Ask HN: Do I need a bug bounty program? Feeling a bit threatened by HackerOne - <AUTHOR> I got a sales email recently from someone at Hacker One and they said that "Teams who push code on a regular basis need continuous coverage on their attack surfaces. " and that, "If security is a priority for you and [COMPANY NAME], I want to make sure you and I connect."
I understand how the sales process works, but I'm kind of starting to feel after the second cold email that this is a bit mafia-like. I'm basically being told that my kneecaps are going to be bashed in by hackers if I don't respond to this sales call, at least that's how I'm reading this communique.
I was thinking a good way to respond would be to at least put something about responsible disclosure on our "Contact Us" page, and that we'd pay a bounty if someone finds something out of the ordinary. A security professional told me allowing responsible disclosure is the first step. We're a very small company though, I'm the sole developer. I know security is important, and I try to follow best practices - but has anyone else gotten these emails and felt a bit threatened?
I don't meant to insinuate that Hacker One is going to be doing hacking themselves, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm just wondering how people are reacting to getting emails like this?
Thanks for any perspective. <comment><USER2> Thanks for raising this issue.

HackerOne will NEVER threaten you or do anything to reduce your security. You can safely ignore our sales emails if that's what you want to do. We are just trying to be helpful.

But we do have the absolutely best set of programs for companies of all stripes. To start with, you can open a vulnerability disclosure program that costs you nothing. It will allow hackers to submit vulnerability reports to you. We run numerous programs of this type for startups and other companies.

Our mission is to empower the world to build a safer internet. That's it.

Marten HackerOne CEO

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much Marten for your direct response!

I'm sorry if my post came out as at all harsh. I respect what you guys are doing. I just had those honest reactions to the communication I got.

Maybe putting some general pointers on getting started in emails like this for really small companies would come across as a bit less threatening? That way, you can be the guide early on, then we can become partners later when we have the scale.

Good luck with your build!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If this isn't guerilla PR for HackerOne, I don't know what it is.

It's set up just the perfect way to make us answer "oh but that's just normal salesmanship and reasonable".

Well played if true.

<comment><USER4> google trends says hackerone spiked today at 4pm on the 7 day search.

<comment><USER5> Is this the power of Hackernews I wonder? If so I am impressed.

<comment><USER6> Sometimes when a link makes it to the front page of HN, the website goes down due to the number of HNers who try to access it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's all marketing. I would ignore it and move on with your life.

Allowing and encouraging responsible disclosure is never a bad idea. That said, if you're a young startup, I would focus on practicing and promoting good security hygiene within your company. Secure coding best practices, locking down infrastructure, that kind of thing. I wouldn't overcomplicate it or stress too much unless your product _needs_ special security attention (i.e. you are a bank or likely to be hacked by a nation state or something). If you're the only technical person and you're already doing this, it does not sound like you have much (anything?) to worry about outside of the norm.

I hope that can help you sleep better at night :-D

</comment><comment><USER8> How much does a bug fix save you? How much is that worth? Are you popular enough that people are constantly trying to break your security? Bounties are cost saving measures.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wouldn't worry too much about it. In my opinion a bug bounty program is another marketing tool of big companies. They have to portray an image of a company that cares about security.

From my experience if you are a small company and fix a reported bug in a timely manner, nothing bad will happen. As long as your customers see that you're reacting quickly, everything is going to be fine.

</comment><comment><USER10> Jeez sending cold emails is mafia like?

Sounds like paranoia.

Ignore the emails and move on with your life.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well...

I want to ignore the email.

But what if we do get hacked in the next few months?

I can ignore it...but yeah, I am definitely paranoid about what might happen if I do! You know?

<comment><USER11> I deleted another comment, but this is a far simpler analogy. As a nightclub owner it is prudent to hire a bouncer. Why? Not because the bouncers are making trouble outside your establishment (as a racket would do) but rather as a form of insurance against future miscreants.

Hiring a company like HackerOne (we've hired a competitor) is simply a very wise idea - that is all their email is pointing out. You are currently running a nightclub with no bouncer, you are currently vulnerable (all software is). Get some help by contracting or hiring.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Projects Fail [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/Teaching/Resources/COMS30205/lectures/comelio/comelio.pdf

<comment><USER2> Please next time insert something like [PDF] in title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, good point, done.</comment></comment>


Y Combinator's Women-Only Forum Is Becoming Its Own Business - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/y-combinator-s-women-only-forum-is-becoming-its-own-business <comment><USER2> This may be illegal in California. Discrimination on the basis of sex for events open to the public is forbidden. It's quite broadly construed too, for example bars can't legally have ladies night.

Edit: To clarify, a nonprofit women's forum appears fine, but turning it into a business not so much.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know why so many commentators are taking a polar stance.

I sometimes hang out with people from my native country; that doesn't mean I'm unhappy with the USA or Americans born here. Some things still strike me as weird, and some things I do strike others as weird so it's occasionally nice to be immersed in a group of people who understand that.

And I come from an English-speaking country and am treated like a white male (not true for me as a kid before I came here). I think this phenomenon of sometimes stepping into a "subset community" would be far more useful for folks who don't fit that dominant model.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's more feminist, more female CEOs or eliminating CEOs entirely?

<comment><USER5> What's the alternative? Make every decision by committee? Have shareholders vote on every decision? Randomly selected leader of the day? Have an AI run everything?

<comment><USER4> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> None of the women techies I know would be caught dead associating with something like this.

<comment><USER3> FWIW my girlfriend is pretty interested in this. And yes, I'd call her a techie: PhD in computer science, worked at Microsoft, FB, LinkedIn, and a bunch of smaller companies.

<comment><USER7> I'm interested in this too. My credentials aren't nearly as amazing, but I've been in this industry a long while now and I think this is excellent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://outline.com/y9B7TH](https://outline.com/y9B7TH)

</comment><comment><USER9> a female only group is a rational response to a brogrammer culture. a desire for a femcentric branch forum {note i didnt say sub forum} is something that should be taken as a symptom of a systemic problem. women, are already segregated devalued and even attacked for thier gender, right here in SV, and right here in YC and HN. ostriches are not the only bird that thrust thier heads in the sand.

segregation has happened before.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Burning

<comment><USER10> Are you seriously condemning segregation while propping up a women-only group?

Also, Mississippi Burning? Do you not realize the extent of hyperbole in that comparison?</comment></comment>


Novi Security Launches Kickstarter. No Contract/No False Alarm Security System - <AUTHOR> http://novisecurity.com

<comment><USER2> This is a sweet idea! This can disrupt

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome!</comment>


Forced to work remotely? Use this collaboration tool for free - <AUTHOR> https://www.remotehq.com/stay-healthy <comment><USER2> Ok pretty useful. Actually can do a lot more than the usual video conf guys. I like that it's all browser-based.

</comment><comment><USER3> I approve.

Seriously tho, I wish most s/w vendor would do this. I wish Slack would do this for the next 3 months.</comment>


H.R.899 – To terminate the Department of Education - <AUTHOR> https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/899 <comment><USER2> Sounds great to me. Let education in the US become an inconsistent hodge- podge, and mostly much worse overall with religion being taught in science class like in Turkey. I'm sure America's competitors will love that America is shooting itself in the foot and guaranteeing its long-term demise as superpower. But if that's what the voters want, let them have it.

<comment><USER3> Would you say the Dept of Ed is effective in its current role, whatever that is? I can't think of any impact it had in my education.

<comment><USER4> The DoE collects a huge amount of nationwide data. If any policy, rule, or idea that was based on evidence and is related to education affected you, there's a good chance it's thanks to the DoE.

Education in the US is pretty decentralized but there's plenty of work the federal DoE does that's very important, here's a good place to start looking: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_for_Civil_Rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_for_Civil_Rights)

The DoE enforces many of these laws which prevent abuse, bullying (teacher tolerance of it), discrimination, etc in education, which is pretty important. It's almost certainly the case that the DoE has seriously impacted the education of you or someone you care about through lawsuits, intervention, investigation which all change policy at the local level in a big way.

There's plenty of more things that it does. Take some time to look at what the DoE does and answer the question for yourself, it isn't hard.

In particular there are a lot of states that would love to let private religious schools torture gay children to try to turn them straight. The DoE is the only reason they can't do that.

<comment><USER5> From that perspective its pretty obvious why some Republicans (Tea Party/Trumpists) want to shut it down then, they don't think government should be an equalising force on society at all. Given that philosophy, it seems almost inevitable they will shut it down. Can anyone think of reasons they wouldn't?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's worth pointing out that bills get introduced all the time, and essentially mean nothing until they are scheduled for actual consideration by a committee.

Introducing a bill is an easy way for any member of Congress to "take a stand" on some issue, and it happens thousands of times per Congress.

<comment><AUTHOR> If anything, just curious that it's right after DeVos got confirmed. Heh..

<comment><USER7> It's a direct response to DeVos's confirmation:

> "Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our > children's intellectual and moral development."

[https://massie.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/rep- massie-...](https://massie.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/rep-massie- introduces-bill-to-abolish-federal-department-of-education)

<comment><USER8> We won't mention that our elected bureaucrats have an 18% approval rating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was able to go to engineering school thanks to FAFSA. FAFSA seems to be run by the Dept of Edu. I want my taxes to go to such programs personally. My family has certainly become wealthier and been able to pay _more_ in taxes because of FAFSA. Big govs investment in me has paid back 10 fold by now.

The next looming debt crisis is one founded on education loans. Does this sort of government gutting really help with that? Is congress planning on giving a check to every college student enrolled instead with the money saved? Are they planning on forgiving a large portion of mortgage sized education loans? If not I fully expect another financial crisis to arise in the next 10 years primarily caused by student loans.

<comment><USER10> Economics 101: supply and demand. Grant money makes prices _higher_ not lower.

Take a look ITT. They took billions per year of poorly spent government grants, and left taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions. That school would not have existed were it not for federal grants.

Separating the payer from the decision maker yields very uneconomical decisions, in education, healthcare, whatever.

There are two options (1) restore sanity by regulating the hell out of education pricing or (2) restore sanity with market pressure.

I lean towards #2, but either way, grants aren't effective at lowering costs.

<comment><USER8> Ah, but the facts contradict ye. Look at private school tuitions. Look at the cost of daycare. They're not publicly subsidized, and they've risen just as fast as private college tuition.

You're also overlooking the rising value, and rising recognized value, of a college degree. Since 1979, only college-educated workers have seen median wages rise. A high school diploma earned a -27% real return over the same period. Is it any surprise young people are encouraged and willing to pay anything, anything for a shot at economic opportunity? (Further information at epi.org.)

The rise in public university tuition is largely explained by reduced subsidies. Year after year, states "hold the line" on higher education spending, leaving ever more of the cost to students (and students' families, of course). To the point that California famously once spent more on college than prisons, and now spends more on prisons than college.

<comment><USER10> Private school tuition can be subsidized by federal student grants and loans as well.

Grants and loans have been around for a long time. I'm not saying they're the cause of rising tuition. I'm saying increasing them wouldn't help.

I agree that the value of a college degree has a lot to do with increased tuition costs. If the average person will earn more than a $1 million more over his lifetime for getting a college degree, even expensive college is still "a good deal".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you want to know what the department does, just look at its budget: [https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget17/17action....](https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget17/17action.pdf)

Eliminating the department doesn't necessarily mean eliminating all of its current functions. It just means that it will not exist in the same tier of government, with a cabinet member at its head.

<comment><USER12> I don't see any proposals for other departments picking up the slack though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This administration will likely render the federal Dept. of Ed useless anyway, even if it sticks around. Getting rid of it is a way to make the removal of its policies, and the increased state control that follows, more permanent.

<comment><USER14> > removal of a department of government

> increased state control

I don't follow.

<comment><USER15> I think the GP means 'controls by individual states'

<comment><USER13> That is correct - in the US, typically the term "state" is used to refer to the 50 states, rather than the abstract term which is meant to refer to any governing body.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some folks might find it interesting that Thomas Massie is an MIT alum, former entrepreneur, and junkyard wars competitor.

[http://news.mit.edu/2002/two-teams-mit-battle-it-out-tvs- jun...](http://news.mit.edu/2002/two-teams-mit-battle-it-out-tvs-junkyard- wars)

</comment><comment><USER17> John Taylor Gato and you'll be free.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds great if they terminate outstanding student loans as well!</comment>


It isn't virtuous to believe Kevin Spacey's accuser. It's backward - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/kevin-spacey-is-innocent/20490#.WhBQnBNSzOR <comment><USER2> The author does not seem to be familiar with the numerous accusations against Mr. Spacey, it's not just one guy 20 years ago but a history abuse.</comment>


Ask HN: Post-Acquisition Depression? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone else experienced a deep depression or emptiness after being acquired? My company was acquired recently, and I know I shouldn't be complaining, because I made off very well, but I'm increasingly finding it difficult to stay motivated.
Pre-acquisition, it was my dream job, and I woke up each day excited to work on cool technical problems. Now I feel like I have exactly the sort of 9-5 office job I always promised myself I'd never take, and I'm finding it difficult to care about anything that I'm working on.
I know that things probably aren't as dismal as I feel they are, but it's just hard to accept that a product I cared about, and felt ownership over, is now just another checkbox on a large enterprise company's products page.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? How did you get over those feelings? I know quitting is an option, but I'd really prefer to make the best of it, at least while the golden handcuffs are still on. <comment><USER2> Money does not equate to happiness. You met your fiduciary responsibilities in negotiating the best sales price possible for your investors, but you didn't negotiate for the best life possible during your handcuffitude. Everything is renegotiable if the cost to the acquirer is less than the value of you staying.

Take three days off: call in sick if you have to. Drive a half day away to somewhere else. With a pad and pen, spend the time designing what you WANT to do during your servitude. Work four 10 hour days and enjoy a three day weekend? Get to spend a few days each month visiting the other divisions—-maybe they could use an interim division exec for awhile. Or?

When you return to the office, set up a meeting with the "decider" and show them your finalized list and ask this one question:

"What can you give me on this list to make me want to stay?"

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> Agree. You have leverage, not just due to sunk costs but because people in the organization staked their reputations on the acquisition being successful. So you may be able to write your own job description.

But many big companies are so broken that there's no job description that could make an entrepreneurial person happy within.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Been there, felt the same way.

I tried to start a new project in the acquirer, but it was an uphill slog against corporate inertia. Being an intrapreneur requires an entirely different skillset of corporate ego fluffing.

I didn't want to give up and get paid to slack. It felt wrong. So I left (leaving a good chunk of money on the table) and started something new and was much happier.

You only have one life. If you don't have to spend another year of it being a corporate stooge for money, don't.

</comment><comment><USER4> I worked with people in your situation. They had to stay on 12 months after acquistion, each made millions. The former managing director was stripped off so much power she decided to work as customer care staff instead. CTO saved all his holiday days (25 in Germany) so he can take the last month off instead of going to the office. The third found had a deal to get promoted to vice president international and more or less jet-setted from one office to the next, as far as I remember he didn't accomplish much but he switched so often people didn't notice. None stayed a day a longer than contractually required.

Can you try becoming an outside consultant to the company instead?

</comment><comment><USER5> Were you a founder? Owner? etc?

It is tough to go from 'big fish - little pond' to 'little fish - big pond'. The drop in adrenaline is probably the drive in the depression.

Did you take a break? Have you taken time to just think about what you want in life? I personally recommend travel, by yourself, to give you time to think and feel. Hint hint - a bicycle and 3 months alone is great.

Optionally, visit a life coach or psychologist. Someone to talk it out with.

</comment><comment><USER6> Have you tried drying your tears with bank notes? jk. I don't know quit then? Unless you're contractually obligated to stay I'm not sure there's anything you can do aside from either quitting or working towards changing your circumstances assuming you have the influence.</comment>


Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and the $100B Blitz on Sand Hill Road - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-27/masayoshi-son-softbank-and-the-100-billion-blitz-on-sand-hill-road <comment><USER3> "Son tells Bloomberg Businessweek that he plans to raise a new $100 billion fund every two or three years and will spend around $50 billion a year. For perspective, in 2016, the entire U.S. venture capital industry invested $75.3 billion, according to the National Venture Capital Association."

This is an absurd statistic. If that's actually true, startups have a long and potentially exhilarating road ahead of them.

I wonder what this would do to the startup landscape in the long term though. Will this make startups look more like big incumbents more than a sprawling landscape?

<comment><USER4> I'm a fan of Masayoshi Son's audacity. However, the outlandish premise floated in the article (raising $100b funds every few years) is all premised on the back of the freak Alibaba return being repeatable over and over again. That's not going to happen, there's one China and its boom phase is mostly over. The last China-like outcome, was a century prior to that (the US).

I watched Masayoshi Son make the same mistake of incorrect extrapolation, 20 years ago.[1] The pitch - the same one he made 20 years ago - only works while the tide is high, when the tide goes out it's ugly. There were countless articles touting his 300 year plan for the future back then, while he was riding very high on the epic Yahoo returns (at one point his investment into Yahoo was worth something like $44b, a particularly huge return to generate in a short amount of time back then). Alibaba will have legitimate staying power, unlike Yahoo's bubble valuation circa 1999/2000, however it won't change the fact that there aren't going to be endless lines of Alibabas to generate vast returns off of to justify raising $100 billion every few years. Alibaba will prove as rare in China as Microsoft or Google are in the US.

[1] [http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2053732,00...](http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2053732,00.html)

<comment><USER5> There is India around the corner with Japan having excellent ties with it.

Next Alibaba will be in India and Mayoshi probably knows it.

<comment><USER4> That's definitely not a sure thing. For example here are the GDP comparisons between China and India going back to 1975.

GDP, five year increments

India $100b (1975) | $190b | $236b | $326b | $366b | $474b | $834b | $1.68t | $2.1t (2015)

China $163b (1975) | $191b | $309b | $360b | $734b | $1.2t | $2.3t | $6.1t | $11t (2015)

They started out in close proximity, were identical by 1980, and they ended up 35 years later with a 5x difference between them. Why? Poor choices that India made along the way. The point being, the sort of growth China has seen is not automatic, it isn't a given at all that India will make the right choices that lead to it becoming another economic superpower. It _may_ make the right choices. China was only able to generate that expansion through very aggressive focus on traditional industry and manufacturing. India isn't following anything like the path that China did, I don't see where they're going to generate the extraordinary foreign investment that China did by using old-style manufacturing as a magnet for capital that they could then reinvest into domestic expansion. To say nothing of the fact that that style of industrial empire and manufacturing is disappearing, and that disappearance is going to accelerate with leaps in automation that are happening now. It's being discussed as an advancement trap for developing nations, where the ladder of advancement gets wiped out for developing nations by AI, robotics, etc (eliminating jobs that otherwise could employ hundreds of millions of people in places like India and China).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _It has already committed $65 billion to acquire big stakes in Uber, WeWork, Slack, and GM Cruise._

Uber and WeWork[1] are money drains buying market share. GM Cruise is a "fake it til you make it" operation. Is Softbank the biggest dumb money operation of all time?

(WeWork is strange. Most real estate businesses buy property and rent it out. WeWork rents property long term and rents it out short term.)

[1] [https://news.crunchbase.com/news/wework-details-run-rate- rev...](https://news.crunchbase.com/news/wework-details-run-rate-revenue-and- fake-profit/)

<comment><USER7> What makes you say Cruise is faking? The disengagement data would suggest they're the most viable self-driving car venture behind Waymo.

<comment><USER8> The technology isn't there. There will never be self driving cars.

<comment><USER9> _If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can 't be done._ \- Peter Ustinov, via [http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

<comment><USER10> Cruise seems to operate like it has an unlimited reserve of money. They also have a bit of a broculture. They are hiring like wildfire.

All self driving tech is in its early days to call it "self - driving". So it will be interesting to see how the future pans out.

May be you can indeed keep on throwing ridiculous amounts of money and something and make it work. May be not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is only going to fuel ( _accelerate_ ) the tech bubble helping already bloated unicorns _burn_ more cash.

Masayoshi is _unquestionably_ a smart guy, but he's making some pretty big bets on an uncertain future.

Uber has raised $22.2B so far and made a $891M Net Loss in its second quarter ending June 30. It's difficult for a mere mortal to see how Uber will ever be _profitable_ considering the cumulative losses.

<comment><USER12> My only hope and concern is whether these companies produce actual technology and benefit for society, or if their plan is to dump all of the risk at an unreasonable valuation onto the public markets to make their returns. Uber is an example, where yes, they along with others highlighted a market exists - and helping disrupt the status quo (shifting less efficient, more expensive systems, with modernized and potentially less expensive) - however they're not dealing with the indirect costs associated with less expense in this case, such as are drivers earning enough now to survive in the current structure of the economy - and what happens to drivers, as well as other workers, once we get closer to fullest autonomy possible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Saudi Arabia invested 45% of the 100B. It's rare for a state to make such risky investments.

Either they have a lot of available capital, and the 45B is nothing but a line item, or they're trying to dig themselves out of a hole and they need to take on big, risky investments to do that.

<comment><USER14> I don't know if $45B is a line item to them, but to give you a sense of scale of how much money the Saudis have, Aramco had a net income of about $34B in the first half of 2017 [0].

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-04-13/saudi-a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-04-13/saudi- aramco-may-have-to-settle-for-just-a-trillion-or-so)

<comment><USER13> That's insane. That's more than Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet's 2017 net income _combined_.

How does a commodity business (oil and gas) generate so much profit?

<comment><USER15> Unlike (almost) every other business on earth where you have to do work and compete with peers to make a profit on your efforts, all the value of oil is sitting in the ground underneath them. Oil wealth is just luck of being born on top of the right geology.

<comment><USER16> And being part of an extremist tribe who were useful to the Brits/Americans versus the Ottomans in World War 1, who then continued to provide a "stable source" of oil. Stable because they stamped out any sort of democracy or society with freedoms that would allow anyone to object to their arrangements with the West, in exchange for one family of the tribe to become extremely wealthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> enahs-sf You could do a lot of interesting things with a fund of that size. It also changes the landscape of late stage and growth companies because they can now potentially raise at valuations that allow them to utterly dominate their competition. This has always been the dream for entrepreneurs: figure out product market fit, then raise insane amounts of money to pour on growth. If you're a couple orders of magnitude away from your next closest competitor, it's going to be tough for them to compete.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have a feeling that SoftBank would be $1 trillion organization by the end of 2030. Let me explain why. The entire magic here lies in the ability to through lots and lots of arrows and this ability is gained only when you have reached a critical mass in terms of fund size. As an example, here is YC facts:

 _YC started in: 2005

Number of companies funded (2017): 1,450

Approximate investment: $200M

Valuation of all companies: $80B_

People here will be quick to point out that there is a difference between valuation and realized cash. Also that there is pg magic that is missing in other funds. For the first objection, let's cut down valuation to just 25%of what they claim, ie, $20B. For the second objection, I had say there have been couple of semi-scientific studies that pointed out that YC is doing just 10-20% better than other funds of same size and that predicting startup success if futile and that your only real recourse is to have lots of arrows.

So timided down YC data suggests that if you have fund of certain critical size you can ignite the chain reaction and watch the magic of compounded growth. YC has showed approximately 100X return over 10 years. There is no other financial vehicle that does this.

</comment><comment><USER18> If that much capital is available without all of the regulatory burden... does this mean the end of traditional IPO's and using something like profit sharing in order to return the capital investment?

</comment><comment><USER19> Current leader of Saudi Arabia is not a smart man, this is the only reason Son managed to coax them into this.

Remember, the true nature of that fund is floating right under ones nose - <USER2> is a nation scale LBO scheme, backed by enormous amount of debt.

They look to buy few other monopoly businesses that they hope will be making money with the same ease as oil, but, obviously, that's not possible.

A very naive assumption on their behalf.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can huge funds like this run into monopoly issues when they own a significant part of multiple large companies in a space?

</comment><comment><USER21> > the prospective investors—executives from a state-owned fund in the Middle > East

</comment><comment><USER22> Thanks SEC for ensuring that all the returns from high growth tech companies are accruing to foreign billionaires and corrupt oil princes rather than to american retirement accounts and pension funds!

<comment><USER23> How is the SEC liable? Is there some regulation preventing US investment houses from investing in the same manner?

<comment><USER24> Unsophisticated Individuals certainly can't invest in private equity, but I'm curious if there are similar rules against a pension fund or other such collection of unsophisticated money having high risk assets in their portfolio.</comment></comment></comment>


Quora Hacked, 100M users Accounts compromised - <AUTHOR> https://pwned.blog/quora-hacked-100-million-quora-users-accounts-compromised/ <comment><USER2> Still confused how marking as dupe with no link to the dupe is helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dupe of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18594564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18594564)

<comment><AUTHOR> Uff, :(</comment></comment>


Minecraft's Pack.png Found - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/wZGPg6Ckp3Q <comment><USER2> this video describes what pack.png is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbR8ZY1Nsm8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbR8ZY1Nsm8)</comment>


Chek – Visually innovating task tracking and collaboration - <AUTHOR> http://www.thechekapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Just saw this on PH</comment>


Storing files in the DB: story of an epic failure - <AUTHOR> https://blog.yourlabs.org/post/184290880553/storing-files-in-the-db-story-of-an-epic-failure <comment><USER2> If you store your BLOBS outside the db, you'll have to write your own two- phase commit logic to ensure when row X is deleted, then /wherever/X.jpg is also deleted. Similar for inserts.

And you'll need to provide a detailed README to your DBAs and your team to explain all your special backup and restore operations.

Or, you can just live with a backup that takes longer and requires more disk space.

<comment><USER3> > _you 'll have to write your own two-phase commit logic to ensure when row X > is deleted, then /wherever/X.jpg is also deleted_

I can't imagine a situation where you would need strict consistency with a BLOB and a database row unless you were also modifying bits inside the BLOB (which wouldn't be true if you are hosting images).

If you just need to ensure that whenever user X says DELETE, you can put S3 infront of an API and just query the database before you return the URL. If you _really_ need the file gone, I would rather just encrypt the image and store the key in the database row.

In a world where S3 doesn't exist, I would still build something similar because coupling my object store with my actual data store just seems like asking for trouble. Having to wait hours to backup several kilobytes of changed data in a multi-terabyte database is just inviting people to cut corners.

<comment><USER4> Storing legal contracts associated with accounts. I implemented a system like this. Documents were simple and usually small, pure html with no images or hrml converted to PDF, occassionally it was an attached JPEG from something someone emailed or faxed.

If you want a system where the documents are strictly linked to the account, easy to query based on account, consistent (in the DB sense), replicated and backed up with all the other very important customer info, and local so you aren't exposed to external risk factors it's the path of least resistance, and can be easily and securely implemented with very little effort.

Different solutions for different needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That didn't really say much. Don't store file content in your databases, otherwise your backups will balloon to massive size.

<comment><USER6> Personally, I think the answer is it depends.

If all we are storing are profile pictures for a small app for a small user base, I think it is better to store things in the database rather than adding complexity of S3. I mean if you are making an image board like [https://github.com/DangerOnTheRanger/maniwani](https://github.com/DangerOnTheRanger/maniwani) you should not listen to me and use something like S3 because the images are the bread and butter of your application but often user generated images only used for profile pictures might be okay to store in a database. Why make things more complicated than they have to be?

<comment><USER7> What complexity? If you Store your files in an S3 you get redundancy for free, easy cross region replication, you can put them behind CloudFront as a CDN.

<comment><USER8> S3 is the complexity. anything added to a system doubles the complexity of said system...

<comment><USER7> So instead of aphorisms, care to explain the complexity of issuing one command to copy a file and storing the URL in the database and letting AWS taking care of copying?

<comment><USER9> You've skipped over quite a lot.

\- learning about and understanding S3 in the first place.

\- Billing and AWS account management (possibly requiring agreement/permission from others)

\- maintaining credentials securely for your app to access S3.

\- bug fixing (for e.g. it's easy to get the permissions wrong when you upload so that it's not visible)

Since you're already storing the URL in your dB, why not just store the binary data you have?

I don't think you're wrong about using something like S3 being a better solution, but it's not quite as simple as "issuing one command"

<comment><USER7> \- there is literally one command and a quick Google search.

\- he brought up S3, I am assuming he's already on AWS

\- you don't have to. The role attached to your EC2 instance will have permission. If he is already on AWS, hopefully he knows that.

\- From the requirements it seems like the images should be publicly accessible. If not, when you create a bucket, it's by default private. Yes if he wants to limit access he would have to either stream from S3 to the client - I had to do that it was a quick Google search - or generate presigned URL.

Why not store binary data in the DB? It makes backups larger.

That being said, SQL Server has the filestream type that does in fact store the binary data as a separate file on disk, but gets treated as if it is part of the database for backup and restore purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Coincidentally, I came to this fresh from watching "Database as Filesystem"[1,2], which takes a different view:

> Most network file systems are either a layer over an existing filesystem > (NFS, CIFS), or are develped from scratch to have separate, replicated, > purpose-designed databases for metadata and object store (GFS, Glusterfs). > At the same time, most database engines provide (or can be coerced into > providing) replication and all the ACID properties needed for a high- > performance filesystem.

> Idea: Use a database engine (Postgres, MariaDB) on raw partitions with a > fast separate nVME log file; build POSIX file system semantics on top. It's > pretty obvious that this could work; I'm just starting to implement it so > performance and durability can be measured.

Epic fail fans and optimists alike will be excited by an actual implementation attempt, I guess :)

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN6IwNriwHc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN6IwNriwHc)

2: [https://2019.linux.conf.au/schedule/presentation/212/](https://2019.linux.conf.au/schedule/presentation/212/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing this ! it's lovely from a technical perspective and researching with Peter Chubb sounds like a transcending experience ... but if you have Bob the manager instead of Peter Chubb, and that you intend to practice continuous delivery on your product codebase, making backups part of your automated deployment pipeline introduces an ever growing bottleneck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Relevant tweet [1]: "Do you know S3 throughput is higher than a SATA 3 controller and almost as much as PCIe 4.0 2x? Depending on the usecase, mounting S3 as a filesystem, not only makes sense, but it saves a LOT of money (and time) as well. You just need to use it a special kind of filesystem." [1]

[1] [https://twitter.com/dialtone_/status/1115130667677786112](https://twitter.com/dialtone_/status/1115130667677786112)

<comment><USER12> S3 latency and availability are many (3, 4, 5?) orders of magnitude worse than those other things.

In other news, smart cars and supercars have comparable leg room, and are therefore interchangeable, depending on your use case.

<comment><USER13> Latency I can see. I find it hard to believe S3 has a lower availability than a sata drive. Given that S3 is replicated.

<comment><USER14> S3 maybe has better availability. Your DSL/fiber and router, that are on the critical path, definitely not.

<comment><USER13> I was speaking in the context of the cloud. If you are using S3, I presume you are using AWS EC2 or other services. Otherwise network egress costs dwarf everything else for most use cases. Except maybe as a repo of database backups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rob-olmos Had to deal with this before. Really hampered things with bloated backups and extended restore times during restoration tests.

Also not a good plan for the database to no longer fit within RAM, especially if the storage engine is evicting cached pages for blob content, only to populate a CDN.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've never understood this advice. To me it just makes a lot more sense to store everything in the database - much less complexity.

What I've done in the past is just put a CDN in front of the file url, so the file content is stored in the db, but served from the CDN.

<comment><USER16> This is nearly always and for nearly everything, the right answer.

Even that article sort of acknowledges this, when it talks about being ultra conservative in your estimations of when this solution will start to fall apart.

Facebook can clearly not "just store all the photos and images in the db! It's less complex!" Same with Google.

To 4 or 5 or more nines of certainty, whatever you're working on doesn't now and never will have Facebook scale problems. And if it _does_, hopefully your business plan has you wallowing in cash-on-hand to pay teams of other smart engineers to help you solve that problem. (I'll respect you more if that pile of cash comes from customers buying your shit, but I'll acknowledge that wallowing in VC money you've raised on hockeystick growth or engagement numbers is also a valid path.)

If your business plan doesn't explain how you'll pay for a db.r4.16xlarge (or your cloud provider or on-prem db vendor's equivalent) with the number of users (or transactions/whatever-your-apporpriate-metric) that a topped-out vertically scaled db can support doing things the "easy and least complicated way", perhaps _that's_ a more important problem to be working on that ACID compliant deletion of user photos...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Dumping a big database continuously for any reason (including backups) is a terrible design decision.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish there was a PG extension, FDW or something that would facilitate blobs being stored externally but managed with regular database operations. sure you can store a reference to it, but your application needs to handle everything in concert with database transformations. Bonus points if it can interface with S3(compatible) versioning to give these virtual blobs an audit trail and rollback. How sweet would it be to have a profile pic that could be updated and rolled back with just a little SQL?

</comment><comment><USER19> Why do people always reinvent and start from scratch and then complain always puzzles me. SQL Server Filestream Feature:

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational- databases/bl...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational- databases/blob/filestream-sql-server?view=sql-server-2017)

FILESTREAM integrates the SQL Server Database Engine with an NTFS or ReFS file systems by storing varbinary(max) binary large object (BLOB) data as files on the file system. Transact-SQL statements can insert, update, query, search, and back up FILESTREAM data. Win32 file system interfaces provide streaming access to the data.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just a TLDR, don't. Store the database record with a pointer to a more scalable better suited datastore like an object storage system (i.e S3). Most frameworks have a pattern for this (i.e [https://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_storage_overview.html](https://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_storage_overview.html))

<comment><USER21> Or if it's at the non webscale level just store it in your own filesystem and serve from your filesystem instead of doing it from S3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That font (Oswald) hurts my eyes to read to the point where I couldn't read the bits of the article I wished to read.

</comment><comment><USER23> When should we consider storing uploaded files in the file system instead of in S3?

</comment><comment><USER24> So it's a pain to back up large databases.

…

<comment><AUTHOR> In this case, storing files in the database is a bottleneck at many levels, if you have are going to drop files older than X months then PG will have to deal disk space efficiently, anyway: you get your ever growing continuous delivery bottleneck identified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Maybe we should make our databases support this use case a little better? I don't see why not. Sounds fun!

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you would mean like supporting open file handlers in SQL protocol ? This is still going to be the ever growing bottleneck and liability in your deployment pipeline, if you intend to practice Continuous Delivery.</comment></comment>


Best Tech Books of 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609624/best-tech-books-of-2017/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2017-12-23&utm_campaign=Technology+Review <comment><USER2> 1\. Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech

2\. The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World

3\. Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone

4\. The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

5\. This Idea Is Brilliant: Lost, Overlooked, and Underappreciated Scientific Concepts Everyone Should Know

6\. A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

7\. Easternization: Asia's Rise and America's Decline from Obama to Trump and Beyond

8\. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

9\. The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies

</comment><comment><USER3> It keeps saying I'm in "incognito mode" and not allowing me to view the page.

I have an ad blocker, so I can only assume they think that because the google ad services aren't loading, that I'm browsing incognito.

</comment><comment><USER4> Meh. I'm hoping for a better crop next year.

</comment><comment><USER5> The latest in the progressive indoctrination into the Scientism of Technocracy, with a bit of post-nihilist Feminism.

<comment><USER6> There are at least three problems with comments like this on HN: first, name- calling; second, unsubstantiveness; third, using the site for ideological battle, which is off topic here.

Critique is fine, but fulminating isn't. If you want to post here, please do better.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER5> I was merely giving a succinct representation of my opinion re: this reading list. Apologies if you don't agree with me. If you did agree with me, I would venture to thing that you would not be complaining about the form of my comment. However, you have criticisms over the form of my comment so please allow me to address these criticisms...

1\. name-calling - Please explain. These are either self-described terms by adherents of these philosophies or prominent criticisms. Scientism is a criticism often applied by Philosophers to the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson. Within the institutions pertaining to the industries related Science & Technology, there is a notion of progressive encroachment of said institutions over traditional domains.

Technocracy is a self-definition by it's adherents. Same with Feminism.

Post-Nihilism is a term that I added to describe the language of the reviews re: the books whose main thesis relates to feminism. My logic is that it paints a picture of feminism beyond the Nihilism of diversity statistics not being at a place where it "ought to be" despite large amounts of investments to "improve the situation".

"While the diversity statistics often show a grim image of women's experience in technology and entrepreneurship, Geek Girl Rising paints a brighter picture of the women who are rallying to start companies, investing in each other, and pulling up those coming behind them."

\-- Review of "Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech"

2\. Unsubstantiveness - One can substantiate MIT Press as advancing the Philosophical position of Technocracy from these books that advocate for the same positions as the Technocratic philosophy. The Review of "The Water Will Come" states:

"It's a call to action for coastal cities and states to undertake smart, dedicated, and sustained efforts to reinforce their shores. But it's also an honest appraisal making clear that for many places, whether it's ever an active policy decision or not, the only realistic option will be retreat."

All of these political solutions based on the predictive models of a few Scientists, or Experts in Technocratic terminology. There has been criticism over these models & of the politics of the creators of these models.

3\. The reading list itself has an ideological position. The criticism against ideological positions is itself based on ideology & creates an ideological conflict, which makes it a contradiction.

Perhaps you mean "please don't address any issues about my ideologies"?

> If you want to post here, please do better.

One would think that is a bit snarky & not befit of a HN moderator, but thank you for the practice of addressing your criticisms anyways :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Large Problems in Django, Mostly Solved: Delayed Execution - <AUTHOR> http://ericholscher.com/blog/2010/jun/23/large-problems-django-mostly-solved-delayed-execut/ <comment><USER2> Celery together with RabbitMQ (or another message broker) is great for big/huge projects. For basic job queueing and delayed job execution, beanstalkd (<http://kr.github.com/beanstalkd/>) is in most cases a better choice. It takes almost no memory, no configuration, and just works.

I wrote a small library for Django that makes writing jobs for beanstalkd easier (<http://github.com/jonasvp/django-beanstalkd>). There's also a management command for starting (threaded) workers. Makes writing and calling jobs from Django very simple.

<comment><USER3> Could you please elaborate _why_ it is a better choice? I don't see how django-beanstalkd could take much less memory than celeryd. If it's about the broker (beanstalk), you could have implemented a beanstalk backend for celery as well, then you would have had a tested implementation of the worker part.

Btw, If you would be interested in writing a beanstalkd backend for celery I would be happy to help you out!

<comment><USER2> Good point - I was under the impression that celery _only_ works with an AMQP message broker. Guess I should have read the description more closely before starting on django-beanstalkd.

I'm happy with my lightweight model for now but I'll definitely look into celery again, when the need arises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can personally attest to the fact Celery is pretty awesome, and a nice compliment to your Django app. The author - Ask is also doing some awesome things with multiprocessing in general - check out <http://pypi.python.org/pypi/billiard/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I use Celery myself as well and it's awesome.

It supports multiple messaging queues and backends for storing results (RabbitMQ, MongoDB, AMQP, Redis, ... - I personally use Redis, because I don't need all the features and overhead from RabbitMQ) and also has a great documentation and friendly support on IRC.

And if you watch the Celery project on github you can see that the author is basically working and improving the project on daily basis.

</comment><comment><USER6> We've been using Celery with Django for a solid 8 months or so. It's been a blessing for our needs, and extremely easy to scale.

</comment><comment><USER7> How does celery differ in functionality than a message queue like RabbitMQ?

<comment><USER8> Celery leverages a message queue (including Rabbit, which is how we deploy it), Celery provides an easy API to define tasks, push them onto your queue, and run them on workers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do scheduling tools in a web framework protect you from having to write threading code yourself? Or is it for a completely separate kind of side- process than when I would want to write threads in my web app code?

Also, is that like Quarts in the Spring Framework?

<comment><USER10> > Or is it for a completely separate kind of side-process than when I would > want to write threads in my web app code?

This isn't about threading, really. I'll explain it in terms of Rails's delayed_job because I'm not familiar with the details of Celery:

        * Let's say I want to send an email, via the function Mailer.deliver_notice(email)
        * With delayed_job, I turn this call into Mailer.delay.deliver_notice(email). This puts an entry into a Jobs table in the database that makes note of what I want to run, with all the details.
        * In the background, I have a daemon running that checks the Jobs table every five seconds for jobs that need to be run. It uses the information in the table to execute the deliver_notice function.
        * That's it.

In many cases, the job will update some sort of field in your model that you can query to see if it's been run yet or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a big fan of doing this with Gearman (<http://gearman.org/>). Super simple interface, very easy to shove stuff into the background.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's a little off topic but I would like to take a moment and profess how much I LOVE the fact that hacker news has so many articles on all languages, popular or not.

</comment><comment><USER13> What are the advantages/disadvantages of using a messaging framework like Celery vs. handling asynchronous tasks in threads?

<comment><USER14> Celery workers can run on any networked computer - it can be scaled infinitely!</comment></comment>


Chop and change: Hacking is making its way to furniture - <AUTHOR> https://www.1843magazine.com/design/chop-and-change <comment><USER2> It was weird to me that they mentioned Ikea all over the place, but not Ikea Hackers:

[http://www.ikeahackers.net/](http://www.ikeahackers.net/)

Which I think is really interesting, sure there's some kind of obvious things in there, but also some really genuinely useful ones as well.

For example, I quite like this Ikea Pax to Synth station build: [http://www.ikeahackers.net/2017/06/pax-synth- workstation.htm...](http://www.ikeahackers.net/2017/06/pax-synth- workstation.html)

<comment><USER3> It's mentioned, very briefly: "Until recently IKEA was a bit uppity about hacking: its lawyers sent cease-and-desist letters to websites like Ikeahackers.net that innocently collated techniques."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TL;DR: We believe that millennials and their money are easily parted.

> In 2016 Vitra, a high-end Swiss furniture company, unveiled Hack, a modular > desk designed by Konstantin Grcic. Made of chipboard panels that slot into > aluminium brackets, its £2,557 ($4,775) price tag sits awkwardly with its > knocked-up-in-a-garage aesthetic – but, as with Delaktig, this > unfinishedness is deliberate.

I believe also the name and price tag are very deliberate.

>The "flexible and dynamic" desk can be adjusted in height, folded up, turned into a sofa, drilled into and sawn.

Just like £ 25.57 each chipboard panels.

<comment><USER5> The price tag is designed to make you appear creative to your rich friends without actually needing to be creative

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something I would love to see is an open-source attitude entering into the furniture manufacture ecosystem.

What Ikea sells you is, essentially:

a) a set of instructions for making furniture out of basic components b) those components, produced and distributed through a highly-efficient supply chain

So break those two apart! Let hobbyists and carpenters share or sell their furniture designs. Just specify the components in a standard way, so suppliers can compete to supply the components for each design.

So you turn a monolithic business into one where smaller groups can compete on each part of the system. One company can cheaply supply cut wood in Seattle, another just sells its funky shelving designs without worrying about the infrastructure.

Most bits of this ecosystem already exist -- the furniture-making hobbyists, the DIY stores, the suppliers of nails and screws. They just need a bit of systemisation (and marketing) to pull them together into a system that can compete with a monolithic supply chain.

<comment><USER7> I agree! You can check out [http://www.aalo.co/](http://www.aalo.co/). Disclosure: this is a startup I founded, with the same intention of what you just mentionted above. Shameless plug :).

General public (especially the millennials) have better knowledge and insights about good design and it has become much more democratic. The problem is that millennials just don't have as much money to spend on furniture, let alone a space to put them in. Ikea's Delaktig line is definitely a step in the right direction, but it still can't provide the level of freedom that "Ikea Hack" does.

I believe the answer lies in a system that provides the basic structure, which lets the individuals design and build on top of it. This way, you can achieve designs that are more unique, multi-functional, and affordable.

<comment><USER8> My first impression was that it's basically cast iron pipe designs, implemented with your custom components. Not a bad idea, especially as the pieces are more streamlined (slip in elbows) but doesn't really hit me as a real "system".

On your "about us" or product page you should do a small write-up about that actual materials and components. Basically, how is this different or better than cast iron pipe or Klee clamps?

I'd really like to know if your system can support significant weight because most of the designs (except for the garment rack) are small structures that you would expect to hold only 10-20 lbs. I would guess from the weight and dimensions of the garment rack you are using 1-1/4 OD x .065 wall aluminum round tube.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the feedback!

Our goal in terms of functionality, is to make it easier for people to enjoy the versatility of pipe fittings (Kee Clamps, FitzKitz) and slotted extrusions (80/20, Minitec) while providing a seamless design better suited for living spaces.

As you suggested, it'll definitely help us to have a better explanation of our materials and structural integrity. I'll work on updating the information :)

Right now our components are designed to widthstand similar loads as a 1"x1" T-slotted aluminum framing system, and it's been a fun but difficult challenge to make it more cost efficient and user friendly.

You seem like you have very good knowledge of building materials and furniture making in general! Would love to have you on our beta creator group so you can give us even more feedback as we develop the product. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > You "hack" the sofa by adding armrests or a back cushion or a footstool, > depending on whether you feel like owning a chaise longue or an L-shaped > three-seater. You can invest in a clip-on reading lamp or a stone side table > or a fluffy cover made of Icelandic sheepskin, and exchange them for new > ones when you get bored.

It's not "hacking" when it's deliberately designed to work like that.

>Hacking is making its way to furniture

It's not like this is new. People have been modifying Ikea furniture in particular for quite a long time now. And modifying furniture in general for centuries.

<comment><USER10> Lovesac makes a sactional that is similar to this, customizable, not hackable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish there were layman-friendly guides to building furniture and a nationwide initiative to pair home improvement stores with tool libraries. If you want to save money and have quality furniture, building it yourself is the way to go, but good luck if you don't have your own wood shop.

You should be able to build most modular furniture using two power tools, some jigs, and raw materials. It's sad that this isn't a common thing.

<comment><USER12> re: laymen-friendly guides: [http://www.ana- white.com/plancatalog](http://www.ana-white.com/plancatalog)

I recently had to buy an entire house's worth of furniture due to a fire. We shopped every store we could find, and apart from any store that sources from the Amish, its all crap. The prices are obscene. We also got to see the innards of the old burned furniture... there's so much chip-board and laminating that I think there must be more plastic/glue than wood fiber. Just like electronics are being designed with obsolescence as a requirement, maybe more so is the furniture in your house...

Its so much more rewarding to build a giant custom table and be able to grunt, "hey look what i did". OR even pick up some older pieces at an estate sale and upcycle with a new varnish or paint and some modifications.

<comment><USER8> The Ana white designs are okay for something short term but are prone to problems due to using _only_ pocket screws and construction grade lumber. Veneered particle board would actually outlast from a construction perspective as it's less prone to expansion/contraction.

Table tops will warp if you just screw the boards together and to the base. You can avoid this by gluing the panels then attaching to base with proper fasteners to allow for expansion/contraction.

You can build them properly but this requires using true edge s4s lumber or removing the dimensional round edge with a table saw, band saw or jointer. Your glue up then requires a good number of large clamps. Even out of poplar, adler or basswood which are cheaper hardwoods you'll have $250-$300 in the table. Oak would be $500+.

>there's so much chip-board and laminating that I think there must be more plastic/glue than wood fiber. Just like electronics are being designed with obsolescence as a requirement, maybe more so is the furniture in your house

The problem is people want things cheap and nice looking. You can get a solid white oak table from Crate and Barrel for $1500; which isn't really that bad considering that's around $750 in ready to go s4s lumber from a mail order supplier. It's a lot cheaper to do as Ikea did and have a particle core with a 1/8" oak 'veneer'. Ikea's table is $600.

<comment><USER12> yeah, but marking it "rustic" solves all my rough-looking problems :) The warping is definitely happening, but my table is also an outdoor patio table so its fine in this case. Thanks for advice though... will help on later projects.

I would like to get some time back this winter and make some inside pieces.. I agree with the pocket screws, but I think I can get around some of that with a joiner. I feel like a joiner and planer are the next tools I will invest in.

>>people want things cheap and nice looking

I agree 1000% but, after the aforementioned fire, I personally have a new perspective. "Collecting" things is way below being able to say I invested in myself/family and built something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Inexpensive IKEA furniture means I have no compunction e.g. cutting legs to get the correct typing/working height.

That said, a lot of IKEA furniture does not have the most dense/durable wood. Hacking's one thing. Big bucks for the finished hacks, is likely still getting you something that's not that durable, especially if exposed to any considerable wear and tear.

</comment><comment><USER14> _hacker: n._

 _[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]_

([http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html](http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html))</comment>


The UK government is paying newspapers for positive COVID-19 coverage - cirrus-clouds https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/the-government-is-paying-the-sun-and-daily-mail-for-positive-coverage-of-its-coronavirus-response/28/05/ <comment> cirrus-clouds Here is the content paid by the government on Guardian's website:

[https://www.theguardian.com/all-in-all- together](https://www.theguardian.com/all-in-all-together)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that is straight up fraud. "Paid for by All In, All Together" otherwise known as the UK govenrment.

<comment><USER2> Can someone explain what's so odd or fraudulent about it?

1\. Govt spending on ads increased in February as the article says. But isn't it expected given that govt sources have to reach wider audience in times of crisis and hence has to increase its spending doing that. We can of course challenge the specific amount spent and whether its justified but there was no analysis done on that aspect of it. The article merely reports the increase in spending.

2\. The article hints that there is an odd correlation of ads by the govt being of "positive response" towards the crisis. Althought that is debatable whether it is indeed true or not, assuming that it is true, I am not sure whether the response where the govt makes ads that say "we are failing each day and have no idea how to respond to this crisis" are a better alternative. These days the media stories are often one sided, either positive or negative so a neutral ground of emotion is hard to see. So I am thinking how else this should have been done.

3\. Is it propaganda? Yes. Is it a lie? That would mean the media outlets are lying and we should stop reading them. Is it half of the information? Probably. That's why we have to rely on multiple news sources to get the complete picture. The question is what is the public going to do with this information?

<comment><USER3> It now reads "This advertiser content was paid for by the UK government. All in, all together is a government-backed initiative tasked with informing the UK about the Covid-19 pandemic."

<comment><USER4> I see a blank after "Paid for by:" now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's funny that people have an issue with this considering the site makes an incredible amount of money stoking fear and hate into people while purposefully looking for controversy anywhere it can be found.

Of the 100 articles on the homepage of The Guardian, try to find 5 that are not fear, hate, or controversy. Good luck..

No one seems to have a problem with paid hate..</comment>


Publishing a Clojure Library to Clojars.org - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.github.com/ato/clojars-web/tutorial <comment><AUTHOR> Don't capitalize the project name (e.g. "defproject X"). Perhaps this is obvious, but I was messed up by that for a while...

</comment><comment><USER2> This gets an upvote simply for using the word "beaut" in type.</comment>


Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/21/twenty-two-states-ask-appeals-court-to-bring-back-net-neutrality/ <comment><USER2> The system seems broken when states representing more than 50% of the population have to sue in court to try to change something like this. Instead with that much backing it should be done through the legislative branch. I'm concerned about the growing use of courts to try to decide policies because our legislative bodies can't work together and instead just try to force one sided issues through or block each other.

> Together, the AGs represent states totaling 165 million people — more than > half of the U.S. population.

<comment><USER3> I came here to say the opposite. The states are doing what they can to limit damaging actions by the federal government. This is the system working for the people. Without the ability or interest from the states to push back against the federal government's decrees, we would be stuck with an authoritarian nation.

Currently, trying to pass meaningful legislation is like trying to squeeze a watermelon through a pinhole. That should certainly be addressed, but we can't ignore the current battle just to focus on the bigger war.

<comment><USER4> > The states are doing what they can to limit damaging actions by the federal > government.

Or rather, absence of action in this case.

> This is the system working for the people.

The system working for the people would be the states to make their own legislation. Using courts to force federal government to take action that elected executive and elected legislature do not support is not system working.

> Currently, trying to pass meaningful legislation is like trying to squeeze a > watermelon through a pinhole.

Legislature is complex and hard. Not the reason to try and make courts into its replacement. That's not how the system is supposed to work, and doing that will result in a system even more broken than now.

<comment><USER3> > The system working for the people would be the states to make their own > legislation. Using courts to force federal government to take action that > elected executive and elected legislature do not support is not system > working.

It's called checks and balances, and it was how the system was designed to work.

> Legislature is complex and hard. Not the reason to try and make courts into > its replacement. That's not how the system is supposed to work, and doing > that will result in a system even more broken than now.

The courts aren't being used as a replacement, they're being used as a court. When one part of the government does something, you use another part of the government to counter it, until you've exhausted all your options. Then you can go back to the drawing board, which is to start a grassroots movement to push for overwhelming bipartisan support to force even a one-sided legislative branch to adopt the reforms you seek. It's an iterative process. Using the courts is not circumventing anything. You can always use legislation later to determine law that supersedes ruling by the courts, unless such legislation is found to be unconstitutional.

<comment><USER4> > It's called checks and balances, and it was how the system was designed to > work.

No, it's not. Just repeating "checks and balances" doesn't mean courts can be abused for doing something that is not court's purpose. The court's purpose is preserving the consistency of legislation (including the Constitution as supreme, very hard to change part of the law) and adherence of executive to the law. In this case, the executive is clearly within the law, but some people are unhappy about it, so they want to abuse the courts to make them legislate from the bench that the policy must be different. This is not how the system is designed to work, this is the exact opposite of it.

> The courts aren't being used as a replacement, they're being used as a > court.

They are being used to force through a policy that is not supported by either legislature or executive. That's not a function of a proper court.

> When one part of the government does something, you use another part of the > government to counter it, until you've exhausted all your options.

No, that's not how it's supposed to work. It's not "try anything until my side wins, then block any attempt of other side to try anything at all". Your side may temporarily win, but when the other side does the same, you end up with the broken system where nobody respects any decisions and the only thing that matters is which side you're on. I call such system broken.

<comment><USER3> > They are being used to force through a policy that is not supported by > either legislature or executive. That's not a function of a proper court.

They're asking the court to reverse the repealing of legislation, with the argument that the FCC should not have been allowed to repeal it because their legal reasoning was flawed.

Who is pushing policy? Was Obama pushing policy by instituting regulation? Was the FCC pushing policy by repealing it? Are the states pushing policy by trying to get the repeal revoked? Yes, Yes, Yes. Welcome to government.

It's _all_ about pushing policy, any way you can. The system regulates the ability to push policy by _allowing_ you to push policy, within the confines of the system, and _gives you the tools to continually push or pull policy_.

> Your side may temporarily win, but when the other side does the same, you > end up with the broken system where nobody respects any decisions and the > only thing that matters is which side you're on.

I re-watched the film Lincoln recently. It's basically about pushing for the 13th Amendment, well before it was politically tenable to adopt it. Bribery, back room deals, switching allegiances, concealing moves, political pressure, manipulation. Politics is the art of doing anything you possibly can to advance your agenda, to the exclusion of others' agendas. Your side doesn't even matter, it's what you can gain or lose that matters.

<comment><USER5> > the FCC should not have been allowed to repeal it because their legal > reasoning was flawed

I have not been able to pin this down.

What law/rule did the FCC allegedly violate?

<comment><USER6> Check out the NY filing for more complete information about their arguments ([https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/nn_govt_petitioners_br...](https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/nn_govt_petitioners_brief_and_addendum_final_filed.pdf)). But the short answer is that the FCC is being accused of violating the Administrative Procedures Act.

The APA was created in response to the growth of government agencies tasked with creating regulations, essentially to curb the power of bureaucrats. Agencies are required to keep the public informed about possible changes to regulations and to allow for public participation, but what's relevant to this case is the process by which proposed changes are approved. In order to change the existing regulations, there has to be a formal review process, which involves gathering evidence and making a decision based on that evidence. Essentially, agencies like the FCC can't just change their rules on a whim, they have to look at all available evidence and actually come up with an argument for why the change needs to happen based on that evidence. Agency heads still get a decent amount of leeway, but standard is that their decisions cannot be "arbitrary and capricious." That's a legal term with a whole body of precedent behind it, google for more info.

I should also point out that suing based on the APA has come up a lot in this administration. My girlfriend is involved with environmental lobbying groups, and a number of the EPA rule changes proposed under the Trump administration have been thrown out because they did not properly follow the APA. The DOJ's repeal of DACA is also currently being challenged as violating the APA.

<comment><USER5> > they have to look at all available evidence and actually come up with an > argument for why the change needs to happen based on that evidence.

Make sense. Proving this seems like it would be an enormously uphill battle.

It would have to be an unambiguously wrong decision on the part of the FCC. (Otherwise, the court essentially becomes the FCC by upholding/overturning any "wrong" decision.)

Given that it only became a policy recently, and the current amount of debate...it's hard to believe that the court would decide that not having NN is egregiously in the wrong. But we shall see.

<comment><USER6> Remember that the FCC has to explicitly provide their reasoning for making their decision. Those bringing this suit don't have to prove that not having NN is egregiously wrong, they just have to prove that the reasoning the FCC gave is egregiously faulty. It is a difficult battle, but not as hard as you might think.

<comment><USER7> Especially if the FCC points to things like the provably false public comments they collected as their reasoning. When they say use evidence like [https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filing/1051157755251](https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filing/1051157755251) it's not hard to prove that they didn't actually have reasoning for their decisions beyond "me and my lobbyists wanted it"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would like to see Twitter, Google, CloudFlare and Facebook classified as public utilities. While Alex Jones is a nut case (And shouldn't be defended), other less publicized incidents of censorship by Social Media companies has occurred (related to picking winners between Israel and Palestine) [1]. While I am a Democrat who has been elected in the past, I agree with the conservative argument that: Corporate censorship dampens the spirit of free speech.

[1] Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments [https://theintercept.com/2017/12/30/facebook-says-it-is- dele...](https://theintercept.com/2017/12/30/facebook-says-it-is-deleting- accounts-at-the-direction-of-the-u-s-and-israeli-governments/)

<comment><USER9> What makes _these_ companies "public utilities" as opposed to others? I don't need Twitter in my life. Nor Google. Definitely not Facebook. And maybe lots of web sites use CloudFlare, but consumers don't interact directly with them.

Maybe applying common carrier status is something that's more palatable, but classifying them as "public utilities" doesn't have to be the mechanism by which CC is applied.

<comment><USER10> What counts as a need? Does one need land lines? Electricity? People live off the grid by generating these themselves and people live elsewhere without them at all.

Of course, one could bring a distinction between things that naturally grant a physical monopoly and things that don't, but I think one could make an argument that certain sites have effectively become the new public square and in doing so have a natural monopoly of our attention (or more pedantically a natural cartel).

There is also a natural monopoly of technology. If you have a patent for something, others can't use it unless you let them. Imagine if every major tech corporation aggressively pursued every possible patent claim against any companies trying to offer an alternate space for those banned from the mainstream, would the little company have any greater chance that a new electric company fighting against the entrenched players?

<comment><USER11> >what counts as need

When access to it is _required_ to be on an even playing field.

Hence internet, yes. Electricity, yes. Phone? Yup.

Facebook? Ehhhh

<comment><USER12> If you want to reach an audience, the vast majority of companies would reach for Facebook and/or Google in a heartbeat. Either they're all wrong, or you're not on an even playing field if you do not use them as an advertiser.

<comment><USER11> Ok, but you a seven year old still needs the internet to have a level education playing field, and her mom needs it to sort out her taxes and ID applications and look up nutritional information and SNAP information and parks nearby and how to register a car and available jobs at the DMV and...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Where did this new anti-NN talking point come from about how, if we're going to have net neutrality then we also need to allow people to be terrible on social media without taking responsibility for it? I swear I've seen this so many times in the past few months, including multiple comments in this thread. If moderation of corporate software platforms is an important issue for you, great, but surely you can see the difference between that and NN? Attempting to conflate the two looks pretty disingenuous and I'm pretty inclined to think it's some kind of culture war talking point.

<comment><USER14> It's being heavily pushed by conservative talking heads. Basically just limping everything into "net neutrality" because everyone knows the phrase

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >US Internet Speed Has Gone From 12th To 6th Fastest Since End Of Net Neutrality

I see this being tossed around as a counter to the main point of NN being slow down of speed.

Also, why do the state dem AG's always suing to enforce new laws instead of the legislation process, it seems like the new way to pass laws is to get a judge to give it to you. We have legal weed from legislation now.

<comment><USER16> I believe all the states that currently have recreation cannabis have it because of referendums and ballot initiatives. The legalization process has shown exactly how our legislatures have failed to address this issue. Canada did legalize recreational use with legislation, but they are the only ones so far.

I personally blame gerrymandering.

<comment><USER17> Vermont recently legalized it via the legislature, though I think your main point still stands.

<comment><USER16> Ah yes, their law did go into effect last month didn't it. Reading up on it, it sounds like Vermont has taken an approach like DC where commercial sales are not allowed, but personal possession, cultivation, and gifting are.

I wonder if we'll look back in 10 years and wish more places had taken these approaches, or if they well eventually also enact commercial legislation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> this is one of the main reasons why states rights is important. Here are the big ones:

1\. each state can be tailored to its population 2\. each state acts an an incubator for new ideas and other states can follow 3\. usa citizens have more choice in who governs then and can easily move between them

<comment><USER19> The problem is that people poor enough they can't choose to move states get kinda screwed over.

<comment><USER11> Well, yes, but that's also currently an issue for say your average rural Indian farmer. Or north Korean.

I get that we're talking about Americans here, and can't be expected to solve every problem across the world, but I'm having a hard time drawing some arbitrary line in the sand here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was wondering whether post the net neutrality repeal any IP has actually started tiered internet packages based on what content is being accessed, whether they stared throttling as many were fearing. If they hadn't it doesn't mean that they won't, was just curious if it's happened yet

<comment><USER21> In the ARS article about Verizon throttling the CA fire dept's service they said the throttling policy was changed from "throttling during high congestion" to "throttling when they use their alloted amount of 'unlimited' data". This change was made basically immediately after the repeal went into effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> One thing I don't understand is why states do not enact their own net neutrality legislation. As far as I know every state has a public utilities commission of some sort that regulates power, water, etc. Why could this not work for ISPs?

<comment><USER2> I think the FCC is trying to remove that ability from States now because federal law overrules state law.

> The Attorneys General are hardly alone on this one. As Reuters notes, > Mozilla, Vimeo and Etsy also joined forces today to file a legal challenge, > while governors in six states have signed executive orders and three states > have passed their own net neutrality laws.

<comment><USER23> > because federal law overrules state law

The FCC does not (and cannot) pass laws.

<comment><USER24> The FCC gains it's authority to create regulation from federal law though.

<comment><USER25> Which many argue as unconstitutional.

We've essentially given an unelected group of people a blank check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For anyone in a place with options, My suggestion is simply switching to a Net Neutrality proponent. Ditching my comcast today in favor of Sonic fiber. Cheaper, supports net neutrality, and waaayyy faster :)

<comment><USER27> A big part of the point is that almost nobody has any options. If there were room for real competition in the space, regulation might not be necessary. Part of the barrier of entry is inherent: building infrastructure is hard. But part of it has been artificially constructed by the existing players through lobbying: [https://www.wired.com/2016/09/utility-poles-important- future...](https://www.wired.com/2016/09/utility-poles-important-future- internet/)

<comment><USER26> yeap. I'm lucky enough to have options in Berkeley, but where I lived in the past, there was only ATT and Comcast...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The Entities involved:

The coalition of 23 Attorneys General collectively represents over 165 million people – approximately 50 percent of the U.S. population – and includes the

Attorneys General of:

1\. New York

2\. California

3\. Connecticut

4\. Delaware

5\. Hawaii

6\. Illinois

7\. Iowa

8\. Kentucky

9\. Maine

10\. Maryland

11\. Massachusetts

12\. Minnesota

13\. Mississippi

14\. New Mexico

15\. New Jersey

16\. North Carolina

17\. Oregon

18\. Pennsylvania

19\. Rhode Island

20\. Vermont

21\. Virginia

22\. Washington

23\. District of Columbia

</comment><comment><USER29> I haven't noticed any change in my Internet connectivity since so-called net neutrality regulations were rolled back. That said, the fears of a single party dictating what you can and can't see on the Internet are not just clear, they're present. How many net neutrality supporters stood up for Alex Jones? Or say anything about shadow bans on Twitter, Facebook, and Google search results based on organizational capriciousness?

Net neutrality is just another example of a regulatory capture competition between the old telcos and the new masters of the Internet. The massive PR spending alone is proof. See Paul Graham's article[1] for a better explanation than I can give here.

Interestingly the authentic left has the answer: Publicly owned corporations, universities, and perhaps other mainly local institutions providing network connectivity are the real antifragile solution to the problem net neutrality regulations claim to address.

[1][http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

<comment><USER30> > How many net neutrality supporters stood up for Alex Jones?

Are ISPs refusing to peer with Alex Jones? If not, this has nothing to do with net neutrality.

<comment><USER29> If net neutrality is exclusively a regulatory power grab by Google and the like at the expense of traditional ISPs, then it's true Alex Jones has nothing to do with it. However, if one acknowledges some kind of moral principle that content shouldn't be discriminated against based on the source, then one has to show why that should apply to traditional ISPs and not to the newer Internet companies that run all the same infrastructure the traditional ISPs do.

<comment><USER30> It seems unrelated to me. If I write an Op-Ed and send it to the New York Times, it's not a net neutrality issue if they refuse to publish it. Maybe they personally hate me. Maybe my idea seems dumb to them. Myabe I ka'nt spel rite. Even though The NYT has a website, that doesn't mean they are under any obligation to publish something there just because I want them to.

I don't see why Facebook is any different. It's their website, they have no obligation to publish anything.

Whether or not you believe Facebook can exercise editorial control over user- submitted content, it's not a net neutrality issue. Net neutrality is about moving IP packets around without charging different rates based on what's in the headers. That's all.

<comment><USER29> You didn't respond to my central point.

You did however clarify that for you net neutrality is purely about application layer providers strong-arming link layer providers via regulatory capture. Thanks, it makes your position much clearer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-internet/twenty- two-s...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-internet/twenty-two-states- ask-u-s-appeals-court-to-reinstate-net-neutrality-rules-idUSKCN1L605W)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm still trying to grok why ISPs are supposed to treat all customers equally while PayPal, eBay, youtube, GoDaddy, Twitter, etc. are allowed to pick and choose.

I'd be more comfortable with the arguments if people were consistent in them.

<comment><USER27> The ISP's are more important because of their physical locality. It's infinitely easier to create a competitor for Facebook than a competitor for Time Warner (Google, one of the world's most powerful companies, tried and failed).

That said, with the amount of ubiquity and sway on society that self- proclaimed platforms like Facebook and Google have started to have, I would not be opposed to regulating some of those as utilities too. But that's a more nuanced issue. The ISP issue is so black and white as to be hilarious, if it weren't so disheartening.

<comment><USER32> It seems to me that I have more choice between ISPs than in auction sites, as an example.

The tendency towards monopoly in networks makes all these cases similar I think.

<comment><USER27> Most people have exactly one choice of ISP. If you're lucky, there might be a second one with the same price and 1/10 the speed.

Whereas I could go build an auction site myself if I really wanted to. Scaling a business takes work, but the power of software is that it requires no material resources to get started. Laying fiber is not only immensely expensive in and of itself, but ISP's have also lobbied to stack the deck severely against newcomers: [https://www.wired.com/2016/09/utility-poles- important-future...](https://www.wired.com/2016/09/utility-poles-important- future-internet/)

<comment><USER33> I think the amount of effort and traction you'd get from trying to launch your own auction site to compete with eBay would be about equal to getting a couple shovels and burying some cat5 around your neighborhood to compete with comcast

<comment><USER11> You aren't allowed to bury cat5 in your neighborhood without government approval, and they'd tell you to just lease time off Comcast lines.

What will you connect your cat5 cable to?

<comment><USER33> Plug your router into your neighbor's, and everyone else that wants to join your new ISP. I don't see the difficulty; it's just as easy as starting a new eBay site and getting people to sign up

<comment><USER34> You can create an ISP and then you have to work to get people to sign up.

You can create a eBay site and then you have to work to get people to sign up.

And your argument is the hard part of making an eBay site is signing people up and hand-wave over the build part of both these things? Apples to Spaceships comparison.

<comment><USER33> Well, the argument is that if you don't like eBay it's easy to just go make your own. I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm just assuming that part of "making your own" is getting the other users to sign up, since an auction site with no one to bid isn't very useful. So it's the same with ISPs: if you don't like it just make your own.

<comment><USER11> You cannot make your own ISP. You can make your own eBay.

There is no competition for Comcast, there is for eBay. It appears your very premise is flawed but I welcome you to demonstrate why this isn't true.

<comment><USER33> Sure I can make my own ISP. It just won't be an international network with billions of people on it. But I'll set up a server in my house with my new ebay on it and connect it to my neighbor running his new facebook. We could even do it wirelessly.

It won't be that great, because he wants to share pictures of his kids and I want to sell my funko pops, but it's definitely easy. Unless your definition of an ISP inherently includes a connection to millions of people, in which case I don't understand why your definition of an eBay doesn't as well?

<comment><USER34> That's funny because your eBay clone _will_ have a connection to millions of people.

You also seem to forget that the "I" in ISP stands for Internet. Your connection to your neighbor is just a LAN/WAN and by definition is not an ISP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> the system is broken when people care more about internet speed than voter fraud. This title should be twenty two states ask court to bring back paper voting ballot

</comment><comment><USER27> Once more unto the breach.

</comment><comment><USER36> Be careful what you wish for. A significant portion of the general population see Twitter, Google, and Facebook as infrastructure companies. If a large enough portion of the population is convinced that net neutrality is important and legislation must be written to accomplish it, the three companies and likely CloudFlare will likely fall under its umbrella. If you ask people to recall an incident of Internet censorship, if they recall anything, it will most likely be something done by one of those 3 and not by an ISP.

<comment><USER37> How would this not be a good thing? Facebook and Google probably should face more public scrutiny, not less.</comment></comment>


Bank of Japan adopts a zero-interest rate policy - <AUTHOR> http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/Bank-of-Japan-reverts-to-zero-rates-in-surprise-move/articleshow/6689833.cms

<comment><AUTHOR> Is Japan on the verge of irrecoverable deflation? What impact could it have on the global economy?

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-04/boj-independence- ch...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-04/boj-independence-challenged- for-failure-to-end-12-years-of-japan-deflation.html)</comment>