Ask HN: Reddit vs. HN - <AUTHOR> Specifically /r/programming vs HN.<p>Is the user-base different? Is it just differences in karma/downvoting mechanics? Am I right to irrationally dislike reddit?<p>[Disclaimer: I am an avid HNer who has barely touched reddit] <comment><USER2> I'm an avid Redditor that is migrating to HN. When I experience Reddit withdrawal (it's a thing!) I realize that in my experience HN is a much more intellectual community. By that, I mean that the general HN community seems more driven to teach and learn about all kinds of topics. Reddit has its fair share of that (with more diversity due to a larger user base) but intermingled with a slew of cat memes, etc. that really contribute nothing to my life. People in some demographics may use it to procrastinate doing work, but I am working on finding more productive ways to do so. Certain subreddits such as /r/personalfinance can be useful for life advice, however, and it seems that many more AMAs are done on Reddit than anywhere else.

<comment><USER3> The comments in /r/programming are much more light-hearted, which is a welcome break from the near-extreme seriousness of HN. I certainly appreciate having an "intellectual community," but sometimes you want to read honest, anonymous comments, even if there's a joke in there.

<comment><USER4> I totally agree with anonymous comments. I guess its not the point of HN, but I'm unsettled by how negative users react to genuine attempts at humour. Maybe its just me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reddit is culturally focused to me, and younger and less intellectual/cerebral. Of course, by saying that, I'm sure there are outliers that can be posted that show how reddit can foster the most intellectual discussion possible! By cultural I mean it isn't much use for discussion about work/programming, nor is it an effective news aggregator on any level, but it is a great way to find humorous or entertaining content or discussions on popular culture.

In honesty, reddit doesn't attract a lot of the actually-hacking hacker crowd.

I go to reddit to see what consumers think and HN to see what producers think.

Reddit is more like an unbridled 'id' of people in a similar culture to HN. Witchhunts, trolling, nastiness, low-effort posting, are stereotypes of reddits most famous and popular areas, and for good reason. Almost every community of any size on reddit is a pretty intellectually barren place (shout out to the outliers like /r/askscience).

It is what it is, but you go to reddit to talk about video games and popular culture and cat pictures, and you go to HN to talk about coding, web development, and the many topics surrounding it.

<comment><USER6> I like how little patience HN has for off-topic, non-constructive or unfounded comments.

Sometimes I have the feeling that even HN is bit too redditish for me. Is there something that is to HN what HN is to reddit?

<comment><USER7> Lobste.rs if you don't mind very few posts.

Mailing lists for the other stuff.

<comment><USER8> I've visited lobsters a few times but it never seemed like the comments were particularly active.

<comment><USER7> That not necessarily a bad thing if they're aiming for quality over quantity. They might need to be a bit more active though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've found quite a bit of convergence when it comes to skepticism, realism, pragmatism, criticism, and like qualities.

Where HN differs the most to me is the lack of jokes or comments that really aren't directly related to the post. On Reddit, jokes, in-references, and memes are often very highly upvoted. On HN, that seems to be frowned upon and downvoted quickly.

<comment><USER10> Jokes are sometimes ok (it seems to depend on people's moods...) on HN if they're clever and original. Lame, boring memes are killed quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In my experience, Reddit somewhat encourages snark and sarcasm, but you better be bleeding edge and perfect in your wit, lest you be criticized into reddit hell. Hacker news does a pretty good job of squashing most snark, sarcasm and humor which gives it a clarity of focus toward helpful discussion.

I think that this generally makes HN a much more pleasant, if slightly sterile place to hang out. In my opinion, that is a worthy trade off. I think the main critique I have of HN is that sometimes comments that are critical, but not necessarily mean get downvoted. Its a tough problem to solve though, so I can give it a pass. Maybe I should create a biometric mood ring that attaches your mood context with a post...

<comment><USER12> I too have this problem when commenting on HN vs Reddit. When a badly phrased comment would be actually taken lightly on reddit here it gets easily misunderstood. That is one of the reasons I do not comment as much as I wish.

I honestly think a small part of all this is linked to the cultural differences between different generations and peoples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I see HN as a more professional version of tech subreddits with a higher standard in both content posted and discussion. I still use reddit to find some stuff but reddit is a lot more laid back and intelligent discussion is less likely to happen on that platform IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER10> HN has always had a bit more spirit of being friendly to the next person even if it's not always evident. The "comic book guy" tone is stronger on reddit.

<comment><USER14> Are we browsing the same version of HN? This is not my experience at all. The amount of blind judgement and "well, actually..." thrown about here is incredible.

<comment> maze-le I know what you mean, but I think the troll-density here is lower than on most newsboards...

<comment><USER15> Until you get to social issues here on HN. This is like flushing quail and the sky blackens with all the trolls.

<comment><USER10> Which is why those things are mostly off-topic, and should be flagged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My activity on Reddit has always been extremely minimal -- I have found the toxicity of interactions between peers to run rampant in most situations. I've only been an audience member in such situations (i.e., I was not involved in generating said situation, they are situations I've happened across -- often too late to make a difference).

The disheartening part, to me, was that certain individuals participating in /r/learnprogramming tended to be outright aggressive towards individuals who had legitimate questions -- questions I had myself when first learning to program.

While reddit seems to be the breeding ground for hate groups and public shaming, this is likely the minority (even if the minority seems rather large). I wouldn't expect to see posts on HN whose entire purpose is to generate hate speech against women speaking out against how women are currently portrayed in games or for the purpose of shaming an individual new to programming for their lack of "expert" knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm a user of both and I'd say both are great but both have deep-seated issues that make me wary of using either at all.

 __HN __

HN is wonderful in that you 're more likely to learn something from the comments and have an intellectual discussion. If you can get to the discussion fast enough. Or if that thread doesn't magically die off. Due to the lack of a notification system on HN, there are lots of dangling, empty comments.

The problem is that HN is very much "all or nothing". If you post an HN question, you're either going to get 200+ comments with people discussing the minutiae or you get a 0 comment thread going.

Sharing links on HN is the same way. 90% of the userbase stays on the front page without even clicking "next" on the bottom that means that there are 20+ threads at any given moment but they usually stay static for hours at a time, giving no other threads any attention.

The upside is that self-promotion is totally okay. No one gives you shit for posting an article you wrote.

 __Reddit __

I don 't personally spend too much time on /r/programming, but I do spend a ton of time on /r/webdev. The issue with Reddit is RULES. There are tons of rules, there are ruthless mods, and often, good content gets buried while terrible content makes it to the top. There's an inherent mistrust in the system.

With that said, I found it more likely to get an answer to a question on Reddit than on here. And I found it more likely that people would discuss something I post. Basically, Reddit feels like there is more small-user generated content rather than big journalism taking over. For example, check the top links for HN, how many of those come from big newspapers/online magazines that everyone knows? Now check Reddit, how about that ratio instead?

Basically, I feel like Reddit is more about users generating discussion and content while HN is more about users responding to a discussion or content. If that makes sense.

I use both, obviously.

<comment><AUTHOR> On a side note, why is there no notification system for HN? It would be great to know that someone has replied to a comment.

Incidentally, I will probably never see if you reply to this.

<comment><USER18> I wish it had a notification system too. I don't live on HN and sometimes I forget to check my previous comments to see if there was any replies for at least a couple days.

<comment><USER17> I use HN Notify which emails you when someone replies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like Reddit for the smaller (particularly local) subreddits. But as a frontpage, HN is far more inviting to me. HN discussions are far more engaging and constructive; with Reddit, you're competing with whoever can copy-paste a meme the fastest. (edit: typo)

</comment><comment><USER20> If you stick to just the popular subreddits, you are doing yourself a disservice. Subreddit subscriptions are what make Reddit really nice.

If you are trying to compare /r/programming to HN, you really don't understand the purpose of either I should think.

</comment><comment><USER21> My biggest issue with HN is the the automatic dismissal and downvoting of comments which discuss non-sexy legacy technologies. Reddit seems to be far more pragmatic about tech choices while HN leans heavily toward the dogmatic side.

</comment><comment><USER22> Biggest differences I notice is Reddit not only tolerates but it rewards jokes / puns / non-seriousness but on HN it's really hard to avoid being downvoted when telling a joke. Beyond that I don't think there is much difference; there is a hive-mind in HN just like reddit (and like any social experience; it's human nature so impossible to avoid).

One thing I will say is on HN, after like 3 or 4 comments within 10 minutes I usually can't post another comment again for another 30+ minutes (I've never been able to quantify the amount of comments required to trigger the throttle and how long it lasts). So it's really difficult to have any type of quick, back and forth conversations / discussions on HN but on Reddit, even though they have a throttle, it's no where near as aggressive so it's more possible there. I'm not sure the HN throttle is necessarily bad but I know I don't enjoy its aggressiveness.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's totally different. HN has very little technical content compared to /r/programming. Some people here say that /r/programming's userbase is less sophisticated than HN. In my experience this sophistication is only skin deep with regards to technical discussion. In the rare technical discussion on HN the form and number of smart sounding words matter more than whether the technical point is correct. It seems as if the people voting know less about the technical content they vote on. HN is just more of a startup and general topics discussion board than a technical discussion board. You can also see it in this thread: most people posting here talk about other subreddits than /r/programming, which indicates that they may not be programmers.

On the other hand, people are more polite and generally nicer on HN. Perhaps this is an inherent difference in the audience, or because the comment scores are hidden on HN.

<comment><USER24> > You can also see it in this thread: most people posting here talk about > other subreddits than /r/programming, which indicates that they may not be > programmers.

A more interesting question is HN vs subreddits in general. /r/programming seems like a bad example.

<comment><USER23> The post asks specifically about /r/programming vs HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reddit is better if you want to focus your attention to certain topics such as /r/javascript or /r/reactjs, for example, and you'll be certain that you'll get all the relevant news (along with some noise).

HN is for general news, and new new things with deeper discussions. There's lots of noise on HN too, if all you want is news or programming related things. Lately, I think, 'intellectual-porn' has increased on HN (such as Wikipedia articles of mildly-interesting things), which I think are no different from cat pictures.

Quite often I spot something on Reddit, and then search HN for additional discussion.

(obviously you shouldn't follow the default subreddits, which are optimized for maximum addiction for general population)

</comment><comment><USER26> I use both, and treat them slightly differently. I'm a lot more passive with my commenting on HN.

When I do my comments tend to be better thought out, but I'll often have an opinion on something and choose to not comment for various reasons. Maybe my opinion was a bit too harsh, maybe others have a similar opinion and have already voiced it in their words, or maybe I realize its off topic.

IMO this is both a good thing and a bad thing. Sometimes I find myself not commenting when I could truly contribute to the discussion. On the flip side, there's also a lot less noise when trying to filter through the discussions.

<comment><USER27> Strangely, I find I'm quite the opposite--rarely contributing on Reddit, fairly regularly on HN.

Probably because I'm interested in quality discussion and generally more knowledgeable about the topics here. I'm also not impressed by typical reddit humor (pun threads, meta-jokes, purposeful mis-reading of comments).

I really like the AMAs and other than that I mostly stay out of reddit comment sections. Conversely, on HN, comments are the whole reason I'm here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I can spend hours on Reddit while I only seem to spend a few minutes on HN. On Reddit I go from /r/programming to /r/diy to /r/art, besides just looking at the first page. On Hacker News I only look at the first page. Once I've gone through it, I'm off to Reddit. The first page doesn't seem like it changes that often, so I only check it once a day or so.

That said, the discussions on HN are usually about technical topics from technical people. It's far more intellectual than Reddit where a lot of the comments are puns, jokes, and other off-topic nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER29> I "extensively monitor" both channels and find that they have their own advantages and disadvantages.

When an important technology is announced, or there's some important tech event, I really want to see what HN says first. It's more likely to be a focused and civil discussion due to the way it's moderated, and it's extremely likely that an engineer involved in the project or its history will come and personally contribute to the discussion. When I read a huge HN thread on an important topic, I feel like I'm largely educated about what experienced thinkers and specialists on the topic would say.

That said, Reddit has more breadth. There's not just /r/programming, there's subreddits for every specific language, technology, and specialty. Some are better curated and moderated than others but it's a deeper and richer set of information. There might occasionally be a story about OpenBSD around here, but reddit has [http://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd](http://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd).

I probably follow HN more closely, but I do like to see what bubbles up in specific subreddits as well.

</comment><comment><USER30> > Specifically /r/programming vs HN.

HNers /behave/ more knowledgeably about startups and software.

> Is the user-base different?

No. White middle class men. Anything else is downvoted or not spoken of.[1]

> Is it just differences in karma/downvoting mechanics?

No, it's the YCombinator brand name that's making the difference. And the fact that HN is nowhere near as popular as reddit. (Popularity attracts even more white people, but especially those who would like to behave like spoiled brats.)

> Am I right to irrationally dislike reddit?

Yup. Find the right sub and you'll be fine.

(Edit) [1] As an example, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9451652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9451652) . Anyone other than that demographic, with some critical thought in them, have already abandoned the use of "riots" [along with its corrolary, "thugs"] to refer to the protests, and are using either #BaltimoreProtests or #BaltimoreUprisings . In that linked debate, not a single leading commentary disputes... wait for it... the very title.

</comment><comment><USER31> i think the main advantage that reddit has over HN is the combination of breadth and specificity. there aren't any categories or labels in HN and, as has already been discussed, people generally only see the front page. this leads to the "social echo chamber" effect that people have discussed elsewhere, meaning a lot of people read/respond to the same ideas over and over leading to an incestuous breeding ground for thought/commentary.

i prefer to create my own multireddits for content technical content i'm interested in discussing. one for languages, open source, web, mobile, or computer science theory. these would be impossible to find on HN but on reddit they often attract more serious comments (not perfect).

also, did you ask this same question on reddit? i'm wary of the implicit selection bias in asking for a comparison from HN users and not reddit. the users on HN who take the time to read and respond to something like this are more than likely to prefer HN to reddit.

</comment><comment><USER24> There's some overlap between the two, of course. Personally, I frequent both. I self-censor here in a way that I won't on reddit, if for no other reason than to help curate the better SNR.

The psychology is a little different, here. Since there's no equivalent of user-created and moderated subreddits, it's hard to associate the same feelings of identity and ownership. As a result, ironic on account of the smaller userbase, I tend to think of Hacker News as a more public space than reddit. Hacker News is more impersonal and sterile, but in a good way. Reddit is the equivalent of bullshitting with the neighbors over a few beers and a barbecue.

Both are good. It's hard to speak of my time here in terms of a migration, or switch from, reddit.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've gotten so, so much out of the archives in the /r/cscareerquestions. It's mostly cultural stuff, but I've learned a lot from there and /r/sysadmin.

When I went to Reddit without logging in (and saw the content of the standard subreddits), I was SHOCKED at how stupid it was. I frequent a bunch of smaller, focused subreddits and really enjoy it... most of the time. I have to say, I've never been scared to voice an opinion on HN like I have been on Reddit. This is a much more civil place, especially when I'm wrong about something.

<comment><USER33> I feel the same way, I actually created a second Reddit account. One for all the cat memes which I'll typically only look at when I want to lazily pass some time. And the other that actually gives me food for thought so to speak. That being said, commenting on HN is a much nicer experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Don't let the layout fool you, reddit is a different beast.

Reddit is a versatile tool for building any kind of community you want. However, Reddit itself is not the herald of any kind of value. Like facebook groups, multi-purpose weakens meaning.

HN was born from the core values of YCombinator. It's a tangible proof of the tribe built around hacking and entrepreneurship. Meaning and Visuals are tightly coupled. Even the language it's written on (Arc) is an integral part of the overarching theme.

<comment><USER35> In reality, I think of Reddit as Usenet.

Tons of groups, and very very low barrier. Flamewars, trolls and idiots are everywhere, and finding a quiet corner for intellectual studies is hard to find... but it is doable.

There are also such thing as invite only / private subreddits, which somewhat compare to moderated usenet subs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> HN certainly has a lot more startup and non-programming content than reddit. In my experience there is also a better balance between "early adopters" and "grumpy enterprise devs" (proggit in particular tends to be dominated by the latter, e.g. a lot of cynicism towards Node.js).

I would like to say HN is simply generally more sophisticated, but some of my highest-voted comments on HR are sarcastic remarks (criticising the US seems to equal free karma).

</comment><comment><USER37> Reddit caters to a broader range of people, so it is less focused. If you go to specific subreddits you can find great content and intelligent conversation. I've learned a lot from /r/swift and /r/learnpython.

HN would fit in as a subreddit on Reddit. In fact, I'd wager that if there was a subreddit /r/hackernews it would look almost exactly the same as this website.

<comment><USER24> > In fact, I'd wager that if there was a subreddit /r/hackernews it would look > almost exactly the same as this website.

A community that generates a nearly identical content feed seems plausible enough. I doubt the character of the comments would be the same, though. Beyond the obvious fact that HN is a more focused and less populous community, the structure, context, and presentation of the reddits must have effects on the psychology of their users.

Even if you were to replicate the HN content feed exactly on a private subreddit, with the same set of members and the same set of moderators, you'd see a different character to the comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Reddit seems to have a larger number of users and a broader range of topics. I don't enjoy the discussions/comments on HN, the answers are fairly predictable, and I mostly visit this site because I'm forced to.

<comment><USER24> > I mostly visit this site because I'm forced to.

Context, for the curious?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Personally for me I do HN at work and Reddit at home.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've gotten the impression (and more so recently) that astroturfing is a problem on reddit. Not so much on Hacker News.

<comment><USER41> What do you mean by astroturfing?

<comment><USER42> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing)

I cannot think of a meaning your question might have that is not answered by the intro of this article. (sorry if I got that wrong)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > Am I right to irrationally dislike reddit?

I'd say that you are wrong to _irrationally_ like/dislike anything.

</comment><comment><USER44> People on HN refer to it as an "intellectual community". That should be you all the answer you need.

</comment><comment><USER45> Reddit has a much wider user-base. I guess most of us on hn have a tech background.

</comment><comment><USER46> Hacker news today looks like /r/programming 6 years ago.

As the population of any online site grows, you get the least common denominator. The smaller subreddits are still good, but /r/programming got too big.

</comment><comment><USER47> I prefer reddit because I can browse by topic. I don't like wading through the latest political news story, science of menstration, dolphin communication, etc that is on HN. HN often feels like r/technology combined with r/politics. That said the comments here tend to be higher quality but I still have to wade through a lot of noise.

</comment><comment><USER48> /r/programming is a narrowly scoped -- it has to do with programming, whereas HN is more generalized.

Furthermore, there is a far wider variety of users on /r/programming. This increases the signal to noise ratio, and reduces opportunity for higher- quality content and comments to float to the top.

And, one cannot discuss HN and /r/programming without discussing the moderators -- they are the curators of content submitted and the comment discussions, after all. I would haphazard to guess that the similarities between the two groups are more closely aligned than the user-bases themselves.

As for my personal opinion -- I feel far more inclined to contribute to HN as my writing on /r/programming is more likely to be lost in the void, akin to pissing into an ocean.

</comment><comment><USER49> > Am I right to irrationally dislike reddit?

It depends. Do you like a fatherly figure to make you do stuff for your own good even if you're now in your thirties? Do you enjoy censoring yourself for the fear of being hellbanned? Do you get a kick out of seeing your comments become unreadable because you wrote something against the prevalent opinion? Do you mind being gently molded into an echo box of what's hip right now in the Silicon Valley culture? Are you so focused on patting yourself on the back that you don't realize that subreddits are actually different forums with different administration and moderation policies?

P.S.: do you like having to wait an unspecified amount of time before being able to post your comment because you've been suspiciously active lately?

</comment><comment><USER50> It's like compare Facebook and Twitter. Surely you can try compare them, but better just use whatever you like to use.</comment>


Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_90dc2a2637f348edae45943a88da04d4.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Is the scenario outlined in the paper realistic and probable? In my opinion: unfortunately, yes.

Most people deny the conservative projections of the IPCC (they somehow acknowledge the facts, but don't act accordingly which is equivalent to denial).

The problem is: some current observations indicate that even the horrific projections of the IPCC might be too optimistic. Recent observations of Canadian permafrost revealed that "thaw depths observed since 2003 met or exceeded the projected thaw depths for 2090 under RCP 4.5" (see Canadian permafrost thaw observed by American Geophysical Union).</comment>


Literate Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://contracts.scheming.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is there no buzz around literate programming anymore? would all the focus on testdriven development I would think it would be a hot topic. Does anybody know of any good literate tools for Python other than the Leo editor?

<comment><USER2> Leo needs a better gui than Tk.

<comment><AUTHOR> You said it. I know Mark was looking into wxPython at one point, but there was something he could not get to work properly. I believe it was something in the tree widget - maybe the little box next to the name of the node.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox? - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/VictorBjelkholm/1d0f4ee6dc5ec0d6646e <comment><USER3> On the HN thread accompanying the release of Google Inbox, a (supposed) engineer working on Inbox was saying that the reason for the exclusion of Firefox was a performance issue with accessing sparse arrays with huge indexes.

Link to the post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495498](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495498)

Link to the bugzilla entry: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for that information! Will include it in the post when I get a chance.

The performance is kind of bad in Firefox but I'm not sure it justifies blocking the entire browser because of that. For a comparison, Google Photos is slow as hell in Firefox, but you could still use it if you want to.

<comment><USER4> Google blocked Windows Phone from accessing Google Maps in the browser (both the desktop and mobile versions) with the claims that IE was unsupported, even though Google Maps UK worked just fine.

Google does have a history of blocking browsers they don't support, no matter how functional it may seem.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, they seem to use the whitelisting strategy for all of their properties. If something isn't QAed it doesn't get enabled. I suppose at that scale the support cost isn't worth the "let them use it in a degraded way" mantra most of the web community follows.

<comment><USER6> SUPPORT COST?! HA HA HA HA HA!

You can't get support out of Google at any price, unless you're an advertiser. But in that case, it's only help for your ads and nothing else.

You can't talk about "support cost" when it's zero.

<comment><USER7> "Support cost" doesn't apply only to customer support.

<comment><USER8> Go on, I'm interested - what extra cost do Google have if I use the same service in FF as I would otherwise have to switch over to Chrome to use; given that they say up front that other browsers aren't supported and that this is a beta so expected to be shonky.

What cost is there?

If I've switched UA string Google might not even be able to tell, without actively seeking out the information, that other browsers are using it - <USER2> then could that be an extra cost?

School me, please.

<comment><USER7> It takes resources (mainly developer time) to ensure that an application is working properly on multiple browsers. If you read the article you can see that a simple UA string change does not fix the problem.

<comment><USER6> There's a big difference between "provided a degraded experience in non-Chrome browsers" and "actively blocking non-Chrome browsers by means more invasive than UA checking"

Remember, there isn't any kind of really legitimate API for 100% determining which browser you're running in. There's a lot of ad-hoc methods which usually work.

These folks spent extra effort to block it from even TRYING to run in FireFox.

How are the FireFox devs supposed to see the bad performance that they need to fix for Inbox to work right if they can't run it at all?

<comment><USER7> There is also a big difference between "provided a degraded experience in non- Chrome browsers" and "you have to actively disable CSP (a global setting) for it to work in Firefox."

Also, with respect to performance, this comment in the article might shed some light:

"Also see Bugzilla entry. The use of spare arrays with huge indexes was a performance issue in Firefox. It's been fixed in Inbox and in FF but not shipped in FF yet. ([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963)"](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963\)")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any time you see a comment like "With some more man hours, it seems trivial for Google to get the application to run in Firefox", you know the author either doesn't know what they're talking about or just hasn't thought about it very much. Anyone who's done any serious web-app development in the past decade knows that cross browser compatibility at the bleeding edge (ie, past what the JS frameworks have worked out) can consume as much time as the rest of the application put together.

At the early fast-iteration stage of a limit-seeking webapp like Inbox, it makes sense to focus on the app itself and limit yourself to just one browser. For Google, obviously they will choose Chrome. Once the app reaches some stability, and major changes are coming far more slowly, then it makes sense to start working in cross-browser compatibility.

<comment><USER10> I think that most of those comments stem from Google-hating, which is currently a big fashion here. Were it Apple doing it, they'd be lauded for their attention to user experience. Was Inbox a product of a random startup, it'd be praised for good business approach and proper prioritizing of developer time. But it's Google, so it must be some evil plan.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure that there's a lot of that going on, yes.

But Google has the legacy of their "don't be evil" company motto to content with. Which is to say that people expect (foolishly) for them to at least try not to appear evil.

The difference between Google prioritizing Chrome vs anyone else is that Google owns Chrome whereas Apple doesn't, and some random startup certainly doesn't.

It smells of Microsoft's "we'll only make this work in IE and fuck everyone else" strategy and that doesn't bring other warm thoughts to mind.

So it's not JUST that it's fashionable to think the worst of Google these days.

<comment><USER11> You might have an argument if Chrome wasn't open source.

Being that is not the case...

<comment><USER12> How does open source invalidate that argument?

<comment><USER11> Anyone can build and release a compatible browser whereas one would be stuck with Internet Explorer (and no compatible browser) if something were only to work on IE.

As it stands, Chromium exists.

<comment><USER12> How is it any better that something can run on a bunch of slightly different versions of Chromium, but no other browsers built from a different base?

<comment><USER11> Chrome isn't the only option. It is not a case where it could be Microsoft making Hotmail only work in IE, for example.

Don't want Google's services in your browser? Download Chromium or the dozens of other browsers forked from that codebase.

With something being limited to working in IE, THERE IS NOTHING ELSE, binary or otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google is not the same it wanted to be back in 2009 [1]:

 _Today, we base our developer products on open standards because interoperability is a critical element of user choice._

[1] [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of- open.html](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html)

<comment><USER14> I think this slide explains everything about how Google has changed the way of handling their business.

[http://www.slideshare.net/ericschmidt/how-google-works- final...](http://www.slideshare.net/ericschmidt/how-google-works-final-1)

They are more focusing on managing their business which is limiting their contributions to open standards.

<comment><USER15> Which of the 54 slides?

<comment><USER14> Sorry for typo, I meant "slides", but especially second and third slide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The last paragraph:

"However, we still haven't figured out exactly why Google is blocking Inbox on Firefox. That the application is not working, seems to not be fully true. With some more man hours, it seems trivial for Google to get the application to run in Firefox to. Maybe too much Chrome specific technologies or just a try to limit the usage of Firefox on the web?"

Is odd as he's spent the rest of the article pointing out that there are bits of missing functionality (such as transitions), he's disabled CSP which worries him and that there are errors showing, and that's just what a relatively brief review found. Given what is listed it seems pretty straight forward to me that in it's current form it shouldn't be supported on Firefox.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I know, given the right vendor prefixes, transitions works mostly the same way on both platforms. I don't think it makes sense to only have transitions for one browser when it's trivial to support other browsers as well. The CSP issue I honestly don't know why that's so but I'm fairly sure they should be able to follow CSP on their own domains, just like the rest of the applications on the web have to do.

To me, it feels like Google has an unfair advantage on doing web applications when they can do stuff on their own domains that no one else can, unless they also develop their own browser with unique features.

<comment><USER17> _To me, it feels like Google has an unfair advantage on doing web applications when they can do stuff on their own domains that no one else can, unless they also develop their own browser with unique features._

And legally dangerous, too. It's as if they forgot entirely about the half a billion Euros Microsoft shelled out for doing precisely the same thing.

<comment><USER18> or they bought the right people this time and are sure to be free from that fate.

remember that Microsoft wasn't sued out of the blue. competitor companies lobbied for it. if Google lobbies first they should be fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Google's attempt to take over email does not sit with me well. We need better email. But email is too important to be proprietary. We need open standards here. And we need open source developers to kick it in high gear to create better email clients.

<comment><USER17> In case you haven't seen it, you might consider Fastmail [0]. They have a great webmail client, they just released native mobile apps (for both iOS and Android at the same time, wow!), and they are very much working to expand the standards to meet the needs of modern e-mail.

[0] [https://fastmail.com](https://fastmail.com)

<comment><USER20> Privacy-wise, personally, I'd just love to see what are my options for self- hosted email service.

Presently it's just Postfix and Dovecot on the physically-owned server and Thunderbird and K9 Mail on desktop and mobile. Quite old-fashioned.

I had seen links to some fastmail support branch for cyrus and some jmap.io, but didn't really get what thase are and all on Fastmail's website suggests it's a service, not software. But maybe I had missed something.

So... is it for me or not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's not really a good reason for Google to make applications they create work outside their own run-time environment - Chrome. Any technical reason they might offer (sparse array performance) is just facetious. They have the technical know-how to solve such problems, but business wise it makes little sense.

I use three web browsers for just that reason. Chrome for Google products (YouTube, Gmail, now Inbox, etc.), IE for Microsoft products (Outlook.com, etc.), and Firefox for the open web and general usage.

<comment><USER22> Yes there is. It's the world wide web. An interoperable universal interaction standard. Or it was until Google started pulling an IE6 game.

I use Firefox for everything because there is no central motivation to specialise. If a site doesn't work well, it doesn't get my business.

<comment><USER21> Well, yes, that'd be nice if we had a "interoperable universal interaction standard." But now the majority (and soon, almost everyone) will be using the internet on tiny personal computers (smartphones) that run native apps. Using a web browser will become less and less important or even relevant. In such a case the costs of optimizing for multiple run-times makes little sense. Really, abandoning the browser for native apps (in the old days we called them "programs") across the board makes more sense, and leave browsers to what they were originally intended for - document perusal and simple data collection.

And web browsers absolutely suck at UI for applications. Imagine the man hours and effort that went into building Gmail. It boggles the mind. Who would even want to maintain that?! All for something that could have been created as a native app much easier. There's a lot of reasons that people have gravitated towards apps on phones, but one of them is assuredly that the experience is better than using a web browser.

<comment><USER22> As someone who is old enough to have written "programs" and sees the instant relationship to "apps", I vigorously disagree. Lets consider these points:

1\. Firstly there are competing platforms on which to deploy your programs. This means there is little common ground between the three major sectors of the market. You either have to pick one and lose market share or pick all and increase cost. Nothing (yet) has solved this problem adequately without increasing cost or decreasing agility and/or quality and consistency.

2\. Each of these platforms has many barriers to entry from subscription fees, having to buy specific hardware and learn how to use it, distribution and vendor costs, QA cost and the risks of rejection and having your product closed suddenly.

3\. All of the markets are primarily consumer oriented which makes deploying things to corporate entities a pain in the backside requiring more hoops to jump through.

4\. None of the programs have longevity, a stable platform to run on, security guarantees or predictable security evolution.

So at the end of the day, you're pitching programs sold behind a walled garden by someone who wants a slice of your cash and doesn't give a fuck if the device works after you've sold it versus a platform with zero entry cost, total ubiquity and importantly absolutely no distribution or sales model at all so you can build your own?

Nope.

People take apps because they're cheap, free or the vendor is pushing them. That's it. If it wasn't the case, the first thing we'd do when we unboxed a mac or a PC was download and install facebook. Which we don't do.

As for mobile first everything, not a chance.

<comment><USER10> A small tangent.

> _and doesn 't give a fuck if the device works after you've sold_

Which is even worse on the web, where most of the time that someone also doesn't give a fuck about you at all _and_ will just pull the product the moment he gets enough users to make an exit.

There are good things about having a working binary on your device; the author can't just take it away from you just because he doesn't care about the product anymore.

<comment><USER23> _There are good things about having a working binary on your device; the author can 't just take it away from you just because he doesn't care about the product anymore._

Tragically, in the modern software world, that often isn't true either.

Buggy junk gets shipped routinely even when people are paying real money for it. Software developers assume you'd love to have their regular updates, even if those updates also change interfaces and modify or even outright break/remove functionality however they feel like. If you don't apply the updates, you don't get security fixes either, so for any software that is at all involved with sharing data or communicating on-line many users have little choice. The idea of long term support for any stable software that people actually rely on is a joke for many projects. And that's before we even get to all the DRM/activation junk.

Ironically, the worst offenders are probably Chrome and Firefox. IME, the next worst offenders are often the supposedly high-end professional software that comes with a thousands-of-dollars-per-seat price tag -- assuming you can even buy a copy instead of renting it these days.

I'm mildly optimistic that a new generation of software seems to be arriving where people are expected to pay for good work but the prices are much more reasonable: not App Store peanuts, not Enterprice Pricing (call for a quote, because hell will freeze over before we publish any useful information publicly). A lot of these tools are relatively small or specialised, but they do their jobs well, they get very favourable feedback from users, and they have real, commercially viable development organisations behind them. Also, they rarely incorporate the user-hostile junk. So good work can still be done commercially, and of course for some of the important geek-friendly software like development tools and OS/server/networking infrastructure there are Open Source projects that are usefully stable, reliable and comprehensive. I look forward hopefully to a day when these kinds of projects are the norm for software we rely on, and we can all get on with using our computers without constantly fighting with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > I'm not 100% sure on how the browsers implementation differs with CSP but > there is a main difference in that there seems to be no CSP protected > between Google domains in Google Chrome

If this is true, does this mean that Google is short-cutting internet-security for their own applications in their own browser?

Or am I reading this all wrong?

<comment><USER25> That's the way I read it too and I'm surprised no one else has mentioned this. Unless I'm missing something Google is allowing XSS for their own domains in chrome.

<comment><USER18> yes. and much more.

for example, even when using open source web kit or chromium they actively removed all options to disable referrer.

go on. try to find it on your current chrome build. or even on chromium thanks to their legacy.

then remember that referrer with its most exposing setting is required for Google to monetize both their organic and paid search.

<comment><USER26> The only way to do it in Firefox is through the scary and arcane about:config (or an extension). Historically, methods to remove that have not been provided by browsers, whether Google-developed or not. I've always done it via Privoxy, never the browser.

<comment><USER18> > scary and arcane

i use it every day.

even on firefox mobile!

and it serves my purposes just fine. not to mention you are not exactly right. as you can update those values via user scripts that can be easily distributed or even made as an extension that change those values for you and/or provide a new settings controller UI.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, and I use the command line every day. Whenever people see it on my screen, they think I'm "hacking".

There are Chrome extensions to do it as well. The point is, the lack of a UI control usable by the average user is not some Google conspiracy. It's always been the standard in pretty much all browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I subscribe to Google Apps for Business ( Gmail, Calendar etc.) The Google Admin console for my company is barely functional in Firefox. Switching menus causes the page to crash and Firefox prompts me to stop the scripts. On the other hand , the same console works fine on Chrome. One could argue that this is because FireFox "is not as fast as Chrome and I should use Chrome if I use Google Web applications". Hmm -- I do recall hearing a similar argument sometime in the 90s.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think the term "blocking" is a bit misleading. It implies they have it running properly in FireFox and are going out of their way to make it only run in Chrome.

It seems more likely they had an aggressive plan to ship inbox across Web, Android and iOS. And they started with "Chrome only" to save development time. I'm sure support for other modern browsers will follow soon.

<comment><USER17> Except that with a few quick changes the application ran, so intentionally blocking seems like a valid description.

<comment><USER29> Changes that included disabling a browser security policy - not something it's reasonable for Inbox to request its users to do.

<comment><USER17> But serving all content from a single domain is a reasonable thing for Google to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Because, you know, "Best viewed in Chrome" is a thing, and somebody is becoming the new IE. It's saddening.

</comment><comment><USER31> Google have produced a product which offers a great experience on one browser. They are happy with the performance of the application on that browser. They have no doubt tested it on other browsers and found the performance to be sub par. That application is clearly still in 'beta' mode (The app is still invitation only). I am sure that they will 'un-block' the browsers that Inbox doesn't perform well on once they've resolved the performance issues - I'm sure it's also not a slight against Firefox or any other browser. The alternative of course is that instead of this discussion thread we'd have a thread about how poorly Inbox performs on firefox which would damage the products overall reputation.

<comment><USER17> Or, you know, a third option. They could always do what _every other web developer must_ and make their software progressively enhance so it works at the very least on a few major browsers.

<comment><USER31> And I absolutely expect them to do that, but when you have a platform you know works well with your software then you'd rather get to market there and then once you have everything working across the board release for all. Again, as every web developer must, release a beta that works under x specific circumstances and then fix for all resulting in your v1.0 product. If you don't do that then time to market doubles or more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> A $400B company cannot get their app to work securely & performantly in Firefox, so they're blocking access via UA sniffing. Seems legit.

<comment><USER33> Release early, release often, iterate fast. Google's doing these things.

Just because you have the resources to do something doesn't make it a wise use of resources.

<comment><USER32> Achieving web compat with Firefox (and possibly other browsers) is not a wise use of resources? What?

<comment><USER33> For an initial beta release on a product with no revenue gains? Yeah, probably not. For later releases? Sure.

<comment><USER32> Like accessibility, web compatibility is harder to achieve (and requires more resources) when addressed late in the development process. A web app must be accessible and compatible with the major browsers, so ensuring this from the start is the optimal approach.

<comment><USER33> And it's clear that they were looking at it from the start. If you read around a bit, you'll see that they ran into a particular performance problem with Firefox. They're working to solve it, but decided they could release something usable for Chrome users immediately.

<comment><USER32> Still, I suspect Google's developers are too focused on development in Chrome- only. If true, this may have contributed to perf issues arising in Firefox, in the first place. I also suspect that Google's web compat team is not sufficient to handle their products.

<comment><USER33> Did you read the clearly documented technical details? Basically, array slicing on sparse arrays in Firefox is much, much slower than on Chrome.

It's not a matter of lacking competence or skills or anything of the sort. It's a basic question of what level of resources you are willing to put into a product before you have something to beta-test. Inevitably, that's less than the amount required to be perfect in every aspect.

<comment><USER34> > array slicing on sparse arrays in Firefox is much, much slower

You mean "was", since it's fixed?

> It's not a matter of lacking competence or skills or anything of the sort.

Yes, it is. Not reporting a bug when you run into it but instead just complaining about it is in fact lack of competence.

Arguably using super-sparse arrays in JS is also lack of competence, but the other is much more obvuous.

> It's a basic question of what level of resources you are willing to put in

Filing a bug takes about 5 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Because they don't want a slow webapp under their logo. And this one would be particularly handicapped by that.

Everyone praises Apple for user experience, right? There you go. They're giving you want you want. And at least Chrome works on multiple platforms, even Linux.

What seems like a more arbitrary limitation is that Inbox doesn't work with Google Apps. Thought it, too, probably has some technical reason deep in the belly of the beast.

<comment><USER36> Whoa, good to know. But considering that the product is beta, they probably want to test it on regular free customers first...

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It is not just Inbox

[http://www.otsukare.info/2014/10/28/google- webcompatibility-...](http://www.otsukare.info/2014/10/28/google- webcompatibility-bugs-list)

</comment><comment><USER38> I removed chrome from both linux and windows and use Firefox all the way. If no Firefox, then I'm just walking away.

</comment><comment><USER39> Google Inbox is using between 365MB and 460MB, when Ghostery and Add Block Edge is activated, it is more than 600MB. This is where multi process seems to be useful (otherwise it is using much more memory for no real gains), and extensions can be really taxing sometimes.

<comment><USER18> why do you even bring that up?

also, unless you know what's on that memory and also tell us about total ram I'm just writing this off as anecdotal cache usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is a good exploration of how the blocking is being done.

As far as why, it seems self-explanatory. They're not ready to support other browsers yet. Why does this need to be a thing?

</comment><comment><USER41> TLDR: 1. Inbox currently using XSS right now, it is disabled by default in firefox. Refer: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Security/CSP](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Security/CSP) 2\. Firebox has option to enable XSS, so inbox can work on it. But that allows XSS attacks.

</comment><comment><USER32> 1\. Develop app specifically for Chrome

2\. Wonder why it doesn't work well in Firefox

3\. Block Firefox via UA sniffing

4\. Disband web compat team and use money on NASA hangers, balloons and robots

5\. Profit

</comment><comment><USER42> For those who did not see my comment in the gist, I'll paste it here:

"Probably the performance threshold Google has for its consumer facing products - if it runs slow on Firefox, then it would have normally have been a release blocker."

Google cares probably the most out of any tech company I have seen about performance, especially with any consumer facing apps.

CSP would probably be trivial for Google to fix. Animations/transitions similarly so. The only real explanation that makes sense is performance.

<comment><USER43> Yet they didn't file a single bug against Firefox!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Key quote from article: ""It's slow, a lot slower than Google Chrome.""

So, InBox (which I really like by the way) is a rapidly developing project and the team only wants to optimize for their own Chrome browser during rapid development -- this seems really reasonable to me.

If InBox does not run well on Firefox and Safari a year from now, then the author of the article would have a valid complaint.

</comment><comment><USER45> Out of curiosity: does it work in Opera?

</comment><comment><USER46> There is always a conspiracy theory on everything Google does. I think this has nothing to do with that.

Besides, everyone that has a startup and fresh ideas is always "afraid" of Google next step not stepping on top of its startup.

This generates paranoid among us, its natural given the size of Google.

</comment><comment><USER47> I want to point out that a while back Apple seemed to "block" \-- or at least not implement -- iOS apps uploading on Chrome or Firefox. The page would just stall loading forever, but it worked in Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER48> tl;dr: here are a couple stabs at why, but I still don't know.

<comment><USER48> I don't understand the 4 downvotes. The blogger himself says "However, we still haven't figured out exactly why Google is blocking Inbox on Firefox. That the application is not working, seems to not be fully true."

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> When you decide whether to release a product on a certain environment, it's not as simple as something like:

a) if it works, or seems it would work, on that environment, then we should release it there.

or b) that environment is a competitor, so we shouldn't release it there.

If you think it should be that simple, you never worked with a real product manager responsible for products with millions of users.

Having a product to support a new environment isn't a trivial effort for devs, QA and a bit design. At a particular stage of the product (think about the goals they want to achieve for Inbox at this stage, which I think is something along the line of polishing the product based on mass but controlled feedback), I would've probably made the same decision if I were the product manager.

<comment><USER18> just like Microsoft was praised for releasing their OS with a free, supported browser. with all the development and qa done for free...</comment></comment>


Blackmail fail - <AUTHOR> http://gwern.net/Blackmail <comment><USER2> I would recommend against having dealings with the obviously mentally ill. I'm not sure in what sense you might be legally liable (for a civil suit) if they happened to commit suicide a week later and mentioned you in the note. Also, psychiatrists may be in many cases working off falsified doctrines just like any other doctor, but also like any other doctor, they really do know important things layfolk don't. Leave the clearly crazy to the professionals.

Though if this is your _first_ real crazy caller I could understand where the fascination came from. About... 15 years ago...? I got that email from someone who insisted that all I really needed to know was the Periodic Table of the Elements in which all answers were contained. It took me a while to get that this was not someone I could save by argument.

<comment><USER3> > Though if this is your first real crazy caller I could understand where the > fascination came from.

You know, thinking about it, I think Jack _is_ the first crazy person I have seriously dealt with at length on the Internet. Oh, I've seen plenty of crazy people online - I've laughed at Timecube, I've looked over HN's own resident Losethos (with a sense of 'there but for the grace of god'), I've watched other people argue with crazy people - but I think I've either never actually dealt with them or quickly flipped the bozo bit on them and disengaged. Under _normal_ situations, on normal topics, I have no reason to talk with them at length and grandiloquence is unjustified....

At least part of the problem here is that in the crazy mirror land of the blackmarkets and Bitcoin in general, sanity is hard to distinguish from insanity, there really are key bits of information random parties can have, not everyone talks straight, blackmail does payoff, and there really are hidden millionaires & billionaires walking around in plain sight. (As an example of the mirrors of insanity, I invite anyone to read the Silk Road 2 forums and parse the SSBD/Inigo/Libertas, the DPR2 key rotation, the Cirrus announcement, Raoul's quoted message from DPR2, the posts by Defcon, the 'accidental' access to the admin forum, Ormsby's comments, Oracle's insinuations, the Tormarket quote from the vendor forum, etc etc etc, and parse it into a single coherent sane narrative. And consider what Satoshi's estimated fortune is at any moment.)

<comment><USER4> I suspect that 'Jack' might be a non-native speaker of English. I get the feeling that the first language of 'Jack' is probably highly idiomatic and frequently uses allusion and/or euphamisms. Also using the threat of the government power, rather than direct force (mafia et alia who more frequently carry out blackmail), while simultaneously engaging in clearly illegal behaviour. I would suspect this means this person's origins would be a country with high levels of government corruption and/or dictatorship. All together I would hedge that this person came from China (linguistical match, corruption match, huge population, national interest in Bitcoin), Vietnam, or maybe Laos or Cambodia. Obviously this is all conjecture of the highest order.

<comment><USER3> > I suspect that 'Jack' might be a non-native speaker of English.

If he is, he's done a hell of a job learning English. I think I'm a very good writer, but in some respects I don't match Jack, which is impressive for a native but astounding if he's ESL. Plus he makes references to US things like referring to MA as being 'east', which suggests he's physically located i the US, which is more likely if he's a native speaker.

<comment><USER4> The reason I think he isn't a native speaker is that the nuance of his words miss the mark way too often (hence the purple prose); almost like he is choosing words from a thesaurus rather than from his day to day repertoire.

I say this from the background of having attended a number of international schools around the globe as a teenager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" Forget the complete absence of the evidence I asked for, this seemed like it was written by someone in the throes of full-blown psychosis or mania or schizophrenia with meaningless plans to somehow revolutionize the world."_

Realizing that this _actually is_ a distinct possibility is important for anybody interested in talking with random people on the internet. Mental illness is prevalent, and there is little keeping the mentally ill off of the internet.

<comment><USER6> Another good reason to stay anonymous and never use your real name online.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. Before I began divorcing my online identity from my 'real' identity^, I had several nutters try to reach out and effect my life 'in the real world'. Dredging through old posts, calling ex-employers, etc. All because they felt slighted for various absurd reasons.

Normally when you have problems with a person like this, you can go to the police and get a restraining order. It becomes harder when it is online because you have to weight the possibility that anything that you do to defend yourself might get them closer to finding you.

These days I find myself being fairly sensitive to 'craziness', whenever I get the slightest whiff of it I break off the conversation completely. I'm not a professional who is trained in how to deal with people with these sort of problems, so I am not going to attempt it.

^ Technically I was not using my real name, but a pseudonym that was unique enough to only return results relevant to me when googled. I've since taken to using names of characters from history or fiction as my pseudonyms, and picking new ones at least once a year.

<comment><USER7> > I had several nutters try to reach out and effect my life 'in the real > world'.

They might not have had any mental illness, and might have just been unpleasant people.

> These days I find myself being fairly sensitive to 'craziness', whenever I > get the slightest whiff of it I break off the conversation completely.

I am crazy. I've had treatment for a long term, severe, mental illness, from specialist mental health service providers. That illness has caused some admissions to general hospitals. My illness has sometimes affected my posts to HN. (Although I'm pretty good at setting noprocast when needed).

I know many people who have spent time in mental health hospitals for severe and enduring mental illness.

I let you know so that you can adjust your filters accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This isn't pretty. Gwern doesn't look good here, messing with someone that was clearly mentally ill. Even at the end when he breaks this opinion he positions himself in a smugly superior way, insincerely offering this analysis.

<comment><USER9> I disagree that jack0fnone is mentally ill. I see him as a 14 year old. It's perfectly understandable that a 14 year old might go through a bitcoin phase, be awestruck by gwern.net, daydream up these crazy ideas.

Kids go through crazy phases and still mature into stable, reasonable adults.

Edit: To me, the writing style seems very teenager-ish as well, though I don't have a good baseline for mentally unstable writing.

<comment><USER10> The delusion that many people are actually one person recurs in mental illness, there's probably even a name for it.

Coupled with insecurity, it might lead to paranoia and feelings of persecution by a powerful puppet-master. Here it seems paired with grandiose delusions, perhaps because the person is otherwise intelligent & high-functioning, or using drugs which create a sense of invulnerability. Either way, there are strong indicators of mental illness.

I would put joking (or trolling) as-if-mentally-ill as a second-place possibility, and teen-daydreams as a third-place possibility. But maybe all three in different proportions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dear Gwern, I very much appreciate everything you write. Your blog is in my top 3 quality blogs, nay, if not top 1!

But the posts are long. It's not something I say proudly, but often I read the first 3 pages but then lose focus and willpower. Maybe it's because English is my second language, maybe it's because there's so much to do in a day.

Not saying dumb-down. But if say 15% of readings end like they sometimes do for me, that's a big loss. Both for your reach and for the readers, who like me fail to get all the good stuff in there.

So as a fan giving feedback: a bit terser would not be wrong. I'm trying, and I'm using programs that let me 'save' my progress in a long text and get back after a coffee, but it's sometimes hard.

(Ironically, this is a big-ass 4 paragraph comment, haha)

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what I can do about that. My posts aren't long (I think) because I spend a ton of space using sesquidealian and periphastic circumlocutions; what is there to cut?

<comment><USER12> Not to mention paralipsis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sorry, but you can handle this much better. Aka not engaging. You aren't sending any message, except trying to show that you're sophisticated enough to mess with some spammers.

I said this in a comment to you on reddit, but this line was just fluff: "Hence by backward induction, there is a clear decision-theoretic verdict against paying you any sum."

<comment><USER3> > I said this in a comment to you on reddit, but this line was just fluff: > "Hence by backward induction, there is a clear decision-theoretic verdict > against paying you any sum."

My reply to this off-base criticism: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1thnq3/i_am_not_sat...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1thnq3/i_am_not_satoshi_nakamoto_please_stop_trying_to/ce8a4j7)

(At least you got the quote right here.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who knows little about encryption or who this gwern guy is, this was still a fascinating read.

It's like hearing a joke or seeing a 'funny' picture that someone finds absolutely hilarious but just doesn't affect you in any way. (In that, someone could have such a different state of mind that it seems almost incomprehensible)

<comment><USER15> I have seen occasional highly voted posts with write ups on effects of various drugs. They are generally pretty interesting. Seems like a cool guy to have a conversation with/have a beer with, I would read through his site a bit more, you might like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am a little lost. Can someone explain the background of this post? What are these extortion messages and why is he receiving them for usernames of a site etc.?

</comment><comment><USER17> I feel like mocking and toying with someone clearly mentally ill is pretty unethical.

</comment><comment><USER18> Random fruit cake blackmail is nothing new. I KNOW UR THE PRESIDENT anybody who's posted on shady forums full of drug addicts will get these laughable bm attempts. Stringing them along is the worst possible solution just ignore them and they find a new conspiracy. Now this nutjob will never cease to harrass Gwern because he knows he will get attention.

</comment><comment><USER19> The prose is strange enough in some of the earlier messages that I wondered if there's steganography being used.

Although since it seems like jack is simultaneously trying to blackmail _and_ become a disciple of gwern, I suppose it's more likely that he just wanted to write something he thought would impress & intrigue him.

</comment><comment><USER20> Minor pangs of irony seeing Gwern whine about being accused of being Satoshi while he's been concurrently been stalking and accusing people of being Satoshi himself. ... complete with a misuse of "we" and claims of secretive methodologies.

<comment><USER20> Gwern responded unfavorably to a similar comment I made on reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1thnq3/i_am_not_sat...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1thnq3/i_am_not_satoshi_nakamoto_please_stop_trying_to/ce882bz?context=3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > The ransom value decreases over time following exponential decay with a > half-life of 365/2=182.5 days.

It's obviously someone taking the piss.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wayback link, since gwern.net is down right now: [https://web.archive.org/web/20131223023402/http://www.gwern....](https://web.archive.org/web/20131223023402/http://www.gwern.net/Blackmail)

</comment><comment><USER23> Amusing read.

Not sure I agree w/ the mental illness diagnosis though.

Sounds more like a person (who maybe should lay off the stuff) taking wild guesses and hoping to score. In his mind - big upside, little effort/downside risk.

</comment><comment><USER12> This sounds familiar:

 _I am but an impoverished writer who barely makes ends meet..._

</comment><comment><USER24> Regarding dead dog, I wonder if this is related: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnfPH6zQbXo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnfPH6zQbXo)

</comment><comment><USER25> This guy clearly rode the crazy bus to crazytown.</comment>


Ask HN: A company wants to buy me a perpetual license, how can I value it? - <AUTHOR> I'm a solo business with a SaaS (It is a software to process data, I prefer not to reveal the name) and one of my clients, the bigger one pay me around $1800 per month for the service, my client wants a perpetual license (they are a large company and need to keep control over it) how can I set a value for it? My net profit for this client is only 15% (I pay AWS costs to keep the service running), because a bad negotiation with a 3 years contract, with a license it is going to be the 100% net profit.<p>I was thinking to multiply 1.800 per month per 3 years, it is 64.000 with only a year of updates if any (maybe there will be not updates), if I release an update after that I will charge for it with a year update policy, can someone give me any advice? <comment><USER2> Here's a wacky idea: say no. Don't offer a perpetual license.

Alternatively, you can price it so high that a 1% money market account earns exactly X in interest in perpetuity.

With a perpetual, you lose autonomy. You will be forever unable to discontinue your product should it stop being profitable or worthwhile or relevant. When that day finally comes (you pass away at the tender age of 108) this client might be ticked off and demand a refund plus interest from your estate.

<comment><USER3> I'd say price it higher than that. Price it high enough that they clearly don't want it. But if they do want it, it's a price that you would be deliriously happy with.

One thing to keep in mind, though: If they have a perpetual license, they may want much more of your service. If _you_ have to provide that, your costs may go up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> $1,800 per month is $21,600 per year. $64,000 put in the bank or invested without risk, gives you, very optimistically, $6,400 per year ⇒ if you think they will keep using this for years, that $64,000 is too low by at least a factor of 3.

Also, if AWS becomes more expensive, or they start to use the product more, you can increase pricing, but if you took a one time payment, that's all you got.

I would think you need to ask at least $500,000, and probably something closer to a million. That gives you money to spend on putting the source in escrow, which, if they really are a big company, they should want, and also gives you money to talk to a contract lawyer (e.g. about the feasibility of your idea _"if I release an update after that I will charge for it"_ ) and an accountant about this deal.

They may not want to pay that much, but they shouldn't be surprised, either, if you explain to them what extra costs you have to make.

Disclaimer: don't take my word for it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Try to offer code escrow (for a fee) instead. Larger companies are worried that small services go out of business. In case you close your business (or get hit by a bus) the customer then has the legal right to get a copy of the code from the escrow.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of the things I want to avoid, I don't want to be out off business and generate a problem for my current client, the service is critical for them

<comment><USER4> But choice is between, both currently and with a perpetual license, _"if I get hit by a bus, my customer is hosed"_ and, with escrow, _"if I get hit by a bus, my customer at least has a fighting chance, however small"_.

With escrow, your customer certainly isn't worse of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This ask is completely antithetical to how SaaS works.

If your selling them a perpetual license then it is a "shrink wrap" copy of your software, and they get to run it (your not a SaaS any more then)

If they are asking for this, tell them you will sell them a copy of the SaaS for them to run internally - the EULA/contract needs to state that employees and contractors are the only ones allowed to use it, and they can't resell it -

Tell them that you will happily sell it at 5x the 5 year cost and if they need help setting it up/deploy that your hourly rate is $200 an hour, with a 5 hour minimum.

</comment><comment><USER7> A perpetual license to the code or perpetual service contract on the SaaS?

<comment><AUTHOR> Perpetual license on the core of my service, not the code and not the whole SaaS, I will provide the core service inside a virtual image

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Guys thanks for the comments and advice. I'm going to avoid to sell a perpetual license.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just say no.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why not? I forget to say my net profit is very low

<comment><USER8> Large companies routinely screw over small ones.

 _Perpetual_ sounds like another way of saying _unlimited._ Every story I have ever read involving an unlimited contract involved bleeding the company that agreed to provide unlimited service.

People who bought unlimited airline flights for life basically live on airplanes. They soak the airlines for all they can get.

I have seen stories of small shops that died largely due to agreeing to give unlimited service to a single client for a fixed fee.

They are asking you to enter a contract where they pay you one time and then service them forever. If that doesn't sound like a deal with the devil, maybe read up on what a bad deal slavery typically is.

<comment><USER9> Perpetual is just licensed software.

If you sell it for $100/user, you charge $20-30 per year for maintenance annually.

The OP is making no margin on his SaaS already and the client probably knows it. This is an opportunity to actually generate a return.

<comment><USER8> A quick skim of articles comparing perpetual and SAAS licensing suggest SAAS is more lucrative. If he's barely making a profit now, this sounds like it only gets worse.

I based my assessment of the scenario in part on this being his largest client. Large companies routinely screw over small ones. It is par for the course. You can basically assume that if a big company wants it, you are likely to lose your shirt if you are overly cooperative with their agenda. They are looking out for number one. They are not looking out for you.

<comment><USER9> YMMV.

It sounds like he didn't price it right. SaaS is more profitable in general because you own the customers data, guaranteeing renewals, and it's cheaper to support an app than support a customer on Amazon.

I made a lot of money selling a little application to an enterprise that did some data transformation. That enterprises policies would have prevented them from buying a SaaS from me.

<comment><USER8> It is always humbling to learn the limits of one's own knowledge. You've been very kind about it.

Best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tell them no

<comment><AUTHOR> Why not? My net profit is very low with the monthly payment

<comment><USER8> It will get lower still, likely into the negatives, if you agree to charging them once and servicing them forever.</comment></comment></comment>


Time To Get Out Of The Bubble And Design For The Average User - <AUTHOR> http://futurephilanthropreneur.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/time-to-get-out-of-the-bubble-and-design-for-the-average-user/

<comment><USER2> It's true that users don't care if you're using RoR or have load balanced servers or or replicated databases or anything like that. However, users do care about what those things provide. Load balanced servers means their requests are likely to be met without large slowdowns. Replicated databases means your application will have better uptime. RoR could mean that you're able to add features more easily.

We care about this technology because it allows us to provide a better end result. We talk about it internally because we want to share our successes and failures so that we can educate and learn from our peers and create better end results for the average user.

I don't care why my house stays up, but I'm glad that there are people (line engineers and architects) who do so that I have a wonderful, stable home. We're the architects of the web.

<comment><USER3> I think the real point of the article is that almost all of the technologies at our disposal are good enough. We spend endless time debating Ruby vs Python, RoR vs Django and navel gazing about Lisp or Haskell or Smalltalk, but how often do we talk about users? Keep a tally yourself and I think you'll see my point - I counted more HN articles in the past week about Haskell than about users.

I would expect that the majority of us here at HN can easily build stable, reasonably scalable applications quite easily. I would expect that far fewer of us really understand the needs, desires and abilities of the average user. To me, it seems ridiculous that we continue to worry about marginal, incremental improvements in the technology when it is readily apparent that "technically better" solutions are easily beaten in the market by solutions that resonate better with users.

To use your architecture analogy, few architects worry about whether or not a house will stay up, because they have mature processes and frameworks in place to guarantee the soundness of the design. The real work of architects, the part that separates the likes of Foster and Gehry from everyone else, is of aesthetics and usability. What makes an architect great is not their ability to build cheaper or stronger or bigger buildings, but their ability to build beautiful and elegant ones. We have a great deal to learn from them.

<comment><USER4>
      > I think the real point of the article is that almost all
      > of the technologies at our disposal are good enough. We
      > spend endless time debating Ruby vs Python, RoR vs Django
      > and navel gazing about Lisp or Haskell or Smalltalk, but
      > how often do we talk about users?

Frankly, I do not see any shortage of talk about "users" or "delivering" or any other of hundreds of similar terms. I think this line of reasoning overlooks some pretty crucial factors:

\- Arguing about X vs. Y beyond a certain point often has nothing to do with "productivity" or some other undefinable metric. It is _entertainment_. Not ha-ha entertainment, but something to pass the time - trading quips, debating and so on.

\- New paradigms, languages, frameworks and applications - as well as hardware and architecture - certainly affect users. Some directly, some by providing developers the ability to concentrate on the essence rather than the unnecessary boilerplate obstacles.

It often seems that the people writing the "stop language wars" posts and the like are the ones most emotionally invested in the topic.

      > To use your architecture analogy, few architects worry
      > about whether or not a house will stay up, because they
      > have mature processes and frameworks in place to
      > guarantee the soundness of the design.

Yeah, and those processes did not just spring up from nothing. There have been centuries, millennia, of development - and you can be sure there were more than a few "pyramid vs. cube" and "vaulted vs. flat" debates in there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think "technical" vs "nontechnical" is quite the right dichotomy. Perhaps "familiar with our conventions" vs "not" is a better distinction. Usually when we say someone is tech savvy, what we mean is that they are familiar with our iconography and vocabulary, and know or can guess at the magical keystrokes or settings to make the software work the way they want it to. They may actually be technical users, or they may simply be "normals" with experience.

An example: a friend was heading up the alpha test team for Sid Meier's Civilization IV, and invited me to join. I was the only tester without previous Civ experience. At one point I expressed my frustration with not being able to view certain information except when the game popped it up. The other testers and devs were surprised that I didn't know to press F5 through F9 to bring up that information. The devs added buttons for those screens to the GUI in the very next release, with clear icons and helpful mouseover text, and my user experience was much improved.

Point being, the thing that gave me trouble wasn't being "non-technical", but inexperienced with the particular conventions being used. The challenge in UI design is to figure out conventions that both experienced and new users will be able to understand, and to replace conventions that new users struggle with. The only useful piece of advice I have is to make sure you have some testers who can compare your product to others like it, and other testers who have never used anything of the sort, so that you can see what conventions people from each camp struggle with.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like what you say here. The idea of getting both testers that are familiar with services similar and getting some that are completely new offers a complete perspective of the product and its applications. I will make sure to aim for this in our testing group.

<comment><USER5> You may be interested in "the $5 Guerrilla User Test", which was posted on HN last week:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1120820> and <http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/the-5-guerrilla-user-test/>

the basic idea is to go into a bar and find someone who's a little bit drunk who'll spend 15 minutes using your software in exchange for a drink. "Watch your application crash & burn as people do all sorts of ridiculous ass shit they would never do in a lab but constantly do in real life", and learn from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> very very light on content, yes we should be looking to make wonderfully usable applications for non technical users, I dont think anyone aims to make an unusable site.

But how can we do it, what have we been getting wrong so far, what design idioms need to be thrown out and what innovative ui's help users? thats what I want to hear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good point, I will try to put that into another blog post in the near future. I know that there is a book that goes along with this, "The Inmates Are Running The Asylum" as well.

<comment><USER7> Dude, with all due respect, you're 18, your product is in triple-closed alpha, and your writing is entirely aspirational.

Less talk, more rock. Go out and do something, and then blog about it once you've learned something interesting. If you want to psych yourself up with self-help stuff, keep a private diary.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are entirely correct. None of the content I am writing can hold true meaning until I have made it. All of the writing at this point is purely my opinions on what I observe and the process that I am going through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another thought: find products that exist in physical form, but can be replaced by something that is much more high-res / efficient with technology. What physical things won't exist in 5-10 years time because technology can replace them. Mainstream users usually adopt products that do this. Examples:

* Campuses used to hand out "facebooks" to freshman so they could get to know their fellow students + have a directory.

* Spreadsheets used to be large pieces of grid paper used by accountants.

* Encyclopedias did really well until Wikipedia came along. Encarta was the first sign of trouble, but Wikipedia was the nail in the coffin.

* We used to mail physical letters. Email has replaced significantly replaced that (of course physical mail still exists, but you don't send physical mail for social interactions anymore).

* We think our generation and their families won't be storing photos, memories, and vhs tapes in a shoebox. What's the specific digital equivalent of that is the question we're trying to answer with the new version of Ramamia (to be renamed Genevine).

There are probably others.

<comment><USER9> > Encyclopedias did really well until Wikipedia came along. Encarta was the > first sign of trouble, but Wikipedia was the nail in the coffin.

This is incidental to your comment, but I think your details are wrong in this example.

Multimedia digital encyclopedias replaced physical encyclopedias long before Wikipedia came along, in fact throughout the 80s and early 90s it is a pretty safe bet that encylopedias on CD-ROM and later DVD significantly outsold the dead-tree versions, and by the mid-90s the major brands (at least in the US) already had online versions as well.

Encarta (which was initially a rebranded Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia) was just one example, and a later one at that, of many encyclopedias that were transitioning from print to digital. Encarta doesn't represent some kind of paradigm shift in the encyclopedia business, just a large company snatching up a small player in a market they were trying to penetrate. Interestingly enough, Encarta has ceased production, while World Book, Encyclopedia Britannica and others are still in business and presumably profitable (for now).

Wikipedia was and continues to be a threat to "traditional" encyclpedias, but not because they didn't anticipate a transition from physical to digital publication.

<comment><USER8> yup, i didn't want to get into a long extended explanation. My logic is this: physical encyclopedias are toast. What do we use instead of them more often and most recently? Wikipedia. Encarta and the like certainly came beforehand to do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. We should look for offline products that can be easily replaced by online technology. Wikipedia is a very good example. Medpedia is aiming to do the same thing right now with medical information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes, yes, a million times yes. This is the great challenge and the great opportunity of our era. A yawning chasm has opened up between 'techies' and everyone else, but we have the tools and the technologies to bridge that gap. For most of us in this industry, the challenge is no longer the technology itself - it is to humanise technology and make it accessible and useful for the mass of the people.

I strongly believe that we are in a new industrial revolution.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree with you. The technology is now in a position where we can bridge that chasm, and bring the early innovators closer to the early adopters. With all of the talent available, we should be able to narrow that chasm considerably so that all products are friendly to both parties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> They should apply that lesson to their blog URL;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know, it's too long of a URL, sorry about that.

<comment><USER11> I'm an Average User and I Don't Care.

<comment><USER12> How many people actually care about URLs? At work I help with a drupal site and by default the URLs are going to be something like node/123 or even index.php?n=123 but some people freak about that and insist on "friendly" URLs. I ask "who types in URLs anyway" (other than the site root itself, maybe). People either bookmark them or are linked to them.

Is this another "techie" blinder of mine? Am I wrong to think that the "average user" cares at all about what the URL looks like?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, you are exactly correct. No average user cares about the URL, let alone types it in. I agree with your point about the nodes/123, or in my case, I see a lot of upset over index.aspx/something. Linking and bookmarking are usually the only ways people find it. The root is usually easy enough, but most people will still use search engines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can we put together a list of current products that appeal to this market of "normals" / "mainstream" users and products that a gap exists?

</comment><comment><USER13> I read this post and then went to sokanu.com. For so much talk about UX design, it was a major disappointment. There is absolutely nothing on that landing page which makes me want to give you my email id. As a user, I take the time and effort to actually visit your site without anyone marketing it to me, and I am turned away without even being told what you guys do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I realize that. We are in stealth mode currently and in the process of building the alpha platform. I do appreciate you visiting though, and we do understand that it is your time and there is little information about the product.

<comment><USER13> I don't really get the fuss about stealth mode. AFAIK you don't really achieve anything being in stealth mode. You might get some traffic out of the mystery factor, but other than that I really don't see any reason why startups choose to be in stealth mode. Personally I would be shouting off the roofs about what we are doing.

In any case, I believe that if you're asking user's for their email, then you should tell them what you are doing. You don't have to give much details. A short 3 line summary would be enough. In my opinion, "Explore. Connect. Achieve." isn't going to get you a lot of emails. Just my two cents.

<comment><USER14> I can think of _one_ reason to be in stealth mode: so the press covers you when you get out of stealth mode. Because that's news. Apart from that, I don't think it matters.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are these possible ways to slow down a blockchain? - <AUTHOR> I am very skeptical for the blockchain technology and although I use it as a gambling addiction (or it uses me) I still use zero crypto based technologies.
Within my skepticism, I started wondering what can make the chain vulnerable?
My first idea was flooding with almost non worthy transactions therefore wasting the miners. This was quickly debunked as I found out the miners would ignore 'empty' transactions.
Another idea is, what if I as user A say want to transfer to user B, but I mention an amount of coins that actually I do not own and spam it. Would the miners have to traverse all the way to the back or are there 'checkpoints' that can assure short travels?
The last one is a bit more difficult. However can a big enough network of nodes, insert itself and start crunching the chain errors-fully on purpose to 'break' the chain?
Excuse my ignorance. <comment><USER2> It's not so much that miners would ignore empty transactions, it's that the spammer would need to pay the miner fee to get each transaction in the block which would end up being very expensive and unsustainable long term.

For the second idea, this wouldn't really work either. When each node receives a transaction it will validate it first before broadcasting it to other nodes, so it would be stopped from propagating through the network pretty quickly and no one would attempt to include it in a block and run do PoW work it which is the most time consuming part.

I suppose in theory if you had a large enough network and could target a ton of nodes individually you might be able to do some form of damage but that's likely a pretty impossible amount of power and similarly to the previous example you could maybe bloat it a bit but it would be very expensive to sustain an attack like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> the 2nd idea. But in order to validate if I actually own the money it has to traverse through the history. Now, I do not know how fast that is, or how far back it goes. But if it has to check and lets say it takes X amount of time, the spamming it will flood the validation without requiring a fee?

In general the 'attacks' are possible but expensive. However are they government expensive bulletproof? especially if we target less expensive coins aka alt coins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _My first idea was flooding with almost non worthy transactions therefore wasting the miners. This was quickly debunked as I found out the miners would ignore 'empty' transactions._

Also, you have to pay a fee for each transaction and thus you'd have to pay (at least) thousands of dollars of fees to clog a blockchain. [https://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-spam-attack- stressed-n...](https://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-spam-attack-stressed- network-for-at-least-18-months-claims-software-developer/)

 _Another idea is, what if I as user A say want to transfer to user B, but I mention an amount of coins that actually I do not own and spam it. Would the miners have to traverse all the way to the back or are there 'checkpoints' that can assure short travels?_

The miners keep an index of how much money everyone has (unspent transaction output index) so they can immediately ignore such invalid transactions.

 _The last one is a bit more difficult. However can a big enough network of nodes, insert itself and start crunching the chain errors-fully on purpose to 'break' the chain?_

This is similar to what people call the eclipse attack. However, if a victim node can connect to even one other node that gives it a copy of the correct blockchain then the victim will ignore the errors and use the correct chain. [https://www.usenix.org/node/190891](https://www.usenix.org/node/190891)</comment>


Anime master Hayao Miyazaki is coming out of retirement to make one last film - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/articlhttp://www.theverge.com/2016/11/14/13621108/hayao-miyazaki-last-film-boro-the-caterpillare/hayao-miyazaki-latest-film-cgi-caterpillar <comment><USER2> 404 Page for me.

Though I must say - that might be the coolest 404 page I've ever seen.

Edit: The 404 page in question - in case the article actually comes back up :). [http://imgur.com/a/cbhS2](http://imgur.com/a/cbhS2)

Edit2: The actual link to go to: [http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/14/13621108/hayao- miyazaki-l...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/14/13621108/hayao-miyazaki- last-film-boro-the-caterpillar)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the correction. Not sure what happened here. True, the the 404 page is really cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How many times does he need to come out of retirement?

<comment><USER4> Vice once described Miyazaki has a "serial retirer". Apparently his first retirement announcement was back in the 90s.</comment></comment>


Multiple Google users are being signed out randomly - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=signed%20out%20google&src=typd <comment><USER2> I got signed out of several of my accounts on several apps but not always the same set of accounts.

I'm guessing they're invalidating auth tokens that could have potentially been compromised with the Cloudflare leak: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13718752](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13718752)

Edit: Or maybe it's unrelated and just a coincidence. Here's someone purportedly from the Chrome team posting about it on reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/5vuurk/account_acti...](https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/5vuurk/account_action_required_notifications_and/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Happened to me and I have 2-factor auth - the text message code was not being accepted and giving an error for at least an hour or so on mobile, but not desktop (Chrome).</comment>


Crook offers 1,300 PayPal accounts, claims billions more are compromised - <AUTHOR> http://www.csoonline.com/article/3011053/data-protection/crook-offers-1-300-paypal-accounts-claims-billions-more-are-compromised.html <comment><USER2> Billions? How credible is that?

Paypal itself says they have just 173 million active customer accounts ([https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/about](https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/about)) and they'd have every reason to inflate that number.</comment>