seems to work well today) and use that as an example. "Oh look everyone, Apple doesn't want to fight terrorism. We are keeping people safe and what side are they on?". It is almost too easy.

Fighting that is an uphill battle. One can present the technical details ("They could have cracked that particular model themselves") or appeal to more general ideals of freedom and privacy etc. Those typically are not as effective in convincing the average joe out there when the other side uses the "T" word.

But here they are playing the same card as FBI -- using a crime that most people can fear -- their phone getting stolen, their identity used. Everyone has heard stories, has friends at least who this happened to and so on. So it works well. Terrorism is more scary, but this is more real. Great work.

<comment><USER3> Good PR, and also grounded in truth. If the DOJ understood the technology and implications of what they were requesting then they would not ask for it. Literally every person who speaks out against Apple begins with "I'm not a tech expert, but I know our world is going to be different if we can't get warranted access to criminals' phones". They completely fail to see how the private tech sector has fought for public safety. Comey said,

 _They [Apple] sell phones, they don 't sell civil liberties, they don't sell public safety, that's our business to worry about._ [1]

[https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h16m18s](https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h16m18s)

<comment><USER4> Their "truth" is a little sketchy. Their argument is essentially "you can't trust us to protect this software if we make it, and if we failed to keep it out of criminals hands you could be harmed by it". Phrased that way it doesn't really sound all that great.

<comment><USER3> That is FBI director Comey's statement, not Apple's. Comey says,

 _Apple is highly professional in protecting its own innovation, its own information_ [1]

Comey even articulates Apple's position clearly,

 _Apple 's argument, I think will be, that's not reasonable because there are risks around that. Even though we're good at this, it could still get away from us. And the judge will have to figure that out_ [1]

So Comey claims Apple is very good at technical stuff and so they must have a way to keep this software secure. Yet at the same time he claims we should not believe Apple when Apple says this backdoor would weaken everyone's security. On one hand he is saying we should believe in Apple's technology expertise, and on the other hand he is saying we should not. Well, given that Comey is self-admittedly not knowledgeable about technology, and given that many other tech companies and independent tech experts have stood up to support Apple, it's clear to me who to trust on this issue about tech security.

Apple has demonstrated their commitment to safety by improving the iPhone's security with successive iterations of software and hardware. The FBI has demonstrated their deep desire to gain guaranteed backdoor entry to devices for over a year, yet claim this case is only about one phone. Apple's track record and rhetoric are much more consistent and trustworthy than the FBI's.

[1] [https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=2h44m](https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=2h44m)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What do we think the likelihood is that at least some of the three-letter agencies already have the capability to get into a locked iPhone (likely their method would be based on some sort of baseband vulnerability) and this whole thing is simply a bid to gain the ability to _openly_ unlock these phones?

<comment><USER6> Baseband vuln seems likely. Additionally, I've always wondered if the NSA or the like could just decap and read out data (IE: the passcode hash) from the chips. Then again, I'm not a computer engineer and don't really know anything about the physics of all this!

EDIT: This paper [1] seems to document such an attack, decapping the chip and reading the memory cells using lasers (although the details are over my head).

[1]: [https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SISW02.pdf](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SISW02.pdf)

<comment><USER7> I think most of us are fine with the government being able to decap our phones and steal data, or at least try. I'm fine with that because It cost money and time and would be difficult for them to do in a massive, dragnet style operation.

The idea is once they have the phone they can do whatever they want with it, but they can't go to a manufacturer and force them to weaken the security of _all_ phones because they don't want to do any work.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I'm completely fine with that as well - I'm happy to see the NSA do computer-security stuff that isn't this dystopian "monitor everybody all the time" nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems Apple is committed. As strange as it may sound, I wonder how that will influence recruiting. Apple was never really on my radar as an employer (silly as it may be I still categorize them in the "hipster and annoying apple store" bin). Their recent "hardline" regarding privacy has made them a nudge more attractive. And that's despite me usually favoring non-proprietary stuff for everything if possible.

Strange to catch yourself in these thoughts but the narrative seems to work.

<comment><USER9> I wonder if people declared they would rather quit than work on the backdoor project if that would be an undue burden on the company.

<comment><USER3> That's a scary possibility, but very far in the future. There will be appeals regardless of how the district-court judge rules.

An attorney for the ACLU says, "The absolute earliest the case could reach the Supreme Court would be at least _two years_." [1]

[1] [http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-04/apple-and- the...](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-04/apple-and-the-fbi-what- happens-next)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I find security fascinating I would not consider myself expert in the low level implementation details or hard limitations of these specific systems.

Perhaps someone more knowledgable could clarify, but....

Isn't the entire point of good security that I don't have to "trust" Apple to do the right thing? Shouldn't it be impossible for them to do the wrong thing?

For example, if I encrypt my phone with my key and set it to secure delete after so many failures how could Apple circumvent this in a truly secure system? Shouldn't they not be able to push an update without my permission? Permission that can't be given because the phone can't be unencrypted?

So the fact that Apple _can_ circumvent the encryption of they want is an indication of a vulnerable system?

<comment><USER11> You're right in that the system is vulnerable, but this doesn't mean that it's not "secure" in practical terms.

One could argue that the phone is secure because even Apple has no way of recovering your passcode, nor do they have a master key that might give access to your data. That's fairly secure.

On the other hand, the system is insecure because it can have updates applied (which is what the FBI wants Apple to do) without requiring user consent, only physical access.

Imagine that updates required a user to put in their passcode, or otherwise wiped all the encrypted data; it would be _more_ secure, but is that enough? Theoretically, there are still ways of getting at the data - someone might find a bug in the software, or they might physically crack open the CPU to get at a piece of needed data.

Security is always a balance - we want to trust Apple as little as possible, but I know of no way to create an invulnerable system.

<comment><USER12> I'm probably just not remembering it correctly but I know of no way to apply updates to a locked iPhone. Even when unlocked if you plug it into a new computer the phone will ask if you trust the new computer. Is there some method of updating the phone when it's locked I'm unaware of?

<comment><USER13> I think it's some kind of device recovery mode designed to recover from "bricked device" situations. It's not the same method that you use when updating via iTunes.

<comment><USER11> Aye, it's called Device Firmware Upgrade (or DFU) mode, and it's specifically mentioned in the FBI's request:

> "The SIF will be loaded via Device Firmware Upgrade ("DFU") mode, recovery > mode, or other applicable mode available to the FBI."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are the FBI "criminals", when they're breaking the law?

<comment><USER15> Officers of the government can absolutely be charged with crimes.

<comment><USER14> Sure. But that doesn't happen very often. Or often enough to make much difference, anyway.

Sometimes the NSA feeds information to the FBI, DEA, etc, etc. Recipients do parallel construction. And then lie to courts about it. Which is perjury. How often does that get revealed?

Have any prosecutions resulted from widely practiced perjury about obfuscated stingray use? That behavior is common knowledge, no?

<comment><USER16> "Sometimes the NSA feeds information to the FBI, DEA, etc, etc. Recipients do parallel construction. And then lie to courts about it. Which is perjury. How often does that get revealed?"

Well, first you'd have to have evidence that such a thing happened.

<comment><USER17> [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1011382-responsive-d...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1011382-responsive- documents.html)

That evidence is widely available. If you want more, just search for it. This training manual should get you started.

<comment><USER14> Thanks. I remember reading that. Pretty plainly stated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "They have suggested that the safeguards of iOS 7 were good enough and that we should simply go back to the security standards of 2013." This is interesting. Perhaps instead of requesting a custom version of iOS with specific vulnerabilities, the FBI should simply request a signed version of iOS 7.0. They could use existing vulnerabilities to gain access to the phone, without placing an undue burden on Apple.

<comment><USER19> No. Among other things, the order the FBI sought requires Apple to build a _RAM only_ version of iOS.

Anything that requires reflashing the phone, or that writes log files at boot or alters as much as a single bit on the phone is a no-go from an evidentiary standpoint.

Edit: but anyway, iOS 7 has no understanding of the encrypted format introduced in iOS 8

<comment><USER20> File encryption was introduced with iOS 3.0.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202064](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT202064)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Simply put "The FBI and other law enforcement agents want to make it easier for many criminals to commit many new crimes for the sake of solving a few crimes already committed"

Basically, the FBI's actions are tantamount to being accomplish to every crime they enable if they succeed in forcing us to make the iPhone knowingly vulnerable to law enforcement and criminals alike.

</comment><comment><USER22> Would be funny (by funny I mean sad) if Apple gives them the new hacked ios build and the password turns out to be something like 'NYOEC"T80BkLYExMU7JYWaz&P}dtMBR', ie they can't ever brute force it.

</comment><comment><USER23> if you can access it, a determined criminal with a $5 wrench can too.

[https://xkcd.com/538/](https://xkcd.com/538/)

<comment><USER7> Not when they're dead, which is the case of syed farook.

<comment><USER24> Well Tim Cook is alive and well and has Apple signing keys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The backdoor is already present, through Apple's design. The FBI are just requesting to use it.

<comment><USER26> If I get it right you're calling update functionality a backdoor?

<comment><USER25> The way it is currently implemented, by which Apple can - if in physical possession of the device - unilaterally force new firmware onto it without the consent of the user, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The encryption technology built into today's iPhone represents the best data > security available to consumers.

I appreciate Apple's willingness to fight, but this article could have benefited from less bragging PR talk and a little more humility. If the issue really is larger than Apple (and they are claiming it is) then we don't need this kind of messaging.

The message is that being forced to create a backdoor is bad for everyone, and they're doing it to Apple today but they'll do it for everyone else tomorrow.

<comment> shawn-furyan I don't agree with the complaint.

I would be much happier if more companies actually tried on security, competed on that vector and then bragged to high heaven about their successes. Usually when you hear a company touting it's security, it's snake oil. The companies who are actually putting forth a solid effort to compete on security, and I think Apple has a reasonable claim that they are one of these companies (even if there are nits to pick), have my blessing to brag as much as they can about it. I'm talking multimillion dollar ad campaigns touting their (actual) security advantages versus competitors. Have at it. Donald Trump style. Go wild!

edit: grammar

<comment><USER27> Sadly, humans are flawed.

Any company that "bragged to high heaven about their successes" with security are setting themselves up to fail. As the old saying goes, "pride comes before a fall".

Not saying that Apple aren't doing a good job. Just saying, bragging and actively trying to differentiate, followed by a major security flaw, is a good way to lose trust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There's gotta be a way for Apple to deliver the FBI the data they want without compromising every iPhone user.

And if Apple doesn't find a way, you can sure bet the NSA will work harder on its efforts to break the iPhone in the general case.

<comment><USER29> They can. The arguments are over whether the FBI has the legal standing to compel Apple to create code to do that, and what precedent, legal or otherwise, it sets for similar cases.

<comment><USER28> Can the FBI compel a bank to open a safe deposit box? Can a bank be compelled to identify the names on a numbered account?

If they can, then Apple can be compelled to deliver the goods on these terrorists. If not, then no.

I really don't see this issue as all that complex.

<comment><USER30> Its more like: Can the FBI compel a safe deposit box maker to add a master key to all boxes so that they can open one when they need too.

<comment><USER31> It's more like if the safe deposit maker already has a master key that is harder to use than a normal key but can still open the safe in a day, can a judge compel the safe deposit maker to use that key on the FBI's behalf?

<comment><USER32> Even that example's not quite right; it's the judge compelling the safe deposit maker to _give_ the key to the FBI, such that they can use it in perpetuity.

<comment><USER4> The order explicitly states Apple will keep possession of the modified software at all times. Nobody would be "giving the key" to the FBI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have sympathy for Apple's position but when they resort to hyperbole they seriously undermine that goodwill.

The "if we make this software, criminals will get their hands on it" argument is absurd. Does Apple have no faith in their own security? The FBI has at no point suggested the modified firmware would ever leave Apple's possession.

Does Apple have a problem with theft of internal code that I am not aware of?

Further, I'm just waiting for someone to transpose the argument, for example: "Apple says guns shouldn't be manufactured for any reason because they could kill someone" or "Apple says cars are unsafe and should be banned because people are killed in accidents."

 _facepalm_

EDIT: Behaving like a bad actor even if you believe your cause is just still makes you a bad actor, albeit one with good intentions. If they want to win the argument they should stick to realistic positions and leave the manure shovelling to "those other people".

<comment><USER33> > Does Apple have a problem with theft of internal code that I am not aware > of?

It only takes one disgruntled employee, or one security slip, and 100-500 million users are compromised. Not a risk I'm comfortable with.

You're requiring them to be perfect. But humans are involved.

<comment><USER34> Yeah for this level of a crack, you're talking about the CIA/NSA (not to mention other countries) embedding people as spies inside of Apple to 'acquire' the hacked version. Illegal as shit but they would do it anyway.

<comment><USER35> No, it only requires finding one current employee willing to take a bribe, or perhaps be blackmailed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


1 Bitcoin Worth 10 USD - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg2ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv <comment><USER3> In the view of many HN members, Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. In the view of other HN members, Bitcoin is an experimental crypto currency, the use of which is unlikely ever to expand beyond idealistic hackers, online gamblers, and underground characters.

In my view, Bitcoin is likely to gain wide adoption worldwide over the long haul -- that is, over a period of many years or even decades. Its price is therefore bound to rise far above current levels over time.

I've laid out my reasoning here: [http://cs702.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/on- the-potential-adopt...](http://cs702.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/on-the- potential-adoption-and-price-appreciation-of-bitcoin-in-the-long-run/)

<comment><USER4> Many people don't realize how small Bitcoin is. It's trading in the $1M range. That's like few hundred people playing with their savings - low liquidity = high volatility - talking about this as something significant/newsworthy is silly.

<comment><USER5> Bitcoin trading volume over a 30 day period is more than $20 million dollars, which is incredibly notable for an open-source currency which isn't managed or operated by anybody. The technology involved and the implications of its growth are very significant/newsworthy.

The fact that it's trading at $10 again is also very significant to the Bitcoin community, it hasn't done that in more than a year. And it'll probably reach 12 by the end of the year before it stabilizes again.

<comment><USER4> >trading volume over a 30 day period is more than $20 million dollars

Again - as a currency this is insignificant. I agree that bitcoin is a great technical accomplishment but talking about it's price as it has any meaning outside of a few hackers playing traders is not realistic.

<comment><USER6> @moonchrome is right.

One of the world's large credit card networks processes on the order half a trillion dollars in a typical 30 day period. So bitcoin has a way to go yet before it's volume is significant compared to other ubiquitous electronic payment methods.

Consider that they need to grow by a great many orders of magnitude to become globally economically significant, yet consider that the supply of bitcoins is relatively fixed.

How smoothly do you think that is going to work?

If you believe in the future bitcoins, you also have to believe that their value will have to eventually sky rocket by several orders of magnitude. If you believe this you should hoard every bitcoin.

So if you actually believe in bitcoins, why would you ever spend one?

If you don't believe in bitcoins, why would you ever accept one?

do you see the problem yet?

<comment><USER5> If you don't think we should be discussing bitcoin -- which is very different from any other currency out there -- simply because it hasn't reached the trading volume of Visa... I don't know what to tell you. Demonstrates pretty clearly the narrow window of information you're willing to consider.

(This on a website for hackers and startups. Pfft.)

<comment><USER7> I'll agree with you on that, but I think a good point was raised. As an inherently deflationary currency, particularly once the maximum number of bitcoins are created, wouldn't the natural thing for people believe it will eventually be incredibly valuable be to hoard them? I'm not saying that a deflationary currency cannot ever work, but with an inflationary currency, there is greater worth in spending one's money on goods or investments that will accrue worth at a greater rate than the inflation, no?

<comment><USER6> Exactly. This is the point I am trying to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is exactly the last thing BitCoin needs to be successful as a currency. After the speculative bubble last year it started to make some headway as the price remained relatively stable. Now in the past 2 weeks we've seen its value appreciate by 50%, something that just doesn't happen with traditional currencies. It's dangerously reminiscent of what happened last year and shows that the BitCoin economy is still very susceptible to manipulation.

If it was just organic growth in the currency I wouldn't say there was an issue but if you look at the transaction volume it's clear that the surge in trading that occurred both a week ago and just recently is what is responsible for the latest increases in value. I don't have enough evidence to say that the price has been deliberately manipulated upwards, and indeed the increase could just be a reflection of the higher demand, but it does call into question how stable BitCoin can be.

I'm not an advocate against BitCoin, far from it, but I honestly believe that a highly valued BitCoin is the worst thing it can have as a fluctuating value doesn't benefit users of the currency. The only people who benefit from a high price are the speculators and investors, those who are at odds with BitCoin being a proper currency.

<comment><USER9> >in the past 2 weeks we've seen its value appreciate by 50%, something that just doesn't happen with traditional currencies

It happens with gold, which could be viewed as a traditional currency.

<comment><USER10> To be pedantic, and to note I'm not an economist, I thought the value of gold or silver was always constant, it was the currencies based on them that inflate or deflate.

<comment><USER11> Nope. As more gold was mined during gold rushes, the value of gold decreased. As people found more uses for gold and demand outstripped supply, the value increased. And of course the relative value of gold and silver changes over time.

<comment><USER12> Particularly, the discovery of the New World with all the gold there caused some huge disruptions in the Old World economy.

<comment><USER10> Makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you look at this data over the max range (<http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zv>) then it looks a lot like the Gartner Hype cycle (<http://bit.ly/N1XCnb>). I wonder if Bitcoin is past the trough of disillusionment and ready for a serious explosion?

<comment><USER14> I'm a strong supporter of bitcoin, and I have a bunch of it, so don't get me wrong. But I suspect we may well be seeing a second big bubble here. Only time will tell.

<comment><USER5> This isn't necessarily a bubble, but market reaction to the block reward halving later this year. The decreased inflation will double the value of bitcoins, and this trend was anticipated well in advance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one to think Bitcoin is just a big Ponzi scheme benefiting the first users/creators who got all the first ones?

<comment><USER16> This argument never made sense to me.

If I were designing a Ponzi scheme intending to defraud people, I wouldn't base it on a 100% transparent network of open source software using public domain crypto functions, where the wealth creation is by design not only randomly allocated, but mathematically capped to a static trickle rate.

It's like the most badly designed Ponzi scheme ever.

<comment><USER17> It doesn't have to be intended or designed as a Ponzi scheme to end up as one. E.g a legitimate investment manager could cover up a bad month/quarter/year hoping to fix it down the road then wind up being flumoxed by compounding losses or seduced by the increased business they get by beating the rest of the market during a downturn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One problem that I have with Bitcoin is its complete dependence on the strength of its crypto. While breaking it may seem impossible at the moment, advances in computation speed and cryptanalysis may one day lead to it being broken. This would basically make Bitcoins worthless overnight.

Of course traditional currencies can be forged as well, but printing huge amounts of forged bills and bringing them into circulation involves all sorts of logistical challenges that don't apply in a digital world. Moreover, forged bills are typically not absolutely perfect and can be distinguished from genuine money, this is not possible with a purely digital currency. The fact that paper currencies can be forged is incorporated into the design of the system, whereas the Bitcoin system is based on Bitcoin's crypto being unbreakable.

<comment><USER10> It's not just speed, but number of nodes. If someone could, lets say in 10 years, build a block-chain of equal length to then-current one, they would still need to control > 50% of the nodes a significant portion of the network sees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm still convinced that the reason for that is the death of Bitcoinica which offered shorting.

Without shorting, the only way to make money on Bitcoin is to go long. That is, the price will keep going up until investors thinks it's too much overvalued and BitCoin will crash again to 4 or 5 USD; the value that shorting stabilized it at.

</comment><comment><USER20> Damnit I remember when they were less than $1 and thinking to myself "this will never take off". If I had invested $100, I could have sold today for $1K.

<comment><USER12> And I wish I had invested $10K instead of $1K in ARMH back when it was $5. It's easy to see missed financial opportunities in retrospect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The difficulty in mining a block of 50 BTC is _far_ higher than it was the last time 1 BTC was worth $10.

</comment><comment><USER22> This won't last; is a bitcoin at least as valuable as 10 USD for people who _use_ BTC?

<comment><AUTHOR> As long as its crypto primitives remain secure (SHA-256, Elliptic Curve crypto, RIPEMD), if the Bitcoin economy continues to grow 5x, 10x, 20x, etc, then its value should increase 5x, 10x, 20x, etc, because there is a fixed number of coins available.

Both of these assumptions are likely. So I would say, yes, this exchange rate should last (of course there will be some bumps on the road, bubbles, crashes, etc).

<comment><USER23> _there is a fixed number of coins available._

Not necessarily true!

There is slow growth in coins. But if it takes off then we know all of the primitives to make a second bitcoin. Establish one with a price peg to existing bitcoin. If you maintain it long and well enough, it will become accepted as equivalent. Once that happens you've done a big one-time increase in the supply.

In fact I would recommend doing this at some point. Because otherwise bitcoin has built-in deflation. That is bad economically because it discourages investment in anything else, like building businesses.

<comment><USER10> It's asymptotic growth of coins. There will never be more than x number of bitcoins. (I forget the value x is exactly, but it is a finite, pre-definded number).

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. The fixed number of coins I referred to is 21 million.

<https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really don't get Bitcoin.

What is the point in a currency that ranges from $2 USD to $12 USD in a year ?

<comment><USER25> The value of the currency doesn't really matter to those of us who use it - <USER2> could be 1 bitcoin to 1 USD, or 1 bitcoin to 10 USD - as long as the downwards volatility is kept to a minimum.

What's problematic is when you buy something worth $50 USD with 5 Bitcoins, and the Bitcoin to USD drops before the seller can get their USD from MtGOX (or whoever their Currency Exchange house is).

The upwards volatility isn't a problem in that buyer/seller scenario. If I want to buy something worth $50 USD, and I go purchase 5 bitcoins for $50USD, and then, those bitcoins are worth $55USD by the time the purchase clears, then I only paid $50USD and the Vendor received $55 USD. Everyone comes out a winner.

<comment><USER26> Upwards volatility creates a similar problem on the other side of the transaction, though.

If BTC is rapidly rising against the dollar, then I'd rather spend dollars because I'll want to keep the BTC in my account in anticipation of further appreciation.

And, for that matter, the fact that the entire conversation is framed this way doesn't bode well for BTC as a currency. People who use a currency as a currency measure its rises and drops in value by comparing what you can buy with a given amount of the currency in the present versus what you could buy with the same amount of that currency in the past. When people measure something's value in terms of some other currency, as is the universal practice for BTC, that indicates they're thinking of it as a commodity for investment or speculation rather than a currency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Much better than the $3 a while back, but still not close enough to the $14 I paid for mine. (Not very many, just for fun).

<comment> throwaway54-762 Thanks, I placed a sell order at $13.99</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would you do? - <AUTHOR>

Imagine this:
You are 30.
No Family, pets or friends and no attachments besides a 6 month lease on a tiny studio apartment and a full time job that pays $56k a year after taxes.
No possessions besides your laptop, mobile phone, a guitar you can't play and clothes/shoes.
You have only $10k in savings.
You have mediocre programming skills.
What would you do to achieve financial independence in the next 10-15 years? <comment><USER2> If it was me, I think I'd work very hard to fix the "no friends" bit before even considering the future financial independence bit. Your mental wellbeing is far more important than being wealthy.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, the friends thing is a must. Why do you have a guitar you cant play? Either its going to stay there as a reminder that you failed at something or use it for inspiration to start! if not dump it. Possessions are not everything but friends are, so GET some. get to local meets, online and off. - and what about those mediocre skills eh? Find one programming language that you prefer and excel in it. Create an app, templates, anything as a side burner - you could even write articles for technology and development blogs. Now as for the financial security, I really cant help. Just get a high interest savings account and save save save. - But remember tomorrow is a new day and could be your last. Don't get wound up, tight or hard. Relax, enjoy yourself and your life and start living fuller. Give it meaning. Maybe read this: [http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~gongsu/desiderata_textonly.html](http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~gongsu/desiderata_textonly.html) \- helped me once. Hope it helps. - If you want a twitter friend, add me @mgpwr

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a bit like you (but older - 44 yrs, divorced). I am trying to "build something". I use the spare time I have to practise and practise and practise. And then practise some more.

Edit: After reading a few comments from people feeling sorry for you, I'm afraid I might have missed your call for personal emotional support. Sorry about that. But if you were not after sympathy, then my original post stands. Practise to improve your skills (doesn't have to be programming). Do lots of practise while you have so much free time. When family and friends (and pets) come around, you will wish you were family-less, friendless and pet-less. And don't feel sorry for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't tell if this is an "exercise" we, the community, are playing at, or whether this is your real life and you are actually trying to get ideas. I don't really have the time to participate in the exercise but, in the event that this is really your life, here's my response:

That sounds miserable - I agree w/ @onion2k about fixing your situation before you work on other things. Life is not short, it's quite long and you have a lot of years left. "No family, pets or friends" for the next 50+ years sounds like you would be getting the least out of life itself. Read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and work from there towards a few more ideas about how you can improve your life and health.

</comment><comment><USER6> First, like the others mentioned, I would work on getting friends. If you want an idea on where to start with that (assuming you don't want to be friends with anyone from work): From what I understand, Meetup.com is a great way to do this. Develop a hobby that has minimal costs, and then find a group that meets for the purpose of that hobby.

\---

To answer your question: Considering you want to achieve financial independence quickly, it's good that you don't own much stuff, otherwise your stuff would own you.

I recently discovered the blog Early Retirement Extreme. There is a post [0] which gives the simple equation which must be true if you want to become financially independent: "your annual expenses < 3% of your invested savings"

Assuming you keep the same living costs before and after becoming financially independent, you will need to solve this equation:

living costs = SWR * ( income - living costs ) * ( ( (1 + ROR) ^ number of working years ) - 1 ) / ROR

where SWR = Safe Withdraw Rate and ROR = Rate Of Return. SWR of 3% is taken from [0].

Assuming you can get 10% on your investments and can live on 25k a year, let's enter some numbers and solve for working years:

25k = 0.03 * (56k - 25k) * ( ( (1 + 0.10) ^ X ) - 1 ) / 0.10

X = 13.7 years

Assuming 10% again, and working for 15 years, let's see how much you could have to live on:

X = 0.03 * (56k - 25k) * ( ( (1 + 0.10) ^ 15 ) - 1 ) / 0.10

X = 29.5k

So if you worked for an extra 1.3 years, you could bump up your living expenses from 25k to 29.5k, a jump of $4500 a year.

EDIT: I forgot to include the 10k you have already saved up. I would probably leave that out of the investments and keep in an emergency fund (keep it in your savings, and future savings would go straight to your investment account).

\---

[0] [http://earlyretirementextreme.com/can-i-retire- young.html](http://earlyretirementextreme.com/can-i-retire-young.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand how you haven't already achieved financial independence. I would love to have $10k in the bank and no commitments. Unless you left out the $60k in student/loans and debt then... I double my previous statement.

<comment><USER6> "Financial independence is a term generally used to describe the state of having sufficient personal wealth to live indefinitely without having to work actively for basic necessities." [0]

[0] Cummuta, John. "The Myths & Realities of Achieving Financial Independence". Nightingale Conant. Retrieved on 14-Sep-2009

<comment><USER7> Interesting, thank you for the education. I always considered "financial independence" having a positive net value/no debt. I guess you can tell what kind of situation I'm used to.

<comment><USER8> There are degrees of independence. Yours is a fine one to aspire to. Having a positive net worth is a nice feeling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Work on your skills. You do that by lots of coding, with good examples. Find an open source project, read until you're sick of it, then try to fix something. Rinse, repeat.</comment>


Jay Carney's Response to Dean Baquet - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jaycarney/jay-carney-s-response-to-dean-baquet-c0407042e893 <comment><USER2> TL;DR: NYT's failure to fact-check is "indefensible". Your turn.

An interesting question for the moderators: is this also a followup that should be penalized, or (since the original stories aren't on the front page) should it be penalty-free?</comment>


Live streamed design meetings-ft. Stephen Wolfram? Pretty much what you'd expect - <AUTHOR> https://www.twitch.tv/videos/181269427 <comment><USER2> He's not that bad. and it is interesting to watch language design as it's happening</comment>


Exploitation by STL Hackathon and Teralogix  - <AUTHOR> http://philipithomas.com/2012/06/exploitation-by-stl-hackathon/

<comment><USER2> I'm reaching out to the event organizer. I talked with them a month ago about it briefly, of course I wasn't aware of this issue...

Any suggestions on a middle-ground for the event? Rather than rain down condemnation on a company that's trying something with potential, they may be convinced to make the right changes and still get the engagement they want from the community.

</comment><comment><USER3> The IP assignment seems a bit much. I wonder if it is common for "hackathons".

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not. "You win! Now hand over all your property" is not the way they should be run.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Building a code portfolio – any suggestions / ideas? - dev-ious <comment><AUTHOR> What kind of code? Embedded, dsp, web backend, web frontend, databases, protocols, ...?

<comment> dev-ious web backend</comment></comment>


ARPPD – Script to Block Malicious ARP Packets in MITM Attack - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Prodicode/ARPPD <comment><USER2> Nice work. I can use this.

This maybe obvious to security minded folks but there are layer2 and layer 3 features you can use to eliminate entire classes of layer 2 attacks.

For layer2,macsec (now with iproute2 support) can be used to encrypt layer2 traffic which means arp poisoning and other mitm won't work without knowing the key. Also,you can just turn off arp if that is practical in your network (or segregate using an arpless vlan)

Layer3 - use a vpn tunnel and on the end host allow traffic only to the vpn gateway(which can be your local router).

That said,it isn't practical to implement any of that if you have byod,smart phones and iot in the network. I want to encourage the author to port it to android and other platforms that make it difficult to implement vpns and macsec.

Edit: also, hate to be that guy but I wish it wasn't in C.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've written it in C because I wanted it to be reliable since it has to run in the background :).

Also, I am aware of other methods of avoiding MITM attacks, but I wanted to write a script to completly block ARP Poisoning attacks, without using any encryption, since some protocols/websites don't use an encrypted connection.

In the end, thanks for your tip. I will work on implementing this on android.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't have said anything if it wasn't a security tool. The tool keeping you safe shouldn't add risk (all the bug classes commonly found in C programs) to your security posture. You can write reliable programs in golang and rust.

I only mentioned other ways of avoiding mitm to inform readers. Your program fills a lot of gaps.

One last tip - have you thought of supporting IPv6 ND and RA messages too? Those technically deprecate arp :(</comment></comment></comment>


Perl Master Plan - <AUTHOR> http://perlmasterplan.com/ <comment><USER3> This is not a master plan. This is not The Perl Foundation. This site and these people do not speak for the Perl community or its core developers.

The whole site is run by Will Braswell, the creator and maintainer of RPerl, and Reini Urban, the creator and maintainer of CPerl. Both are increasingly troublesome to the Perl community. Rather than apologizing and reintegrating to the community, they've decided to start their own separate community where they are the leaders without disclosing the fact that they are speaking for this new, separate party.

<comment><USER4> Let me confirm this, except more so.

Will and Reini have effectively been cut out of the main line perl community for repeatedly being assholes to anybody who dared to disagree with them about anything (and I mean being assholes by _my_ standards, which I hope at least some readers will recognise as a rather high bar to clear).

When the website was first created there was a ripple across the social media presences of assorted significant perl/cpan people, myself included, decrying it, though it's non trivial to search for because most of us deliberately didn't include the URL to avoid signal boosting its existence any more than strictly necessary.

The general consensus among my fellow cpan authors (including core team members of some of the most widely used projects) is basically a superposition of

1) "Oh for fuck's sake, not them again"

and

2) "The only way this could've been more tone deaf and counter productive is if instead of a 'master plan' they'd called it a 'final solution'"

There's lots of things happening of late that I'm very optimistic about. This shit is basically the Tulsi Gabbard of perl futures. I respect the right of the authors to hold their opinions, but I respect nothing _about_ said opinions and would encourage everybody else not to feed the trolls.

\-- mst, deeply unimpressed by this shit

<comment><USER5> Comments like this is what makes people not want to participate in your community. And your peer group is not even the Perl community at large, I doubt anyone but a small minority even cares about what's going on with mainline Perl these days, they are not exposed to any of it.

<comment><USER4> They've insulted the perl5 maint team. They've insulted the raku developers. They've insulted every cpan author I've ever seen dare to disagree with them. They've insulted Larry, to his face, mid conference talk.

("they" to mean "at least one, possibly both, of the two instigators of this rubbish")

Their behaviour has repeatedly and materially damaged participation in the community.

I understand that my comment may seem to be coming on a tad strong, but after several years of trying to get them to participate constructively my patience is more than a little frayed.

\-- mst

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This gets it exactly backwards, IMHO. It's all about what _Perl_ needs: more Perl jobs, more Perl classes, more Perl apps. But what drives adoption of a language are the ways that language satisfies what _users_ and _developers_ need.

If you want to drive Perl adoption, don't tell the world to use Perl, tell the world about problems that Perl is better than any other language at solving.

<comment><USER7> Have tried this with Common Lisp and Haskell.

I think the biggest factors in adoption are: being in the right place at the right time and app/platform exclusivity.

That's a lot harder to overcome these days. I'm starting to doubt if we'll ever see another popular language displace the status quo.

<comment><USER8> I disagree -- software development is more fashion-driven than the fashion industry itself.

Programming languages are simply interfaces into a particular tech stack. The stacks will shift as the trends come and go, and the languages will go with it. Perhaps the lowest levels of the stack have settled nice and snugly, with little hope for displacement except by extreme measures (cpu archs, kernel/os implementations, etc) but the higher layers are still rapidly changing, and dragging along new languages with them.

<comment><USER9> That's what the industry looks like among early adopters, but most developers wait for clear winners to emerge on new niches before they commit.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure that's true -- I think most developers use whatever is fashionable in their circle at the time, and then the project gets locked into that tech. In some circles, they're old enough to stabilize: kernel developers are attuned to C, and will rarely consider anything else regardless of option- availability, because their entire ecosystem (and by virtue, culture) revolves around C. C of course was picked in the first place because of the fashion at the time kernel development got into gear.

That is, kernel devs got into bed with C before it was a "clear winner", and now they're stuck with it.

Ecosystems that are still developing, layered on top of these older more stabilized systems, have the freedom of choice, and they certainly make use of that freedom.

And of course, by nature of a non-stabilized ecosystem, most choices made are done _before_ a clear winner exists -- because no clear winner exists just yet. But the choice will stick, unless it was dramatically harmful to the project.

The older the ecosystem, the less viable it is to select anything other than the clear winner, because the ecosystem is coupled to that clear winner, and the ecosystem is the fashion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Of course to reverse the trend Perl needs more programmers etc., but Perl for its own sake isn't really a compelling argument. The question really isn't "What's required to make Perl a more common language?" The question is, "Why should anyone choose Perl over another option?"

Certainly there's a "best tool for the job" approach that might suggest Perl for certain applications, but most of the time developers are saddled with using a single language for a task. Like choosing a hammer: You'd like to choose the one best suited for a job, but that job requires driving both 20d framing nails and brads and everything in between. Carrying an 18oz for the framing, a 10oz for the brads etc. isn't practical, so you choose the 18oz because it's the only one that will work for framing and you can still use the 18oz for the brads, you just need to use a light touch and be more careful.

All that said, I take it this article may not be entirely serious. If it had not been written by Larry Wall, I might take it as complete satire, as examples of the exact wrong reasons to champion a language.

<comment><USER11> To be clear, this was NOT written by Larry Wall. It was written by Will "the Chill" Braswell, author of a perl fork called `RPerl.`

He is not speaking for the general Perl community

<comment><USER10> Thanks for clarifying. The presentation is a bit misleading then-- it has Larry's picture & name at the top, looking like a byline, and I don't see any other obvious author except at the very bottoms where two people are listed as "endorsements"

<comment><USER12> Will Brasswell has a long history of appropriating other peoples images / volunteering other people, even to the point of submitting talk proposals for people at conferences _without_ their knowledge or consent.

I've asked him to remove all mentions of Raku on his site (as Raku is no longer part of the Perl future), but he has refused to do so.

It's [http://perl11.org](http://perl11.org) all over again, but with improved graphics and UI. But it's still the same sour wine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> stone-monkey A lot of people shitting on the website in this thread, but it seems to me like you guys are missing the point - this isn't a site targeted towards people who aren't using it currently - it's a site targeting the true believers to give them more concrete actions they can take to help spread the faith.

<comment><USER13> If it contributes nothing to the discussion of actually making Perl a language useful to the problems developers face today, the site deserves the criticism.

<comment><USER14> > If it contributes nothing to the discussion of actually making Perl a > language useful to the problems developers face today

It does - for example it talks about a project to make Perl faster.

<comment><USER15> > a project to make Perl faster.

That's respectable and worthwhile regardless, but I don't think performance was a major factor in Perl's decline. If I start a project right now in Python instead of Perl, it will have absolutely nothing to do with Perl not being fast enough. That is to say, I doubt performance improvements of Perl 5 will help much in regaining ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Aside from all the other excellent points about the motivations behind this group - this one sentence on the website is really a very silly move : 'Currently, most software courses teach either Python or (worse yet) Java'.

If you're trying to show that a language is good, don't slag off other languages just for the sake of it.

At best it makes unjustified suppositions. At worst it makes you look like a bitter zealot.

<comment><USER17> Except PHP. Hating on PHP is practically a meme at this point.

<comment><USER18> Sure, but PHP's got it's shit together lately. It's actually grown w/ the times and isn't the POS it was a decade ago w/ the 4/5 versions. 7 and soon version 8 are a lot faster, more secure, and w/ composer/laravel and the ecosystem a lot easier to build apps in. That said it's not always perfect. There's definitely something to be said of building the entire stack in JS simply because then devs only need know JS... Or use something like elixir because of performance needs.

I think hating on PERL is more of a meme than hating on PHP, and in some circles hating on JS is just as popular a meme... I mean JS is a nightmare sometimes esp. the tooling/build setups but it accomplishes things not many other languages can. Though rust+web assembly might be interesting way to skip js, but learning curve is a bit high on rust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> On my Macbook Pro parsing a 19Mb log file with a regex using the latest Perl 6 (Rakudo 2019.3) takes 8.3 times as long as Perl 5 and 5.1 times as long as Ruby 2.7, excluding startup time. Text processing is what made Perl famous so I can't see Perl 6 having a cat-in-hell's chance until performance improves significantly.

<comment><USER20> These guys are using mostly Perl 5 though. They basically forked 5 years ago and call it Perl 11. They have a good relationship with Perl 6 devs/maintainers and even incorporate some of 6 in their work (that's where 11 comes from 5+6=11). AFAIK they are working with them to get Perl 6 to use the name Raku and drop the link to 6 and let Perl 5 continue as it was with new development instead of Perl becoming a completely new language.

Anyway it's complicated and I only follow along sporadically but as someone who used Perl 5 for over a decade when it was more popular I welcome some kind of resolution where Perl 5 is just Perl and what is now Perl 6 becomes a new, different language with only a tangential relationship to Perl 5.

I don't dislike Perl 6, I just remain biased towards 5 due to past experience.

<comment><USER4> > They have a good relationship with Perl 6 devs/maintainers

This is outright untrue, the raku devs can't stand them any more than the rest of the perl community can.

> AFAIK they are working with them to get Perl 6 to use the name Raku

Will and Reini have contributed absolutely nothing to this effort except to periodically distract the people doing the actual work while we go clean up after their bullshit and drama.

> I welcome some kind of resolution where Perl 5 is just Perl and what is now > Perl 6 becomes a new, different language

The raku change is indeed an excellent thing. However this giant pile of idiocy is trying to capitalise on that change to push their hostile fork of perl, and that's, uh, let's say "not such an excellent thing."

<comment><USER20> Hey thanks for correcting me. I was unaware of a lot of what's going on behind the scenes. As mentioned I was a heavy user of Perl 5 for a long time and I'll still find any excuse to use it given a problem I think it will be good at solving.

I'll have to read up on all of this before I say more but I do appreciate you giving me something to follow up on and learn about before I open my big mouth again!

<comment><USER4> 's all cool, dude, countering their spin while minimally signal boosting it is why I'm commenting in this thread.

Have a skim through chromatic's Modern Perl when you're bored and see if it gives you ideas :)

<comment><USER20> I actually have read parts of it. My work stopped subscribing to O'Reilly's Safari Online Library so I lost access to it, kind of forgot about it but thanks for the reminder, I might just grab a copy today.

And thanks for the kind reply, there's nothing I hate more than speaking incorrectly or out of turn on HN!

<comment><USER21> Buy here or read online for free. This is the official website of the book: [http://modernperlbooks.com/](http://modernperlbooks.com/) (hint - it's worth buying :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here is a link to the discussion on Reddit a while back: [https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/dq1lzy/the_perl_maste...](https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/dq1lzy/the_perl_masterplan/)

It's worth reading. What I think it is is a power / money grab by a small group inside Perl. It's not reflective of the goals or desires of the wider Perl community. Or at least those goals and desires would not be presented in this way.

</comment><comment><USER23> The real question is whether a programming language that has lost traction, mindshare, and focus ever gained it back? It's probably no coincidence that Python's rise was at the same time of Perl's stagnation.

<comment><USER14> I think what happened to Perl is that its approach (puns, whimsy, ornate symbols, multiple ways to do the same thing) suddenly became extremely unfashionable with the rise in popularity of more clean and simple languages like Python and Ruby (although Ruby had a much more whimsical US community in the past, it's not part of the core language community in the same way.)

Almost overnight everything about Perl seemed very old fashioned. Maybe their style of programming will suddenly become popular again? But doesn't look like it's coming soon.

<comment><USER24> I don't think those things became unfashionable, it was just not what people who were until then (late 90ies) not programmers were looking for. They were looking to get shit done (tm) and verbosity (Java) or clarity (Python) suited what they were looking for much better than Perl (a clever language for clever programmers).

<comment><USER25> I think that's a large part of it, yes, but a lot of folks saw the demented weirdness of perl and were (rightfully) turned off. And by that time there were sane alternatives available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This was always the problem of Perl: it tried to be all things to all people:

> * Perl as the fastest language > * Perl as the most popular language

You can't get the fastest language (assembly) and be the cognitively easiest and most popular language (Python), there's a trade-off there.

This is why Python won: it focused on what was most important for ease of maintainability and readability and left out everything else

<comment><USER27> Honestly python won in large part because perl took over a decade to come out with perl 6. Knowing that there was a backwards-incompatible upgrade on the horizon shortly and having that be true for a decade meant that new projects in perl or major upgrades in perl were delayed and then shifted to projects in other languages. Python and ruby both were beneficiaries of this (especially with PHP going through a similar process with PHP 6 which took 5 years before being abandoned.)

<comment><USER28> Cough. Python 3. Cough.

(I don't dispute the majority of your point, but I don't think all 10 year, backwards-incompatible upgrades are created equal.)

<comment><USER27> Agreed. The main difference is that development of python 3 didn't stop development on the 2.x branch until 3.4(?) was out. There was also an upgrade path and the ability to support both Python 2 and Python 3 at the same time. Python 3 could _easily_ have been a similar roadblock but was handled well enough to avoid that fate (better upgrade tooling would have been a massive help)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There was a discussion on this a week ago in the Perl subreddit where some key community members (Ex: Ovid) chime in.

I think it is a good plan to make Perl faster, but I'd rather they pitch in and help Johnathan Worthington with the Perl6 (now Raku) effort. Perl5 is a good language, but there isn't enough to get me to switch from Python. Raku on the other hand is very cool and I can see the benefit.

Edit:

Perl6 (now Raku) isn't just a version change from Perl5, but is an entirely new and powerful language. It seems to have pulled some of the best aspects of Python, Ruby, Perl, and some things from Haskell/Lisp.

</comment><comment><USER30> I cannot tell if this is satire or not.

<comment><USER31> As with many things Perl, it's tounge-in-cheek.

Yes, they want to increase Perl adoption. No, they probably don't think they can realistically meet all those goals in the forseeable future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love Perl, but this is delusional

<comment><USER12> Indeed. Especially when you realize this is only the first of many sites Will Brasswell wants _other_ people to make:

perlpackages.com perlcontainers.com perlvm.com perlclouds.com perlaccessibility.com perlinstall.com perlgames.com perloffice.com perlapps.com perlservers.com perlgrandchallenges.com perlhackathons.com spacescouting.org perlscouts.com certifiedyouthprogrammer.com programmingmeritbadge.com mlperl.com scienceperl.com perldemos.com perljobs.work perllegacy.com perlpodcasts.com perlvideos.com perlbrochures.com perlflyers.com perlmerchandise.com perlpapers.com perlnewsroom.com perlblogs.com perlinfographics.com perlbeer.com perlparties.com perlconferences.com perlmulticore.com perlsupercomputers.com perlspeed.com perlfamily.org

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is the first time I've ever read anything which left me thinking 'it _may_ be satire' ...

Be it satire or not (which I think it actually isn't), this is not a good sign.

</comment><comment><USER34> If you want your language to win, all you need is Google to adopt it in one of their products. Apparently that's all that matters.

</comment><comment><USER35> Never written a line of perl in my life, but this seems like total satire. They talk about "machine learning" trends and apps and putting classes in "every school." It's exaggerated and funny. Check out their linked site, "Teen Perl," which has nothing but a splash page.

[http://teenperl.com/](http://teenperl.com/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Perl is #1 in Advent (perladvent.org).

I've been following Perl Advent for a looong time. The sad art is I don't code Perl anymore (at least 10-12 years) but I still visit perl advent every year.

Let's see what happens this year :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> _> We are now developing the RPerl compiler, which provides startup optimization, serial runtime optimization, automatic parallelization, and memory usage minimization._

What would a modern high performance language look like though? I see it at as a language with AOT compilation, high performance implementation of a decent actor concurrency model not shared memory one, vector/matrix abstractions, primitives and operations. At the same time I see automatic parallelization in multi core context as something only hurting high performance.

<comment><USER14> > automatic parallelization in multi core context as something only hurting > high performance

Automatic parallelization hurts high performance? What do you mean - <USER2> like throttling when extremely high-end vector instructions are used?

<comment><USER5> No, I mean more generally performance and efficiency of multi core computational models are tightly bound to algorithms and so auto parallelization can only add restrictions on what algorithms can be implemented and what performance can be achieved. Basically the same problem many languages have that try to use more cores, instead of pursuing higher performance, and of course end up slow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > The certificate is only valid for the following names: packages.rperl.org, > phpmyadmin.cloud-web0.autoparallel.com

I hope step 1 is to get a working TLS certificate.

Edit: Oh, I see. https serves the wrong site...

</comment><comment><USER38> I started using Perl back in 2007 for their text parsing capabilities, then moved to Python as more and more examples and libraries became available, I definitely enjoy both.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is from the Perl11 guys, right? So, not exactly the Perl mainstream, if such a thing exists these days.

(Not saying that they're entirely wrong)

</comment><comment><USER40> What might put Perl back on top (or at least no longer at the bottom) would be a really awesome modern web application framework.

<comment><USER9> Dancer is actually really nice, but that ship has sailed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "In the past, Perl applications could be found on most computers."

I'm not sure I could fill a bus if I located every programmer in my area who ever used Perl on a PC. But as someone points out the tone of the page appears to be tongue-in-cheek.

On the other hand, I think "(worse yet) Java" would make a great .sig line.

<comment><USER42> Have used Parl at its height.

After studying Java and C courses Per felt like a language I can finally do something useful without boilerplate. And for simple text processing it was fast enough.

But then codebase grew... Switched to Python and never looked back past 15 years.

Please let Perl die

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is this satire?

<comment><USER44> I'm not sure. The external links (ex: [http://teenperl.com](http://teenperl.com), [http://perlscouts.com](http://perlscouts.com)) are not real sites. If it's real, its very sad. Hard to get fired up and believe Perl can be relevant in the modern world via a ridiculous website that looks like a bad amateur job.

<comment><USER12> Amateur job is the right description. No, alas, it is _not_ satire, far from it. :-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> First Step: get TLS certificate

<comment><USER46> lol. No excuse, you can even do that in perl : [https://metacpan.org/pod/Crypt::LE](https://metacpan.org/pod/Crypt::LE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Godspeed.

But for one of the goals, Python just seems more immediately accessible to "non-programmer" technical people for whom programming is merely a means to a non-programming end.

I used to use Perl decades ago. I can barely read it anymore.

</comment><comment><USER48> [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/ha-ha-only- serious.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/ha-ha-only-serious.html)

</comment><comment><USER49> I am really confused. Are we taking this obvious joke as though it's a serious website making serious claims? Everyone seems to be discussing this as though it's actually real and not a joke.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is a great bit!

This _is_ a _bit_ , right?

</comment><comment><USER51> why? It's never explained why

</comment><comment><USER52> This is great. But what is it?

<comment><USER3> TL;DR: this is the manifesto of a self-selected maintainer of a largely incompatible fork who has growing delusions of usefulness.

This is a splitter's manifesto of what he's going to do right where he blames everyone else for shortcomings he's done little to nothing to help overcome. He's too egotistical and toxic to get any work merged into the mainline project, so he has decided to lead from outside the established community and separate from the established foundation. He's a technically quite competent developer who can't work well with others. He speaks for himself and claims broad support and calls his ramblings a master plan, implying that he's a master planner for the whole community.

Most of his plans don't even involve Perl mainline or Raku. He's pushing his own RPerl and Reini Urban's CPerl both of which depart from the Perl code base. He does this while calling others stupid and difficult and repeatedly violating the CoC of The Perl Foundation online and at several major events (including repeated harassment over gender, gender identity, sexuality, physical disabilities, and his perceptions of other people's moral obligations and shortcomings under his religion).

During the recent Perl6 to Raku rename, when the plan was to create a new Facebook group for Raku and direct visitors to the Raku group from the Perl 6 group, he unilaterally renamed the Perl 6 group to reflect the name change. So we had two Raku groups and no group for people to find it by the old name and be redirected. All the old posts to the Perl 6 group were now in the newly renamed Raku group. Since a group can only by renamed every so often, the fresh Raku group was renamed by the founder of the group to be "Perl 6" for discoverability and aimed at the old, original group now named "Raku" but with posts predating the name change talking about Perl 6. Rather than apologizing when the difficulty he caused was pointed out, he claimed nobody would look under the old name during the transition period and he was doing everyone a favor with his rash actions since the founder of both groups hadn't rushed headlong into the same decision.

He also has a history of using images and other assets without permission or even attribution. He claims t if something isn't watermarked with a copyright he's in the clear, which is obviously false on its face in any Berne Convention country.

Then he wonders why he gets disinvited and nobody wants to work with him on merging his work upstream. So since everyone else isn't playing by his rules, he has apparently decided to once again apply his own rules to everyone else and claim to speak for The Perl Foundation and the larger Perl community despite no mandate at all to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Haha, didn't read the post, the title alone gave me enough laughs.</comment>


Improving API Performance with Telnet - <AUTHOR> https://blog.teller.io/2020/06/23/improving-api-performance-with-telnet.html <comment><USER2> Good stuff. I didn't use Nerves but overall use of distributed SoC is a neat idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Telnet is our propietary mobile carrier proxy network. The name is a portmanteau of Teller Network,_

Clickbait baked into the product name.</comment>


New APIs to release code on Heroku - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2013/12/20/programmatically_release_code_to_heroku_using_the_platform_api

<comment><USER2> This is really awesome. I've been using Heroku for a while now, and the service just keeps getting better.

I think their platform API is actually one of the most underutilized tools out there for building really cool stuff. Last year a friend and I built postgression ([http://postgression.com](http://postgression.com)), to showcase how powerful it can be (for fun, of course).

I've got about a million other ideas for using the platform API to do awesome stuff.

Good job, guys (and gals!).

<comment><USER3> That's a neat tool to have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice. Deploying a Scala / Play Framework project on Heroku is painful because the compile times out about half the time. Being able to compile locally and push up a zip is going to make like much nicer.

<comment><USER5> Yes. Pretty much the only thing I really dislike about Scala is the speed of the compiler, and Heroku magnifies this about 70 times by requiring a complete rebuild of the slug on every push. It would be nice if it cached the build artifacts and only recompiled source files that changed - that would be a huge time saver and would mean I could deploy several times a day instead of only the one time I allow myself. Perhaps a workaround exists but I just haven't seen a way to accomplish this

To be honest I _love_ using Git push to deploy. I just wish it was faster. This doesn't really solve that problem for me - building the slug on my own machine or as part of a CI setup seems like a step back.

That and Heroku's MySQL-compatible service, ClearDB, is very inconsistent, with query times for simple queries ranging from normal to a couple of seconds inexplicably.

<comment> jon-wood You may well be interested in the build cache[1], which allows you to store build artifacts between pushes - I think it was designed for asset compilation, but there's no reason it shouldn't also work for compiled code.

[1] [https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/buildpack- api#caching](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/buildpack-api#caching)

<comment><USER5> I hadn't seen that - sounds like it will help. Thanks a bunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ever since the Rap Genius gaffe([http://news.rapgenius.com/James-somers- herokus-ugly-secret-l...](http://news.rapgenius.com/James-somers-herokus-ugly- secret-lyrics)), I view Heroku with a totally different angle.

I don't recall there is anything concrete offered to affected customers, except a generic apology, and this keeps me from doing business with Heroku. Right now I am building a web stack from scratch on a US-based hosting vendor. It is frustrating and we kind of are reinventing the wheel, but the reassurance that all things are transparent and within our control is priceless. Your opinion could be different.

<comment><USER3> My experience with Heroku has been drama free. I have never pushed a high- traffic system to their servers. For a reason: for the price, I'm better off managing my own boxes and not have to worry about data security and performance. Heroku for me is for projects that quite don't require much in order to run (as in not many users, data is not very important, etc).</comment></comment>


Sprig is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/26/on-demand-food-startup-sprig-is-shutting-down-today/ <comment><USER3> I would guess any restaurant funded out of the gates with this amount of VC would fail. Call it a food-tech startup if you want, but Sprig and its competitors are restaurants. The reality of restaurants is that their growth is linear, even if they are successful. That's because it takes time to develop trust with the consumer, and even once that is established, people either want variety or their trust can be shattered completely on one off experience. Deploying this much capital on a restaurant concept straight out of the gates would be fine if and only if they managed to execute flawlessly and if VCs were ok not making money for a few years and then churning out 0-15% returns after that. But that's not the VC game.

<comment><USER4> 100 years ago, every family prepared their own Tomato Ketchup from scratch, 50 years ago every family prepared their own Cookie dough from Scratch. We are evolving to higher level abstraction in Food consumption, following is my view where we will be by 2025 .

Here is my Vision (Comprehensive thought process) on the UNIT Economics of Food delivery, how this will manifest by the year 2025 .

Pre-requisites:

a) Massively centralized, highly Automated Kitchens : can prepare 10,000 meals/hour

b) offer quality Meals at $4/meal with delivery ( with Self driving fleet starting year 2022 )

c) Monthly meals plan : a family will buy pre-paid 60 meals/month plan, USE it or LOSE it in a month.

Here are the Plan details.

1\. If we take avg. family size as 3 people in US, a family consumes 2 meals/day X 30 days X 3 people = 180 meals/month for family of 3 people

2\. for family of 3 grocery bill is say $540/month, that give s Raw material cost as $3 per meal

3\. Meal preparation + Cleaning dishes etc.. takes about 1.5 hours/meal that is 3 hours/day for two meals a day for a family

4\. If massive Centralized Kitchens ( like the Amazon Robot handling warehouses) can offer meals at $4 per meal ,people hook on to on REGULAR basis.

5\. For this massive centralized Kitchens in order offer at at these low $4/meal, they need 'Commitment of minimum number of meals per month' from a family. I would say 60 meals/month

6\. Basically this 60 meals/month minimum for $4/meal is like pre-paid PLAN, it is USE it or LOSE it in a month.

7\. With the Mobile phone app, you set your Default Delivery place, if any thing change, you change Delivery location 2 hours in advance, your meal will be delivered to that place. ( with self driving fleet that should not be a problem)

8\. These Centralized Kitchens Offer all Kinds of meals: Chinese, Japanese, Thai, American fastfood etc..

9\. When you have these economy of scale where each family Order their food 1/3 of total meals in a Month, and it is offered almost same price as your Grocery Bill to prepare those meals ( with out 3 hours/day preparing meals /Cleaning dishes) , This MODEL will be successful

<comment><USER5> 3 hours for the prep and cleanup for 2 meals is quite a bit longer than our experience as a family of 4. Breakfast and lunch prep/cleanup is closer to 15 minutes than 90 and dinner prep/cleanup might be 30-60 for most meals.

Breakfast and lunch also seem less amenable to delivery as they're often eaten "on a schedule" with little room for screwups or delays.

I agree that delivery has a place; I'm not so sure it's going to be from a centralized location/coordinated kitchens. That central location is unlikely to be experts at sushi, Vietnamese, pizza, subs, have the fries I love, Thai, etc.

<comment><USER4> People consume food predominately (70% of total meals in a month)based on ethnic lines and local customs why because that is how their Mom cooked first 15 years of their childhood and their taste buds were developed that way.

If you take a two month window,120 meals (2 meals X 60 days) , 90 meals that is 75% consists repeats from a group of 20 different food dishes .

Let us assume, you are living in typical US city where the population is 30,000 people. There may be 10 different categories of people BASED on their 'food preferences'.

When you combine this 10 different category groups with the above '20 different food dishes repeat' combine this with pre-paid Monthly plan and Centralized Kitchens, you have a quality food at close to GROCERY price bill .

Once the above AGGREGATION happens, It is not hard to have a sushi, Pizza, Thai, Chinese etc.. all under same roof Centralized Kitchen because the kitchen will be serving on a given day serving 1000 Pizza, 1000 Thai, 1000 Sushi, 1000 Subs etc.. for 30,000 population city .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honestly, not surprising! The unit economics of services like Sprig (and, to a lesser extent, DoorDash) are horrifyingly bad. If you've ever thought about starting a delivery service, this is a worthwhile read. They predicted Sprig's demise last year: [https://medium.com/@review/the-food-delivery-death- star-85f9...](https://medium.com/@review/the-food-delivery-death- star-85f9a121313)

<comment><USER7> It is a good read, thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From: xxxx Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2016 3:03 PM To: 'xxx' <firstname.lastname@example.com> Subject: RE: Introducing Myself and $20 from Sprig

Hi Billy,

The problem with Sprig is price. A normal lunch costs $9-10, while Sprig's lunch with all fees is $17.

Thanks

xxx.

From: xxxx [mailto:firstname.lastname@example.com] Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2016 12:08 PM To: undisclosed-recipients: Subject: Introducing Myself and $20 from Sprig

Hey there -

I wanted to reach out and introduce myself. My name is Billy Blaustein and I'm acting as the new Manager of Sprig here in San Francisco. I'm a Bay Area native that cares deeply about healthy accessible eating.

I'm reaching out now because I know that used to be a big fan of Sprig, but for some reason we haven't had you order from us in the past few months.

We've done an amazing amount of work at Sprig rebuilding our app, rebuilding our menu, and trying to build a great brand for busy San Franciscans. I can personally attest that a lot of our food is completely redone.

I've put $20 of Sprig credit into your account that you can use through February. I'd love to hear from you about your experience.

I apologize for emailing, but this is a personal outreach from my personal account.

Looking forward to hearing from you - <USER2>

<comment><USER9> Do people sending these messages ever read them back back to themselves aloud?

Please, at least write something that isn't from the same template as every other unsolicited email I get about <random> online service.

<comment><USER10> Yeah. Although personally, I think that it's still not as bad as the "James from FoobarSaaS" for the technical products (you know, CI, etc).

It was new and cool a few years ago, and maybe non-technical users find it more trustworthy, personal touch, whatever. But when you get this crap daily, it's just a bit silly. There's nothing personal about spam and I don't even know if the "James from FoobarSaaS" person actually exists (probably not).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately seemed like there were hints of this eventual demise when Gagan was interviewed by Jason Calacanis: [http://thisweekinstartups.com/gagan- biyani-sprig/](http://thisweekinstartups.com/gagan-biyani-sprig/).

YC-backed SpoonRocket had just announced their shutdown, and Gagan was put on the defensive. Touting unit economics, an optimized menu, and food delivery innovation, the reality was, as others have mentioned, the company was a glorified restaurant with delivery. Ultimately I do think these companies made an impact but may have been a few years to early (pre self-driving). High- quality, healthy, on demand food is an inevitability but the labor costs are still prohibitive. I'm genuinely excited for the day I can get a delivered grilled, free-range chicken breast and seasonal veggies for $6!

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure self driving vehicles will magically make food delivery profitable. Sure, self driving cars can bring the food to the front of my door or house, but how will the food get into my place? Maybe that's okay for a sandwich for one person, but a soon as we're talkang about a complete meal for two or more people, it becomes a completely different story.

Are people really willing to pay a premium delivery fee, only to have to carry the heavy or hot packages themselves into the house, elevator, appartement? In the rain, cold or snow? In the dark?

Self driving food delivery has a 'last mile' problem. Sure you can transport the food to my sidewalk that way, but how do you get it to or over my doorstep without ruining the whole convenience experience, in a sustainable and profitable way?

<comment><USER13> Are you presuming they won't drop a robot in the self-driving car to bring you your food?

<comment><USER14> Yeah, something in that!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is sad because Sprig had just won me back.

There were the dark days of Sprig where, with limited options, it was mostly $13+ airplane food (pre fees, tax, tip etc.) - they literally hired a guy who led mass food production for airlines, and another bigwig from the cafeteria industry - and at that point I and others I know mercilessly bashed Sprig, and they deserved it.

Then one day I checked on them and they had greatly expanded their menu, brought in great partners like Dosa, Blue Bottle, Stumptown, and I then became a regular user (why not have Chicken Tikka Masala from Dosa, a kale-Avocado salad, and New Orleans style iced coffee brought to my door while I work). Still pricey but it's actually worth it now.

I get that their "dark days" were tied to financial desperation, but IMO from the view on the ground it did irreparable damage to their company once it got out they brought in airline and cafeteria people, and still had the audacity to charge a crap ton for it. Funnily I didn't even know they brought in airline people until I had a small, $14 crappy barbecue sandwich that I swore I had on an airplane once and lo and behold after a second of Googling it all made sense. This could all make for an interesting case study on critical strategy mistakes and failed brand management.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Sprig, the startup that makes and delivers its own food"

Know in plain language as a restaurant that delivers.

<comment><USER17> If only they'd done it on the blockchain, then it would've been a guaranteed success.

<comment><USER18> The irony of your comment is that if they had put all vc money into bitcoin and then just sat on their asses they would have done pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some outrageous percentage of small businesses fail within two years.

Restaurants are a big contributor to that statistic. Sprig was, essentially, a restaurant. Calling it a tough environment to operate in is an understatement.

</comment><comment><USER20> Doesn't surprise me. I tried them a few times and the food always seemed mediocre and uninspired.

Near the end of the company's life they switched from fully compostable packaging and utensils (wherever possible) to the standard array of plastic containers and utensils you'd expect from any restaurant, while keeping their price just as high.

<comment><USER21> Oh gosh. I tried it once in Chicago and it was pretty awful. Does not surprise me as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've tried all of these delivery companies thanks to VC-subsidized promotions, and none of them get me a better meal than Costco's excellent frozen and refrigerated prepared foods (Sukhi's, Giovanni Rana, Ajinomoto, etc) which I keep stocked in my refrigerator and freezer and which are ready within 5 minutes of me deciding I want to eat one. The Costco food is quicker, cheaper, and tastier.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think the problem with these cooked meal services is scale. It is very hard to scale these operations across multiple cities. The margins just aren't there for the layers of complexity and management. They are better off as small businesses, just like a restaurant franchise model.

I have used a couple of them in Kansas City over the last 5 years. Before this was even a craze. Success Meals and Healthy Meals. Both were fantastic and neither needed to raise $50 million dollars to do it.

</comment><comment><USER24> For a while Sprig was very convenient. I paid the monthly flat fee for delivery for some months. But then it became very hard to get a meal from them:

\- Meals would be sold out by noon

\- You had a limit. You could order only 1 meal.

\- The drink prices were ridiculous. Like $6 for a juice.

So because I could never get a meal, I canceled my subscription and started using other services.

<comment><USER25> Totally unrelated but if you're interested in expensive juice have you heard of the company Juicero?

In all seriousness, there's a service in Washington, DC called HighSpeed which will deliver to you a bottle of $55 freshly squeeze juice. Except they include a free gift of marijuana.

<comment><USER24> Yes but having to order from 2 different companies, with food arriving at 2 different times seems a bit hard to deal with. Imagine this in the context of a lunch break.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "They cooked and delivered their own meals."

... Like Dominos?

</comment><comment><USER27> Here's the email sprig CEO Gagan Biyani sent out today:

[https://pastebin.com/raw/9DPWQ4QC](https://pastebin.com/raw/9DPWQ4QC)

</comment><comment><USER25> Again, who? I really think a problem with any startup is marketing and getting the word out there. If any startup is able to raise some capital, surely they have some idea about how they're going to make money. I would really love to see the postmortem reports VC's do on failed startups to understand why it happened, and how to avoid in the future. This actually sounds like a great company. I wish I had heard of them ....

Who's next? Blue Apron?

<comment><USER28> For Blue Apron, you cook + assemble the meals yourself which does not sound too different, but could be a huge advantage for cost (and quality standpoint vs you expect it prepared well and warm).

<comment><USER29> So, like -

Online grocery delivery that several nearby grocery stores with a healthy sustaining underlying core business probably already do, and probably for cheaper, or alternately, with call-in ordering if I prefer a lower delivery fee?

Oh.. but it has an 'app',

right.

<comment><USER28> Blue Apron comes with its own meal kit and instructions on how to make. It's almost like one of those DIY science experiment boxes, but for dinner. This makes it more appealing than the package of what a grocery store could offer. (Or selecting the individual ingredients one by one.)

<comment><USER30> I tried it and I'll never do it again. Huge waste of money.

<comment><USER31> I know some folks for whom it was the gateway drug to actually cooking for themselves, but it doesn't make a ton of sense once you've gotten past that. Parting things out of a Peapod order is not a big ask.

<comment><USER30> Ironically the recipes they gave me were more trouble than I'd normally bother with on a weeknight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Sprig, which had raised $56.7 million"...a lot of money to be on a company that including delivery costs probably had negative gross margins.

Blue Apron's model of delivering just ingredients has a big advantage that they don't have to cook food nor deliver quickly, and they probably charge around as much for a meal as Sprig did. Much more promising business model in theory...and one that's working great.

<comment><USER23> Blue Apron must have much higher margins too. I think that is the key. Delivering cooked food every day requires a lot of labor and complexity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Low margin businesses like this with so many responsibilities won't work, unless you have limitless amounts of money. They simply can't compete on price, unless they can drop the price so low that it creates a new market, like Uber did.

Instead of $15 meals, they need to go up to $30 meals and have real waiters bring the food and serve it to them.

Margins are what you need to be able to survive.

<comment><USER29> > They simply can't compete on price, unless they can drop the price so low > that it creates a new market, like Uber did.

and what other people are saying is at least in some markets somewhat of an illusion based on investment subsidies..

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "And another one bites the dust" ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE))

Personally better/fancier food delivered sounds strange. I cook at home when i like good food or i go out and enjoy it outside.

</comment><comment><USER35> I seem to be in the minority here, but I will honestly saw I'll miss Sprig. It was one of the few places I could not only order food that would arrive quickly, but most importantly (until their recent transition a month or two back), it was not only quite healthy, but they listed the nutrition facts up- front. I realize most people don't care, but as someone who was on a restricted diet (I'm diabetic) [hence the throwaway account], it was nice that I could know up-front what the food contained. I've yet to find another option that delivers decent quality food with nutrition facts up-front. The only reason I stopped using them was I invested time to start cooking my own food (with great health results, even if it takes up a few hours a week).

Anyone know of any similar services?

</comment><comment><USER36> Ahh, this is a shame, but not surprising. Sprigs competitors have all fallen as well (Bento, Spoonrocket) for the same reasons.

I think there is a business that can be made with this model, as restaurant delivery does work, and the margins are improved nicely if you have roving delivery units with all the required deliverables (since you cut out half of the round-trip delivery time).

There was a pizza company (I've been unable to quickly google which one) that learned they could take a good deal more orders by sending out drivers with extra unordered pepperoni pizzas. When an order came in for a pepperoni pizza, they'd just relay it to a driver already on a delivery and have them make an extra stop. 2x deliveries for maybe 1.1x delivery distance.

Sprig, Bento, Spoonrocket, Presto Pizza, and all these other startups were trying to capture this market, but the problem is that demand is not consistent and slight mistakes in supply are onerously expensive. Too much food, and you've got spoilage; too little and you've lost a customer because of your 'Sold Out' message.

Additionally, the question of quality and variety is a difficult one to tackle. The pizza place that found success only had to carry pepperoni or cheese pizzas; Spoonrocket failed because it cheapened its product to try to increase the margin wiggle-room and lost customers; Bento failed because it couldn't offer much intraday variety.

Sprig was at least hopeful, in my eyes -- they managed to keep their meals at a higher standard than Spoonrocket. I was fine paying extra for it (although I admit that is subjective). The achilles heel is that if you want startup growth, then managing to keep your supply within the margins of profitability is a _very_ difficult task. The only solutions are to grow a lot slower (and learn your demand) or to double-down _DEEP_ on your datascience team and hope they can divine a line of best fit.

Unfortunately, that latter would likely need to be a Psychohistorian and those won't be around for another 10k years.

<comment><USER37> data science teams aren't that magic. We can't fix a low margin business model

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I used Sunfare (www.sunfare.com) in Scottsdale, Arizona for almost 5 years before I moved to San Francisco. It's a similar model to all of these Bay Area restaurant + delivery startups, but they have never expanded outside of LA / AZ, never raised venture capital, and somehow manage to stay in business and turn a profit!

I love and miss them!

</comment><comment><USER39> This was one of my favorite startups. :(

</comment><comment><USER40> The article lists a bunch of companies in the space going down.

Thinking of the demand side, would a company rolled up into one, being able to claim a large slice of this nascent market for itself, have been able to survive and grow?

</comment><comment><USER41> I did some back of the napkin calculations. The investors would have had much higher yield if they had invested in cinnabons and Acai Bowl style fast-casual shops.

</comment><comment><USER42> Look at India to see a model that has scaled:

[https://dailyfintech.com/2017/01/13/9062/](https://dailyfintech.com/2017/01/13/9062/)

<comment><USER43> As a note, while the dabbawalas are successful, there was a comically excessive food-delivery startup bubble in India around 2015 full of companies that failed similarly.

It comes down to the basic issue, I think, that Uber made everyone worldwide excited about the idea of "software eating the world" but you can't wish away the issue of margins and unit costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I was overjoyed for a moment, then I realized it's Sprig, not Spring.

</comment><comment><USER45> I only clicked because I read "spring" other than "sprig"

<comment><USER46> Me too, I hoped Spring Framework is shutting down.

<comment><USER47> I'm not sure the framework can just shut down if it's OSS:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> > {...} Sprig CEO Gagan Biyani wrote in an email customers _will receive > shortly_.

From TC's wording it sounds like they obtained and published this email before it was sent. Maybe just incorrect choice of words; if not then that's pretty bold from TC and unprofessional IMO.

Italics mine.

<comment><USER49> That's called journalism.

<comment><USER48> Potentially more insulting to real journalists than a Trump news conference.

<comment><USER50> The most important part of journalism is discovering and publishing news that people don't already know yet.

<comment><USER30> Wait, it's not acting as a stenographer for PR people?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can Hulu Be A Bigger Business Than YouTube? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/can-hulu-be-a-bigger-business-than-youtube/ <comment><USER2> I still haven't seen a good implementation of Internet video yet.

YouTube is great for the one offs, the funny things that people catch on camera. But as Google has discovered, it is difficult to make money out of that stuff. Only live streaming is available, too bad if you're on the train on the way home. There is little support for following a 'program'. If you want to see if a content producer you like has done something new, you have to visit YouTube. On the plus side, YouTube has made it fantastically easy to publish work, and to embed stuff in other web pages - most of my viewing of YouTube clips is done because I see the clip on some other web page.

Hulu is only available in the US, and it only offers live streaming. Again, too bad if you want to watch somewhere when you are out and about. After all the effort that we have put into time-and-place shifting our media, this feels like a big step backwards for me.

Podcasts allow you to watch offline, and they allow you to easily follow when new episodes become available. But there is no service offering impromptu YouTube-like serving of clips - you see a cool episode of a show that you want to share on your blog, then you're out of luck. From the Content Provider's perspective this is a problem too - having people embed your clip on their webpage is the best advertising you could wish for if you want people to subscribe to your podcast. The whole subscribing thing is important too when it comes to obtaining advertising dollars - you'll have much more success negotiating a price for ads in your podcast if you can show that you have a large audience already subscribed.

<comment><USER3> Hulu has flaws, yes. However, they're not trying to do everything at once. Right now, they're trying to offer high-quality programming in place of each company having a separate site. Offline watching would be great and all, but that's not an enormous setback, sorry. That's not a necessary feature, that's a luxury.

I was deadset against Hulu when it was first announced, as was essentially the entire Internet. I think it's one of my most-visited sites, now. The presentation is top-notch: few sites look or work better. And the video content is all to die for.

Even the social aspects are excellent. They stay out of the way unless you really care, and they tie into Facebook, which means that they've got a good social plug-in for when you want to send things over to friends.

If you want a good video site, though, check out Vimeo. Grossly underrated site, and it's got excellent features and content.</comment></comment>