India is drowning in its own excreta - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psi-vid/2013/04/24/india-drowning-in-its-own-excreta/

<comment><USER2> Here's an extract on this topic from a fantastic book called 'Poor Economics':

Most experts agree that access to piped water and sanitation can have a dramatic impact on health. A study concluded that the introduction of piped water, better sanitation, and chlorination of water sources was responsible for something like three-fourths of the decline in infant mortality between 1900 and 1946 and nearly half the overall reduction in mortality over the same period. Moreover, repeated bouts of diarrhea during childhood permanently impair both physical and cognitive development. It is estimated that by piping uncontaminated, chlorinated water to households, it is possible to reduce diarrhea by up to 95 percent. Poor water quality and pools of stagnant water are also a cause of other major illnesses, including malaria, schistosorniasis, and trachoma, any of which can kill children or make them less productive adults.

Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom is that today, at $20 per household per month, providing piped water and sanitation is too expensive for the budget of most developing countries. The experience of Gram Vikas, an NGO that works in Orissa, India, shows, however, that it is possible to do it much more cheaply. Its CEO, Joe Madiath, a man with a self-deprecating sense of humor who attends the annual meeting of the world's rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in outfits made from homespun cotton, is used to doing things differently. Madiath's career as an activist started early: He was twelve when he first got into trouble—for organizing the labor on the plantation that his father owned. He came to Orissa in the early 1970s with a group of left-wing students to help out after a devastating cyclone. After the immediate relief work was over, he decided to stay and see if he could find some more permanent ways to help the poor Oriya villagers. He eventually settled on water and sanitation. What attracted him to the issue was that it was simultaneously a daily challenge and an opportunity to initiate long-term social change. He explained to us that in Orissa, water and sanitation are social issues. Madiath insists that every single household in the villages where Gram Vikas operates should be connected to the same water mains: Water is piped to each house, which contains a toilet, a tap, and a bathing room, all connected to the same system. For the high-caste households, this means sharing water with low-caste households, which, for many in Orissa, was unacceptable when first proposed. It takes the NGO a while to get the agreement of the whole village and some villages eventually refuse, but it has always stuck to the principle that it would not start its work in a village until everyone there agreed to participate. When agreement is finally reached, it is often the first time that some of the upper-caste households participate in a project that involves the rest of the community.

Once a village agrees to work with Gram Vikas, the building work starts and continues for one to two years. Only after every single house has received its tap and toilet is the system turned on. In the meantime, Gram Vikas collects data every month on who has gone to the health center to get treated for malaria or diarrhea. We can thus directly observe what happens in a village as soon as the water starts flowing. The effects are remarkable: Almost overnight, and for years into the future, the number of severe diarrhea cases falls by one-half, and the number of malaria cases falls by one-third. The monthly cost of the system for each household, including maintenance, is 190 rupees, or $4 per household (in current USD), only 20 percent of what is conventionally assumed to be the cost of such a system.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.amazon.com/Poor-Economics-Radical-Rethinking- Pove...](http://www.amazon.com/Poor-Economics-Radical-Rethinking- Poverty/dp/1610390938)

Would be interested to hear about any similar books you'd recommend.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Poverty-Economic- Possibilities...](http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Poverty-Economic- Possibilities/dp/0143036580/)

<comment><USER4> Poor Economics criticizes this book (by Sachs) "who posits that poor people are poor because they are caught in one or more poverty traps" --[http://www.philanthropyaction.com/articles/book_review_poor_...](http://www.philanthropyaction.com/articles/book_review_poor_economics)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having been to India quite recently (and being Indian), I talked to a lot of family members there about this issue, among others, as I saw it happen time and again. One of the things that really frustrated me was the pure lack of accountability in general. I said 'among others' earlier because I am also referring to environment issues such as littering and pollution. The people there aren't dumb--they know all of these actions have harmful and negative effects on others' help and the general environment, but they would rather not care than care for the most part. Herein lies the fundamental problem...if you would rather not care, well there's no solution to that. I am originally from Northern India but on my most recent visit, we went to Mumbai. If the ocean wasn't brown and there was less pollution, it would hands-down be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But no one there seems to look at what could be but rather what it is and accept it.

So rather than spreading knowledge about these issues (which, don't get me wrong, is also good), there has to be an attitude change. You can't blame the government and I never like doing that, but it would be wonderful if the government would get involved in preventing these environmental/health jeopardizing actions. The problem with this, of course, that the country is so populated that it is extremely hard to make this drastic of an imposition and follow through with it.

<comment><USER6> > The people there aren't dumb--they know all of these actions have harmful > and negative effects on others' help and the general environment, but they > would rather not care than care for the most part.

Well that's just disgusting. I don't think you could pay me enough money to step foot in that country.

<comment><USER7> That is what happens when a plethora of cultures have migrated to a region, each culture growing it's own little bubble. India has been a recipient of migrants from Central Asia, North Asia and Europe over the last two thousand years. India to it's smallest unit is a hive of ghettos, each ghetto not caring about the other one, while striving in the futile exercise of ensuring it's own survival. People don't care about cleanliness or have general civic sense because they don't see themselves as one community. The lack of the sense of "India" is appalling. We have Kashmiris, Biharis, Marathis, Gujaratis. Oriyas, Nagas, Tamils, Other South Indians, Bhaiyyas(from Uttar Pradesh), Punjabis and a thousand of other sub-cultures. India has not had Independence long enough to have that sense spread in it's massive population.

From the heights of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pataliputra>, and later <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijayanagara_Empire>, India has been seizing to become a more "me and my tribe first" civilization due to the always constant influx of foreigners looking to settle. In 2013, it's just, "me and my 1000 square feet flat first".

Indians are in for a massive shock when they realize they can't keep themselves prosperous for long without thinking of the community first. The "Red Revolution"(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite>) and the massive protests in the big cities are indications of a society in great distress. It's going to implode. In any case, it's going to get much worse before it get's any better.

The 10th century chronicler, observed this about India: "The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs.They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited, and stolid. They are by nature niggardly in communicating that which they know, and they take the greatest possible care to withhold it from men of another caste among their own people, still much more, of course, from any foreigner ... Their haughtiness is such that, if you tell them of any science or scholar in Khorasan and Persis, they will think you to be both an ignoramus and a liar. If they traveled and mixed with other nations, they would soon change their mind, for their ancestors were not as narrow-minded as the present generation is." \--<http://www.shunya.net/Text/Blog/AlBeruniIndia.htm>

<comment><USER8> The US is also mostly immigrants from different places. It is also more individualistic, but not in the sense you describe India. A lot of people know their families are mostly Irish/German/Whatever but for the most part no one cares. I'm not saying this because of "my country is better than yours" shit, but I'm legitimately interested in what causes the difference. Why do some groups assimilate into a common culture and others do not? Immigrants to the US did initially congregate and form their own communities like that.

<comment><USER7> U.S has had the benefit of favorable geopolitics(a good read:[http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopolitics-united- states-p...](http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopolitics-united-states- part-1-inevitable-empire)). A large living space and a fairly sturdy inland waterways.Historically, the pressure on natural resources has been mitigated by easier transport of goods and people(unlike India which doesn't have inland waterways). In last few decades U.S has also closed gates on immigrants for good. Though that has slowed down the process of ghettoization, eventually large swathes of U.S will convert into American-Hispanic and other similar sub-cultures. And then it's just "my tribe vs. your tribe". The U.S is at the beginning of the road, and in time when there is a greater pressure on resources, you are looking at yet another India within the next 100-150 years.

Let's just hope that it doesn't happen too soon and that human social mechanics today is advanced enough to handle another great civilization falling into chaos due to clash of cultures. The good news is that this time we have the Internet.

<comment><USER9> The US has certainly not closed its gates on immigrants for good. Immigrants as a percentage of population is close to the highs of ~15% seen in the late 1800s and early 1900s and has been steadily rising since the 1970s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think we Indians are still trying to overcome our false sense of cleanliness. We keep our own houses clean but expect divine intervention outside. Partly due to the still-existing caste system, where the lowest castes are responsible for clearing the muck, associations with this work is looked down upon. Therefore the uninterestedness of the typical Indian in solving the problem. Public toilets are few and far between, and most go unmaintained for lack of people willing to do the job. This attitude is changing fast though, thanks largely to improvements in technology and pay which make it safer to engage in and survive doing such work.

</comment><comment><USER11> Open defecation is also practiced in San Francisco. I have seen is occurring in front of my apartments and on the street. You can find human feces on almost any walk through SOMA, the Tenderloin or Civic Center area if you know what to look for (expert tip: dogs don't look for hiding places to poo).

We have decided this is not a problem.

<comment><USER12> Others of us have decided not to live in San Francisco (or India).

I'm not being entirely flippant; I'm originally from the Bay Area, and the filth is a significant part of the reason I live in Tokyo now. Regularly encountering human feces is one of several things I don't miss.

<comment><USER13> I'm also from the Bay Area and have lived in SF proper for about 15 years. I don't think I've ever encountered human feces. Were you a sewage worker?

<comment><USER11> I wish I was a SF sewage worker I'd be retired with a nice pension by now ;)

Aloisius you just needed to walk around more in the downtown area - I walk everywhere. Next time you are here take a look around the NW corner of Mission and 8th in the nooks and crannies of the PG&E building. I'm betting you will find something if it has not just rained.

This stuff is just not well documented but this guy has a blog about his street in SOMA (somewhere just of 6th near Mission) that captures some of the flavor of the place:

<http://www.olddirtyalley.net/>

Why is this stuff just invisible to so many people here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The history of civilization is full of inventive people finding ways to make life better, and then doing so. Why does this not happen in these poverty stricken areas? Is it because anyone intelligent enough to do something about it leaves?

They don't have to jump straight to modern plumbing to have their lives improved.

<comment><USER15> There are many hypotheses about this; history only happens once, so it's hard to test them. Here are a couple of the more interesting ideas.

Jared Diamond: Eurasia runs east-west and has a large temperate zone. This supports enough biodiversity that the plants and animals you need to start farming can be found in one place. Other continents run north-south, lack biodiversity, and couldn't be farmed until Europeans introduced some critical species.

Lots of lawyers and economists, whose names I've forgotten: By default, someone bigger than you nicks whatever you make, until you get sick of making stuff. The exception is when you make weapons, and nick stuff from people bigger than you. Something strange and kind of miraculous happened in England a few centuries ago, and led to the only society that isn't like that.

<comment><USER16> And now for something completely different:

Could the strange and miraculous have been... Dennis Moore?! <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLkhx0eqK5w>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great article. Does convey some of the harsh realities. However, I didn't understand why outline such a well written article with a meaningless sensational headline. "Drowning in its own excreta", really?

<comment><USER18> link baiting is the thing to do these days! sad truth.

<comment><USER19> Catchy headlines have been important since before the Internet though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is an amazing citizen led initiative called the "The Ugly Indian" to clean Indian cities. They've been having significant impact in Bangalore.

See some of their work here,

[http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Ugly- Indian/12345979104661...](http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Ugly- Indian/123459791046618)

<http://www.theuglyindian.com/about_us.html>

</comment><comment><USER21> Overpopulation is a problem because _one_ government can only _properly manage_ a limited number of people (by "properly manage" I mean not _control_ , that's easy to do by controlling the upper class and having decent police/military/intelligence systems, but _provide adequate living conditions for, actually solve health and education issues etc._ ).

Compare to the US ratio of population of ~300M population to 1 government (even ignoring that in the US states have real autonomy and are mostly self governing!) to India's ratio of ~1200M to 1 government. Similar ratios for European countries too. _India should be at split in at least 4 different countries, with different governments, internal and external policies, armies and maybe even a "healthy" dose of conflict/competition between them. It would be worse for some new countries and for some people, but on average better for most. Sticking together is not the way to solve a poverty type problem!_

</comment><comment><USER22> Indian here. Yes population is the biggest problem for us.Which naturally leads to many problems like this one.

* I agree with author this is absolutely true for slums like Mumbai. (But does not apply to whole India. Second tier urban areas scenario is not this bad ) * I agree that in most of rural area practice open defecation.

In general whey open defecation is in practiced,

* Since we have too many people even one bathroom in rural area per home is not sufficient(seriously) * Attitude of people towards cleanliness.

IS GOVT DOING SOMETHING FOR THIS?

* Yes lots of schemes have come(more than 10-20 years back and still continuing) in its slowly picking up. * The best scheme in my state(Karnataka)the govt is paying Rs 7000/- for each house to encourage them to construct toilet from 'gram panchayath'. * Thanks to media and celebs who are getting involved more these days.

Yes we have problem, we need to solve it.

<comment><USER23> imho the overpopulation needs to be adressed the chinese way. I don't think that throwing tech at it will solve the problem. I remember vaguely, that one indian gov. wanted to sterilize slum inhabitants and wasn't reelected.

<comment><USER24> The population is not a problem, the population is a resource. Of course, to be (more) valuable (than it is now) it has to receive some attention/investment. The sterilization of people that possess the potential of growing and becoming beneficial to society is, for the society as a whole, a form of self-mutilation.

<comment><USER23> I agree to certain degree, but the indian pop.growth is just not sustainable. Closing the eyes doesn't make it go away: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India-demography.png>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> India is what you get when governance gives way to bureaucracy, morality gives way to greed and spirit gives way to helplessness. Indians die by millions on the wayside consumed by hunger, disease and violence - and the well to do 20% looks down from their glass houses built on excreta. Welcome to oldest civilization!

</comment><comment><USER26> India isn't alone. Dubai is having a massive problem with sewage and in the US there are a lot of communities that have septic tanks which, when they fail, can cause ground water pollution. Even in St. Louis, Missouri, USA we still have overflows in which the sewer system excess gets purged into streams and rivers when it becomes too much to handle for the sewer system. A lot of US cities have this problem.

And this is in 2013. We have a robot on Mars, people in space, and flags on the moon.

The problem is that our only current solution is an extremely expensive underground sewage system with thousands of miles of pipes, treatment plants, and storage containers which take a long time to build and are expensive to maintain and replace. That's not something realistic for fast growing communities or rising countries. There's really no cheaper better alternative.

Is this an industry ripe for disruption. Dare anyone challange the sewer/septic tank gods?

<comment><USER27> > Dubai is having a massive problem with sewage

I don't understand why people always bring this up about Dubai. In 2010 a new treatment plant was completed that nearly doubled capacity. Dubai probably has a better sewage system than most US cities now (and the funds to expand it if needed). The controversy was that in 2009 there were lots of queues for sanitation trucks to dump their waste, so a lot of drivers just illegally dumped it. This resulted in some of the waste ending up in the sea water, so there were concerns over the health of beach goers (tourists). Where I'm from in the UK, up until around 15 years ago, raw sewage was dumped into the sea by design [0].

[0] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-332000-90000...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-332000-90000/page/9)

<comment><USER26> That's my fault for not keeping up with the times. Sorry I didn't know that was over and fixed. My original point still stands, when cities (even rich ones) expand very rapidly, a traditional sewer system takes too long to build to keep up with demand.

<comment><USER28> A traditional sewer system is not more complex than a traditional fresh water system or a traditional paved road system – in fact, it might well make sense to build the sewers when you pave the roads (or slightly before that…).

What it does take is some planning and some functional local authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Composting toilets are the future.

<comment><USER8> Would that work on a massive scale? What's the reason it isn't done now?

<comment><USER13> You still have to physically remove the composted feces which is a logistical nightmare in an urban area, there are reliability problems with maintaining the proper environment for proper decomposition (temperature & moisture) and compared to pit toilets are bigger and more expensive (though in an urban area, you don't have the land for pit toilets).

Really, a wet sewage system is superior for densely packed areas.

<comment><USER30> Wet doesn't mean pipes to a processing plant necessarily though. Ive seen an amazing system that used a moderate sized pond, masses of reeds and somehow this processed the water and filtered it. There were fish and ducks swimming in it. That said, if dealt with waste from one house. I'm not sure this would scale very well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A picture I took few years back. This was in the heart of the City of Mumbai (Bombay), near residential and lots of commercial establishments.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/brajeshwar/1283051163/>

</comment><comment><USER32> 4 people in a home hate each other 24x7 for the past 3000 years (caste).

What will an Intellectual (Gorbachev) do?

Give them their share of land/Independence and tell them to go and build their own home/nation. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika> aka <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_Award>

</comment><comment><USER33> One thing that I think is sad is the poor Dalit ("Untouchable") girls who have it as their job to collect other people's shit using bits of cardboard or tin :-(

</comment><comment><USER34> Reminds me of the horse manure crisis in NYC [http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/16/09111...](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/16/091116crbo_books_kolbert)

Not that any comparison can be made, they are really completely different.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a classic case of Confirmation Bias[1] - if no one else is cleaning it up, it means I'm not responsible myself.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias>

</comment><comment><USER36> This sort of stuff makes me sad. But also strangely curious, since the suggestion is that these conditions are not survivable and yet people do survive. Are millions of people dying in Mumbai's slums and we're not hearing about it?

<comment><USER37> From TFA:

> Around 1,000 children below the age of five die every day in India from > diarrhea, hepatitis-causing pathogens, and other sanitation-related > diseases, according to the report of United Nations Children's Fund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> For an excellent book on sanitation, I can recommend "The Big Necessity" by Rose George.

<http://rosegeorge.com/site/books/the-big-necessity>

</comment><comment><USER38> What most people do not realize is this: Mumbai also has the most expensive house in the world - thats right, in the world:

[http://statspotting.com/the-most-expensive-home-in-the- world...](http://statspotting.com/the-most-expensive-home-in-the-world-mukesh- ambanis-antilia/)

<comment><USER39> For the curious: [http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/30/home-india-billion- forbesli...](http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/30/home-india-billion-forbeslife- cx_mw_0430realestate.html). Tastes differ, let's say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Could there be money in it if somehow it could be converted into fertilizer (obviously with some hygienic challenges)?

</comment><comment><USER41> no mention of india spending $1 trillion on infrastructure over 2013 - 2018.

<comment><USER42> Spending money and seeing the results of spending the money are two different things entirely.

<comment><USER41> spending $1 trillion by 2018 is alot of money.. Dont you think articles like these are a precursor for the year 2018 ?

why are we hearing about indian sanitation and infrastructure NOW ?!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The problem is that government clearance aren't up to speed with how the population housing need is growing. This leads to unauthorized colonies, unplanned, un-organised and unhygenic.

Few hundred years ago, the Harrapan Civilization had one of the best water & sewer management systems. But today, finding a public pool in Delhi, is like finding a Oasis in the desert.

In Delhi itself, the biggest issue, surrounding sewer and management of water bodies is the cleaning up of Yamuna River, many have fought for it, many have eaten corruption money out of it, subsequent governments have failed to address this issue.. about time it comes into the limelight.

</comment><comment><USER44> After reading this, it makes me want to hug my toilet...</comment>


Ask HN: starting up with VPN or cloud hosting? - <AUTHOR>

Summary: I want to start hosting my product. I'd like to register domains (at some point). I'm a linux beginner. Thinking about scalability and price, I'm thinking am I better off on a VPN to get started or would some form of cloud hosting be better (not being familiar with either).
Full question: I'm creating a product where people can create their own 3D representations of whatever data / info they have, and (re)organise that data. The product is coming along beautifully on my local environment, but it's about time I start getting some form of hosting ready, and I could really use some advice where / how to get started:
- I'd like people to be able to move/register their own domains on my server.
I could start without this just to demo the product, but it would be the very first on the todo list. I'd like to automatically copy some files / install databases etc for each domain. I probably want to see if I can let users manage their own subdomains at some points, but for now:
- I'd like start as simple as possible I've always on a windows machine, so my linux experience is quite basic. I really don't mind getting into it, but I'm thinking it's better to get my product out first of all and see where to go from there. Although...
- I'd like things to be scalable.
If I set up some reseller VPN now which only scales to 100 domains or so, which means I have to set up something else / move again when I pass that level, or which means that I'm in trouble if I suddenly get lots of new customers... hmm.
- Finally, I need to start cheap.
I'm putting all I have into starting this company, and live on very little. So before I have any customers, 50 dollars a month is a fair bit and 100 dollars a month may be too much.
If anyone has some tips to help get me started I'd be really grateful. Also if this question would fit better elsewhere, please tell me. <comment><USER2> You're confusing a VPN with a VPS. A VPS is a virtual private server, which is virtual server you can use to host web apps, etc. A VPN is a virtual private network, which is like an encrypted layer over your internet connection, so you can communicate securely with a corporate network, or masquerade your real IP address which is useful, for example, if you're trying to use a US-only service such as Pandora from outside the US.

You might want to shy away from setting up and configuring your own VPS right now. When you've got your feet wet and have some experience, then look again at this as an option. For now, maybe you'll want to focus on a PaaS, but this might blow your budget.

You're almost asking for the impossible: cheap, scalable, and simple. I also assume that your app probably is also going to chew through CPU cycles and memory due to its nature; I could be wrong on this point though. (On a side note, how have you built your app? Is this a Python/Ruby/PHP app, or something running on the JVM? Is the part of your app that does the heavy lifting written in a statically compiled language? What kind of database, if any, does it need? How memory hungry and CPU-heavy is your app? All these things will have an impact on your options.)

There's going to be a ton of great advice in this thread. In addition to it all, I would recommend you do two things:

1\. Learn. Learn how to set up and manage Linux servers. While there are recipe-style guides for setting up *nix servers, they're not always correct and they don't really impart any real knowledge. Read them to get started setting up a practice system, but bear their limited utility. Read (official) documentation and get as familiar as possible. Practice, try to break things, and fix them. This is how you get good.

2\. In the interim, find someone (competent) to work with that can help you from a technical standpoint. This may break your budget unless they become a "cofounder" or something.

If you're wanting to host domains, I suspect you're probably not going to want to be setting these up manually, so you're going to have to write a script that will do it for you, and configure the servers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> You architect the backend very differently if you need to scale on day one. Unless you positively absolutely sure you will, I recommend going the single server route.

Amazon AWS is free for a year, it'll give you a rough idea how much money you'll need to spend.

If you have the time up-front, spend it wisely and automate server orchestration. Puppet, Chef, etc. (For me Salt works best.) It pays off the first time anything goes down, by the time you should have a plan to expand and hire a sysadmin.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> Linode, apart from being a fantastic VPS host, has some great resources on setting up Linux server software:

<http://library.linode.com/>

Another commenter mentioned learning to set up Linux servers, and while app hosting frameworks like Heroku and dotCloud are great, doing it the "hard way" first (it's not that hard anymore, really) will help you to understand and appreciate these types of services.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're looking to start cheap, I'd recommend something like dotcloud[1] or Heroku[2]. Personal bias draws me toward Dotcloud for a variety of reasons, the main one you should care about is that their pricing model allows you to 'develop' against their infrastructure for free, and you only have to 'turn on billing' when you launch.

Even when you launch, your pricing is tied to memory. Meaning if you launch and have 3 users, it'll be cheap to host because you can allocate very little memory, but as your userbase ramps up, you can turn the memory up with it. Scaling is fairly prescriptive as well -- you either add more workers / nodes or more memory (or both). Either way, if you don't need to scale, it's pretty cheap to stay small (less than $10 a month I'd suppose, but that depends on what you're building).

The only big negative I can think of as it pertains to you is that their Dotcloud on Windows support may not be great as they self-confess that none of them uses Windows. I also don't, and I haven't tried to use it on Windows, but at least on Linux/OSX, development couldn't be easier. It integrates with Git and is highly scriptable.

[1] - <http://dotcloud.com/>

[2] - <http://heroku.com/>

<comment><USER6> +1 for Heroku.

I only seriously took a hard look at Heroku in the past week and for what you get — I think it's absolutely fantastic. You can't beat the free, unlimited web dyno vs. AWS's free-for-one-year micro instance.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Listen Notes Podcast Search API - <AUTHOR> https://www.listennotes.com/developers <comment><USER2> This looks very promising! I've thought of doing something similar and started (very slowly) on the project a month ago.

What are the data sources you're using for the transcripts behind the api?

As an idea for others who are better able to implement, I'd love a system which would search every podcast I've ever listened to. It's very difficult for me to remember which podcast I heard a specific story, maxim, or interview when I want to share it with a friend. Bonus points if a transcript has some timestamps lined up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have meta data of podcasts & episodes in my own database, including title, description, publisher, ... But I don't have transcripts.

Everyone says they want transcripts, but after some digging, I decide that transcript is not very useful for now --

For listeners, those who choose to listen hate reading texts.

For podcasters, it's expensive to produce transcripts and the seemingly SEO boost is not easy to justify -- 1, it takes time for SEO to work; 2, conversational contents (most podcasts) are not high quality when you see them in texts.

For Listen Notes (podcast search engine), indexing transcripts introduces more noise than signals.

I did some experiment around transcripts, e.g., [https://www.listennotes.com/e/51222de65c2c484e8a47608eac1329...](https://www.listennotes.com/e/51222de65c2c484e8a47608eac13294a) But I decided not to continue for now.

The search results from Listen Notes include uuid for episode & podcast. So the client side (e.g., podcast player) can keep track of listen history for a user.

<comment><USER3> If you're interested in transcript search. We do it as part of our video processing engine and we work with a some podcast creators to provide search api. Message me if you are interested.

 __We do the first option in what you bring up in your later comment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love this, I just love this. This is what Google should have released a few years back when podcasts started taking over. I can't donate with PayPal because that platform hates me, maybe I can venmo you money for a beer!?. Thanks for sharing it with us!

<comment><USER5> just build on it, he's trying to monetize it not ask for donations

<comment><USER6> He _is_ asking for donations. There's a PayPal link at the bottom of the home page: 'Buy me coffee or donate some server time'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That makes sense, I find it too distracting to listen to unless I'm doing something entirely monotonous. The illusion of multitasking and all that. I'm jealous that you can just pause to think!

I'm definitely in that category of people that spend more time listening than watching, but I can't find 5+ hours per day. Although I might if I replaced all blogs and HN with podcasts haha.

In any case, I'll definitely try your service out and show some friends :). Hope you get some donations!

</comment><comment><USER7> "I'm an avid podcast listener. I listen to 5+ hours podcasts everyday."

How do you have time for that? Do you listen while doing light work? Looks like a great service anyway!

<comment><AUTHOR> I wear AirPods while coding. You know, modern programming work involves a lot of mechanical work... like moving code block around, copy & paste... For such mechanical work, I can multitask by listening to podcasts -- so I don't feel that I waste time :) Whenever I need to think, I just double tap my AirPods to pause.

I also listen podcasts during commute, workout, doing grocery, ...

I heard serval of my friends said that they spend more time listening to podcasts / audiobooks than watching TV / reading books. I don't know whether it's silicon valley bubble or it's actually a trend :)

<comment><USER8> I'm with you up until the part about listening while coding. For all of the other more mundane tasks like shopping, dishes, showering, video games, commuting throwing on a podcast makes sense.

I just can't concentrate on code and a podcast at the same time. Both will suffer if I try to combine them.

Great service! Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Big podcast fan here. After looking at the page, I tried:

[https://www.listennotes.com/api/v1/search?q=hello](https://www.listennotes.com/api/v1/search?q=hello)

And got an empty result.

Looks like you need to sign up with some external service to use it? Why that? For the monetization? Or am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> The API can't be accessed via www.listennotes.com.

I host my API on Mashape, where it takes care of some mundane but necessary tasks for building an API, e.g., API key/secret, rate limit, payment, documentation, ...

For details, please refer to [https://market.mashape.com/listennotes/listennotes](https://market.mashape.com/listennotes/listennotes)

<comment><USER9> Yup, got it!

It says "Search (almost) all podcasts & episodes on the Internet."

Where does the data come from?

<comment><AUTHOR> From iTunes initially. But right now, more and more podcasters submit their podcasts to Listen Notes. Podcasters want their shows to be discovered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool! How are you doing the typeahead feature? Do you have a big list of topics or something?

</comment><comment><USER5> how exactly do you rate "best podcasts"? not disagreeing, just interested in methodology. ever thought of giving per episode rating?

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to be frank here: it's from iTunes top chart via their API [https://affiliate.itunes.apple.com/resources/documentation/i...](https://affiliate.itunes.apple.com/resources/documentation/itunes- store-web-service-search-api/)

In the future I'll use my own data to come up with my own top chart, e.g., data for searches, clicks, plays, shares, ratings (TODO)...

<comment><USER5> ah i see. might want to disclose that then. i have no problem with it but it might confuse people that you are adding your own rating somehow

<comment><AUTHOR> For now, there's a footnote at the bottom of that page :)

Sure, I need to make it more clear.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Discuss valuations for seed stage SAAS startup - <AUTHOR> Where is a good place to discuss valuations for a seed stage SAAS startup with a working product that is just getting the first clients on-board? I had heard $5-6 million, but this is not in the valley.
Also looking for how to award stock to founders pre funding. Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> It really depends on your market and who your investor targets are. If you're in a hot market and looking to play the VC game, you're probably looking at something more in the $3M-$4M range for a seed round if you're outside the Bay Area and raising from VC's. On the other hand, if you're soliciting angels or micro VC's and don't see yourself going down the VC path, the valuation is likely to be lower in the single digit millions.

Stock awards are a contentious subject. My personal preference is vesting RSU's if the valuation is low at the time of the grant. I'm sure other will disagree. When the valuation is higher, the tax implications for both RSU's an options become a problem. IMO options are better for the company long term but worse for the employees, while RSU's are harder on the employee in the short term but better for them in the long run.</comment>


Burger King Has an Opinion on Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-24/net-neutrality-movement-finds-a-fast-food-friend-in-burger-king <comment><USER2> Clever ad spot, but I think this is confusing the debate more than clarifying:

1)

>Video portrays a world where patrons pay more for fast service

Paying more for faster service is orthogonal to Net Neutrality. Of course you can pay more for a fatter pipe. No one has a problem with this. The issue is _preferentially_ charging for data based on who is dumping it to their side of that pipe.

2) In the food world, you can already, likewise, pay more for better quality food. No one has a problem with that.

3) You can also, more controversially, bribe or tip the staff to get preferential service. That's widely accepted. The food service world is already more like net non-neutrality.

<comment><USER3> Just to play devils advocate for a moment :)

1) The video showed that you could receive a chicken sandwich now. That you were only paying more to receive only ,specifically, a whooper faster. This I thought shows preferential treatment over different types of food (data).

2) the quality of the food was not an issue in this video everyone was receiving the 'same' whooper, presumably.

3) The example burger king made was not quite the same as bribing a Maitre d' to get a table faster than other customers due to limited table resources. The video showed them withholding whoopers that were already made and ready to go, for a certain time-frame, in order to shake down the customer for more money. The idea that others who paid more for their whooper got it faster, due to limited supply of whoopers, was not the issue. The issue was that burger king would be falsely creating a pipeline delay, simply to get money out of the end user.

Although, all metaphors will be mostly speculation, as far as how it will directly relate to future ISP behavior and it's relationship with the end users. How exactly US ISP's decide to use the repeal of net neutrality, debatably, remains to be seen. It would be quite hard to form a 100% accurate metaphor for something that hasn't been fully realized quite yet. I do not mean this to imply that the behavior would in anyway be good. simply that the specifics of it are still unknown.

As a side note I like to think burger king is also inadvertently creating a self-deprecating metaphor. I hope that in the Internet world it is also only the shitty food that is being tiered. If you have to pay more to get Google, Facebook, Amazon (terrible junk food) then no worries for me. Unfortunately that bit of speculation is probably way to optimistic. ;)

<comment><USER4> Yea, the chicken sandwich example is .. interesting. I mean it works in this really basic example and I think it will help the lay-person get the general idea.

A more accurate analogy would be in a food court:

For free, you're allowed to access Taco Hell, Burger Thing, and Mc Doubles.

For $5/month, you get a special pass that also sets you access Suppression Chicken[1], Pizza Slut and Baskin Toboggans

For $8/month, you get an extended pass that lets you get into the line for a few more diabetes joins.

You can get in any of those lines without a pass, but it will cost $1/visit.

This is of course, limitation of service (which is already done in some countries, like Optus Australia which gives you unmetered Facebook and Twitter that doesn't count against your mobile data), or African ISPs that give people free Wikipedia (which is arguably, kinda a good thing -- which is what makes this tricky).

The other aspect is quality of service. Say you could get to all those fast food joins for free, but you bought passes that put you in different positions in the queues (which is more like what we see with the Burger King example). It's like the airport pre-check. Pay government extortion prices and you get to jump to the front of the line, while everyone else gets molested by the TSA.

[1] Chick-Fil-A .. if you didn't get that one

Edit: formatting

<comment><USER5> I think the problem with this analogy is that nobody would argue that a mall or theme park doesn't have the right to do this. Hell delivery services could also do this too without much fuss. If Taco Hell wants to pay DoorStash to get preferential treatment on deliveries or to be excmpted from delivery fees they wouldn't even have to be sneaky about it -- both companies would probably advertise it as a feature.

<comment><USER6> > nobody would argue that a mall or theme park doesn't have the right to do > this

I feel like the DisneyWorld / SixFlags priority / qbot system is all the commercial we should need to explain why fast lanes are bad. You can ride 4 rides in the time I stand in one line? you elitist pig.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You may think this is funny, but Burger King is actually burger-washing a very serious issue.

Not only is fast food convenient, it is essential to the most vulnerable in our society. Burger King provides food fast and cheaply. Simply stated, working class people cannot afford not to eat fast food [1].

In many locations, Burger King is the only fast food restaurant in the area [2]. In many of those same locations, public transit is inadequate for the purposes of going to a competing fast food restaurant. Establishing a fast food restaurant that can compete with Burger King requires so much work and capital that doing so is impossible for someone already working two jobs. For all intents and purposes, Burger King has a monopoly on an essential service.

Here's where it gets scary. Burger King preferentially serves proprietary, branded food items, and beverages from Coca-Cola, for which they've made an exclusive, behind-closed-doors deal... for money [3]. Have you ever noticed that it's impossible to get a McDonald's Burger or a Pepsi at a Burger King? With customers being shut out from these discussions, it's not surprising that the products they serve are unhealthy.

The common sense solution to all of this is to classify fast food joints as public utilities, and then demand that they serve food without regard to its origin. Fast food is far more important than high speed internet. And while the repeal of net neutrality regulations lead to the death of the internet... the lack of food neutrality will lead to death.

/s

[1] [http://frac.org/obesity-health/low-income-food-insecure- peop...](http://frac.org/obesity-health/low-income-food-insecure-people- vulnerable-poor-nutrition-obesity)

[2] [http://www.fastfoodmaps.com/](http://www.fastfoodmaps.com/)

[3] [http://www.businessinsider.com/restaurants-that-serve- coke-v...](http://www.businessinsider.com/restaurants-that-serve-coke-vs- pepsi-2013-12)

<comment><USER8> The problem with this analogy is that the government don't give out the only available land to Burger King restaurants for free while at the same time make it practically impossible for any other restaurants to get access to land and compete. Government created monopolies on food access are indeed a major issue in nations which has had that (east Germany, war time rationing) and it would be more important than high speed internet.

Thankfully this doesn't happen with Burger King. Burger joints are common simply because the ease of starting one up and access to customers. No requirement to go and dig cables on government land, no last mile issues, just make a safe building and edible food and off you go.

<comment><USER7> In many places, the government's barriers to entry are worse for a fast food restaurant [1] than for, e.g., creating a WISP. So, I don't think your argument breaks the analogy.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/01/why-o...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/01/why- one-major-city-will-no-longer-let-fast-food-outlets-open-near- schools/?utm_term=.1ca1e35b41b9)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Burger King restaurants are independent franchisees but the brand is owned > by Restaurant Brands International, based in Ontario, Canada.

While it's true that the headquarters is in Ontario, RBI is majority owned by 3G Capital out of Brazil. They moved the RBI HQ to Ontario ostensibly for tax reasons when they acquired Tim Horton's. Burger King's HQ still appears to be in Miami. So I'm not sure if it's wholly honest to make this seem like a Canadian company doing this, they're just the middle parent of a U.S. HQ > Canada HQ > Brazil HQ ownership chain.

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone else notice the name tags on the employees? Vint (Cerf) and Robert (Kahn)!

</comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps we can just embrace this new reality of corporate decision making in politics, and game the system. If companies like Burger King can be brought to the consumer's side on certain issues, perhaps it's possible to rally many others to bring powerful special interests to heel. Imagine a future where rather than jamming stupid advertisements down our throats, companies can just straight up "buy" the good will of their consumers for a time by openly opposing certain things legally. If the citizen's only worth to political discourse is the amount of cash they have in the bank and how they spend it, then maybe this is just the natural evolution of democracy to a more pure, unpretentious form.

<comment><USER4> Special interest groups already dictate policy. There have been actual studies on that, and I did a video on one of them a while back:

[http://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-voting-make-a- differen...](http://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-voting-make-a-difference/)

I'm currently working on a post called "You can't vote with your purchases" which is something I feel a lot of libertarians and capitalists spew out. Don't like Wal-Mart? Don't shop there.

The trouble is you really can't. Edward Bernays and Anna Freud really changed the game when they started teaching companies how to market to people emotionally to draw them in. I know tons of people, myself included, who don't shop at Wal-Mart, but it doesn't make a dent. Wal-Mart can still manipulate millions of people with their extensive ad campaigns, and most people simply don't care.

Tobacco companies got women to smoke more by disusing it as being part of women's rights (look up Torches of Freedom).

McDonalds led a PR campaign against "frivolous lawsuits" from the women who got 3rd degree, life threatening burns from their coffee, that people still believe to this day ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNWh6Kw3ejQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNWh6Kw3ejQ)).

The Baptist church didn't put a dent in Disney by boycotting them. Even MLKings Montgomery bus boycotts didn't succeed due to financial pressure. They succeeded because the news and media attention got so huge that the Supreme Court had to step in.

Every company does something unethical. Your processors are manufactured in Malaysia by people who get paid barely enough to live on, your shoes are made in Africa by companies driving people off their land and into the cities to work in factories, your shirts are made in South American sweat shops .. just by living in a high income country (US, EU, AU, even Russia) you are part of a river of exploitation (the book The Culture of Make Believe goes into this in detail).

To vote with purchases requires all the actors to be active, uncompromising and aware .. and that simply never will be the case.

<comment><USER12> There are efforts to record the history and origin of manufactured items using bkockchain in the supply chain. It will probably end up increasing the price of the items though because only items created in a sustainable way will want to publish to a public ledger. You will be able to vote with purchase, it will just become increadibly expenisve to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems to show the opposite point: there is no law requiring BK to not have a, say, faster drive thru or counter for more money. Yet we survive.

<comment><USER14> Well BK operates in a very competitive industry, and I'm not aware of any major (or even minor) player doing something like this. I know if I was waiting in line watching other people get their food first because they can afford to pay a premium for that service (thus pushing my order further back in the queue), I would ask for my money back and would not return because there are hundreds of other food options available in my city. If BK was the only food option available in my city (and local community supported alternatives outlawed at the state level), then I guess I would just have to live with it, or go without.

<comment><USER15> > If BK was the only food option available in my city (and local community > supported alternatives outlawed at the state level)

Then the best solution would be to rally support to change the law to allow more food options to operate in your city. Spending time trying to dictate exactly how your one food option should operate its cashier line won't give you nearly as improved a consumer experience as getting a few competitors to open up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Burger King corporation believes they can sell more and make more money > selling chicken sandwiches and chicken fries so now they're slowing down the > access to the whopper.

Quoted from the video, this is the actual analogy that makes sense.

However, under no net neutrality, would customers be able to pay extra to get faster access to services that are pushed to the slow lane like the customers here can pay for the whopper?

</comment><comment><USER17> Being vegetarian the bar is quite high when it comes to burger companies and their marketing efforts - I am not going to be spending money in Burger King ever. However, after seeing this ad I do think that Burger King have a bit more to them than that rival burger chain.

They have been smart here because nobody wants to pay more for priority interwebs access - the fast lane pass. But actually they have done a good job of hopping on this bandwagon. It is okay to be against the government on something like this where riots are not going to happen, it is tame.

Now they could not do this jump on the bandwagon marketing with the other thing of the moment - crypto currency addiction, but this could be on either the side of government or the bitcoin-bores.

If they sided with government and went the extra mile to protect their customers from spending their money on alt-coins then there would be a lot of the bitcoin addicted that would take issue with this (probably starting with the semantics of bitcoin). Burger King could have a parody pyramid scheme burger store where none of the food was regulated, just regurgitated. People could be HODLing onto their burgers and fries could end up being used to back a new blockchain based currency for burgers, so everyone could convert their useless fiat money into fries, with those fries being convertible to good as gold bitcoin at any time, subject to transaction fees that can be paid in USD or BTC. Naturally there would be a fixed 22 billion fries to buy, no more. And funny stories about people who bought a pizza with ten million fries not realising how many burgers you could get with that.

Of course such a marketing campaign would alienate lots of customers, even if it was educational. So the net neutrality topic is extremely conveniently tame plus they can take the people vs the government on it, to play the underdog.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure why you wouldn't spend money in a burger king as a vegetarian. They are one of the few burger chains that offers a vegetarian burger. If you ask for a veggie burger in Wendy's they'll give you a bun with lettuce and tomato. If you ask in a McDonald's they'll just laugh at you.

Don't get me wrong, Burger king is absolutely disgusting food no matter your dietary restrictions. But at least they try.

Also their advertising campaigns make me want to smash my TV, Alexa and computer.

<comment><USER19> They've had one for years too, I remember being pretty young and them being the only chain almost (aside from taco bell) that we could go to. It isn't a _good_ veggie burger really, but at least they tried.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This a great example of a great marketing team. Capitalize on a trending news item. While you may upset some people you will just as likely get a smirk out of them. Yet in all cases your name gets more exposure which is still important regardless of your position in the market.

<comment><USER21> Given that BK is also launching WhopperCoin in Russia, they've definitely done a good job adopting tech fads for the sake of news exposure. Eat your heart out, Denny's Twitter account marketing team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> All their customers would just walk over to McDonald's instead.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, unlike Net Neutrality. Joke's on the internet customers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Burger King has a pretty nifty marketing team, probably with some half geeks in there (or full, i.e. see comment of biggieshellz below). Nothing more, nothing less. Remember their Google home calling commercial? There will be more of this, way more, from many more companies.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why is BK trying to look so stupid. They appear to actually be for net- neutrality by showing a non-regulated BK that has a bunch of crazy things that no one would ever pay for like a $26 fast lane Whopper. It's scare mongering and playing on emotions really.

But the irony is there is no burger-neutrality in the real world and none of the featured horrors has happened. There is a free market that has prevented all of the things they are espousing that a free market internet would cause (but somehow has not occurred in other markets). So it is like they are making an argument against net-neutrality.

Am I missing something here?

Perhaps they are just saying that if BK had zero competition, there would be price gouging somehow. But there IS competition in the ISP market for almost everyone. If ISP's ever start doing crazy things, it's just going to open up the door for more competitors too. In some places where there wasn't good competition. ISP's were told they couldn't do certain things because of antitrust laws. Net Neutrality is a solution looking for a problem.

I see people exclaiming their shame often of the lack of good internet service in the USA compared to Hong Kong ETC. I know the geographical challenges are often stated as a reason why. That is true in some cases, but what many people don't realize is that government has made it too difficult and expensive for competitors to come into the market. Bit ISP's have even lobbied for more laws and regulations in some cases because they can afford it and it will actually cost them less than having competition.

So government causes a problem with laws and regulations that it passes, then people want it to pass more laws to compensate for a hypothetical problem that the government in the first place. So in the end we have all this bureaucracy mucking everything up just to get us back to the equilibrium that a free market had brought us to and people are actually OK with this??? I am seriously boggled.

Less regulation in this space will spur more and more competition. Antitrust laws and media pressure + PR has been absolutely adequate. What am I missing?

<comment><USER26> BK pandering to the ever increasing socialist millennial. Which my generation has been unfortunately tricked into. And despite all the down-votes from all my socialist friends on this site, you are absolutely correct. The BK depicted in this ad would fail and fail spectacularly. It would take 1 company making burgers at a flat predictable cost/speed and this BK would have to change it's policy to survive. In the end, the consumer always wins in the free market. But these socialists think more government is the answer to all of societies ills. They will just create more stagnation and problems they claim to fight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a strange analogy. A better picture of what food neutrality is would be a menu with identical prices for every meal, be it a three-store burger or a 1 oz of ketchup.

<comment><USER28> But it's easy to understand for people with a non-tech background. If they had made it more realistic (representing how net neutrality really affects people), it would've been much less entertaining and harder to understand. The analogy of no net neutrality=slow access to service is easy to get for customers and still somewhat true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> By this logic, the FDA should make a burger-neutrality law, which would prevent burger joints from making people wait for their food unless they pay extra.

</comment><comment><USER30> Burger King is known for their odd marketing campaigns... I won't be surprised if we see them launch their own crypto currency too

<comment><USER31> Guess I should invest in their stock in case they do announce something crypto related soon, it's only a matter of time before they read your comment and take the idea

<comment><USER32> Too late! WhopperCoin has been out for months. Seriously, although seems to be limited to Russia.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41082388](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41082388)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have to admit, the dig with the oversized Reese's coffee cup at the end made me LOL.

</comment><comment><USER34> In case you doubted the idea that corporations are people, they can have opinions now.

</comment><comment><USER35> Nice mug at the end. Lookin' at you, Ajit Pai ;-)

</comment><comment><USER36> This could actually be in a South Park episode.

</comment><comment><USER37> Pretty good actors. (Some) real folks would've pulled out a handgun... which they won't be able to do sitting at home, angry at their ISP.

</comment><comment><USER38> Pure genius.

</comment><comment><USER39> They're hoping we forget they moved out of the US to avoid paying taxes; its nice they want to raise awareness, but you ditched the US, so your opinion doesn't matter here anymore.

I'm a strong believer of "If you don't vote, you can't bitch" :)

<comment><USER40> They moved out of the US to avoid paying taxes on worldwide income, they still pay taxes on US income - all foreign companies that operate in the US do! Just like all US companies that operate in Canada pay Canadian corporate income taxes...

No taxation without representation.

<comment><USER39> Anyways, the core point was they moved out to avoid paying taxes, and that's exactly what they did. The $2 left isn't worth talking about

<comment><USER40> The alternative was to make Tim Hortons a US company, that would have sucked.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Police Arrest Men for Spreading Popcorn Time Information - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/police-arrest-men-for-spreading-popcorn-time-information-150819/

<comment><USER2> At the risk of making a slippery slope argument, it's impossible not to wonder how this boundary will continue to move (how many degrees of separation can be prosecuted from an actual crime). I'm sure the more extreme advocates of this prosecution will try to draw parallels to "What if someone put a bomb making guide online"; but this illustrates the point well: When the original feinstein bill to make illegal distributing bomb making information was put into place, it was not long after that corporate interests wanted to move the needle such that financial damages were protected in similar form, in this case from CD cracking.

We've now moved one step further, pursuing those helping people find ways to help them do an illegal act (my own opinions aside, it's still illegal), and while this can be very readily justified as simply expanding the scope of investigation for involved parties, I have two primary concerns.

\- One, where do you draw the line? As a sister post jokingly put it, google should clearly be taken down for facilitation too. But perhaps it's not such an outlandish suggestion after all?

\- Two, there are too many similarities in my mind to how prosecution in the drug war focused on end users, and the overwhelmingly negative outcome from that angle of attack; With the additional leveraging of some of the most extreme violations that can be brought against these individuals (as another sister post jokingly puts it, "those terrorists!"), I must again take the sobering reality from that joke in that we are further criminalizing acts that at the end of the day have EXTREMELY disputable damaging impact, and for practical purposes, entirely overturning the subjects lives (who, I have no reason to believe were not otherwise productive citizens; but no longer) in the pursuit of this crusade.

That was quite the rant. A bit of a conglomeration of a few subjects very close to heart, I guess.

Let me try and end this with a thought, however, more to the tune of what HackerNews wants to be:

Given that the pre-takedown content of the site is still present on Archive.org, I wonder how much of a statement it would be to start mirroring the content in a more "disposible" fashion across multiple providers, play a game of whack-a-mole. Or if something like Etherium, or another distributed system, is truly the panacea for content like this. It probably takes away from my earlier points in that I would support this form of dissent, but I can't help but see things like that and not want to "aim to misbehave."

<comment><USER3> > Given that the pre-takedown content of the site is still present on > Archive.org...

It will be _until_ a crawler-hostile robots.txt is "accidentally" added to the site. :(

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So now people are getting arrested for writing about and linking to a software that helps people potentially infringe copyright. Plus their domains seized and website shut down before they have been found guilty of anything.

Shoot first and ask later. True Hollywood style.

Luckily Torrentfreak is not based in Denmark.

      "The Danish State Prosecutor for Serious Economic and International Crime is presently conducting a criminal investigation that involves this domain name,"

Wow so this is treated as a serious economic or international crime. Those terrorists!

<comment><USER4> QUICK! Raid Google, Im pretty sure you can jse it to find infringing material too /s</comment></comment>


Browser Based Quilt Design Tool - <AUTHOR> http://kck.st/PQWbb4

<comment><USER2> Not trying to be a skite or a killjoy but we designed a tool very similar to this as part of a research project (for a usability project mind you) as part of a thesis back in 2003. We primarily targeted Microsoft Windows XP Tablet edition at the time, which is now arguably a dying breed. We found quilting wasn't a large area of interest but still, I'd be interested to see how it goes...

<comment><USER3> I've learned not to underestimate the crafting community. I was astonished when I saw what Ravelry (<https://www.ravelry.com>) grew into. It certainly casts a wider net than a specialized quilting website, but if even a small fraction of the 2 million worldwide members of Ravelry (as of 2.29.2012) found this interesting, one would have an impressive userbase. I've forwarded the project on to my mother :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the encouragement. Ravelry for sure has been amazing. I thought I'd clarify though that the tool we're building is for quilting, though we hope later versions will work for other sewing. The community site that is tied to it is for all sewing though, not just quilting. So basically while Ravelry covers fiber based craft, we cover fabric based craft.</comment></comment></comment>


How to ask for a favor - <AUTHOR> http://www.askmen.com/money/how_to_60/97_how_to.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Guilty phrases to look for: just, any, all, always

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


Why Small Companies Will Win in This Economy - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bregman/2009/03/why-small-companies-will-win-i.html?cm_re=homepage-031909-_-lede-_-headline

<comment><USER2> It drives me nuts that 10+ years with this crazy web of ours and newspapers/magazines still haven't figured out how to either a) automatically link to websites/URLs mentioned or b) make sure the producer copying and pasting does it themselves

From the article:

<http://passlogix.com> <http://unicycle.com> <http://banjo.com>

<comment><USER3> Wow. They are actually for unicycles and banjos. I was expecting some weird, ironically named, social networking sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Corporations with cash will also continue acquiring those small companies, everyone wins.

</comment><comment><USER5> This still seems pretty counter-intuitive to me. I would think that large businesses would be preferred over smaller ones in a down economy, because clients/customers would be worried that small shops could go under. Likewise, larger businesses would feel a greater urgency to spend more personal time with clients/customers to avoid losing them.</comment>


Twitter's tech problems take a toll on developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179446/Twitter_s_tech_problems_take_a_toll_on_developers

<comment><USER2> This is why you shouldn't base your entire business on a 3rd party service.</comment>


Relaxing with Runcible, the circular 'anti-smartphone' - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/04/runcible-circular-anti-smartphone/ <comment> grey-area The anti-smartphone I'd love to see is a small bluetooth communicator with a mic, buzzer and speaker in some sort of small badge, with an SDK like pebble's, but it has to be small and thin. You could do an awful lot of notifications with subtle sounds, and of course have phone calls, send voice messages or text messages (speech to text) via your phone. Love the filtered notifications idea here though.

Once you start adding a screen, the battery requirements go through the roof and you need something very big, at which point it's like a cut-down phone without the internet connection and battery life and size become a constant issue. The Apple watch is chunky and ugly in its current incarnation because of these problems, and unfortunately this device is pretty big too.

We need internet connected things which complement phones and enhance our lives, not compete with them in different form-factors. Another thing that'd be nice is some sort of colour epaper scroll for a reader which winds up really tight into a tube. It is interesting to think about where the future could take us with printable electronics and better performance, but it feels like we're on the cusp of all these technologies becoming possible, but not there yet - a little like 90s feature-phones - promising but not persuasive.

<comment><USER2> Your epaper scroll idea reminds me of what Rob Pike said at the very end of this interview: [http://rob.pike.usesthis.com/](http://rob.pike.usesthis.com/)

>The world should provide me my computing environment and maintain it for me and make it available everywhere. If this were done right, my life would become much simpler and so could yours.

>I would allow the setup to force me to carry a computer screen around, as long as it rolled up and fit inside something the size of a pen and had touch input when unrolled. As long as it had no local storage.

<comment><USER3> From a usability perspective that would be very cool. But I think we'd need some big changes to our laws. Under current U.S. laws, data you have in your physical possession is subject to greater legal protections than data you have hosted at a 3rd party. Switching to a life without local storage today means accepting lower protections for privacy and legal defense.

<comment><USER2> That's a good point. I guess that could be mitigated by operating your own server, though that would never be a popular option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "It runs on Mozilla's Firefox OS platform and lets you make calls, ask for directions and browse the web. So when you're heading out to grab dinner with friends, you can leave your smartphone at home and avoid the temptations of Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat."

I don't understand these two sentences at all. If you can browse the web, how does it help "avoid the temptation"?

It's a nice looking round thingy, but "anti-smartphone"?..

<comment><USER5> Because Firefox OS has no Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat Apps (yet).

<comment> Digit-Al But if you have a browser you don't need the apps... Just log in via the appropriate website.

<comment><USER6> Having a browser != having a browser you want to use. The e-ink kindles have browsers that would only be well suited to an emergency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of the aesthetic in Her [1], which was summarised nicely here [2] by the production designer:

      "You could say that Her is, in fact, a counterpoint to that prevailing vision of the future–the anti-Minority Report. Imagining its world wasn't about heaping new technology on society as we know it today. It was looking at those places where technology could fade into the background, integrate more seamlessly. It was about envisioning a future, perhaps, that looked more like the past. "In a way," says Barrett, "my job was to undesign the design."

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/) [2] [http://www.wired.com/2014/01/will-influential-ui-design- mino...](http://www.wired.com/2014/01/will-influential-ui-design-minority- report/)

</comment><comment><USER8> There seems to be an interest in making, and perhaps owning secondary mobile devices. The problem, IMO is that most people have one SIM for their phone. If phone companies would give you a 2nd SIM for the same number, I think a new little market could emerge for them.

<comment><USER9> Its quite easy to get a second SIM, and multiple SIM-slots are one of the reasons for Androids' popularity in various non-US markets, namely: Asia. Its very common to have two SIM's per phone - one for private, one for work, or one for calls and one for Internet.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but the point wouldn't be to have two numbers on the same phone, but two phones with the same number, so you'd need two SIMs with the same number.

<comment><USER9> Well its probably different for your market, but I have no problems calling my telco and asking for a second SIM for my account - same #, same plan, etc.

<comment><USER11> An actual phone SIM? How does that work? Do both phones ring? Does the one phone stop ringing when you answer the other? What happens when you're talking on one phone, does the other phone ring?

I mean lots of places offer secondary data SIMs for your phone plan, but never one that gives you the same phone number.

<comment><USER9> One is set as the 'parent' SIM and incoming calls will only ring on that phone. If you're using the master and another call comes in, it can be configured to either go straight to voicemail, or ring on the second phone. Quite convenient.

This is available all over Asia - as usual, the Western countries seem to either be being held back by some regulation, or simply behind the times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Video review of demo version:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlo8jHHeP8Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlo8jHHeP8Y)

</comment><comment><USER13> Perhaps it's time we stop beating around the bush and just release a StarTrek communicator already. Looking for screenshots, I found someone already did: [http://www.orionlabs.co](http://www.orionlabs.co)

<comment> grey-area That's about 5 times the size of a StarTrek comm badge and far uglier, still, at least it's a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER14> Surely you're thinking of the TNG-VOY-DS9 era combadges, not the clunky flip- phones from the original series?

<comment> grey-area Oh yes probably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My Moto 360 is this and more. The Runcible just looks like a poor re-invention of the smartwatch. Its almost looks like a comically archaic pocketwatch version of a smartwatch, which is a form factor no one is really playing with.

I love having Google now and Google search just one whisper away from my wrist. Just the other day at dinner, we were discussing the ages of certain celebrities and I just whispered, "Ok google, how old is William Shatner" and got the proper answer with a headshot. I didn't just get a link to wikipedia or a list of search results - I got the actual result with next to no effort. Pulling out my phone and doing this just seems like a pain in the ass now. The Android Wear products are full of hidden gems like these.

The minimalist mobile device is already here. The Runcible guys seem to have been leapfrogged by AW and by whatever Apple finally releases.

<comment><USER16> _Its almost looks like a comically archaic pocketwatch version of a smartwatch_

I'd call it a dumbphonepocketwatch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I assume the name is a reference to Edward Lear's favorite nonsense word? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runcible](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runcible)

</comment><comment><USER18> It reminds me Siemens Xelibri series.

</comment><comment><USER19> Chumby 2.0</comment>


Javascript Engineer at Cloud/Big Data Fusion Startup - <AUTHOR> http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/sof/3721198795.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't tell if this job posting is real or just making fun of big data companies. Definitely laughed out loud :)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a webcast for the SpaceX Jason-3 launch tomorrow? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I got a Livestream notification about it.

Here is a link to the Livestream Event: [http://livestream.com/spacex/events/4695903](http://livestream.com/spacex/events/4695903)

<comment><USER3> did you get notified by SpaceX or Livestream? because I signed up for spacex email, but I never get any updates

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They've scheduled a YouTube stream and r/SpaceX's live thread as already started

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivdKRJzl6y0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivdKRJzl6y0) [https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/417weg/rspacex_jaso...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/417weg/rspacex_jason_3_official_launch_discussion/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Previous link was [http://spacex.com/webcast/](http://spacex.com/webcast/)

No guarantees though</comment>


News.YC first month traffic - <AUTHOR> http://www.ycombinator.com/images/news.yc.1month.png <comment><USER2> Thanks for the stats, I was curious how things were progressing. I wished for such a site (I thought it would be a subreddit) for a long time. Happy to see it's going well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why the sharp jump in traffic in the middle of last week?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no idea. Usually midweek will be highest for a site like this, but that was an unusually large spike.

<comment><USER3> Actually, it was probably Jason crawling news.yc indexing everything...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, that would be in the right ballpark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if there's going to be a change in traffic (# or composition) at the end of the YC application process.</comment>


Ask HN: First time CTO, having trouble juggling multiple asks from teams in org - firsttime-cto I'm having trouble juggling emails from multiple different teams, and multiple different vectors. I forget to reply to emails, and forget timelines for deliveries on verbal communications I have with other people.
I want to solve this since it's early in my tenure and I know I can fix it, I just never had a mentor teach me these things.
How do you manage asks/comms from multiple teams in the org, and remind yourself to keep track of asks and emails from people?
Appreciate any and all help. Throwaway for obvious reasons. <comment><AUTHOR> How large is your team? How many direct reports you have? Can you delegate any of the stuff on your plate?

A strategy that has work well with me in the past is having a weekly meeting with all the leads of each team and following a specific format which helps with:

-Keep your team focused on the most important priorities -Hold your team accountable for the things they've committed to -Identify, discuss, and truly solve issues - once and for all.

> How do you manage asks/comms from multiple teams in the org, and remind > yourself to keep track of asks and emails from people?

I keep a notebook log of my priorities for the day, notes from meetings or code changes and anything that needs a follow up or a reminder goes into the calendar to keep track of.

Shoot me an email amacgregor at allanmacgregor.com if you want to bounce ideas and help with specifics.

Cheers!</comment>


Ask HN: How did you manage your stress or recover from depression? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Two things to consider:

\- Identify cause(s) of stress. Operate on that cause. Address symptoms but work on the underlying cause.

\- Depression is not simple but consider if your depression is about past or future. Either direction is a problem that needs to be addressed by being more present in the now.

I had massive eczema and a host of other issues caused by stress. Nothing helped, eg creams, diet, meditation etc. The source of stress was ultimately incompetent management where I worked. Bad schedules, faulty deadlines, poor environment. I put up with it long enough to prepare my escape to a new role elsewhere. Within 3 months at new position my skin issues vanished, I lost quite a bit of weight, I had more energy. My depression dropped off significantly.

Various drugs might help with symptoms but if they aren't addressing the underlying cause they can prolong the issue rather than solve it. Don't ignore medications that address an underlying cause of symptoms either.

One final catchall: go to a dentist, doctors. Get full blood work tests. Make sure you eliminate all the "stupid simple" deficiencies or factors that are easy to fix. Vitamin D is one of these for depression. I'm definitely sensitive to that and it was an early cause we eliminated through just me being outside more and supplements. It helped a bit.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was very depressed for a very long time. Here is my philosophy.

First, I have learned to define depression as "A captulation to loss of control." By that I mean, to be depressed you must (a) feel like your life sucks and (b) believe you can't do anything about it.

This is effectively the story of the elephant who spent it's life chained to a wall who, when the chain was removed, still acted like it was chained to the wall.

The cure to feeling out of control is to systematically start controlling small things and then working up to large things.

My method to get out of depression goes like this:

Wake up. Get out of bed. Make my bed (easy to control). Brush my teeth. Take a shower. Get coffee. Clean my room. Clean & vacuum my house. ...(other stuff). Address the thing that is actually bothering me.

After that point I add more and more challenging things. It is a ramp, from small and local to prove to myself I control my environment up to things that are really bothering me.

I call this my "stop being anxious and depressed plan" and I do the plan. By the time I am up to item 5 I start to feel better.

Life is very, very complicated. Depression is very hard because it is frequently the result of multiple things at once that create a self fulfilling feedback loop.

The most important thing I ever learned was "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy." This is effectively the practice of arguing yourself out of limiting or negative beliefs.

If you are as depressed as I used to be, you are infested with lots of negative beliefs that are preprogrammed. To stop being depressed you need to trap and eliminate all these little beliefs.

CBT was the turning point for me, after that I stopped being depressed forever.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for this very well written and helpful comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I did not have depression but was very stressed and generally agitated/unsatisfied/tired. This year I decided to take most of my yearly vacation in July, like many people here do. In the past I'd take 2 weeks at a time - this time I took 5 weeks. At the same time I read a book about the importance of sleep, which also explained that sleep deprivation leads to stress, anxiety, and other emotional and cognitive problems. During my vacation I practiced good sleeping habits which I maintain today. I think next year I'll take 4 weeks off instead of 5, but just pausing to take some time off and get my sleep in order has helped tremendously with stress and general life satisfaction.

</comment><comment><USER6> antidepressant. I know it's a bit controversial but... at some point your nervous system is not working properly, and there is no way you can heal if your nervous system continues to overheat. Antidepressant allowed me to calm it down, regulate it, to be able to sleep again, and start the (needed) psychological work with a therapist. Both have to go together. It can take months or years. But you'll fight it ultimately, trust me.

<comment><USER7> Curious to know if you ever got off anti depressants? Or youre still on them?

<comment><USER6> No i got off it. I thought it would take 3 months (naive hope). It took 18 months. It was a liquid solution, I had to take 7 drops per day. I had to decrease the dose VERY progressively. I took my time. It was rally a small dose at the end. But I wanted to be safe. Again, it goes together with a proper therapy. One without the other is useless. So I progressed a lot during my therapy, which allowed me to decrease the dose. It's been 2 years I dont need antidepressant, and I dont think I will ever need it again. I am completely cured :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Recovering from depression: seeing a phycologist, starting on sertralin(antidepressants) and getting peace of mind by removing a big project that was waiting for me for "when I recovered".

Managing stress: through the above journey I learned to better identify when im getting and why I'm getting stressed, and act on it.

And generally ive become better at distancing myself emotionally from project.

</comment><comment><USER9> I joined the Marine Corps. That was ~20 years ago now and it helped me in immeasurable ways. I was a pretty crappy teen - suicidal, drugs, problems with authority - and decided I wanted to fix that.

The Corps taught me to be confident and that helped me leaps and bounds... until my wife became unfaithful and financial stress started to pile up.

For the past 4 years I leaned on medication to help me with the anxiety and depression and only this week I have begun working with my doctor to taper off of the medication. I'm at a place in life now where I don't need the crutch anymore and the medication severely impacts my creativity. It was the right choice at the time, but I'm ready to take on the world again.

</comment><comment><USER10> Shift in perspective. Facing the facts.

1) Every creature (you and others) is going to the grave no matter what. No one gets out alive. 2) You're alive _for now_. That in itself is enough to start taking control of what you wish to experience inside yourself. 3) The current moments cannot be changed at this point in time, but they can be used to start looking at possibilities in situations ahead in life. 4) You are actually responsible for everything that is happening _within_ you. So it is definitely possible to change that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Quit my job to read and code for shits and giggles.

<comment><USER12> Serious question: How are you keeping body and soul together?

<comment><USER11> In what sense? I keep improving as a programmer (a lot, like my skills have gotten so much better since quitting). You contribute to open source. You read shit from your reading list. You can make time to meet people if you feel like talking to someone. The possibilities are infinite.

<comment><USER12> In the sense of making money to pay the bills. I'm sure all of us would love to just do stuff for shits and grins, but most of us aren't independently wealthy.

<comment><USER11> I'm not independently wealthy. I saved a lot, and invested a bit. I'll run out of money eventually unless I launch something (which I'm in the process of).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Exercise and socializing. Find yourself a new woman and you'll be out of the hole in no time!

<comment><USER14> May not apply to everyone. For me, more socializing means I feel worse. I'm happiest when I can spend as much time alone as possible. If I spend too much time around people and in social situations it immediately affects my stress levels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> God and discipline.

I also used time blocking to do things even when I wasn't in the mood to.

</comment><comment><USER16> exercise, a lot of walk in parks, daily and also when feeling in "hell" during the day, and also developing a spirituality, very important to find a way to deal with the bigger questions...

</comment><comment><USER17> my got over my deep depression with therapy and medication ( prozac ). and keep my chronic depression under control with the therapy. i really should be doing some exercise, hit the gym, but still struggling with this one.

</comment><comment><USER18> Learned an amazing meditation yesterday, can teach you if you need help.

</comment><comment><USER19> exercise, no alcohol, minimal caffeine

</comment><comment><USER20> Wellbutrin

</comment><comment><USER21> i only thinking about best case scenario. that's keep me happy and motivated.</comment>


QEMU Advent Calendar - <AUTHOR> http://www.qemu-advent-calendar.org/2016/ <comment><USER2> Heya!

Thomas Huth, and myself are organizing the 2016 edition. We still have a couple of slots left, so don't hesitate to contact[1] if you have a cool disk image (or two) to contribute!

Edit: Check out the original announcement[2] by Thomas about disk image requirements.

[1] [http://www.qemu-advent-calendar.org/2016/#contact](http://www.qemu- advent-calendar.org/2016/#contact)

[2] [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu- devel/2016-09/msg039...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu- devel/2016-09/msg03990.html)

<comment><USER3> squeak/pharo

Corman Lisp/Clozure CL/SBCL Common Lisp Interface Manager [https://github.com/robert-strandh/McCLIM](https://github.com/robert- strandh/McCLIM)

meta emu: b-em/atomulator/elkulator/rpcemuspoon/ep128/amstrad cpc/fuse/stella/atari800/hatari/vice/uae/apple II/kegs/basilisk/sheepshaver/vmac/psx/pcsx/mess/EACA Video Genie etc. A lot has compatible FLOSS ROMs included.

sky is the limit: Stellarium

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the nice suggestions!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was done back in 2014 (with different images), and was a super success.. making it easy for people to try software they wouldn't normally have...

Check out the one from 2014: [http://www.qemu-advent- calendar.org/2014/](http://www.qemu-advent-calendar.org/2014/)

<comment><USER2> Indeed, major kudos to Stefan Hajnoczi, who organised it alone and did a stellar job in 2014!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for compiling this set of OS images. Being always on the lookout for obscure and non-mainstream OS I was pleased to find a few more and possibly even more in the days to come.

It was always fun to see MnuetOS run a very usable GUI with comprehensive programs all from a single floppy drive back in the days.

For me the above routine has now been replicated by booting macOS, starting VirtualBox Ubuntu VM and installing QEMU inside the VM just to see it boot MenuetOS even faster than bare metal boot ever did.

<comment><USER2> Glad that it worked for you. We realised a bit late that mouse was behaving rather oddly inside MenuetOS (at least on my Fedora 24 machine). We were seeing three behaviours: 1) mouse works fine; 2) mouse does not move at all (but you see it); and 3) mouse moves automatically to the right-most border at the start and stays there -- sometimes for ever, sometimes just for a while.

Adding the ' _-usb -device usb-tablet_ ' to the QEMU command-line gave an impression that it's the cause, by working once, but it quickly reverts to either behaviour 2 or 3 above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if they'll feature TempleOS at one point...

It would be appropriate, especially considering its biblical references :}

[1] [http://www.templeos.org/](http://www.templeos.org/)

<comment><USER6> For the uninitiated, TempleOS (formerly LoseTheOS) is the work of programmer Terry S Davis, who went schizophrenic. He hangs out on HN, mostly blabbing nonsense, racial slurs, or conspiracy theories, but the rare times he's lucid can be very interesting. More info about him:

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/gods-lonely- programmer](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/gods-lonely-programmer)

He was shadowbanned, though, because it just wasn't worth putting up with the shit. See this discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7818823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7818823)

<comment><USER7> Terry Davis' crazy is actually pretty easy to understand. He believes that God exists. However, the word of god is a random sentence generator he created (though he would say god willed him to do it). This means he is following the will of an RNG. If he's not trolling (look how long Andy Kauffman would hold a gag), I don't find his zealotry for his version of God much different than other religious zealotry. At least, his schitzophrenia is functional, and it's very interesting to watch software development dictated by an RNG.

There seems to be a correllation between the DSM-IV classification of Aspergers and a predilection to views outside social norms.

if you can get past the blatant and often blinding racism he'd spew on HN, Davis actually had some really interesting insights in his posts. Shame they were all greyed-out.

<comment><USER8> I looked at the RNG in TempleOS out of curiosity. I assumed he was mixing in some noise sources that could be explained as some kind of universal communication subchannel from god. Here's the relevant code (in HolyC of course):

      I32 RandI32()
      {//Random I32. Xor with TimsStamp.
        sys_rnd_seed.i32[0]=(1664525*sys_rnd_seed.i32[0]+1013904223)^GetTSC>>4;
        return sys_rnd_seed.i32[0];
      }

There are very similar RNG functions for signed and unsigned versions of 16, 32 and 64 bit ints. The GetTSC function just calls RDTSC, combines the two 32-bit halves in EAX and EDX and returns the recombined 64-bit TSC.

So the last returned value is used as part of the seed for the next one. The initial seed is set in kend.cpp:

      sys_rnd_seed  =93186752^GetTSC;

I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed that god would be quite so deterministic.

<comment><USER9> Relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/221/](https://xkcd.com/221/)

<comment><USER10> No, not relevant. I wish someone would invent an ad blocker that instead blocked all gratuitous references to xkcd (i.e. all of them)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Day 1: MikeOS [http://mikeos.sourceforge.net](http://mikeos.sourceforge.net)

Day 2: Syllable Desktop [http://web.syllable.org/pages/index.html](http://web.syllable.org/pages/index.html)

Day 3: FreeGEM [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeGEM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeGEM)

Day 4: ReactOS [https://reactos.org/](https://reactos.org/)

Day 5: Tower of Hanoi for Forth/OpenFirmware [http://www.kernelthread.com/projects/hanoi/html/macprom.html](http://www.kernelthread.com/projects/hanoi/html/macprom.html)

Day 6: MenuetOS [http://menuetos.net/](http://menuetos.net/)

</comment><comment><USER12> My first instinct was to check the predictable URLs for future images and ruin the surprise... luckily they have that covered!

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how many of these could be made to run in the browser now, a-la the Internet Archive.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hoping for something interesting that isn't x86ish :)

<comment><USER2> We're hoping, too -- there's some more ground to cover, let's see how it turns out. :-)

<comment><USER2> Oh, forgot to mention, checkout Day-5 -- it's PowerPC-based.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious - what would a minimal Linux(?) system consist of that starts qemu at the first opportunity?

Perhaps qemu could even replace init?

<comment><USER16> Have a look at Qubes OS

<comment><USER8> I don't think qubes comes anywhere close to what the GP was asking for. It's awesome, but it's far from being a minimal linux system to bootstrap qemu. dom0 is a full Fedora install, and it uses Xen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is exciting. But I'm already wasting countless hours solving the AoC every day, and I'm backlogged on work. So I'll have to give it a miss for now.</comment>