A Minecraft world that has been played for 3.5 years - <AUTHOR> http://minecraft.xandorus.com:8123/?worldname=playground&mapname=surface&zoom=6&x=-109.6183436789116&y=64&z=-17.340908734067128 <comment><USER2> Pretty big world, but it doesn't even compare to 2b2t in scale.

For those who havent heard of it, 2b2t is an anarchy survival server that's been around for about the same period of time, 3-4 years, with no resets. Virtually the entire map from the spawn point to 5km from spawn is a desolate wasteland littered with ruins griefed bases, castles, and megastructures.

With the introduction of the hunger system everything got a lot more interesting, requiring new players to make a mad scramble from spawn and try to find some source of sustenance. It's not uncommon for new players searching for food to duck into a 2-3 year old base that's been long abandoned but has a few precious pieces of bread left in a chest.

Typically players will build their bases anywhere between 10-500km away from spawn, and when they do, they build some of the most impressive bases I've seen in the game. One favored hobby of many regulars is to go hunting for these gems that have usually been abandoned years past.

Google it and you can get a good idea of exactly how old the map is, but the pictures really don't do justice to the absolute carnage of spawn.

<comment><USER3> Here's a video tour of 2b2t for those interested: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIlcLPJqvvA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIlcLPJqvvA)

<comment><USER4> Just watched that and came away a bit confused. I'm not a minecraft player, but I understand what it is and have seen videos of people playing. I guess my question is, in the case of this, did someone go around a build that whole world just to mess with players or is it the work of a lot of different people who want to make a difficult world?

I suppose I just don't get what they are going for.

<comment><USER5> The latter. The admin takes a completely hands-off approach to running the server (I'm not even sure if he plays on it). So the condition of the spawn is purely because many people over the years thought it would be funny to make it as inhospitable as possible.

I guess it's an acquired taste, but there's something fun about trying to survive in such a hostile world. How many game servers have 200+ page comics written about them? [http://minecraft2b2t.thecomicseries.com/](http://minecraft2b2t.thecomicseries.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> We should carve out a small section of land, right at the spawn. One chunk, say. Fill it with useful things like farms, farm animals, resources. Then, guard it 24/7 by using a rotating staff system. See how long we can keep it defended!

<comment><USER5> Oh, people have tried. It never lasts.

[http://minecraft2b2t.thecomicseries.com/comics/104/](http://minecraft2b2t.thecomicseries.com/comics/104/)

EDIT: Looks like I've gotten sucked in again. Feel free to message me if you want to try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seeing things like this, and others in the thread, honestly depresses me. I've wasted months of my life building in Minecraft, huge structures that I can do nothing but look at, alone. Months where I lost social interaction and self maintenance. Nothing good ever comes of these worlds, and they are self destructive to their creators.

Minecraft, Reddit, Imgur, Facebook, all things you will eventually have to block from your life if you want to achieve anything real. Don't let it consume you. The only winning move is not to play.

<comment><USER7> I know this sounds harsh, but you seem to lack self control which I can emphatize with. After all, I've spent nights where "one more thing" has kept me up till early in the morning.

I don't have the end all be all advice on the topic, but you might just need some people looking out for you. If you choose to play, play on a small server where you know people, and people know that you are struggling to pace yourself. If you're feeling guilty about playing, don't. Building huge structures you aren't proud of doesn't do you any good. If you're playing compulsively, but you're not enjoying it, it might help to shut it out entirely. Deinstall your client, give your account to a friend, block imgur, reddit and facebook, and forget they ever existed.

Sometimes that doesn't solve your problem though, it only creates a void in your life. Empty time is horrid, and we try to fill it up no matter what. Unless you make a conscious effort to fill that void with things you do enjoy, you'll just end up filling it with whatever is convenient. If you don't know what those things are, you might need to do some testing and sampling. Maybe it's contemporary dance or building miniature railways or helping people learn to code that you'll stumble across and start to really enjoy.

Also, if you, in the process of doing that, stumble across something you absolutely love, but tell yourself that it isn't productive or important, you've got problems with who you think you should be. You might be telling yourself you'll be happy if you're the guy in the 10,000$ suit sitting in his blacked out tesla, whilst you just stumbled over the fact you might be happier if you're the guy that's sitting in his basement watching tiny trains go on laps.

If you think that that will make your parents or friends or whoever you care about think of you less, what business do they have of deciding what makes you happy? They shouldn't have a stake in whether you're gay or straight, who you fall in love with, whether you want children or not, and certainly not in whether you get to lead a fulfilled life or not.

Anyways, I'm just drawing this from similar struggles I've been having, and maybe some of these points will help you crack out of whatever problem you're having. Honestly, I can't either say that I have implemented everything I'm preaching here, but it seems like a step in the right direction for me.

<comment><USER8> Another technique is to make empty time less horrid, which in turn reduces the need to immediately fill it, which in turn allows you to choose better activities instead of scrambling for what is the quickest and easiest distraction.

Empty time doesn't have to be a void in your life. If you can't sit alone and do nothing for an hour without a lot of anguish, that indicates some internal turmoil. Eliminating the feeling of emptiness during empty time is freeing, because in my experience it lowers the bar for your own contentment. While living, instead of worrying about meeting your needs for present gratification AND productivity of an action, you usually only have to think about the second, because you know you'll be fine, and even happy, regardless of the "fun" of the action you choose, as long as the action seems rewarding in the long run.

This is easier said than done, but I've found some success in being content in the present through reading up on both mindfulness practices and Stoicism. A lot of people have found success through mindfulness meditation specifically (so check that out), but I've found it more useful for me to mindfully and meditatively carry out mundane tasks, such as dishes, instead of sitting meditation.

<comment><USER7> I'm certainly plagued by some internal turmoil, and I feel free to admit that. I'm at an uncertain period in my life, and I do not know whether I will be sucessful at achieving any of my goals. My past record has been littered by public failures, and successes noone close to me wants to recognize.

I've failed at getting 3 businesses started, my academic track record is meager at best, and whilst I consider myself intelligent, I do not know whether I'll be able to perform as expected in college, which is what I'm looking at right now. I have trouble moderating myself, and even though I've spent the last couple of years working on my skillset, I'm not sure whether that will cut it for what I want to do in life.

I'm struggling with the amount of social expectations that I'm being handed. For one I have friends who expect me to do great things, and they are on track to do great things. I also expect myself to do great things. They're all in college now, I'm not. One kid I helped with bio homework back when I was in 9th grade and he was in 11th grade now studies Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. There's another former classmate at NYU who I'm helping with physics and programming problems, and he looks up to me as an example. Can't say that about myself.

But then, if you look at the way I've been performing, you'd expect me to fail in a spectacular manner. C student from the get go, then after changing schools oscialating wildly from getting straight As and straight Fs. Only student in the entire school that managed to get on academic probation with a GPA of 3.19. Then I got kicked out of that school as well. I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of the school I managed to graduate from either.

Then college right now. I'm not sure which school I'll even get into. Ideally, I'll get into a respectable school abroad, perform well, finally get to use the skills I've been honing for years, make some money, transfer to one of the schools I was told I should be in, that I could be in if my life wasn't such a mess. That's a long shot though.

Then there's the less than rosy but equally possible probability that I'll ascend astronomically for the first semester and crash and burn within semester 2. Get kicked out second year, no job, no degree. My health in the gutter because I overworked myself and couldn't quite cope with the workload.

It's quite the conflicting, uncertain situation to be in, and I don't think I'll be any less anxious about it before I figure out how well each of the bridges I've got to cross hold up. They look shoddy, but you never know. I don't think meditation will help me with that.

<comment><USER9> Something that can really help with this is getting out of the mindset of identifying yourself by your achievements. You talked about stoicism and being in the present, but it sounds like you're very preoccupied and anxious over how others will percieve your potential success/failure.

One of the aspects of experiencing the present moment is cutting away that ego - realising that ego isn't actually part of conscioussness, it's just something you're choosing to cling onto and identify with.

That doesn't mean that you can't pursue goals and achievement - just that you're not tying them to your happiness. To quote Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle (which you may want to consider reading):

"Does it matter whether we achieve our outer purpose, whether we succeed or fail in the world? // It matters to you as long as you haven't realised your inner purpose. After that, the outer purpose is just a game that you may continue to play simply because you enjoy it. It is also possible to fail completely in your outer purpose and at the same time totally succeed in your inner purpose. Or the other way round, which is actually more common: outer riches and inner poverty, or to 'gain the world and lose your soul'. Ultimately, of course, every outer purpose is doomed to 'fail' sooner or later, simply because it is subject to the law of impermanence of all things. The sooner you realise that your outer purpose cannot give you lasting fulfillment, the better. When you have seen the limitations of your outer purpose, you give up your unrealistic expectation that it should make you happy, and you make it subservient to your inner purpose."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Way awesome! It's really amazing what people can build in Minecraft even in a short period of time, let alone a long stretch.

Here's a map from a server I play on. This map represents only 6 months or work (we reset our map every 3-6 months) and was done 100% in survival mode: [http://nerd.nu/maps/pve11/#/61/64/-42/-2/0/0](http://nerd.nu/maps/pve11/#/61/64/-42/-2/0/0)

<comment><USER11> Where on earth did you get so much iron?! That's what the spaceship is made of, right?

EDIT: Silver -> Iron

<comment><USER10> The spaceship is made of iron and is the only thing on the map that wasn't player-built. The spaceship was pre-made by the server staff to serve as the spawn point. However, iron is extremely abundant because we figured out how to exploit villager spawning mechanics to construct enormous machines that generate free iron by slaying and regenerating iron golems. A bunch of these machines can be seen all over the map; here's a notable example: [http://nerd.nu/maps/pve11/#/-1188/64/148/-2/0/0](http://nerd.nu/maps/pve11/#/-1188/64/148/-2/0/0)

<comment><USER11> Oh my mistake, I meant iron! Very cool technique, thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER7> If you're intrested in vanilla minecraft resource farming, i'd reccomend giving a couple of these videos a look, i've built a number of those back when i was still playing vanilla.

      Mumbo Jumbo
      [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZYgfmLCrek&list=UUhFur_NwVSbUozOcF_F2kMg] High Efficiency Sheep Farm
      [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zWbXLa4LKA&list=UUhFur_NwVSbUozOcF_F2kMg] Wither Powered Furnace Array
      [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy-dzsMtVYk&list=UUhFur_NwVSbUozOcF_F2kMg] Mega Cactus Farm
      [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xzbx7vFqqE&list=UUhFur_NwVSbUozOcF_F2kMg] Supersmelter
      [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gb4VUT_HLU] Automatic Tree Farm
      [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wx766O4tKQ] Simple Blaze Farm

      Xisumavoid
      [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR6oATNOFSw] Wither Nether Farm
      Redstone Jazz
      [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPwPpaPKFnc] Gold Farm
      Tango Tek
      [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STs4wDJewNw] Iron Titan Compact Iron Farm]
      [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTvYKtL822E] Automated potion brewing.

Even if you don't play minecraft, some of those builds are either awe inspiring in complexity or size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Server worlds can get impressive pretty quickly. One of my wallpapers is this render from one of the old reddit server worlds: [http://i5.minus.com/im5gOe.jpg](http://i5.minus.com/im5gOe.jpg)

On the other hand, my single player world which is about 4 years old isn't nearly as impressive.

<comment><USER13> I migrated my single player world (dating back to Beta 1.8) to a server so some of my coworkers at the time could play too. It's not really huge, but I am strangely emotionally attached to it. My server was down for a few months (and I wasn't playing at the time), but I recently brought it back online. Minecraft seems like one of those games that I'll play forever, like Super Mario Bros.

[http://minecraft.cgore.com](http://minecraft.cgore.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The ring roads are the most impressive part, IMO.

Between material-gathering, going to the work site, clearing the path ahead (largely avoided here by elevation, but still) and actually laying down the road one... block... at... a... time... roads are very slow to build in Minecraft. They take a large amount of investment before they start to pay off, unlike most buildings, and they can't really be fully appreciated except from map views like this site, so they're kind of low-reward for the people doing the work, too.

I only run a vanilla server, so I don't know how mods might affect that. Were these tool-assisted in some way? I just can't wrap my head around that time involved if not.

<comment><AUTHOR> They were initially built by WE, then manually filled in over time. It's taken quite a while and you can still find some with holes.

Relevant comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8649733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8649733)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stuff like this is pretty fascinating. I've only really played Minecraft singleplayer and intermittently. I almost always end up starting a new world with each update, too, since it bugs me not having the new blocks/structures/etc in already created chunks. I've never even made it as far as doing the enderdragon, usually getting caught up building some ill- advised structure or clearing some endless cave network. I wish the devs would slow down with the new features, the complexity is kind of out of control at this point.

<comment><USER16> That's the best part about minecraft:

"the complexity is kind of out of control at this point"

Because on the surface most people who don't already own the game probably didn't buy it because they thought the game looked stupid and "simple". Haha, what a pleasant surprise Minecraft is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here is a world I've been running for 2.5 years. Spawn has been moved several times, so the world spans tens of thousands of blocks. If you look carefully you can find large settlements from continent to continent, [http://treestop.com:8123](http://treestop.com:8123)

</comment><comment><USER18> Very impressive. How many days in total have been spent playing this world?

Also, some gems in there[1].

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/RFDD5lZ.png](https://i.imgur.com/RFDD5lZ.png)

<comment><USER19> I wonder which was first, the pyramid or the TIE. So as to find what went on the head of the builder "look, he made a pyramid... let's build a huge TIE Fighter!"

<comment><USER20> To anybody reading the above two comments thinking _" TIE Fighter? That sounds cool, I want to see that."_ The TIE Fighter is south east of the giant penis rocket.

<comment><USER21> That's my mistake. I always take a left after the giant penis rocket. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, the performance of this website is really good. How is this so fast?

<comment><USER23> They're just rendered PNG tiles in a Javascript slippy map library.

EDIT: Just checked, it's leaflet ([http://leafletjs.com/](http://leafletjs.com/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have a _really_ hard time believing you built those concentric pathways by hand and not through some level editor...

Very nice world otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> They were built using Worldedit. The precision of WE is pretty bad, though, so they had holes from where WE rounded the numbers. I've been traveling along the roads over the past few years, filling them in by hand. It's quite meditative, to be honest :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Another large server map that's from a 1+ year old map that's 12000 blocks wide. Players' towns are marked:

[http://imdeity.com/map/](http://imdeity.com/map/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I know almost nothing about mine-craft. How many people played in that arena? I ask because it would be kind of sad if one person did all of that. However, it says something pretty cool about humanity if it was constructed by random people passing through, which is that people will naturally work together. In other words, no centralized set of rules are required in order for people to collaborate together to build a (virtual) city.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure which arena you're speaking about, but a few of our arenas were very popular when we were running the Spleef plugin, which automated restarting of rounds after the last player stood, etc.

The best part about having so many players build over a period of several years is discovering little things they built that no one saw. Signs with personal notes. Graves for players who never came back or dogs that died. This kind of thing.

<comment><USER27> I think by 'arena' he meant the whole world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wanna play minecraft now. I have a save that is one i continually work on. Nothing super impressive, still dont have the enchanting table surrounded by book shelves. But it's been a fun project slowly growing.

</comment><comment><USER29> The server has enormous lag because of this post. I managed to find a castle full of melons just a minute before I would have starved. I guess I'm lucky.

<comment><AUTHOR> The map is toast. I got a notification from the server host that it was consuming hundreds of megabits per second so it was taken down :S

The server itself is back up and running though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> As someone who's never played minecraft, my first response is "I wonder if I can build Jurassic Park in this thing?"

<comment><USER31> It's not Minecraft, but i have seen some strange things in Trove club worlds.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Neat bit of trivia: Notch's wife, ez, was kind enough to visit once and leave a sign. "ez was here" :)

<comment><USER32> Well, come on, at least link to it!

<comment><AUTHOR> VERY hard to see from the map, but you can.

[http://minecraft.xandorus.com:8123/?worldname=playground&map...](http://minecraft.xandorus.com:8123/?worldname=playground&mapname=surface&zoom=8&x=-69.77729597643204&y=64&z=26.91955635082833)

See the area in the centre with the red and yellow flowers? In behind the glowstone is the sign. You can catch the edge of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There are some very impressive things created in Minecraft. This one of them: Westeros (Game of Thrones) built in Minecraft. Simply amazing, I bought the game just to check it out:

[http://www.westeroscraft.com/](http://www.westeroscraft.com/)

</comment><comment><USER34> This could be an extreme version of "Where's Wally".

<comment><USER35> I never knew it wasn't called Where's Waldo originally. I agree, this would be an intense WW search. I wonder if he's already in there hiding?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> A black page? The website doesn't seem to work in Firefox.

<comment><USER37> I got in Firefox:

This address is restricted

This address uses a network port which is normally used for purposes other than Web browsing. Firefox has canceled the request for your protection.

It wouldn't even try to connect until I set network.security.ports.banned.override to "8123" in about:config. But now that I've set it, it seems that the website is unresponsive (overloaded?) anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another bit of trivia: I set the map to do a full render a day or so ago and it's still going. The map is at 1657200 tiles and counting.

</comment><comment><USER29> The link is not working for me :(

<comment><AUTHOR> I think my server host blocked port 8123 after this hit the front page :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> My question:

How many hours/day did you sit with Minecraft? (or whoever has made this)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thousands. Most of my work, though, as admin, was building a great griefer- proof system, promoting people, working with newbs, editing configs, updating when new Bukkit + plugins came out, etc.

We've had thousands of players over the years. It's crazy because some of the people who were kids when they joined are now quite grown up. I'm proud to have run a server so long and (hopefully) been a positive memory in so many kids' lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Doesn't anyone on HN play feed the beast modded minecraft?

<comment><USER7> I do. Our server is kinda looking for new people actually. We're running modified monster with some additional tweaks to difficulty, such as Hunger Overhaul, Spice of Life, Zombie Awareness and Special Mobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wonder wouldn't such map invite trolls and griefers that would just come to destroy everything in sight?

<comment><USER12> Most large servers have plugins that allow them to rollback specific sections of the map by an hour or a day to undo damage from griefers, and to log who made changes to blocks so that the griefers can be banned.

This is however a problem for 1.8 as the server API most of them were using, Bukkit, has disappeared in the wake of some drama that occurred because it was licensed as GPL invalidly (it distributes Mojangs All Rights Reserved code bundled with itself), and a former contributer unhappy with the fact that Mojang now owns the project DMCAed it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we run LogBlock and McBans, and have a pretty solid newbie filter that turns away all but the most dedicated of griefers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I can't even imagine how much penises they had build in this time

</comment><comment><USER42> What a waste of time.

<comment><USER7> I'd like to disagree with that because Minecraft ends up turning into a different experience once you're working at that scale.

Similar to EVE, which goes from spaceship simulator to corporate management simulator depending on how deep you get into it, Minecraft turns from house building simulator into project management simulation if you're building things of such size. There's a planning stage, there's a stage in which you aquire resources, people working on the project together need to be coordinated, the area needs to be prepared, and the actual building has to take place. Regarding large projects, this might also require preliminary buildings, such as stone generators, xp farms to improve tooling, complex smelting setups to create glass or lumber farms.

Modded minecraft will bring even more complexity to the table, from automated mining rigs, power production, ore processing, large scale agricultural work and making a disjoint set of technologies from different mods do exactly what you want them to do.

The project I'm working on on our server right now is building a world spanning road network (we have a 30km x 10km world) with safehouses every 500m and access points every 100m. After researching options and testing several designs, i arrived at a design that is both feasible and secure. One of the things I worked on before that is full automation of food production where I took this [[http://imgur.com/Np6Ftaj](http://imgur.com/Np6Ftaj)] and converted it into a factory. Or building a computer controlled pebble bed reactor.

But since "that's pretty neat" isn't an argument, my experience managing personal projects outside of the game has also broadened considerably. It's taught me to vigorously test sub components, track figures and validate them, to detail the entire process before jumping into it, and a whole range of other useful planning skills.

I think for something that calls itself a game, that's a lot of use I'm getting out of it.

<comment><USER43> Safehouses every 500 meters seems like such a small scale...why did you choose that number and not something more distant? I'd think 800 meters would be a better distance.

<comment><USER7> I'm playing on a server with additional difficulty settings, which means you most likely want a bed closeby if any one player gets stuck somewhere at night (we have monsters form into mobs and being attracted to light sources). 1km seemed too distant, and 500m divides evenly. Also, preliminary testing has determined that running 1km on the road will deplete your hunger (I'm planning to put down 70k MFR road blocks, which make you run incredibly fast), and we don't want players accidentally running too far and dying due to starvation. Also, the cost of safehouses is almost negible, 3 beds and an ender chest for food and supplies.

<comment><USER44> Thats interesting, my first guess was something along the lines of a chunk is 16x16 so your "five hundred" is actually 512 at exactly 32 chunks and you're deploying chunk loaders along the road to keep the road loaded (and maybe also farm fields or trenches full of mobs or pipelines full of liquids or the worlds biggest applied energistics network or ...) Or something like each player can ask for a 128x128 "deed to the land" along the side of the road for megaprojects and there's exactly 4 along each side of every road segment.

<comment><USER7> Our server isn't quite as dense, and people usually settle several hundred meters apart from each other. We try to keep people settled close enough for interaction but far enough away from each other so that there are no neighbourhood conflicts. Considering we have 15km^2 of worldbordered space for less than 30 people, density isn't yet an issue.

We allready have a functioning nether road system for all 4 cardinal directions, the new road is mostly designed for overworld exploration and finding a place to settle for new players. Also, since we're running ATG with Biomes of Plenty, the landscape is truly stunning in certain areas, with rich sloping mountains and d̶e̶a̶d̶l̶y beautiful valleys. Due to the dangers on the ground at night (full powersuit won't safe you baby), there's rarely much exploration going on in this stunning landscape.

Also I'm absolutely running out of big things to build, having set up a 11x11 chunks base with 60 blocks high obsidian walls, and built the majority of the nether roadways. The project afterwards would most likely be a tokamak reactor or something if i could get the thing working in creative.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Sites would you clone in an emerging country? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, What you people think would be a good business to get ideas from in a emerging country ?
I am from Brazil, things like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedln, GroupOn etc... are very well known here, What would be a nice idea to start in a country that misses it ?
I heard about threewords.me, that is english only and depends on language which sounds like a good idea to start here, or quora also english only,but this one already have some competitor here.
I think there is plenty opportunity in this kind of business as we are missing them and the english  only doesn't work here. <comment><USER2> Taking suggestions from popular sites is OK. But cloning? Make sure you do something original.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't mean cloning as copying exactly... I mean getting the idea and modifying it to fit in a specific country. Like www.peixeurbano.com did here with GroupOn. I mean copying the business model moreless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Craigslist. e-commerce sites that don't ship to your country. Reddit/Digg

</comment><comment><USER4> yelp. I think this has the best chance of being useful to local areas. The problem with most of the ones mentioned are they are already worldwide and don't benefit from some sort of local culture. This is not always the case but generally. Local and something that is societally different from American culture that can't be captured just by internationalizing. Example: Mixi in Japan does well as a social network because of cultural differences. China is a huge market that tend to only like Chinese services.

<comment><AUTHOR> we have something not close but that tries to copy very badly yelp. and it's not working at all... :( I can't remember it's name now. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> it really depends on the culture of the location you're planning on attacking. While Reddit/Digg is hot here in the states. the same concept might not fly in other countries. I had a few buddies who started a Digg-like site a couple years back in Taiwan. It never really took off because culturally people over there just wasn't into it. Majority of consumers are still using BBS systems to share news and info even though there are plenty of 2.0 social sites on the market.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think something close to reddit would be nice, but it doesn't depend on language to work so people would just use reddit.

We also have here a Yelp like site.

</comment><comment><USER6> Have a look at Fabrice Grinda's recent blog post

<comment><USER7> Here: [http://www.fabricegrinda.com/personal- musings/a-superangel%E...](http://www.fabricegrinda.com/personal- musings/a-superangel%E2%80%99s-investment-guide/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> O que voce gosta facer de mais. ;)</comment>


Most Expensive KickStarter ever? - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/globalauthorship/global-authorship-the-advanced-web-and-internet-of

<comment><AUTHOR> These guys are requesting $100k (unlike other high-value projects, who requested small amounts, but were overfunded). After watching the video, I'm still not quite sure what exactly they're doing.

</comment><comment><USER2> [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2116548608/help-erase- th...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2116548608/help-erase-the-national- debt-of-the-usa?ref=search)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1740188708/the- internati...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1740188708/the- international-space-station-for-you)</comment>


Power Outage at Samsung Fab Destroys 3.5% of Global NAND Flash Output for March - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12535/power-outage-at-samsungs-fab-destroys-3-percent-of-global-nand-flash-output <comment><USER2> This sort of thing shows how scarily centralized electronics production is. If a disruption at one plant can take out 3.5% of global production, how many of these plants are there? On the order of 30? Imagine a terrorist group decides to bomb them all simultaneously; there goes the production of every device that uses these chips, potentially for years. Are they needed for something critical? How many products do we rely on that all come from the same dozen or so places?

<comment><USER3> I don't think the terrorist threat is likely. It would have to be on the scale of 30 simultaneous 9/11 attacks. Anything less would just be a temporary inconvenience, 3.5% for a month is only 0.3% of annual production.

<comment><USER4> Also, a group capable of 30 simultaneous infrastructure attacks anywhere in the world with the goal of disrupting civilization can easily find far better targets than chip fabs, and various intelligence agencies will have infiltrated such a large international group anyway. The notion is interesting but unrealistic.

<comment><USER5> What thirty targets with similar security as chip fabs do you have in mind? I have a hard time coming up with anything other than nuclear plants for massive damage, but they have somewhat stricter access control, I hope. Oil pipelines are much quicker to repair and most countries have strategic reserves. Refineries maybe?

<comment><USER6> What about critical infrastructure? Dams which could flood big areas are one example which would be absolutely destructive

<comment><USER5> I don't think flooding one area is on the same level as killing a large part of microchip production for a couple of years. Almost everything has a chip inside these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The cost of RAM is already very very high. This has been surging for quite sometime and now we might see the same for SSDs too. Not to call this news as false, but its sad to see the price increasing :(

[https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/73el5s/are_ram_pr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/73el5s/are_ram_prices_unusually_high_at_the_moment_or/dnpq1a4/)

<comment><USER8> We've already been in it for SSDs for a while. We're just getting _back to_ $40/120GB SSD Sata drives. And that's mostly via on-sale prices.

(diclaimer - this is mostly via newegg/amazon pricing - hard drive prices are something I follow in the background, this isn't a scientific/well researched observation by any means, but other folks I've talked to have similar observations)

<comment><USER9> I recall paying around $1/gb in ~2006, and that was for a 5400rpm drive (and I'm sure the older members here will say something in the mb range). So while i agree, the rate we have come to expect value to increase isn't continuing on that exponential curve we experienced the last 20 years, the prices are not expensive by any means.

<comment><USER10> If you're talking mechanical drive prices, the best deal I've seen around are the wd easystores sold at Best Buy. When they go on sale for under 150 for the 8tb version, hard to beat that value. I filled my entire storinator up with them.

Can't wait until ssds can compete with price/capacity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Power can be critical in many ways: loose it at a meat processing plant and all production is lost too.

Reminds me of another situation where power loss was... a huge problem: [http://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-chemical-plant-braces- explosi...](http://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-chemical-plant-braces-explosions- fires-hurricane-harvey/story?id=49521170)

<comment><USER12> The Fukushima meltdown was ultimately due to power loss as well. The tsunami started the ball rolling, but the simultaneous loss of power from the reactors, the backup generators, and the grid is what led to disaster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Power outages tend to happen on various semiconductor plants and at times they harm production wafers."

One of the most meaningless sentences I've read in recent memory. The journalist didn't bother to ask how often they have power outages and how often those harm wafers, but they still put this in the final article?

<comment><USER14> You don't see any value in pointing out to the lay reader that such events aren't unheard of, unless their frequency and severity is precisely quantified?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's not very hard to come to the conclusion that this might be done deliberately...

<comment><USER16> It's hard for me. Help me out.

<comment><USER17> There have been many instances of price fixing and collusion among DRAM, Flash, and storage manufacturers going back to 2000 and before.

If however you can attribute the price hikes to a natural disaster, say a flood or power outage, then you'll receive less scrutiny for sustained price increases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Makes a great case for on site energy storage.

<comment><USER19> They have it, but not enough, probably because they would need a lot more. From the comments of the article:

 _" Korean media has coverage of this.

Battery powered emergency power did kick in. However, some areas had to be shut down because of the amount of power that battery power can cover. Stuff that cannot be shut down were kept operational.

Not all the wafers will be thrown away. They are checking which are safe to use. Maximum damage is estimated at about $50 million."_

<comment><USER20> Maximum damage is estimated at $50 million = 3.5% of global supply for a month

global supply for a month = 30 * $50 million = $1.5B

global NAND market = $18B/year

That seems low to me. Are there other figures on the value of the global NAND industry to compare this with?

<comment><USER21> $50B is likely their wholesale value, not end user value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me of that epoxy plant disaster (can't remember/find source atm) that shot prices through the roof.

<comment><USER23> Is it this Japanese chemical plant explosion from 1993 perhaps? [http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1993/Semiconductor-Industry- Fac...](http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1993/Semiconductor-Industry-Faces- Problems-After-Resin-Plant-Explosion/id-8fe2925b68d34d33f19a53e4892c74a2)

<comment><USER22> I think that's it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> These guys should think about a Tesla battery UPS for their risk mitigation plan.

</comment><comment><USER25> Formerly discussed here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16594694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16594694)

</comment><comment><USER26> Most likely silicon cruicibles. The reason there is no backup power is because this would've taken building an own power plant.

<comment><USER27> Link? I've not heard of those before, and am interested to learn more!

<comment><USER28> They're just the things that the silicon crystals are grown in. The furnace cools off and the whole thing needs to be re-started/replaced.

<comment><USER26> It does not work like that. The whole thing needs to be a single crystal. If a minute temperature change creates a second grain in the melt, it is all gone, along with the crucible.

<comment><USER27> Is there any place online, on a book, you suggest I go to in order to watch or read more about this? That all sounds remarkably interesting, especially for something which impacts all of our lives so much.

<comment><USER26> [https://youtu.be/8QKzS_w_Ko0](https://youtu.be/8QKzS_w_Ko0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems like this is going to develop into another years long excuse about why NAND prices remain high. Totally not collusion though, absolutely not.</comment>


Hackers breach White House system - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4b56233c-ad36-11dd-971e-000077b07658.html

<comment><USER2> Damn, you just know these are Windows systems with their multiverse of vulnerabilities. Why are governments so exceedingly incompetent at everything?

<comment><USER3> Governments don't fire people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is _so_ Red Alert :) <http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/China_Infantry_>(Command_&_Conquer:_Generals)#Hacker</comment>


FedEx sues U.S. government over 'impossible' task of policing exports to China - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-tech-fedex-usa/fedex-sues-u-s-government-over-impossible-task-of-policing-exports-to-china-idUSKCN1TO047 <comment><USER2> I used to do customs compliance for UPS during a break I took from tech. The only way to 100% "police" international shipments is to open them, and look at what is inside every box. Even ignoring the logistics of that, that seems like a privacy concern to me.

FWIW, at UPS we were allowed to open the boxes if needed (no other UPS department had that permission), but we normally just trusted that whatever description they put on the paperwork matched the contents of the box. We'd open it if there was no paperwork. If we knew the description would stop it at customs, we'd look inside and re-write the paperwork after seeing what the contents were to speed it through customs. But I'd estimate we sent more than 95% through without opening a box.

<comment><USER3> Did they ever run any test? For example, open every box and record the accuracy?

If the accuracy is greater than 95% then I don't see any problems with your actions.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what you mean by accuracy.

But no, we didn't do testing of any kind. If the packages got through customs without causing a delay that made people miss their expected delivery date, all was well. It wasn't our intent to do the job of customs, we just intended to make sure that everything was documented in ways that it would speed through. Or, to stop the package before it left its originating city and have the shipper correct it vs. having it go across the country before a problem was noticed.

It was our goal to make the shipping smooth with minimal invasion of people's packages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Five years ago there was a similar situation with the transportation of prescription medications. FedEx put out a public statement that they intended to fight the Department of Justice order:

"We want to be clear what's at stake here: the government is suggesting that FedEx assume criminal responsibility for the legality of the contents of the millions of packages that we pick up and deliver every day. We are a transportation company – we are not law enforcement. We have no interest in violating the privacy of our customers. We continue to stand ready and willing to support and assist law enforcement. We cannot, however, do the job of law enforcement ourselves." [1]

Ultimately two years later the DOJ dropped the charges against Fedex.

"In court on Friday, [U.S. District Court Judge Charles] Breyer said FedEx was 'factually innocent.' He said the company repeatedly asked the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to give it the name of a customer that was shipping illegal drugs so it could stop working with the person, but the agency was either unwilling or unable to do so." [2]

If this plays out similarly, FedEx will use a similar blacklist mechanism to comply with the law, but is suing right now to prevent any backlash that will inevitably occur when the blacklist doesn't contain an illegal entity and it's discovered there was a shipment that slipped through the cracks.

"Export restriction rules "essentially deputize FedEx to police the contents of the millions of packages it ships daily even though doing so is a virtually impossible task, logistically, economically, and in many cases, legally," it said in a filing. ... FedEx responded by saying publicly that it would deliver all products made by Huawei to addresses other than those of Huawei and affiliates placed on the U.S. national security blacklist." (from the main article in this thread)

[1] - [https://about.van.fedex.com/newsroom/fedex-response-to- depar...](https://about.van.fedex.com/newsroom/fedex-response-to-department- of-justice-charges/) [2] - [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2016/06/17/482537913...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2016/06/17/482537913/justice-department-drops-charge-that-fedex-shipped- for-illegal-pharmacies)

</comment><comment><USER5> Does the govt provide mailing addresses? Is there a law on the book that puts burden on shipping companies to block sender and receiver based on the provided addresses?

If not then I'm with fedex on this one.

<comment><USER6> Yes, they also provide API [https://developer.trade.gov/consolidated- screening-list.html](https://developer.trade.gov/consolidated-screening- list.html)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for posting that.

I find it odd that the URLs returned by the (test?) API[0] are bit.ly shortened. I'm generally not a fan of URL shorteners because I can't easily see where I'm headed, but it also seems that the government should have their own shortener URL if they're going to do that.

[0] [https://www.export.gov/consolidated_screening_list#/](https://www.export.gov/consolidated_screening_list#/)

<comment><USER8> It's strange especially, that the bit.ly allows you to check statistics without any form of restriction:

[https://bitly.com/1I7ipyR+](https://bitly.com/1I7ipyR+)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> customs should be dealing with this, not fedex

<comment><USER10> Each year, more than 11 million maritime containers arrive at our seaports. At land borders, another 11 million arrive by truck and 2.7 million by rail. Tens of thousands of packages arrive every day by air.

Carriers, to clear stuff through customs, have to have appropriate documents that have the shipper/importer of record/adequate description of the goods/country of origin. This then gets, by the vast majority of brokers anyway, transmitted electronically to Customs and the vast majority of packages are never inspected.

<comment><USER9> wow! so if my understanding is correct: customs can still check if it is shipped by huawei

<comment><USER10> Customs will know if Huawei is the shipper or importer of record, if it was on the docs. However "John Smith" could walk down to FedEx/UPS/DHL and go "I have this box of phones I'd like to ship, as John Smith" and hand a box full of Huawei phones across the desk.

The origin station goes "ok" and the provided documents get scanned in (commercial invoice, waybill). The packages goes along its way. If it is headed to the United States those documents then get transmitted to an office somewhere and someone reviews them and files entry on the shipment with the port it is expected to land in.

Say it's John Smith to Not Huawei Inc and it's 12 phones.

So Customs would get that it's John Smith and such and such street, shipping to Not Huawei Inc at such and such street. They'd then get the tariff number of 8517120050 for cellphones, that the quantity is 12, the country of origin on the docs and the value of the shipment.

What Customs won't see, unless they decide to manually review the commercial invoice themselves, is that the phones were manufactured by Huawei. What Customs and the carrier doen't realize is that "John Smith" is actually "Huawei Employee at Huawei, shipping for Huawei from Huawei to Huawei" because the commercial invoice says John smith to Not Huawei Inc which happens to be a DBA for Huawei (although Customs could catch this via the EIN).

A lot of customs clearance is "If it's written on the commercial invoice, it must be true" unless Customs flags something for manual inspection and decides to question it themselves. And the volume of packages entering the United States is such that it is just impossible to go over even 20% of shipments with a fine-toothed comb. You'd need to drastically increase the number of ports, the size of the ports, probably increase the number of CBP employees doing the job an order of magnitude and you'd still end up slowing down how fast freight is getting moved.

We live in a world where stuff gets on a plane in China and 12 hours later is clearing Customs and getting on a truck to head to it's final sort facility or onto a truck to be delivered to the importer. If you wanted to manually inspect every shipment you'd need an insane amount of warehouse space and something might get released a week or two after landing at the port of entry.

<comment><USER11> I work with a company that imports and exports physical products to the U.S. regularly.

Yes, you could probably get away shipping a dozen phones a few times. But they will catch it eventually. They do actually inspect paperwork and sometimes contents.

And if they find out you've lied on the paperwork, you've earned yourself a shit list that's going to extend to any travel you do to/from the U.S. for life, on top of penalties and possibly arrest warrants.

They don't mess around.

I should add: CBP shares offices at the border with the couriers. They're literally down the hall from each other. They're inspecting packages crossing the border all day long, but it's a random sampling, so whether it's your day or not is a matter of luck. They also have mobile x Ray trucks that scan full semi trailers.

<comment><USER12> > you've earned yourself a shit list

Does this extend up and down the tree? The issue is not so much that John Smith needs to get randomly selected at every airport he goes to for the rest of his life.

The issue is that the business he worked for also hired Jane Doe who is doing the same thing - they'd need to trace the responsibility up to his employer/contracting company and back down to their other employees and contractors.

Businesses seem surprisingly good at providing scapegoats and deniability in situations like this, especially compared to our government's tendency to blame the individual.

<comment><USER11> As far as I'm aware, this applies to the person filing the documents. If a person does this on behalf of a company without referencing the company, he's personally liable. If the company is listed on the paperwork, they'd be flagged.

There's a big difference between sending something personally at the post office, and registering as an exporter/importer. If you're registered, you use your broker account number.

Can the company have thousands of employees attempt to send packages personally? Sure. But if discovered, the company would itself be shitlisted, with probably no way to undo it. The executives and any company that helped facilitate the fraud would be investigated.

I can't speak to whether the CBP maintains employment data or affiliations, but my guess would be yes. I'm sure they have back-office integrations with the NSA.

Misrepresenting information is lying under oath to a government agent. Even honest to God mistakes will get you fined, and flag you for closer inspection in the future.

As a non US citizen, the CBP is scary. I've been to exporter training sessions put on by them jointly with brokers and lawyers. I can't stress how seriously they take this, and how far their influence reaches. Even as a US citizen, I'd find them scary.

<comment> em-bee it wouldn't be hard to create another company to do this either.

<comment><USER11> Yes, it would. The application process is a bitch, and fairly invasive. This isn't something you can churn and burn.

<comment><USER10> If they wanted a legal entity with legal protection and create a brand new company sure.

You can go buy shelf companies (companies that have been previously created and are presently unused) online all day long and effectively take instant delivery however.

And if they just wanted to be blackhat about it, you can go to the IRS website and generate an EIN (tax ID for companies) in a few clicks without showing any identification or documentation and then you just need a place to receive packages or have the packages held for pickup at the carrier.

You can also just go hire random people to accept delivery or pickup your packages. Those dealing in AAS (steroids), recreational drugs, carded merchandise etc do this regularly.

Crime exists because, more often than not, it's painfully easy.

<comment><USER11> Shelf companies is an interesting approach I hadn't considered.

I wouldn't call anything you described easy, but I'm not a nation state trying to illegal smuggle banned goods. I disagree that you can churn and burn these, but you've made a good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> isn't this something for border controls / customs rather than shipping companies??

<comment><USER14> The problem that I see with this approach is that we are privatising profits while socializing costs.

Customs should be dealing with it is akin to say that taxpayers should deal with the cost of FedEx businesses whenever they use it or not.

I see the point of sharing health care or education expenses thru society. But, your new iPhone cost should be on you.

Customs should still do random checks and things like that to assure that all companies follow the law, thou.

But, it is not a strong opinion. I see the value of having customs doing it. I just get inclined for FedEx taking in the cost.

<comment><USER15> > The problem that I see with this approach is that we are privatising profits > while socializing costs.

The costs in question are the costs of achieving a government goal. It's not like FedEx expects the government to pay its shipping bill. But when a government mandate costs FedEx money, it wants to be compensated for complying.

<comment><USER14> > it wants to be compensated for complying.

This will not scale. Next, industries will want to be compensated to add filters to not pollute rivers. Car makers will want to be compensated for doing safe cars. Supermarkets will want to be compensated for having to check customers age before selling alcohol or tobacco. Etc.

To follow the law is part of doing business. If the law is unreasonable or it is a problem with the law or it is a problem with the business model.

<comment><USER16> You're glossing right over what's happening here. Customs is expecting FedEx to _enforce_ law. Not comply with it, enforce it. Preventing a package from crossing the border on a legality basis is not the responsibility of any private entity in the United States. We have official agencies who act in that capacity and have authority to do so.

So, no, it is nothing like putting seatbelts in cars or not polluting rivers. Equivalent would be forcing car makers to ensure customers wear their seatbelts or companies keep rivers at a certain level of pollution (regardless of their complicity in its pollution).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> reminds me of the entirely fraudulent way mainland Chinese merchants send packages to USA labeled "gift" ... or often they are charged zero for shipping ... its the Chinese government subsidized way to support their own export based economy ... whereas the USA is shooting itself in the head with this export decision

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if hospitals will also start to sue over the EO to provide costs up front? On one hand this seems super helpful, but on the other hand, it seems pretty impossible with our healthcare system.

</comment><comment><USER19> Two related recent reads regarding how we came to be with regards to China.

First it was Nixon and Kissinger:

"Nixon argued, "containment without isolation" was necessary but not sufficient. "Along with it, we need a positive policy of pressure and persuasion, of dynamic detoxification … to draw off the poison from the Thoughts of Mao ... [although] Nixon said, years later, that his policies might have "created a Frankenstein" — and the family of nations he hoped would domesticate China finally has begun to take notice of the monster that has arisen in its midst."

[https://thehill.com/opinion/international/449695-red- china-r...](https://thehill.com/opinion/international/449695-red-china-redux- pariah-among-nations-enemy-of-its-people)

Then it was the American companies:

"Well before Donald Trump was elected, the carping about Beijing's policies from the Fortune 500 crowd intensified. In the annual reports issued by the American Chambers in both Beijing and Shanghai, the number of respondents who felt the regulatory environment in China was worsening steadily increased. A senior executive at Honeywell in 2015 told me flatly that his company was fed up with Beijing's demands for technology transfer. Friends at CISCO and MIcrosoft said the same. Privately, the complaints about companies like Huawei stealing intellectual property also ratcheted up."

"After having spent so much time and money building out their supply chains, there aren't too many CEOS who want to spend more time and money rebuilding them somewhere else," says former USTR Froman, now a senior executive at Mastercard. And with a Presidential election now less than a year and a half away, the possibility that a Trump successor may not be a "tariff man" (or woman) also means companies are unlikely to tear up their supply lines, at least for now.

[https://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-biggest-companies- made...](https://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-biggest-companies-made-china- great-again-1445325)

</comment><comment><USER20> More of a political move than a legal one, saying please don't ban us... But this trade war is a bifurcation of the world that was going to happen sooner or later. US is trying to tilt the table on its side. It's a bold move Cotton, let's see if it pays off.

<comment><USER21> >But this trade war is a bifurcation of the world that was going to happen sooner or later.

why is it inevitable? What do trade wars get us?

As I understand it, trade wars decrease the GDP of the world, decrease the total output and productivity of markets on both sides. I mean, certainly, it's better than a war war, but it's something that has great costs for both sides, and few (no?) Benefits for either.

<comment><USER22> From what I read, China started the 'free trade' war according to USA. Free trade as in, they weren't meant to impose restrictions on entering their economy and subsidise everything going out. They're still happy to trade with USA but USA wants mutual free trade, not one way.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, the current US administration claims that China started a "trade war" but they're also making similar claims intermittently about other trade partners like Mexico. It's nonsense, and the lack of economic understanding behind the claims that led to them kicking off a trade war is evident in how poorly the war is turning out for american businesses

<comment><USER24> > ....the lack of economic understanding behind the claims that led to them > kicking off a trade war is evident in how poorly the war is turning out for > american businesses

Based on the impact of the trade war on American businesses, you are able to deduce the quality of understanding of economics of those behind the policies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Export restriction rules "essentially deputize FedEx to police the contents > of the millions of packages it ships daily even though doing so is a > virtually impossible task, logistically, economically, and in many cases, > legally," it said in a filing.

Then don't export? Leave it to another company willing to take that risk and inconvenience, and price international shipping in accordance with that risk and inconvenience.

<comment> m-p-3 Why should the burden of these restrictions and policing falls upon a private company? If the government decides to apply additional restrictions under the pretense of national security, then it should foot the bill.

<comment><USER26> The government doesn't pay any bills whatsoever! The taxpayer does.

In this case, should all taxpayers foot the bill, or should only exporters?

<comment><USER27> All taxpayers. We're the ones indirectly responsible for the government that imposes the unreasonably trade-disrupting regulations, and it's in everyone's interest that we be able to export smoothly (not just that of the exporters themselves).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Without having read the briefs, I fall pretty strongly against FedEx on this one. If you can't run your business while complying with the law that doesn't mean you get to break the law. Rather it means that you get to shut down the business.

If a law is stupid (but otherwise constitutional) that doesn't mean you get to ignore it without being liable for the consequences (fines, jail). If you want to protest it without going to jail you can do so legally by telling people it's a stupid law - while complying with it.

<comment><USER29> This is a form of protest.

<comment><USER30> I guess it's too radical but shutting down a business voluntarily if the rules are too onerous would also be a form of protest. Especially when the idea is that the business has allegedly been conscripted into unprofitable tasks.

<comment><USER31> Publicly traded companies don't get to just shut down in protest. They are obligated to take whatever actions would be interpreted as best fulfilling their fiduciary obligations to the stockholders.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A notebook of laser-cutting experiments for bootstrapping planar fabrication - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kragen/laserboot <comment><USER2> And for your open source CAD needs I always recommend solvespace:

[http://solvespace.com/index.pl](http://solvespace.com/index.pl)

If you want to try making motors, I've got a parametric 12-slot stator drawn up in solvespace - and a 10 pole rotor IIRC - ready to laser cut from steel. You should just need some magnets from say JKmagnetics, bearings and such, and you have a motor. Catch me a gmail if you like and I'll send the files.

</comment><comment><USER3> I started making a catalog of construction techniques that take advantage of parts made using laser, waterjet, etc.: [http://www.bigbluesaw.com/tags/construction- techniques.html](http://www.bigbluesaw.com/tags/construction-techniques.html)</comment>


Post mortem: Thanks and lessons learned - <AUTHOR> http://elnorr.com/2014/01/27/post-mortem-thanks-lessons-learned/ <comment><USER2> So I install a random app that includes PingJam. Another flashlight app or something.

So the flashlight app then goes and monitors my phone calls, intercepts them _to display ads_ (at no point is it clear that the app is responsible for that) and probably relays my called numbers to PingJam?

Are you fucking kidding me? It's straight malware and you should be fined triple for every dollar you ever made. Google should fire whoever inside their organization enabled you to run this scam for longer than a month.

(Anyone still have the SDK or an app that used this? I'd love to see if it leaked caller ids to them. Holy privacy invasion.)

<comment><USER3> I really hate being this cynical, but I dare say they were simply ahead of the curve. The over-under on google doing this themselves? Two years?

<comment><USER4> The article states that it happened immediately after Google released a very similar feature on Android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      Pingjam was a monetization solution for Android app developers
      ...
      Google Play kicked out over 1,000 apps that worked with us from their app store

this whole article paints Google in the usual HN-friendly light of 'big bad unapproachable Google being evil', without giving any detail on what this 'monetization solution' actually was, and why Google wasn't being entirely reasonable to kick it to the kerb.

edit: yeah, thought so. they push contextual ads based on who you're calling. no surprises that got killed.

<comment><USER6> I've experienced enough about Google to believe that their experience could be exactly what was described.

On the other hand looking at links like [https://angel.co/pingjam](https://angel.co/pingjam) I have to admit that they were doing something that was going to feel a lot like privacy invasion. Knowing who you were calling, and using that to target relevant ads?

<comment><USER7> Facebook is now scanning SMS on Android, ostensibly for 2 factor authentication, but it's easy to see them mining the data for advertising purposes. I wonder how Google will react to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _To this date, I don't know what made Google suddenly not like us. I don't > know whether we got kicked out because 24 hours before banning our apps > Google launched an almost identical feature in Android 4.4 or if it's > something else_

Google has been accused of being "evil" in recent years, but I find it strange that they'd pull 1,000 apps with no forewarning and no explanation as to why. Surely they must have given you advance notice, perhaps a chance to change your service? Either that or your service was doing something unethical or clearly against Google's terms, and it was just a matter of time until they killed it.

Something doesn't add up here...

Edit: after looking at the site ([http://pingjam.com/](http://pingjam.com/)), I have no idea what kind of advertising service this is, but it looks pretty nasty (in call popup ads?). Site itself is also very, very vague, providing little information on the service itself, and lots of fluff.

tl;dr - we made a shitty service and Google killed it.

</comment><comment><USER9> You add Ads on top of a fundamental function of a phone???

Sorry, but it is correct that google kick you out.

And i cant believe that app users understand what they installed in background. I think many users complained about the ads and thats why google react.

</comment><comment><USER10> On a more general note, I enjoy reading these post-mortems. Not out of a wry malicious pleasure, but it is certainly a learning experience.

Is there some place where these are gathered for common benefit? Maybe get into more depth with interviews, because this post-mortem for instance leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

The top Google link is a CBinsights blog post, but that does not really cover it. I would consider starting this as a side-project. Would this be interesting?

<comment><USER11> > Would this be interesting?

Of course it would! but make sure to create a profile for each company, what they are trying to achieve, how, etc..

And then all the biography of the company.. what events ocurred.. also analisys could be collected from bright folks of what they were doing right and wrong.. just some ideas :)

We can learn much more from failures compared to the successful enterprises.. we dont hear much from the failed side of the trench. and thats a shame..

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Don't rely on just 1 platform as much as possible"

Look at Zynga => they relied on FB

Look at Angry Birds (initially) => they relied on Apple

Look at Moz => they relied on Google (scraping rankings)

Look at Xobni => they relied on Microsoft

Look at Rapportive => they relied on Google/Gmail

Look at TweetDeck (before acquisition) => they relied on Twitter

It's not black and white. Sometimes you just get unlucky. Sometimes you get lucky.

<comment><USER13> Just a quick note: Moz's domain authority and page authority score is what is used the most in the industry. It relies on their farm crawling the web and seeing who's linking to who. Their business is NOT heavily dependent on Google. Rankings is one of many features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "To stress the point, if your startup has one point of failure that is controlled by one entity – do what you can to not be totally dependent on that single entity. Develop for other platforms, decouple from the ecosystem. Do whatever it takes to get out from under their thumb."

This is the most important part that most don't seem to grab

This has caused several people to go under. Another company doesn't owe you nothing, be that Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Google

If your product rests on only one base, you are under a great risk

</comment><comment><USER15> _Don't operate in a market where a single player can arbitrarily decide to kill you. Especially don't work in a market that's controlled by an entity that explicitly refuses to communicate with you (or anyone else) or to explain their guidelines._

That really says it all. As another commenter pointed out, yeah, sometimes you get lucky... but I say "why tempt fate"? Some people go to Vegas and bet their life's savings on the roulette wheel and come out with a bundle. Most people that go to Vegas come back with their wallets lighter than when the went.

Some people bet on a platform that they don't control, with no SLA or contractual agreements to protect themselves, and subject themselves to the capricious whims and foibles of Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Twitter or whoever, and some of them succeed wildly. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to do this.

There's an old saw that says the two worst strategic mistakes you can make are "launching a ground invasion of Russia in the winter, and partnering with Microsoft". I'd like to offer up a new version of that:

"The three worst strategic mistakes you can make are launching a ground invasion of Russia in the winter, partnering with Microsoft, and tying your app to a single-source platform you have no control over".

</comment><comment><USER16> Lesson learned: don't expect a business built on breach of standards of conduct to be sustainable.

Monitoring call records and targeting ads based on them sounds very close to what the NSA has been exploiting in mobile apps (c.f. revelations a couple days ago). Atrocious. I blame both Pingjam _and the app developers_ for callously abusing end-user trust and integrating with such a shady third- party.

This also reminds me of top comment on the $50,000 Twitter name social engineering attack article[1]: setup a list of vendors that have pathetic security practices, but in this case the list would be of apps that integrate shady third-parties.

I'm not sure if these guys are super-slick sheisters or legitimately clueless. This 'woe-is-us' blog post, written in the style of the humble lean innocent entrepreneur, certainly strikes me as disingenuous.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7142523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7142523)

</comment><comment><USER17> Thank you all for your comments.

The intent of the post was to share experiences and lessons, not to promote what we did at Pingjam. We already went through that discussion several months ago when we were working to get Pingjam accepted by developers. Some developers (including very respectable apps) liked our service and tried us out, some did not. To each their own. Since I don't think it's useful to discuss what we did - I'll refrain from fully explaining what we did, why we thought it was a good thing, the value that the service provided to users or how we made sure to follow best practices on opt-ins, opt-outs, privacy, etc'. You are welcome to think what you want about our service.

Regardless of whether you like the service we provided or not, we went through a certain set of experiences that can be useful to others. If you choose to take anything from that - I hope it helps you in whatever you are doing.

</comment><comment><USER18> >the reality is that we've failed.

I'm seeing this a lot lately. Paraphrasing UK driving test examiners, it should be "You didn't FAIL; you just didn't succeed this time."

</comment><comment><USER19> _Until the money is in the bank you don't have an investment._

There is a lot of talk about what went wrong, but I think this is the most transferable lesson spanning startups of every kind.

</comment><comment><USER20> You made ad/malware available for phones as a slimy monetization gimmmick for 1000's of apps. Wish you would have learned another lesson.

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe a better lesson to be learned: don't be scum

</comment><comment><USER22> yuck.</comment>


Amazon is selling stolen art, fake products and is infringing copyrights - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/AmazonUK/posts/2822462551134523?comment_id=2835971836450261&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%2348%22%7D <comment><USER2> (I work for Amazon, but not in the retail division. Opinions are mine and not of the company. I'm also an attorney, but this is not legal advice.)

There is a channel in pretty much every company, large or small, for reporting copyright violations and other legal complaints. That channel is the legal department (in the US, the DMCA contact point), not the customer service department. If you want a company to actually take action, you have to get the right people involved.

In Amazon's case, it's right here: [https://www.amazon.com/report/infringement](https://www.amazon.com/report/infringement)

If you complain to the wrong people, expect a suboptimal response. They're not trained to help in these cases, and don't always have the authority to short- circuit the bureaucratic process like the legal department does.

<comment><USER3> As the article/message chain clearly shows, the author did submit an infringement report to that link. In fact, so have I.

As the author posted a screenshot of, you get an email reply after some time saying something to the effect of "We have reviewed and removed the content"

...except, nothing was removed. The infringing content is still there. The exact same thing happened to me. Same exact email.

Edit, here's my email from Amazon: [https://i.imgur.com/mzXycfk.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/mzXycfk.jpg) \-- nothing was actually removed.

<comment><USER2> I looked at the thread and it appears that the product ID (ASIN) that was the subject of the original takedown request was not the same as the ASIN of the the subsequent complaint. If it appears on multiple catalog pages, or a subsequent violation is alleged, each ASIN must be reported.

Unfortunately this is the downside of being an IP rights holder - policing is a PITA. (Amazon, do their credit, does offer a brand registry, but that protects against trademark infringement, not copyright infringement.)

In your case, assuming they did not do exactly what they said they would do (remove the infringing content from the specific listing page referred to by the ASIN), I'd have your attorney send a takedown notice to the following address:

      Copyright Agent
      Amazon Legal Department
      P.O. Box 81226
      Seattle, WA  98108

If your content is on multiple product listings, you'll need to identify each ASIN.

<comment><USER4> So nothing stops a copyright infringer re-uploading the content with a new ASIN? I think only a hefty fine for both the infringer _and_ Amazon would make them think twice about doing it again.

<comment><USER2> The DMCA expressly gives entities that publish user-generated content a "safe harbor" exemption from such liability if they handle authorized takedown requests in a reasonable amount of time.

<comment><USER5> Exactly! So Amazon makes money from our work. And they even makes us lose time with reporting items that simply change numbers. What a shame!

<comment><USER6> Do you really want platforms to decide what can be put and what can't be? How should they decide that an article is IP infringement and what isn't?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the product page in question: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Orlco- Paintings-Decoration-Collecti...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Orlco-Paintings- Decoration-Collections-16x16inch/dp/B07KJ8XJL5)

You can clearly see the artist's signature cut-off in the bottom left of the image. Here it is on the artist's website as well:

[https://tsevis.com/editorial- illustration-2016-2017?fbclid=I...](https://tsevis.com/editorial- illustration-2016-2017?fbclid=IwAR2fg_-8P7FXh3SOY9sgXGeOS4qOShf57DZLjAXpmA93JXyOcwdN3O2F0Rk)

<comment><USER8> I would say those posters are created by some software, definitely not that person.

<comment><USER9> Many artists use technology to create art. That doesn't mean they're not responsible for creating it, or that it's not art, or that others should remove the artist's name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've said it several times...but counterfeit items on Amazon is a big big problem. I've gotten counterfeit goods there in the past and just today I almost bought 2 items; saw Amazon had the cheapest price...then I looked at the reviews. It was very clear people were getting counterfeit goods, some with the UPC I was going to buy actually catching fire (I've had several of this brand and I find this difficult to believe happening a couple of times in the same review thread.) So anyhow, I'm going to Best Buy tomorrow to buy both the things I was going to buy. Amazon is slowly losing my business.

<comment><USER11> There is a HUGE market in China for counterfeit products. In China, even Mercedes-Benz you buy _might_ be entirely counterfeit! Until recent years, these fake products didn't leave China to come to US shores. Now these merchants are simply creating web of LLCs and have Amazon ship it off their crap on Prime. At least dozen product categories were reported as counterfeits in various reviews like Duracells, headlamp, bulbs, USB cables, board games, GoPro like cameras, razor blades etc. I wish Amazon at least made it compulsory to disclose "Made in XYZ" in product description (isn't that a law anyway?).

<comment><USER12> I don't think somebody selling counterfeit products on Amazon is going to have any ethical qualms about lying about the origin country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They also allow illegal infringement on sellers. I knew a family that ran an Amazon import business and they bought an entire batch of surplus tennis shoes directly from a company in the primary supply chain of the shoe company. All on the up and up. The shoe company filed a complaint with Amazon that they were not authorized to sell their shoes and Amazon closed down the related listings. That was a serious restraint of trade and Amazon could likely be sued to the moon but they just moved on. I really wish they would have pursued the lawsuit against Amazon.

<comment><USER14> What did Amazon do here that was wrong? It sounds like these people bought illegitimate "ghost shift" shoes from a factory and the brand owner correctly shut them down.

<comment><USER13> If you obtain a product legitimately you are allowed to sell it. This wasn't a counterfeit product nor was it claimed to be. Just because a company has a policy of only selling to authorized retailers does not allow them to restrain the trade of their merchandise by legal owners. It would have been a huge lawsuit.

<comment><USER14> Yes but ghost shift goods are counterfeits unless they are free of any logos and other intellectual property. The first sale doctrine doesn't apply because it was never purchased from the IP owner at any point in the line.

If I have a factory in Bangladesh print some t-shirts with the Nike logo on them, I wouldn't be able to sell them (at least in the US) because I didn't get permission from Nike, which owns the rights to their logo. It's the same thing here. It doesn't matter if the factory happens to also produce legitimate Nike t-shirts.

<comment><USER13> I believe you are trying to classify what they bought as something it isn't (ghost shift goods). They legitimately bought the surplus from an authorized retailer.

If you go buy a bunch of Nike shirts from a Nike store they cannot stop you from selling them on eBay or Amazon (at least legally). At best the shoe company could have sued their authorized retailers for the bulk sale if it violated a contract.

Amazon happily complied with an illegal request to restrain trade causing damages to a small company. The lawsuit would have been huge.

<comment><USER14> That's true, I assumed from your original comment where you said "directly from a company in the primary supply chain of the shoe company" that the shoes were from further up the supply chain, like a factory, rather than further down. My mistake.

Even if the product were from an authorized retailer, I don't see how the shoe company's request to Amazon was illegal. Restraint of trade means that contracts restricting commerce are in some cases unenforceable. It doesn't mean that Amazon is compelled to do business with the reseller if they would rather prioritize their relationship with the shoe company.

<comment><USER13> If Amazon had terminated their listings without any cause or even because of competition agreements it probably would have been legal. Since it was in direct compliance with an illegal demand and Amazon stated as such they probably doomed themselves. Judges tend to look very poorly on large companies ramrodding the small guys. The small business wasn't prepared to spend $50k+ just initiating the process and went on with their business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In 2018, things are truly great for large copyright owners. But for small copyright owners, it sucks.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's pretty much impossible for Amazon to tell whether an item is a licensed use of a copyrighted creative work or not. It's perfectly legal to resell work that was legally bought with no additional permission from the creator, for instance. (It is pretty clear from a human analysis here that the seller is infringing copyrights by making prints of digital images found online, but it would be pretty much impossible to create some sort of filter that would block these products from being offered on the platform).

From the thread, it looked like the support representatives engaged with the person complaining on Facebook, reported some items had been removed in the past based on takedown requests. That's pretty responsive, all in all. Maybe the artist could enlist some additional help discovering and helping him and other affected artists report for takedown the items that this seller is offering so they'd eventually . Or they could gather some funds and sue Amazon.

<comment><USER17> Yes, it may be impossible to create a filter to detect new (previously unseen) copyrighted products on the platform. However, once a copyrighted product has been through a dispute and the owner has been established by Amazon - it's completely feasible to programmatically detect and flag this product once it re-appears under other accounts. It would actually be quite easy, given Amazon's technology expertise.

From reviewing the thread the artist posted, it appears that's why he's frustrated - that fakes keep re-appearing, and Amazon is asking him to jump through hoops again, even though his authorship had been established.

So, no - I don't feel it's reasonable to ask the author to enlist people to help him police the marketplace, Amazon can easily solve this problem (future infringement) with technology.

<comment><USER18> 1\. Write a book and sell it on Amazon.

2\. Some counterfeiter creates a listing with an infringing copy of the book.

3\. DMCA request is filed and the listing is taken down and the account is banned.

4\. Someone else buys a legitimate copy of my book and creates a listing for it on Amazon.

What should Amazon do?

<comment><USER17> Selling a used book? Different scenario. Same product (ISBN), nothing for Amazon to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks like the person violating the copyright just reuploaded under a new ID after the original takedown, which is why the artist is still seeing his work up there.

</comment><comment><USER9> Everyone at Amazon is supposed to be committed to Amazon's Leadership Principles. Each new hire is supposed to learn them and live by them. The very first principle is:

 _Customer Obsession: Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers._

What a joke.

<comment><USER20> Is it a joke?

Does the average customer care more about saving $10 or protecting someone's copyright? I'd argue given the how prevalent copyright infringement by people has been that they'd rather save $10. So Amazon is doing exactly what customers want which is cheap goods irrespective of everything else.

<comment><USER11> It's not about copyright infringement. The problem is that counterfeits are typically sold at same price and more often than not experience is severely degraded. I personally have lost several hundreds of dollars worth of gadgets due to counterfeit duracells. Most importantly customer is being lied about what they are actually sold.

<comment><USER20> The linked story is mainly about copyright infringement of artists and that is what I responded regarding.

You're talking mainly about trademark infringement and I agree that Amazon is screwing over their customers regarding it. Of course, their end game is pretty clear in that area. Buy "AmazonBasics" products and you're certain they're legitimate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Only tangentially related but type in any product category like say "socks". Near the top right set Sort By: to "Price High to Low"

Result: $14000 pair of socks

$9000 tube of toothpaste

$3800 package of rubber bands

$1000 usb-c cable

$45000 water bottle.

Curious why Amazon can't fix this. It makes them look like they have zero control, zero trustworthiness, a scam site. Note I don't normally choose to sort that way but those items with those prices show up in my regular searches quite often

<comment><USER22> Those $14k socks could be a money laundering operation as well. Happens on AirBnB, course it might be easier on there as who knows what the real price us of a one if a kind house vs a pair of socks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've had fake headphones (more than once) and fake software. I contacted customer services and they didn't even seem to understand why I was trying to point out all the fake products listed on the site. Needless to say, they are all still there and no action was taken.

Take a quick search for headphones by "Apple", I doubt any of these are genuinely Apple: [https://smile.amazon.co.uk/s/s/ref=sr_nr_p_89_0?fst=as%3Aoff...](https://smile.amazon.co.uk/s/s/ref=sr_nr_p_89_0?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3AApple+EarPods%2Cp_89%3AApple&keywords=Apple+EarPods&ie=UTF8&qid=1546083082&rnid=1632651031)

The problem is it's more profitable not to care about these problems.

</comment><comment><USER24> How many people got involved in that conversation? At least 3 different support people. And neither had a direct response to the guy. This corporate jargon is just painful to read and companies like Amazon should know better.

</comment><comment><USER25> In switzerland (which is outside of amazon's prime and shipping area) amazon is nothing else than a super expensive version of AliExpress where everybody tries to hide that they are in fact from China.

<comment><USER26> What is the shipping experience from aliexpress like?

<comment><USER27> I've ordered a couple of things from AliExpress to Canada, the cheapest shipping options take a long time... I think I waited 2 months for a pack of rare earth magnets once. There are FedEx, etc options available but sometimes they are more expensive than the items themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't any content on this post just a link to Facebook?

<comment><USER3> Try this: [https://imgur.com/a/L1gFAqy](https://imgur.com/a/L1gFAqy)

<comment><USER29> Thanks!@

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Once I ordered a painting and it never arrived. Amazon didn't give me back my money as seller claims it was delivered. Seller never responded to an inquiry from my side. Since then I'm not ordering much from Amazon anymore - there is no customer service and they collaborate with and support thiefs.

<comment><USER31> Did you try a chargeback?</comment></comment>


Build search for objects and people in the physical space with Estimote SDK - <AUTHOR> http://blog.estimote.com/post/128190731930/estimotes-location-intelligence-platform

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, this is Jakub, Co-Founder of Estimote, Inc.

Last May we have announced a new robust mobile SDK for Indoor Location using beacons: blog.estimote.com/post/118294444205/super-simple-and-accurate-indoor- positioning-with

Today we are happy to announce that we have integrated Indoor Location with #nearables and allow tracking objects in the physical space with tiny, battery-powered beacons.

People who use mobile apps with our SDK opt-in to act as crawlers scanning for nearby beacons and updating their position when they walk around..

Hope you enjoy our tech and I will be more than happy to answer any questions here.</comment>


George W. Bush is smarter than you - <AUTHOR> http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/ <comment><USER2> Really?

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/bushisms/200...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/bushisms/2009/01/ws_greatest_hits.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> By way of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10990105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10990105)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm personally willing to go with that assertion. Nobody gets to be President by being stupid, as near as I can tell.

But if I buy that Bush is so smart, then I have to feel even worse, much worse, about his dragnet surveillance programs, the Iraq War, and a bunch of other stuff, virtually his entire legacy. If he's that smart, why did he lie to us about "WMD", and the (non-)connection between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qeada? What was the real motive for the huge manipulations to get the USA to commit to that war? Why did he think that "SOLARWIND" was such a great idea? Dragnet surveillance is very much against the American tradition, and has definite bad effects, and a slippery slope argument against it. Why did he OK that? Why did he OK "enhanced interrogation" I mean torture?

There's just so many follow-on questions to that assertion. Did Keith Hennessey really mean to open that kind of a can of worms about Bush?</comment>


Finding Closure in Rust - <AUTHOR> http://huonw.github.io/blog/2015/05/finding-closure-in-rust <comment><USER2> It's good to see that. Rust's closure/lambda system has been in flux as recently as a month ago.

Rust ties closures closely to lambdas, but that's not inherently necessary. The article says _" Syntactically, a closure in Rust is an anonymous function value defined a little like Ruby, with pipes: |arguments...| body."_ Actually, that's a lambda, not a closure.

A lambda which references no variables from an outer scope is not a closure.

        |x| x*x

is a Rust lambda that isn't a closure.

On the other hand, a nested function in Python which references variables from the outer function is a closure that isn't a lambda. That's also true in Javascript. In Rust, you can nest functions, but you can't generate a closure that way. A reference to the outer function scope in a Rust nested function generates an error message. I was surprised by that; I tried to write a closure in Rust as a nested function, and there's an specific error message for that.

<comment><USER3> From the classic computer science point of view, you are correct in saying that a lambda that does not capture in variables from its enclosing scope is not a closure. But I think that's a meaningless distinction here that would only serve to be confusing. Rust uses the terminology "closure" to refer to this pipe syntax, regardless of whether it captures variables, and that's fine. It's less confusing for people who aren't coming from a computer science background, and it's not really even strictly speaking wrong. A closure is a function coupled with an environment that allows it to capture values from its scope. A closure that captures no variables can still have an environment, the environment just happens to be null.

<comment><USER4> I think it would be useful if the distinction did exist in Rust, so that for example, "closures that have an empty environment" were indeed referred to as lambdas, and lambdas had the guarantee of being Sync, Send, Copy, Clone, etc., since they're more or less just like regular `fn` items as far as I know. As it is, a closure that captures nothing doesn't satisfy those bounds AFAIK, so their use is more restrictive than it needs to be. Instead, you're forced to write an actual `fn` definition, depriving you of the practicality and conciseness of closure syntax.

<comment><AUTHOR> A closure satisfies Send and Sync when it can, automatically. (I.e. with or without captures.) Satisfying Clone when the contents are Clone would be valuable for all closures, whether or not they capture anything.

The most valuable special case IMO for captureless closure would be allowing them to coerce to (extern) fn types, useful for writing e.g. C callbacks directly inline.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I forgot about that last point, which was the original reason I got this idea.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep...  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/sleep_deprivation

<comment><USER2> Seems like an even more direct wakefulness promoting agent than Modafinil. It's unfortunate that you still go crazy after not sleeping for a week, even with these drugs. Once we get that figured out, we're set.</comment>