Stories from Radium Age sci-fi, which ruled the early 20th century - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2016/05/recapture-the-glory-of-radium-age-sci-fi-from-a-century-ago-with-these-books/ <comment><USER2> Fun article! Interesting titles.

Of the post-Radium-Age list, I'd like to point out C. S. Lewis' _That Hideous Strength_ for special attention, just because everyone and their dog has some experience with _Narnia_ and usually has some preconceptions of what Lewis is all about based on those -- but this story is likely to defy those expectations. If you'd like to turn your one-dimensional stereotype of the man into something more nuanced, this book is the ticket. Also, a good portion of it (indeed, the central plot-bearing part) is of Extremely High Quality (as endorsed by George Orwell... albeit with certain qualifications for the rest of the book). This portion reads sort of like a spiritual prequel to _1984_ (a work that would come 4 years later). It's also surprising to many people to find Lewis writing, even incidentally, about eroticism, and that's quite besides the chain-smoking butch-lesbian chief-of-police (rumored to be a sort of character Lewis slightly fancied, if I recall correctly).

Third in a trilogy of space stories (which few are aware Lewis wrote) this novel just barely predates nuclear weapons - so Space is still a positive thing instead of being a place of vacuum and death filled with the missiles of global thermonuclear annihilation. Also, if you've heard about how fascinated the author was with Relativity and time moving at different speeds in different places (e.g. in Narnia) you may have wondered why Lewis never did a time travel novel. Turns out, he started one, and its rough draft eventually turned into this. My advice: read the short and sweet _Out of the Silent Planet_ first for context, skip _Perelandra_ (dangerously overdosed with overt Christian allegory), and then try this thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> can strongly recommend kipling's "with the night mail" and "easy as a.b.c.". i was amazed at how sophisticated they were - i would definitely have placed them well within the golden age if didn't know when they were written.

<comment><USER4> In general, there are a number of Victorian and Edwardian era authors who remain quite readable and come across as rather modern, or at least some of their writings do. Kipling--who actually won a nobel prize in literature--is one of them. For some reason, I find the British authors of that general period hold up better than the American authors in general.

<comment><USER3> yep, i'm a huge fan of kipling's writing in general, but what struck me about those stories was not that the writing sounded modern, but that they felt like modern _science fiction_ in the topics they dealt with and the manner in which they were developed.

<comment><USER4> I actually haven't read those two particular stories but I have them now. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some classic proto-pulp. I got into "Princess of Mars" as a teenager, and they were hugely important to my understanding of SF&F, warts and all. So many weird ideas in that list that have not even become tropes. I'll have to add "Nyctalope of Mars" and "Prisoner of the Vampires of Mars" to my to-read list.

</comment><comment><USER6> A lot of these should be in the public domain now, seems like a perfect opportunity for putting together a nice collection of these (perhaps even sold through Kindle)?</comment>


Tesla Has Failed Massively as a Public Company - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcollins/2019/08/21/tesla-has-failed-massively-as-a-public-company <comment><USER2> Consider this: Every day that Tesla, and the electric car/solar future is delayed, is another $5 Billion of revenue for the oil and gas industry.

There is a strong incentive to spread every possible bad news item about Tesla for all the people in that industry which comprises 2-3 percent of the world's GDP.

<comment><USER3> Or maybe - just maybe - Tesla is actually a poorly run business that objectively has seen a dip over time in stock price and tremendously wasteful spending (see nearly empty Buffalo gigafactory or the highly automated assembly line for Model 3's that was abandoned after who knows how many tens of millions spent on it).

I agree that corporations have undue influence on media, but come on. Tesla isn't making their critics' jobs very hard. Reporting the truth sounds pretty bad already. But sure, maybe it is all a conspiracy by clandestine cells of writers recruited by Big Oil. And they're doing a great job, since multiple electric vehicles are coming to market more and more each year across all brands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to know how these numbers compare to Amazon's early years. Amazon also took forever before it made a profit. As the article points out, Tesla has been expanding enormously. As long as there is demand for their cars (and it seems there is), I don't see why it would start making a profit once the company focuses on profit rather than expansion.

<comment><USER5> There's a difference in not having a profit due to (a) reinvestment; (b) poor unit economics.

(a) is much less worrying for an investor, e.g. Amazon (b) suggests a bad business model, e.g. Uber/Lyft, Tesla

<comment><USER4> But Tesla is reinvesting a lot. And it's growing the market for electric cars, setting up infrastructure, etc. He might be selling at a loss initially in order to create the volume that will eventually drive down the cost so he can generate a profit. From what I understand, the big reason he keeps losing money on selling cars is that by the time the previous car starts making a profit, he's already already started selling the next one at greater volume, creating new loss that drowns the fresh profit from that previous car.

<comment><USER5> That was true with model S but not with model 3. The latter is the main product, bread and butter, whose purpose is not funding other future products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would being continously shorted by Wall Street have anything to do with this? For example, take yet another short position in Tesla and then trash it in the financial press, like this article is doing.

It is curious that since 2013 Tesla sales have jumped from approx 20,000 per year to approx 30,000 per month and yet the stock price hasn't shown an equivalent increase. If I were of a cynical nature I would suspect the rest of the US car industry (what's left of it) of punishing Musk for being sucessfull. Despite this, an increase of 1,889 percent on an initial investment in the IPO in 2010 is not too bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> The financial press has gone _very_ easy on Tesla & Musk. They will routinely write "Elon Musk says" articles which are little more than stenographic regurgitation of some statement by Musk or Tesla. Longs and Tesla touts like Ron Baron, Cathie Wood, Gene Munster, and even the utterly inexperienced Galileo Russell are routinely given long CNBC segments to hold forth with their bullish theses. And even if it can temporarily push the stock price one direction or another, press coverage has little to nothing to do with their audited financial results.

Netflix attracted a ton of short interest back when the stock was around $100. Somehow that didn't, in and of itself, hold back the company at all.

> It is curious that since 2013 Tesla sales have jumped from approx 20,000 per > year to approx 30,000 per month and yet the stock price hasn't shown an > equivalent increase.

Yes, it's almost as though the company has a complete lack of operating leverage and is losing more money the more cars it sells.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> At least it's doing better than my kickstarter:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/poly-wants-a- cracker/po...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/poly-wants-a-cracker/poly- wants-a-cracker-robot-controller-for-bricks)</comment>


.Cat Domain a Casualty in Catalonian Independence Crackdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/cat-domain-casualty-catalonian-independence-crackdown <comment><USER2> Related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15296359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15296359)

</comment><comment><USER3> The .cat domain was seized because the organization in charge of the domain IGNORED the orders issued by a JUDGE. So saying: > "If such content is unlawful, a court order directed to the publisher or host of that content is the appropriate way for authorities to deal with that illegality, rather than the blanket removal of entire domains from the Internet."

Is simply put, bulshit. A court ordered taking down illegal calls to a referendum not approved by a democratic consitution. If that was ignored, someone had to take action.

<comment><USER4> > The .cat domain was seized because the organization in charge of the domain > IGNORED the orders issued by a JUDGE.

What orders ignored? Do you have any link to newspapers?

And, by the way, PuntCAT is a TLD register, they don't host any site.

Do you know other case where the TLD registar has been seized? Domains are blocked via ISP's, the publisher or the hosting.

<comment><USER5> As far as I know, no newspaper has published anything that indicates that the puntCAT foundation ignored a clear order by a judge to censor a domain (though it is possible that they did). It's also possible that this is part of the open blanket investigation of anything the Catalan government does about the referendum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Before anyone goes rushing off to make sure that their favorite (nyan?) .cat domain is still up:

> _... .cat domains not connected with the October 1 referendum (including > eff.cat, EFF 's little-known Catalan language website) have not been > affected._

A more accurate title might have been "Individual .cat domains promoting sedition casualties in...", which is not what it currently seems like it means.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, the didn't government didn't ruled the referendum illegal a constitutional COURT did it. And the detentions and search were ordered by a JUDGE from Barcelona that not long ago was awarded by the same Catalan government that now is criticizing him.

Please read this to know the facts: [https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/09/20/inenglish/1505917320_78...](https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/09/20/inenglish/1505917320_788824.html)

<comment><USER7> A court is an arm of the Kingdom of Spain, and a judge is a Kingdom employee. In US parlance, where the EFF is based, we would say the court is an arm of the government, and the judge is a government employee, thus this is a government action.

In European parlance, 'the government' often means the currently in-power group of legislative representatives, which causes much confusion in the US when we hear 'a new government was formed in X', or 'the government will be dissolved in Y'.

<comment><USER8> Spanish King has no actual power, we have a democratic monarchy.

<comment><USER9> Monarchies are not democratic. Unless I can vote the King, that is.

<comment><USER10> What if your elected representatives can vote to abolish the royalty?

<comment><USER9> Good point. I believe you could.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is interesting to note that Assange and Snowden seem very interested in the catalan issue these last days.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/911226994846...](https://mobile.twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/911226994846814208)

[https://mobile.twitter.com/Snowden/status/910888878948700160](https://mobile.twitter.com/Snowden/status/910888878948700160)

<comment><USER8> According to El Pais (first Spanish generalist -i.e. non-sports- newspaper in audience), the Russian intelligence is behind the support to Catalan separatists, like before pushed for the Brexit, Trump, and Le Pen: [https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2017/09/22/actualidad/1...](https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2017/09/22/actualidad/1506101626_670033.html)

<comment><USER11> I understand that many people here dislike El Pais; but please, do not link continuously at their most outrageusly ridiculous articles. There are still reasonable writers there. Not many, of course, but they are still there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> .cat domains work properly, e.g. [http://www.elperiodico.cat](http://www.elperiodico.cat) (tested from Barcelona)

TL;DR: if you break the law, expect to get punished. The operators knew they were breaking the law, so involved sites in that domain were blocked. I.e. not a ".cat" generic blockage, but a specific action driven from a court.

<comment><USER12> Did you even read the article? Or did you just jerk-reply in an effort to criticize people or the movement?

> First, the content in question here is essentially political speech, which > the European Court of Human Rights has ruled as deserving of a higher level > of protection than some other forms of speech. Even though the speech > concerns a referendum that has been ruled illegal, the speech does not in > itself pose any imminent threat to life or limb.

What the Spanish government did is considered censorship under any reasonable system of law. Justifying one "wrong" with another is not gonna get anyone anywhere anytime. But since the Spanish government is fond of censorship, this reaction shouldn't come as a surprise.

<comment><USER3> There's a system of law in Spain, is called the constitution. And the unilateral call for seccession or doing a referendum not allowed by the constitution or the courts is not allowed in any democracy.

I'm in favor of a referendum so the catalans can decide if they want to be in Spain or not. But I'm not in favor of a unilateral decision.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, my grandfather was also given a death sentence under the rule of the law, because of his political ideas. That was Spain. Laws can be immoral. Breaking immoral laws is a duty of everyone. Now these immoral laws are applied to Catalans who want to vote, but next it can be you.

Women wouldn't be voting if they never broke the law first.

Giving a Tax amnesty to very rich tax dodgers (as the current Spanish government has done recently) has been ruled to be against the Rule of The Law and the Spanish Constitution, yes? Who is going to jail for this? No one.

The constitution only matters when it matters to some.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What happened here:

\- judge told .cat TLD to take over some domains, setting them to display a spanish police landing page.

\- .cat complied.

\- Judge told .cat TLD to censor any domain that does support the referendum in any way.

\- .cat replied that they run a TLD, that it's not their job to act as a censorship agency, inspecting each domain and disabling those that host websites that talk about topics that a judge specified are forbidden.

\- .cat notified the ICANN of the situation they're in: [https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/lineros...](https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/lineros- to-marby-17sep17-en.pdf)

\- police raided the TLD office, and arrested its CTO at his home.</comment>


One Browser Input To Rule Them All - Chrome Omnibox Extensions - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/22/chrome-omnibox-api/ <comment><USER2> The site-specific search examples cited in the blog post are just about the lamest possible implementations of this API. I'd like to see things like an implementation of the built-in Bash commands, but mapped to various Web- centric commands:

ls: Parses the current page and lists the links.

cd: Change to another directory or page on the current site, relative to the current page.

history: Show the user's history.

source: execute a given JavaScript file in the context of the current webpage.

alias: Creates a new bookmark with a keyword shortcut.

export/echo: Set/echo JavaScript variables on the current page.

[...]

Actually, now that I've taken the time to write that out, I may just write this extension myself rather than wait for someone else to do it.

<comment><USER2> Update: The Omnibox API doesn't allow a single extension to register multiple keywords, so I'm moving ahead by registering "$" and then parsing the input for the shell command.

<comment><USER2> Update: I've started coding; anyone who wants to watch can continually reload <https://github.com/cfinke/ChroSh>. :-)

<comment><USER2> Update: A very simple version 1 is live at [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kipnlkomdkndemni...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kipnlkomdkndemnifbahedkkglaodggl)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Verizon 4G LTE is down, nationwide outage confirmed - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/7/2619137/verizon-4g-lte-outage-december-2011

<comment><USER2> As someone who understands networking at the office / rack level (but not the datacenter or nation-wide level), what are the single points of failure that could bring down an entire nationwide network? I would think that things would be setup by regions just to avoid this type of scenario.

At least the 3G networks are still up for voice/sms fail-over.

<comment><USER3> pquerna's guess is a reasonable one, though I don't know the authentication mechanisms, either.

Here are some other wild guesses that may have little or no resemblance to what Verizon is experiencing, but kind of show what can bring down an Internet-like network:

* Some sort of configuration fat-finger that got rolled out everywhere without proper testing. You'd like to think that's impossible on this scale, but after having an insider's look at the operations of a couple major US cable companies, I put nothing past telecoms.

* Verizon probably runs some form of routing protocol internally. If a core router has gone insane, you could, conceivably, get route flapping and bring down pretty much everything, but that's not supposed to happen on carrier-grade equipment ( _cough_ see previous paragraph).

* In a closely related scenario, large portions of the public Internet have been brought to their knees at least once by a nasty BGP bug in a major vendor's routers that got triggered when somebody broadcast just the right set of options in their announcement. Picture a guy in upstate New York trying to route around a bad line card, and suddenly the US goes dark because half the routers crash when they got the BGP table update.

You can probably spot a common theme here -- a "decentralized" but homogenous network is still vulnerable to the triggering of problems shared by all points.

<comment><USER4> The thing you have to understand about "wireless" systems like CDMA/GSM/HSPDA/LTE is that there is little diversity in the vendors of these types of systems and there are a bunch of relatively closed protocols that govern how things like the base stations authenticate subs and do provisioning of stations. It's not like IP; it's more like Novell IPX.

So even though LTE is ostensibly an IP-based system, there are a host of dependencies on single vendor closed management systems and protocols that could be the cause of any outage. A nationwide outage points to the failure of one of these systems to properly handle letting subscriber stations onto the network, not something simple like getting packets from here to there.

Think failure of the RADIUS/DNS like systems, not the routing infrastructure.

<comment><USER5> Your premise is more accurate, you just need to replace IPX with 3GPP standard protocols (vendors dont make their own protocols - everything is standardized), and instead of radius/dns (which are used in telcos nonetheless), its more likley HLRs,CSCFs, MMEs, or PDN gateways that can bring an entire network to its knees, or a poorly implemented mobile backhaul solution

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a current 4G customer, I can say this has been the most frustrating 6 months. It's been well documented their LTE network has been sketchy from the start:

4G launched in Dec 7th 2010 and this article ran a week later about issues already showing up with handoffs between networks: <http://bit.ly/td1XQT>

Another article from April 29 2011 about an earlier 4G outage: <http://bit.ly/v8zJUZ>

I'm not surprised this happened and will be returning to 3G. Clearly their 4G is not ready for prime time yet.

<comment><USER7> I'm not too familiar with 4G tech - but why "move back" to 3G? If the LTE network falls over, your phone switches to 3G and keeps right on humming along more slowly, doesn't it?

Or is my concept of 4G modems out of date?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm actually surprised at how resilient the cell phone networks are. For something that is so heavily used I would expect it to go down more often.

Or maybe my definition of going down is different than others. There are plenty of bugs all the time (dropped calls, misdialed numbers, etc). I'm not convinced that whenever I dial a number and someone else picks up and says wrong number that I did indeed dial the wrong number.

Ghost in the shell I tell you.

<comment><USER9> > There are plenty of bugs all the time (dropped calls, misdialed numbers, > etc).

Precisely. Erlang was created to run digital phone switches, and so was designed exactly for the scenario of "it's fine if certain calls crash, they can always be redialed, but the system itself always has to be available".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> that's interesting. a fake telecom spec (4G!) can't perform like a 3G network.

<comment><USER5> Care to elaborate ? Are you referring to the fact that 4G was meant to be 1 Gbps but marketing departments hijacked the term to just mean "as fast or faster then 3g"

<comment><USER10> yea pretty much. the whole term, 4G, is just a dubious marketing term meant to mislead consumers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The $299 price tag for a Verizon Galaxy Nexus is looking like an even worse deal now.

</comment><comment><USER12> 4G is down: 23 customers affected.

<comment><USER13> I know it's an overly snarky comment, but being from a state that has literally ZERO 4g coverage, I gotta share the frustration. You have to live in a huge city to even get the signal, and when you do get it, your battery consumption is greatly increased. 4G as it stands for me is a huge pile of care not.

<comment><USER14> You actually don't have to live in _that_ large of a city. The Raleigh/Durham MSAs combine for about 1.6M in total population spread over a pretty sprawling area and we have had LTE service for a few months.

I frankly don't get the complaints or the folks who are going to downgrade to 3G. If you don't have LTE available, the device will fall back to 3G. When you do have LTE available, however, the performance can be unbelievable. I was co- working with a colleague and we were getting 20Mbps down and 10Mbps up over a little MiFi.

I'll hang onto my LTE MiFi, thankyouverymuch. :)

<comment><USER15> For comparison, the best I have measured with a 3G technology (HSDPA) was 10 Mbps down, while downloading from kernel.org on my laptop, tethered to my phone over wifi, in a sparsely populated area covered by a strong HSDPA signal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> (In the voice of the Apple fan in the … Samsung? LG? HTC? commercial: _Why don't you just get a 4G phone?_ )</comment>


Ask HN: What awesome newsletters do you subscribe to? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ruby Weekly, Hacker Newsletter, Startup Digest are all good.

</comment><comment><USER2> "Now I Know" by Dan Lewis.</comment>


Fuck you, Debian - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/broken-window/fuck-you-debian-ebe8cede37ed#.9d317qa1x <comment><USER2> How is it not obvious that Debian _must_ enforce such a rule? Otherwise they open themselves up to issues like the Great NPM Unpublish Debacle of 2016. Doing so would dilute and ultimately negate whatever value they provide as a trusted package source (which, BTW, is _huge_ ). (While there are exceptions (notably flashplugin-nonfree), I believe they are necessarily relegated to the nonfree repository.)

Not to mention that a package which violates the "no-downloads" rule would utterly break on any system without Internet access. (Yes, there are very legitimate reasons, even in 2016, to run a system with access to a package repository, but without Internet access.)

And the workaround is _trivial_ : just bundle the libraries you need with your source.

But no, instead of making the effort to understand the notion of trust inherent in a time-tested packaging system, and implement a simple workaround, let's whine about it on the Internet and say "fuck" a lot.

What a non-story.</comment>


Zbox – Zero-knowledge, privacy-focused embeddable file system written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zboxfs/zbox <comment><USER2> I will be a bit harsh with the project since I understand it aims to be a technology to be used in production and not just a pet project... (not "Show HN" tag was present.)

I only see here yet another key value store with an application programming interfaces that resembles the typical filesystem operations, but it is only accessible within a programming framework.

I know it is not finished but the flaws I see at the moment are completely fundamental: it aims to be general purpose, not unix compliant, not mountable, not language or truly operating system agnostic and in conclusion does not permit leverage existing filesystem tools such as mount/find/grep/sshfs etc... not to speak about support for multiple processes, users, time validations...

I wish you all the luck in the world as pet project (really! especially since filesystems are quite hard to get mature and stable) but I hope it never succeeds as a serious alternative to filesystems, because that could be worse than mongodb to rdbms.

Now trying to be constructive: there is value in the concept of runtime embeddable file systems. Why don't reframe the project as a key-value store which is embeddable within applications and mountable? (for example via fuse so you can even mount it mac/linux/others). Even if it is mountable only as RO that could bring several advantages over existing key-value-stores and advanced filesystems which are not embeddable.

Again, impressive work, good luck.

EDIT: the way you store data is also a great discussion topic... who is interested in so many possible ways to store the information anyway? that mostly depends on the requirements of the consuming application... for example if you target users which want to have a file-system-alike embedded runtime, why they would like to use this project if they have access to advanced unix compliant filesystems which support encryption and RAID and advanced tools out of the box?

<comment><USER3> I'm also surprised that there's no Fuse interface, it's the first thing I expected while reading the title.

For single process crypto storage I'd sooner use a crypto shim for SQLite, I don't know if there's any good one available out there (besides the one sold by the SQLite devs).

<comment><USER4> You can use SQLCipher [1] with libsqlfs [2], which has a FUSE interface.

1\. [https://github.com/sqlcipher/sqlcipher](https://github.com/sqlcipher/sqlcipher)

2\. [https://github.com/guardianproject/libsqlfs](https://github.com/guardianproject/libsqlfs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Before an entire bikeshed discussion arises over the misused term "zero- knowledge", know that the author is sensitive to this issue and will likely correct it soon [1].

[1] [https://github.com/zboxfs/zbox/issues/4](https://github.com/zboxfs/zbox/issues/4)

<comment><USER6> Seems to me the bigger issue is calling it a file system. As far as I can tell it is nothing of the sort.

<comment><USER7> So it's not a file system and not zero-knowledge :-)

<comment><USER8> Or perhaps it is zero-knowledge, but about file systems. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great project, I applaud the effort! Some curious questions:

\- Where exactly does "zero-knowledge" play a role here? Does this provide steganography? Or, what is meant?

\- Why do they use libsodium (excellent choice, but C) instead of a native Rust crypto library?

\- Does this only work with Rust applications?

<comment><USER10> Does Rust have _official_ implementations of Crypto algorithms (in pure Rust)?

I am not talking about some github repo in some dudes repository which contributes to it in his spare time.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure what you mean by "official" exactly, but I think for any of them, the answer would be "no".

That said, [https://crates.io/crates/ring](https://crates.io/crates/ring) is what most people suggest you should reach for: it's a slow and steady port of BoringSSL's code to Rust + asm. Of course, that only has a subset of crypto; there's other great projects too, the tor people have been putting out crates like [https://github.com/isislovecruft/curve25519-dalek](https://github.com/isislovecruft/curve25519-dalek)

<comment><USER9> Is there something like "ring" for libsodium instead of BoringSSL?

Also, does it really make sense to create a separate crate for every crypto primitive (or small set of primitives)? This has so many obvious disadvantages compared to the "libsodium approach".

<comment><USER11> I think it has pros and cons, honestly.

I'm not aware of anyone porting libsodium, though it's also not my area of specialty.

<comment><USER9> Of course maintaining some kind of "libsodium for rust" is more work, but on the other hand, a central project for rust crypto stuff is highly desirable: Even if initially run by mere crypto enthusiasts, such a central place is needed for the real crypto experts to condensate. Then, obsolete crypto can centally be deprecated and put with a warning, and competing implementations can be resolved at a central place getting (hopefully) all knowing people together to discuss.

What's the alternative? That each individual developer has to pick and combine their favourite set of crypto libs, making crypto libs spread by popularity (which is more often than not a self-fulfilling prophecy) rather than actual quality.

<comment><USER12> Tweetnacl ([http://tweetnacl.cr.yp.to/](http://tweetnacl.cr.yp.to/)) would be a good candidate for porting to Rust, since it's very small. Others have done it successfully in other languages: [https://github.com/dchest/tweetnacl- js](https://github.com/dchest/tweetnacl-js)

Someone has given it an attempt: [https://github.com/jmesmon/sodalite](https://github.com/jmesmon/sodalite) But the port doesn't seem to be too mature yet.

(Edit: For those not aware, Libsodium is based on a portable rewrite of NaCl.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks interesting - on my checklist for serious testing.

Currently using cryptomator[0] for encrypting local directories under Linux. Works very well with Nemo (File Manager), browsers (I keep local html pages here..), gedit. Some apps don't like accessing the DAV-based links (geany), while others generally work will enough that I have long-term confidence (ZIM Desktop Wiki = issues only with moving pages around within ZIM itself).

[0] [https://cryptomator.org/](https://cryptomator.org/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps there are use cases where this would make sense (mobile?), but for a server-side application, wouldn't encrypting the filesystem be better?

I'm just imagining an operator trying to debug the system only to find out that he can't read any of the files from the terminal and will have to build custom programs using this library to operate with the data.

And it seems like there are API abstraction issues too... Imagine you use a library that writes some state to the file system using the standard lib. None of that data would end up encrypted because it didn't go through this library.

Whereas using the operating system's filesystem allows transparent compression and encryption without having to change your code at all.

<comment><USER15> I could see it being used alongside Intel SGE for DRM or security reasons, in situations where the OS and system are considered hostile adversaries, but you still need extensive mutable external storage outside the application binary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder how can this coexist with docker. Docker volumes maybe could be encrypted?

</comment><comment><USER17> Can it run in the browser and store files on IndexedDB?

<comment><USER18> Not yet, but could be possible if you can compile it into WebAssembly.</comment></comment>


Do Venture Investors Require Business Plans? - <AUTHOR> http://www.askthevc.com/2007/06/do_venture_investors_require_b.php <comment><AUTHOR> How accurate is this? Do those in the valley see the same requirements?

<comment><USER2> Here the common answer I find: Feasibility study A formal document presenting an overview of your business can help you recruit potential partners, investors or lenders. It should detail the following aspects of your business: \-- The product or service: What are its unique features? \-- The management team: Does your team have experience in the industry? \-- The market: Who are the target customers? How big is the potential market? What are the costs required to reach the target market? \-- The competition: Who are your major competitors? Is your product or service superior to the competition? \-- The costs: What will it cost to start and run your business? Don't rely on credit cards Credit cards are a tempting but expensive source of capital for starting a business. If you resort to them for cash, your business plan should include a schedule for paying back that money within a year or so.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why Doesn't Canada's Express Entry System Consider Patents for Scoring? - user-on1 It does consider education and outside canada experience. Isn't it valuable and a healthy metric to consider while evaluating applicants?<p>Note To Admin: I posted this previously at evening and din't get any response. So posting it again in the morning as morning posts seems to be getting some attention. So we can consider the one i posted prev as duplicate. <comment><AUTHOR> ...are they canadian patents?

<comment> user-on1 No US Patents. Do they consider Canadian Patents?

<comment><AUTHOR> having something registered in canada MIGHT fall into the adaptability category, in showing that you've already dealt with their government for something other than your attempt to enter. just a guess, though.</comment></comment></comment>


Yale Law student takes a look at Bitcoin (draft of legal paper) - <AUTHOR> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1817857 <comment><AUTHOR> He's seeking feedback on his draft. His forum post can be found here: <http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=6247.0>

Edit: He has pointed out issues that he will flesh out in the next version of the paper in the forum thread^.

[He plans to expand the paper's scope only in a superficial way as it pertains to international law: (from the forums) "Your point about internationality is very well taken. The paper is very U.S.-centric. I will try to do a better job in the next draft of pointing that out and mentioning the internationality of bitcoin. I may try to touch upon laws or regulations in other countries, but I don't have expertise in other countries' laws."]

</comment><comment><USER2> > Furthermore, other legal issues that have not been analyzed in this paper > are probably significant, including tax evasion, banking without a charter, > state escheat statutes, and money laundering.

The Internet's first decentralized and anonymous currency will have an impact on so many different areas though not all areas necessarily need this research.

This study will be even more useful with less Flattr vs. YouTipIt comparison and more "store of value" versus "currency" comparison (and why each classification is important). Less comparison to WoW Gold and more comparison to e-gold (and why that comparison would be important as well).

</comment><comment><USER3> Digital currencies are so fascinating. There are HUGE markets waiting on cost- effective micropayments. There are also cool futuristic ideas like programs that earn their own money and pay for their own hosting.

</comment><comment><USER4> My feedback is that as a lawyer, the author should concentrate on the legal arguments (which are interesting), rather than branching off into economics.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is US only. Your laws dont apply to the rest of the world even though you like to think they do.

<comment><USER6> Provided you never travel to, though or over the USA, volitionally or by ill luck, nor hold assets there, provided your government doesn't have a cravenly subservient extradition-at-whim treaty, and provided you aren't high profile enough for them to bend rules, then US laws probably don't apply to you.

<comment><USER7> I feel your frustration and, while it is true that any individual person is exquisitely vulnerable to legal and extra-legal coercion by state power, this still does not mean that the laws of one country apply to the citizens of another country.

<comment><USER8> That's little solace to the people that do things that are perfectly legal in their own country, only to be arrested because their plane had to make an emergency landing at a US airport.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The good part:

| Most importantly, Bitcoin currently operates in a legal grey area. The federal government's supposed monopoly on issuing currency is somewhat narrow and statutes that impose that monopoly do not seem to apply to Bitcoin due to its digital nature. However, a bitcoin may be a "security" within the meaning of the federal securities laws, subjecting bitcoins to a vast regime of regulations, including general antifraud rules. Furthermore, other legal issues that have not been analyzed in this paper are probably significant, including tax evasion, banking without a charter, state escheat statutes, and money laundering.

</comment><comment><USER10> He missed the last part on the title: "in the US"</comment>


Red Hat Enterprise Linux Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sargun/red-hat-enterprise-linux-considered-harmful-c95af86062f4#.bc2shvitm <comment><USER2> RH may be dangerous, but not for the reasons this article presents.

While Torvalds holds the kernel devs to the mantra, higher layers are less stringent about not breaking.

For example compiler optimizations are a duel edged sword. There seems to not be a months without there being and article on the NH front page about C ambiguities that compilers will mangle as they see fit.

The article also gloss over that Fedora is backed by RH, it is pretty much their development branch. Many of the people working on Fedora are RH employees.

And that is perhaps the real danger of RH. So much that is happening above the kernel right now come straight out of Fedora.

The people involved there pretty much decide the course for Linux user space, and then supposedly independent orgs like Gnome and Freedesktop rubber-stamp that course.

This because they can devote their day to hammering out reams of code that solidifies that direction, while other distros have to rely on the spare time of their community members.

<comment><USER3> Right, I think that Red Hat the company is great. RHEL on the other hand isn't. I love Fedora. I love the work that RedHat does on Gluster, Ceph, and all of their other technologies.

RedHat changing this one thing about RHEL would radically change the way enterprise software works.

[Author]

<comment><USER2> And sink their ship in the process. What RH is doing with RHEL, is exactly what Microsoft has been doing with Windows for so long.

<comment><USER3> Err? The Windows kernel actually moves at a pretty reasonable pace, even on server.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tesla Motors Picks San Jose for $250 Million 'Model S' Plant and HQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/tesla-motors-picks-san-jose-model-s-hq.php

<comment> patrickg-zill I predict they will fail as a result. California is among the least business- friendly of states, especially if you are making a physical product. How much equipment does Cisco make in San Jose?

<comment><USER2> But California is one of the most aggressive alternative energy promoting states. They are motivated:

> California offered incentives worth about $15 million and possibly more. > That includes waiving rent for the first 10 years of the 40-year lease on > the San Jose property and waiving state sales tax on $100 million worth of > equipment.

<comment><USER3> _California is one of the most aggressive alternative energy promoting states._

Not really.

<http://news.google.com/news?q=fresno%20nuclear>

 _The Fresno Nuclear Energy Group has ignored a current state ban on new nuclear power plants._

<comment><USER4> Nuclear Energy _is_ alternative enery - alternative to Coal, Natural Gas or Oil fired generation.

It produces polution in reasonably small quantities which, unlike fossil generation, doesn't get thrown into the atmosphere.

A mixed Nuke/Renewable infrastructure, backed with gravity hydro reservoirs and a smallish number of gas turbine plants to absorb load spikes, is probably the most realistic and reliable way to stop throwing junk into the atmosphere in the short term.

<comment><USER3> _backed with gravity hydro reservoirs ... is probably the most realistic ... in the short term._

There seems to be a relative concensus among engineers that Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) makes the most sense for grid energy storage in the longer term.

[http://topics.energycentral.com/centers/gentech/view/detail....](http://topics.energycentral.com/centers/gentech/view/detail.cfm?aid=1404)

 _In Europe, a group of researchers are studying a different [from standard CAES] approach. It eliminates fuel consumption altogether, so that the system functions as a pure storage facility. They call it Advanced Adiabatic CAES.

The idea for AACAES is that, in the charge cycle, hot compressed air is passed through a counter-flow heat exchanger before being sent to its storage cavern. The compressed air transfers its heat to a thermal storage fluid, which then enters a well-insulated storage tank of its own. In the discharge cycle, both flows are reversed, and the cool compressed air from the storage cavern recovers most of the heat it gave up before being stored. The now-hot compressed air exiting the heat exchanger drives an expander turbine to generate power.

If the heat exchanger and thermal storage work well, then efficiencies approaching those achieved with pumped hydroelectric storage should be possible._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me a little of Steve Jobs, his endeavour and strategy for NeXT, with their own factory in California.

Perhaps Testla will have the same fate as NeXT, bought by an auto giant if they fail to go mainstream with their expensive, though great, cars.

<comment><USER6> I think they'll have a worse fate than NeXT. When the time comes for electric cars to go mainstream, the big car companies will just muscle in on Tesla's territory -- there's no need to buy them since (as far as I know) they don't own any of the key parts of the technology.

Tesla might survive as a niche manufacturer in the long run, but their small head-start in the electric car game isn't enough to make up for (say) Toyota's huge existing infrastructure.</comment></comment>


How a 17 Year Old Russian Kid Stole My Minecraft Account - <AUTHOR> http://rustyshelf.org/2015/08/13/how-a-17-year-old-russian-kid-stole-my-minecraft-account/

<comment><USER2> Hey dude, be a nice guy and share your account with him, you aren't even playing anymore.. You might just make someone's day :)

<comment><USER3> You didn't read the whole article, did you?

"It was a hollow victory though, unsatisfying and entirely unglamorous. Another switch flipped inside me, I went to Mojang's site and bought the kid his own Minecraft account. It was probably the wrong thing to do, it probably makes me a gullible fool, but I'd like to believe that somewhere out there, a 17 year old kid is playing Minecraft. He's happy, he's building things with his friends and he has a lasting memory of a weird Westerner he met while stealing his account. A Westerner that even though he didn't have to, bought him a replacement account that he enjoyed for many years. In truth he's probably blowing stuff up while tea-bagging his crazy online friends and laughing at how stupid I am, but, let an old guy dream, ok?"</comment></comment>


Show HN: Self-Quarantine Book Club - <AUTHOR> https://selfquarantinebookclub.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Self-Quarantine Book Club is a community on Slack where book lovers around the world come together to discuss what they're reading.

Each book has its own Slack channel, so it's easy to find other readers, share thoughts and questions, or just sit back and follow the conversation.

As of today we're opening it up for more people to join.

</comment><comment><USER3> use Discord. better for this kind of community

<comment><AUTHOR> I did look at Discord pretty hard and even set it all up for this community. But in the end I decided that enough of my existing network, friends, etc. have Slack on their devices to keep it simple to begin. Also, there's just enough of a download/learning gap that I didn't want to risk. It appears that if we want we could transition to Discord later, but I don't have any experience doing that. Have you seen people get stuck on the wrong tool and be unable to transition?

<comment><USER3> well, the discord community is quite big. it depends entirely on the kind of folks you want to attract. you are right - if its the office going devs, management folks then slack maybe the right way to do it. although we have a slack at workplace but the gamers in the office we use a Discord server. so far has been easier to pull in folks there since the context is preset - <USER2> are joining because you are working full time and like playing games (namely Factorio for now)</comment></comment></comment>


PlanGrid (YC W12) raises $40M - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/18/plangrid-lands-40-million-investment-to-expand-product/ <comment><USER2> PlanGrid is more evidence of the rise of vertical-specific SaaS. Their customers are basically like, "No one ever made software specifically for our industry -- can you give us more?"

Result: a software designed to solve one pain point eventually evolves into a general-purpose solution.

<comment><USER3> There's been lots of software to serve construction. PlanGrid is successful because:

1\. It's late enough to the game that it could start as a SaaS company.

2\. It's late enough to the market that it can leverage contemporary Silicon Valley financial tools.

3\. Mobile computing is now ubiquitous enough that a mobile first strategy is viable for construction...PlanGrid's creation story is based on the introduction of the iPad.

4\. PlanGrid has a low first cost (as in free tier) pricing model that allows initial use by construction company employees without incurring a cost against the budget of the projects to which they are assigned.

5\. The product was introduced to solve a narrow problem rather than sold a by four legged meat eating sales team as an office suite.

That said, successfully scaling out to a general solution is a different challenge because the number of moving parts increases and the edge cases that can cost a construction company enough money to put them under are exponentially larger. There's a hard copy fallback for drawings at the building department and another at the architect's office and various other copies living out in the wild at the architect's consultants and the contractor's subcontractors. That's not the case with a contractor's internal documentation.

To put it another way, there's a certain tolerable error level to a PlanGrid generated link from a floor plan to a detail because it can verified against the originals and the actual building. The acceptable error level is different when the electronic version is the original and there's no external validation mechanism.

Then again, $40 million is a lot of money to deploy against such challenges.

<comment><USER4> > The acceptable error level is different when the electronic version is the > original and there's no external validation mechanism.

But that's true about an all digital business. I mean, I'm pretty sure most of Google and Facebook's records are digital only. There are plenty of solutions that exist to make sure that it is backed up and replicated safely.

The trick here is convincing not only the construction companies that it is safe, but their regulators.

<comment><USER3> In the US to a first approximation, the regulations regarding construction companies don't include auditing of internal processes such as those PlanGrid appears to be tackling. The problem is the relationships between margins, the potential cost of errors, and the volume of projects a construction company undertakes. Margins are low, the cost of potential errors can be higher than the initial contract, and contractors handle a relatively low number of projects. In other words: small reserves, very bad worst cases, and not much spread of risk.

If Facebook looses my post of a cat picture, the worst thing likely to happen is that I rant on Hacker News. If a critical deviation gets lost in the shuffle, people die...and lawyers get involved. [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse#Aftermath)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> PlanGrid is doing really cool stuff. I hope the high-speed VC growth trajectory does not kill them. There's so much money in this space.

<comment><USER3> There's a lot of money in construction, about $400 billion in a mediocre year. But it's widely distributed - single family construction is about half of the total. There isn't a Google/Apple/Microsoft of construction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this YC Continuity's first investment?</comment>


This Startup Wants to Launch Giant Glowing Ads into the Night Sky - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/startrocket-giant-ads-night-sky-cubesats/ <comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, this is my idea of hell. We already have enough light pollution in the world.

<comment><USER2> I cannot co-sign this statement enough. I think we need to draw a clear line to limit advertisements like this.</comment></comment>


Google to Start Running Fiber in Kansas City - <AUTHOR> http://www.kansascity.com/2012/02/06/3412534/google-to-start-hanging-internet.html

<comment><USER2> My cable ISP just implemented a 150GB monthly limit. At 1gbps, this is 20 seconds of transfer.

I can't wait for Google (or anyone really) to blow away these awful regressive ISPs.</comment>


Health Bill Would Add 3.8% Tax on Investment Income - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-18/health-bill-said-to-add-3-8-medicare-tax-on-unearned-income.html

<comment><USER2> This is going to hurt startups. (the health care part is theoretically nice, but offset by the tax implications)

Short-term capital gains will be 15% (Fed) + 5% (Fed Increase in 2011) + 3.8% (this) + 10.3% (California). 34.1% capital gains!

This does not compare favorably to anywhere else in the world. For a CA startup founder, capital gains are going to be 1.5-3x higher than most countries.

This is an issue primarily because (half?) of US startups are founded by immigrants. At some point, it becomes more attractive for an immigrant to go to Vancouver, BC (21.5% tax rate, much easier immigration process, better quality of life than SFBA) or even to remain in India or China. The tax advantages might also push for Hong Kong or Singapore startups, with 0% capital gains and very low income tax.

A big number minus 34.1% is still better for an exit than a much smaller number minus a small percentage, but California is definitely not the only place to do a startup.

<comment><USER3> Do you see this hurting startups in some way other than reducing immigration?

I think it will help startups, by allowing small shops to bootstrap without having to surrender health insurance for themselves and for their families.

<comment><USER2> I think the combined CA + US tax burden might reduce marginal angel investments. It probably won't affect VC investments, but doubling my tax burden on a win means I'd need to double the odds of a win, or the size of the wins, and that might not be feasible as an angel, who could otherwise spend the money on a new boat.

I am unconvinced the health care result of this will be good enough for someone with a family to be comfortable going on relatively inexpensive insurance.

As a healthy, single, 20-40 year old guy with no risk of children, I'm fine with an $80/mo catastrophic plan, and I suspect a lot of people starting startups are the same, or have health care from a spouse's job. A single parent is not in a great position to do a startup for a lot of reasons, and someone with a lot of chronic health issues requiring expensive medical care probably isn't either.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't take ongoing chronic health issues to become uninsurable. For instance, having an unexplained seizure when you're 4 appears to do the trick, as does having a functioning female reproductive system.

I think there's a lot of room for reasonable people to disagree about whether this bill will help or hurt startups. But I don't think there's room to disagree about whether the status quo retards entrepreneurship. It does. Health insurance could have screwed me out of my company. Health insurance kept at least 3 candidates I can name off the top of my head from accepting a role with us in the early days of the company. There's no countervailing argument about how the status quo _encouraged_ someone to start a company.

<comment><USER2> The status quo of health care definitely retards entrepreneurship. Increased taxes also retard entrepreneurship (in a historically well documented way, although maybe the effect between 15-23.8% isn't a well tested range).

I am not sure which has a larger effect here.

I definitely would like to see some health insurance changes, just not the ones in this bill, and not by taxing capital to pay for services to individuals. Actually reducing costs would be my #1 approach -- politically unpopular, but I'd be fine with subsidized or free basic care for everyone, but no free advanced care for those without private insurance. Private insurance purchased by individuals, with or without a tax deduction, and totally decoupled from employers.

<comment><USER3> What's "advanced" care?

<comment><USER2> I sent you long email describing. Basically I'd like to see public subsidized or free health care at the NHS level (i.e. kind of crap, but good enough), with available free relatively-unregulated private insurance and private care. I figure it would cost $1-2k/person/yr for the public side (excluding old people in medicare, which is another huge problem), which is a lot less than is spent now covering marginally insured people, overhead of medicaid, etc. I'd get employers totally out of the insurance game.

This is politically unpopular (some people WILL get lower quality free care under this plan than they get today, and some people might get lower quality care than under employer-provided care, if they choose to spend the savings on something else like food or education, which might be rational!) Also, I think the US Government is possibly more incompetent in running healthcare (I work in DoD healthcare, so I see this firsthand...) than the UK or Canadians or French.

<comment><USER3> Your email was great. You should click "edit" on your post and paste the email over your comment. I'll do the same with mine.

In the meantime, my response was: a totally standard appendectomy for a friend of mine cost tens of thousands of dollars. That isn't a quality of care issue, it isn't a freak incident, it doesn't involve preventative care or externalities. Nobody is comfortable starting a company where they will be instantly bankrupt if their kid's appendix bursts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The health care bill would seem to increase demand for healthcare services without actually increasing supply for healthcare.

Doctors takes years to train, drug trial are still expensive, amongst other thing.

All what we're doing is adding million of individuals into the healthcare system without balancing the supply side equation.

It would also seem to treat health care insurance as a sugar daddy of healthcare, instead of being treated as a mechanism that reduce risks through incentive and such. This make insurance companies big juicy targets for healthcare providers. If people were to spend their money on the daily cost of healthcare, they would be more conscious of the cost, thus use it only as neccesary. Insurances would only be used in high cost emergency measures such as cancer and other diseases, which are preventable and can be reduced by individuals.

This reduce the demand for healthcare and give people incentives to lower their cost their healthcare cost through insurance's discounts, thus less strain on the supply of healthcare.

The taxation scheme also rob people incentive of saving for emergency measures, an alternative or complement to insurance spending, which may have the side effect of impacting long run productive growth or simply maintenance of current productive capacity(Capitals need to be maintained or replaced), as saving are in effect fund the production of capitals, which eventually lead to consumer goods and services.

<comment><USER3> Those millions of individuals are already in the health care system. The primary impact of the bill seems to be whether their contact with the system bankrupts them or not. Either way, the hospital isn't getting $3,500 for the MRI they just ran.

Your concerns all seem very reasonable. In particular, the distortion of the concept of "insurance". But, two things.

First, that distortion already took place. Providers and insurers have spent the last two decades colluding on pricing and process in ways that transformed Blue Cross from an insurer to a poorly-regulated utility.

Second, your concerns are orthogonal to the debate. We should train more doctors, and we should create more tiers of service (nurse practitioner clinics in particular). That has little to do with whether we should allow de facto monopolies to lock consumers out of the healthcare market.

<comment><USER5> _First, that distortion already took place. Providers and insurers have spent the last two decades colluding on pricing and process in ways that transformed Blue Cross from an insurer to a poorly-regulated utility._

The health care bill takes this to a whole new level, and then sets it in stone.

Insurance and health care delivery was already a mess in the U.S. But prior to this bill, we might have evolved or legislated some solution that was not a stupendous giveaway to Blue Cross and Aetna. Too late now. They will never give up the privileges they get today. They get to be toll collectors on our outrageously overpriced health care system forever.

Meanwhile, I read articles with people celebrating because they think this bill _protects_ them from the health insurance industry. It's all just too depressing.

<comment><USER3> I agree with your sentiment. But from what I can tell, the likelihood that we were ever going to disentangle the insurers from the system was _nil_. It would have taken a climactic reshaping of health care, like single-payer.

When I look at the well-intentioned reform ideas coming from the opposition, I see things like "deregulate and sell across state lines". These ideas don't weaken the grip of BCBS and Aetna; they encourage consolidation and push us further in the direction of the Citigroup-izing of health insurance.

What's on the table will, on paper at least, ensure that startup entrepreneurs like me can actually buy insurance on the private market. We didn't have that ability before, at all. That's a win, from what I can see. Would I prefer not to have BCBS and United be the vehicles for that win? Of course. But what does that have to do with anything?

<comment><USER5> You're right, we probably weren't going to disentangle the insurers. That is not an argument for handing them the keys to the nation for the sake of "doing something". Doing nothing would have been better. At a guess, doing nothing would have resulted in attempts to reform at the state level, like Massachusetts. I'd have preferred that outcome by a long way.

 _What's on the table will, on paper at least, ensure that startup entrepreneurs like me can actually buy insurance on the private market. We didn't have that ability before, at all. That's a win, from what I can see._

I do not have employer provided insurance. I buy private insurance on the market today. It costs me about $6000 a year to insure my family of four. I expect the cost of insurance, post-reform, to converge on the national average, which is around $13000. That's a loss of $7000 a year for us. Maybe somewhat less because of subsidies (we won't get much there). Maybe more, if the cost of insurance rises post-reform as it did in Massachusetts under their similar reform.

It is not out of the question that we will actually give up health insurance altogether and pay the penalty instead. This would not be a win for us.

If you aren't able to get individual coverage for around $6000/year now (national average), and would like to, then this bill will indeed be a win for you. Of course, if you don't like the coverage you get at that price, pay it anyway or get fined.

This is getting too long, but does it seem thinkable to you that this reform might accelerate the increase in health care costs? I think it quite likely myself. If it does, too bad for everyone. We're locked in now.

<comment><USER3> It would have cost $14,000 to insure my family of four (adults in our 30s, kids in single-digits, no pre-existing conditions). I say "would have" because dollar figures didn't come into it: we were flatly denied coverage, first for our daughter, who had been hospitalized several years earlier for a freak seizure, and then for my wife.

(Note: we tried to obtain coverage ourselves, using the Internet and a telephone. When that failed, we worked with an insurance broker friend of the family. Neither worked.)

There was no dollar amount that would have bought us private insurance. We got around it first by getting Erin a job that offered group coverage, and then by setting up group health insurance at Matasano. I'm happy to say we now subsidize coverage for all our employees.

The numbers are a red herring. COBRA vs. private health insurance costs are not the issue that should be scaring entrepreneurs. The possibility of getting stranded with no possible coverage option is what should be scaring them.

<comment><USER5> _The numbers are a red herring. COBRA vs. private health insurance costs are not the issue that should be scaring entrepreneurs._

Thousands of dollars a year in new expenses is not a red herring and is plenty scary. It's not what's important to you, but it is going to be important to a lot of other people.

People who have chosen catastrophic coverage, or who chose to go without health insurance to save money are going to get hit hard by this bill. My guess is a disproportionate number of self-employed people fall into this category.

People will go out of business because of this bill.

<comment><USER3> I don't think you're correct. I've read the Senate bill, though perhaps not as carefully as you have. I don't see where it says high-deductable plans don't qualify as health insurance for the purpose of satisfying the mandate.

I don't care about the people who choose to go without health insurance to save money. I wind up paying for them when they get hit by a car, when their appendix bursts, when they have a freak aneuryism, or when they fall down their stairs.

The same arguments suggest that people who drive infrequently and carefully should be allowed to forgo car insurance. After all, you can always sue them when something goes wrong with their plan!

<comment><USER5> I have not heard that catastrophic coverage is banned by the bill, but the end of this sort of insurance is implied because of adverse selection. Either "insurers cannot refuse coverage" will have exceptions, or reduced cost/reduced benefit programs have to go. Maybe it will take a year or two before the "quality standards" get enacted, but I can't see it not happening.

 _I don't care about the people who choose to go without health insurance to save money. I wind up paying for them when they get hit by a car, when their appendix bursts, when they have a freak aneuryism, or when they fall down their stairs._

People go without health insurance because it is incredibly expensive. For a lot of people it is a crappy deal, or just flat out unaffordable.

It is interesting how people who thought they couldn't afford health insurance used to be portrayed as victims. Now they're the bad guys, they broke the system for everyone else, and you don't need to care about them. What a difference two years makes.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand how your logic follows. There are no rules in the Senate bill that cap premiums, or establish floors for the premiums of high deductable insurance. Won't adverse selection drive down the cost of high- deductable insurance as it becomes a proxy for "insurance for 20-30 year olds unlikely to make claims"?

If you can afford health insurance, and health insurance is available to you, and you decide not to buy it because you're 25 and you don't think you'll need it, you don't deserve my sympathy. If you can't afford health insurance, you deserve whatever we can do to make health insurance affordable to you. Please don't try to drag me into identity politics. This isn't a "rich vs. poor" issue.

<comment><USER5> If the rule is cannot deny coverage, high risk people will buy the cheap policy and then switch when they need the expensive benefits. For that matter low risk people will switch if they roll snake-eyes and need to schedule something expensive like reconstructive surgery. This is essentially the same adverse selection logic that justifies the mandate.

 __*

People choosing to buy or not buy insurance has gotten reframed, and I find it interesting to see how effectively the switch took place.

In 2008, your hypothetical 25 year old would have been portrayed as a victim, if anything. Screwed over by the greedy health insurance companies who make it impossible to get decent coverage at a reasonable price.

In 2010, he's the bad guy. It's his fault the system is broken. He is morally obligated to buy that health insurance now, and if he argues that he's getting a crappy deal for what he is paying, it's him who is being selfish and greedy.

There are certainly identity politics tangled up in health care reform, but I was talking about the reframing of an issue and fickle public opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What are the startup or hacker implications?

<comment><USER7> Less worrying about staying insured if you quit your job to found a company, which is a huge barrier for a lot of people (especially with dependents).

More wanking over _"oh noes I might not invest in your startup now that my payday would be taxed slightly more"_ , followed by handwringing about a perceived slide into socialism, but nearly no change in investment behavior. Maybe a few people cash out earlier than they would have to avoid the tax increase.

<comment><USER8> Wanking is a good word for it. I've never understood how people looking for upside measured in the hundreds to thousands of percent can complain about a 3.8% tax with a straight face.

If you invest $100k in a startup, it goes well and you walk away with a million ($900k profit), are you really going to cry when the tax man comes and gets his $34,200? I guess you might, but it didn't suddenly make the investment not worth it.

Then again, those people aren't likely the ones complaining. It's the people who have a hypothetical model in their head of what "investors" are like and want to use it as a talking point to attack health care reform.

<comment><USER9> Let me start by saying that I am not opposed to the proposed healthcare reform, since I don't know enough about it to have any opinion, and I suspect that if I did invest the time and learned the facts I would be in favor of the reform.

With this out of the way, your argument seems completely wrong to me. In reality nobody can consistently get 1000% returns, or anywhere near it, from the startups they invest in. (If that was possible, everyone would want to invest in startups and the valuations would go up until the returns got more in line with other investment vehicles with the same risk profile.) In reality, for every startup where you invested $100k and walked away with $1M, there are many where you invested $100k and walked away with zero. On average the returns can't be much different from what you get elsewhere, I'm guessing I won't be off by much if I say 10% before tax and before inflation. And 4% difference in tax burden will also mean about the same it means for other investments, which is to say it's not insignificant. Think of the lenghts people go to in order to put a little more money in a tax sheltered part of their portfolios. Or, think of the risks many people with stock options grants took to convert their short term capital gains into long term (and many of them got burnt very badly when the dot com bubble burst).

<comment><USER8> I totally agree with you _in aggregate_. If you take the entirety of the VC/Angel scene and figure out the overall return, it's probably not that much different than other investment vehicles (it's probably a bit higher, since there are barriers to entry, which prevents everyone from getting into the game).

But my point was for those upper echelon's of VC/Angels who actually make money. PG has pointed out in the past that there really are only a handful of VC/Angels that actually consistently make money (and more importantly in the case of VCs make money for their investors). You're right that my case was idealized, but investment losses can also be used to offset gains for tax purposes, and this is an industry of lawyers, so I doubt the tax effects are as clear cut as either of us paints them to be. And I still maintain my overall point that 3.8% isn't going to suddenly kill the startup scene. If it was that tax sensitive, it wouldn't be in California to begin with.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 questions for Y Combinator's Paul Graham - <AUTHOR> http://blog.easydns.org/archives/217-5-questions-for-YCombinators-Paul-Graham.html

<comment><USER2> Not entirely related, but I really like using 3rd party DNS services. (I use DNSMadeEasy.) They offer reliability, because they disperse their DNS machines geographically.

If you keep your TTL low enough and your host has a massive outage, you can reroute traffic to hosting environments. (If for no other reason to say, "Uh. Our host just got nuked. Give us a few hours to get everything installed on our new host.")

<comment><USER3> You are talking about a poor man's global load balancing :-)</comment></comment>


Getting Started in Natural Language Processing - <AUTHOR> https://monkeylearn.com/blog/getting-started-in-natural-language-processing-nlp/ <comment><USER2> As a linguist and software engineer I can't imagine someone doing serious NLP without ever having studied [concrete] syntax trees and such. It is easy to impress people with some tokenization but it's n-grams that are really useful in the real world, as is understanding syntax trees and all the interconnections possible inside them so you can NLP the shit out of real world text/speech, instead of simple examples with a tagger (and a good, carefully crafted for a demo like Apple's, trained set of tagged data). This is a good summary article with very good links nonetheless.

<comment><USER3> > as is understanding syntax trees and all the interconnections possible > inside them so you can NLP the shit out of real world text/speech

But do modern DL approaches (e.g. SQuad, translation models) defy this approach? They train DL models on labeled data without knowing anything about syntax trees, and allow NN do all the magic..

<comment><USER4> > They train DL models on labeled data without knowing anything about syntax > trees, and allow NN do all the magic.

Sure, but that doesn't mean that knowing about syntax won't improve the result. If you're training a translation model on a huge database of labeled examples, it might discover syntactic relationships from scratch. But if you don't have so much data, you're probably better off using all the auxiliary information you can get.

<comment><USER3> > But that doesn't mean that knowing about syntax won't improve the result

this is likely correct, additional high quality input will likely improve performance, but creating such input for 200 modern human languages requires significant effort, much larger than allowing NN to solve this problem, that's why researchers invest this effort into NN improvement, not syntax tree creation tooling.

<comment><USER5> All of us have to strike the right balance between stubbornly believing that NNs will solve all problems in NLP -which, imho, underestimates what linguistics can do for this field of study- and stubbornly saying that only linguistic knowledge will lead to an improvement of the results -which, imho, means underestimating the outstanding work on deep learning techniques done so far. As you said, creating high-quality input is likely to be costly -and I'm not talking about syntax tree creation tooling only here. But, isn't it worth the while? I believe it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really love that this getting started guide is "do lots of studying and practice, here are the canonical textbooks, papers, conferences, tools, and problems" instead of "spend a few hours on this superficial toy problem." I'd love to see more guides like this.

<comment><USER7> I strongly disagree.

It's easy to list a lot of books and papers (and drown newcomers in them), without pointing to actual step=by-step starting points. Sure, doing superficial problems is only the first step (and it's foolish to think that it is the last step). Yet, you can read all books in the world, but unless you are able to prove theorems, or write code, you know less than someone who wrote a small script to predict names.

Additionally, it's weird that they recommend NLTK (no, please not), SpaCy (cool and very useful, but high-level), but not Gensim, PyTorch (or at least: Keras). As a side note, PyTorch has readable implementations of classical ML techniques, such as word2vec (vide [https://adoni.github.io/2017/11/08/word2vec- pytorch/](https://adoni.github.io/2017/11/08/word2vec-pytorch/)).

There are some good recommendations linked there (I really like "Speech and Language Processing" by Dan Jurafsky and James H. Martin [https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/](https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/), and recommended myself in [http://p.migdal.pl/2017/01/06/king-man-woman-queen- why.html](http://p.migdal.pl/2017/01/06/king-man-woman-queen-why.html)).

<comment><USER8> I finished top 25 in kaggle using NLTK and sklearn. word2vec is thrown around like the gospel in NLP, but simple techniques usually do a lot better because: #1 there isnt that much data in most cases and most importantly #2 the corpus differs substantially than the one word2vec was fit on. I am really flabbergasted by how many people start with word2vec and LSTM and come up with really over-fit models and they never even tried the simple things.

using ngrams (1 and 2 on words, and 3-5 characters with truncated SVD) gets you really far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What, no Charniak? Tut tut:

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/statistical-language- learning](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/statistical-language-learning)

</comment><comment><USER10> Besides NLP course by Jurafsky, course "Introduction to Natural Language Processing" by D. Rädev is quite good - there were some topics not covered in Jurafsky course</comment>


Programmers Who Defined The Technology Industry: Where Are They Now? - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/development/124541/programmers-who-defined-the-technology-industry-where-are-they-now

<comment><USER2> From the Dan Bricklin section: "One thing I've always done, for many years -- I know Bob Frankston did, too -- you have to figure out a path through the whole thing and implement that first,"

I believe we call that MVP now.

<comment><USER3> If you read all the way to the end, you'll see that it was a common theme among those early developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very important point Bricklin makes, and one I agree with strongly:

"But one thing is and was necessary: experience shipping a product. You should know, he says, 'what it is to actually complete something and get it out the door. That's a real important thing to learn.' Nothing beats the experience of shipping software, to take something from start to finish. You get feedback from users, and find out what you did right and wrong. It's even better, he says, to do this with other people"

Ideas and knowledge are great. Accomplishment is something else altogether. Ship, ship, ship!

</comment><comment><USER5> The ads on that site are absolutely horrendous, playing sound without warning and covering the main content. Flagged this link for that reason.

</comment><comment><USER6> one page: <http://www.itworld.com/print/124541>

</comment><comment><USER7> On the same topic, I really enjoyed this podcast that included Dan Bricklin:

<http://thisdeveloperslife.com/post/1270441885/1-0-5-homerun>

Some great stories by developers who hit a "home run"

</comment><comment><USER4> adblock ftw! Very interesting read.</comment>


An utterly hopeless orgchart... now what should I do? - <AUTHOR> http://www.flickr.com/photos/35336338@N06/3273551197/

<comment><USER2> That chart reflects most places I've worked, especially the larger ones. It's good in some ways, because those if there were no inefficiencies in organizations, startups would have it that much harder.

</comment><comment><USER3> 50% "overhead" for management and direction sounds pretty low. The only hopeless thing about that chart is the number of geographical sites.</comment>


Jessica Alba's Honest Co. Gets $200M Investment - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-honest-company-gets-200-million-investment-from-private-equity-firm-1528309613 <comment><USER2> Everything is branded for what it's not

</comment><comment><USER3> Some of the products are decent: the baby wipes, the dishwasher detergent. I'm probably missing a couple. But the majority of honest products are still quite harsh - in that their ingredients aren't up to par or they are very very drying: hand sanitizers, hand soap, laundry detergent.

It is refreshing to see a company with such a diverse range, with some hitting the mark, get traction. I see Honest stuff almost everywhere now, whereas it used to be more niche.

</comment><comment><USER4> I fail to see how this is newsworthy to HN as Honest Co. isn't a tech driven company. Looks like being dishonest cost them a good chunk of their valuation.

Since WSJ is behind a paywall but likely regurgitating the same basic info, here's a link with the gist of the investment:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-honest-co- equity/jessica-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-honest-co- equity/jessica-albas-honest-co-gets-200-million-investment-from-l-catterton- idUSKCN1J22BP)

<comment><USER5> > isn't a tech driven company

Not all of the things posted on HN are about 'tech driven' companies, even though the majority are.

<comment><USER4> I realize that but there are no other intellectually interesting features that usually define HN submissions. The only notable thing is the company is founded and run by Jessica Alba. Correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER6> I think the connection here is Honest Co. is a heavily marketed as a way to be an ethical consumer -- akin to whole foods, soylent or hampton co. In addition, Honest Co.'s best selling products are baby related and the mean silicon valley founder is approximately 30 ([https://hbr.org/2014/04/how-old- are-silicon-valleys-top-foun...](https://hbr.org/2014/04/how-old-are-silicon- valleys-top-founders-heres-the-data)) which is also about the same average age for having your first child in California ([https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db232.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db232.htm))

So based upon that, the user overlap between HN and Honest Co. maybe larger then you think.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SnapIt – A Core Data Alternative using Ruby-like syntax - <AUTHOR> http://www.github.com/zniazi/snapit

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure I'd call this a Core Data alternative, as it seems closer to a few convenience methods around SQLite.

I'd imagine that using this for presenting data in any kind of table view (a typical use for a local data store) could be extremely frustrating as it wouldn't do any of the progressive loading, caching or change notification that Core Data gives you.

Core Data can be a pain to work with, but when you do it right, it has some extremely nice features - stuff that you absolutely need in a performant, stable app that handles data at a scale of anything more than a few dozen records.

Also, looks like we've got some cat references (from the demo) in the library's own code, so I'm not sure whether the demo was created to demonstrate the library, or the library was a rushed abstraction of the cat project :)

Edit: [https://github.com/zniazi/SnapIt/blob/86f1ec45e6493c3fc9fd4d...](https://github.com/zniazi/SnapIt/blob/86f1ec45e6493c3fc9fd4d01e76d51095b5eb200/Pod/Classes/SnapIt.m#L271)

I would absolutely _not_ recommend this for use in any kind of real-world app. From what I can tell, there is no attempt whatsoever to sanitize or parameterize SQL statements.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right in that NSFetchedResultsController is a nice feature of using Core Data with TableViews, but the functionality is not difficult to write on your own. As you insert or update data, call [tableView reloadData]. You may not want to reload each cell for one insert in which case you can do something a bit more custom.

And yeah, there is a reference to catsDB. I thought people may find that funny if they ever looked into the implementation. The work is derived from a blog post I wrote a while back to demonstrate connecting to a SQL instance in Objective C.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Slightly off topic: are there any good solutions for keeping localdata and a rails back-end in sync? If the device is offline save locally, otherwise sync with the rails app.

<comment><USER4> That's the most straightforward solution. I'm working on an Android app that syncs calls and texts to a Rails back-end and I try to keep the sync workflow as simple as possible. As for sync'ing, I found the following to be a huge boon for users:

\- Allow the user to set sync to happen only when connected via Wi-Fi (not sure if this is possible in iOS, but it's easy to check how an Android device is connected to the Internet).

\- Give options for sync intervals. Most of our users choose once a day. Other options include sync'ing a call or text right after it's finished or received if they need their data to be up-to-date within minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Realm is also pretty neat as a core data alternative: [http://realm.io/](http://realm.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, the syntax is very clean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. How does this play with Swift?

<comment><AUTHOR> The code is written in Objective C. I will make a Swift implementation soon. In the meantime, if you write your application in Swift you can still use it by bridging the Objective C code inside your Swift application.

[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/swift/...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/swift/conceptual/buildingcocoaapps/MixandMatch.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You mean an ActiveRecord-like syntax.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's right.</comment></comment>


Nonreligious children are more generous - <AUTHOR> http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2015/11/nonreligious-children-are-more-generous <comment><USER2> I think there might me a simple explanation for this.

Nonreligious children tend to be richer and come from richer countries. Having more wealth means they do not attach as much value to material goods, so they are more "altruistic". Likewise, wealth shields them from the consequences of negative actions, so they are less "punitive".</comment>


Pakistan flood aid pledged - data broken down, country by country  - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/aug/09/pakistan-flood-aid

<comment><USER2> On the one hand, I'm glad to see many European countries in there, but on the other hand I always kind of fear for the effectiveness of this kind of ad-hoc aid.</comment>


Ask HN: What has been your biggest risk? - <AUTHOR>

And did it pay off? <comment><USER2> The Team. The more time that I spend building companies (Securemote, Linuxcare, Sputnik, Technorati, and now Offbeat Guides), the more I realize that the single biggest risk is in picking a great team. Get a great team that works together, and you can resolve almost every other problem - competition, product, market, financing, etc.

Pick a poor team, and you can have all the advantages in the world - lots of money, little competition, a killer product, a huge market, and the company will find a way to screw it up.

This was probably the biggest eye-opener for me when I moved from CTO jobs to CEO. It's all about the people, and how everyone works together. Learning leadership skills was incredibly important for me to be able to build and inspire teams.

I've seen both sides of this at all the companies that I started. In my experience, it's far and away the most important factor in a company's success or failure.

<comment><USER3> Management. The more companies I work for, the more I realize that coherent decision makers are the foundation of successful enterprises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Strapped camera to head.. turned into company

<comment><USER5> Went to work for company started by guy who strapped a camera to his head ;-)

<comment><USER6> lol

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Went to live in South America just because I was tired of Belgium, no job, no money. Turned out fantastic.

<comment><USER8> Gosh, I miss Belgium, spent 5 years there. Australian weather is great and stuff, but it's boooring...

<comment><USER9> Oz is boring? Im stuck in the UK and would love to be back in Oz because the UK is boring (and the weather is terrible)! My theory is that no matter where you live, it becomes normal (aka boring) after a few years.

<comment><USER8> Haha, so true!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Biggest risk : Not taking a risk, until now.

Going to start on my own from Oct 01, 2008. The current economic scenario makes that option seem more adventurous/challenging, making it my next biggest risk.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nothing huge yet, but a risk I may be taking in a year or so is moving out of the province/country.

My goal is to move to Seattle with my girlfriend but obtaining a working visa trying to work at a small company/startup seems tough and basically start something new before moving back to Canada to start the next part of my life (probably a family)

It's a big risk to me because I'm currently in a nice cushy startup with great people, good money, and I really can't complain. But a man's gotta experience life you know?

</comment><comment><USER12> Working at a corporation for a year. I guess it was worth it to know what it is like, but a terrible long term financial, educational, and health risk--not because of the company, but the domestication of relying on someone else over many years. Also, the opportunities I missed out on while working.

</comment><comment><USER13> Got married.

Sold everything, moved from Australia to London.

Took up contracting

Wife worked on our startup while we bootstrapped instead of earning a salary.

In retrospect, it really doesnt feel like a risk at all, but I have significantly less hair.

</comment><comment><USER14> Getting married.

</comment><comment><USER15> Leaving a decent job where I worked with good people and was paid well. I left to go to grad school full time.

I have yet to complete my studies, but my feeling is that it has been worth the cost.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not quitting my finance job.

Actually it was using 90k in credit card debt to finance my first business. It paid off.

</comment><comment><USER17> quit my job, no funding, just own savings, each day of my personal freedom and a hard work is the best revenue I can get from this risk!

</comment><comment><USER18> customer risk. assuming people know what they want.

specifically, do the potential customers who i interview really know how they want their information management problems solved

payoff: tbd

</comment><comment><USER19> I wanted to study Medicine. I ended up working for Wall Street.</comment>


Why an Upstate Prisoner with a History of Escape Foiled His Latest - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/nyregion/david-sweat-prison-escape.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16041707](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16041707)</comment>


Interesting Case of Mismatched Parentheses - <AUTHOR> http://kazimirmajorinc.blogspot.com/2010/05/interesting-case-of-mismatched.html <comment><USER2> This guy needs to learn something about visual design & usability.

Collhorrrz...</comment>


Show HN: Screen Sharing with Code for Teams - <AUTHOR> https://gitduck.com/remote-teams <comment><USER2> This looks pretty awesome, Boris and Crispin! I know this is a space with a lot of movement right now. How do you compare to a service like Tupal?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

I think the main difference is that GitDuck works async. You can record your screen/Code and other developers can interact and watch it at their own pace, whenever they can.

Merry Christmas!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic app!

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice icons</comment>