Show HN: Knwl.js - Scan through text for data that may be of interest - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/loadfive/Knwl.js

<comment><USER2> Cool, but for each of these properties that knwl.js finds there are done extensive research and none of them are easy to do well. Sure, in the demo you find some interesting properties, but it's content was chosen by the author.

E.g. in the emotion-detection instead of using a data set such as [http://sentiwordnet.isti.cnr.it/](http://sentiwordnet.isti.cnr.it/) the author defines the following data structures:

        this.emotion.negativeWords = ['terrible','horrible','evil','die','dick','bitch','fucked','stupid','idiot','dumb','noob','shit','vain','n00b','dickhead','cocksucker','disgusting','slut'];
        this.emotion.negativeWordsB = ['fuck','shit','kill','rape','hate','hating'];
        this.emotion.positiveWords = ['happy','good','great','amazing','awesome','wonderful','brilliant','smart'];
        this.emotion.positiveWordsB = ['love','like','want',"<3",'kiss'];

Which perhaps functions well, but in a very limited domain. The same can be said for detection of spam, phone numbers (only find American numbers in a certain format atm) etc.

<comment><USER3> As with most projects that deal with parsing natural language, it works best when optimized for your use case. For example, I created a natural language date parsing library [[https://github.com/Tabule/Sherlock](https://github.com/Tabule/Sherlock)] that is great at parsing events for entering into a calendar, but would fail if tested against an entire news article. The cool thing about knwl is that it is open-source and the code is very clean, meaning you can easily optimize it for your use case. Knwl lays the ground work for somebody to build a smarter parser into their app.

<comment><USER4> \+ 1. I fully agree here, parsing for events data, parsing a news article or parsing tweets are all very different tasks and each one requires different optimizations.

An interesting project regardless, I'll likely be using this in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love the concept but also agree with some of the comments below. Text extraction, and parsing is better done with classification and training. I spent sever months working on the problem with Natural[1].

[1] - [https://github.com/NaturalNode/natural](https://github.com/NaturalNode/natural)

<comment><USER6> I cannot encourage people to check out Natural enough. One of the best node packages out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Things that didn't work:

(xxx) xxx-xxxx phone number

mm-dd-yyyy date

</comment><comment><USER8> Clever, but not quite good enough for us to parse our notes with. If you type a time such as "14:30PM" it can't detect it, but if you put a space before the "PM" then it works fine. Also, if the time is in 24-hour, then you don't need the "AM/PM" but it can't detect this.

</comment><comment> 97-109-107 Has anyone heard of solutions to just guess that something looks like a timestamps within a longer string (eg. generic logs, chats, nothing fomralized like mail headers)?

</comment><comment><USER9> A little bit more info about the internals of the recognition engine would be welcome. It seems that one needs to manually supply sets of keywords and key phrases?

</comment><comment><USER10> The execution could have better, as others have mentioned before me. Hopefully others will contribute to make it more intelligent. Nevertheless: Great idea!

</comment><comment><USER11> Yeah. If you could get me the indices of the extracted data, too.

That would be great.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very cool. Needs some work but a very good start

</comment><comment><USER13> Would be nice to see it take a URL.</comment>


Ask HN: Encryption and 5TB+ Backups - <AUTHOR> HN, how do you deal with large (5TB+) backups that requires encryption to a remote location? We want to use S3 glacier given the reasonable pricing but we need to encrypt the data with a private key in house. Any solutions? <comment><USER2> You may find your answer in this article.

How to roll your own backup solution with BorgBackup, Rclone, and Wasabi cloud storage

[https://opensource.com/article/17/10/backing-your- machines-b...](https://opensource.com/article/17/10/backing-your-machines- borg)

</comment><comment><USER3> GnuPG. But you knew that, didn't you? So you probably have a reason not to use it.

Unfortunately, you gave no parameters, constraints or other ways to evaluate potential solutions.

</comment><comment><USER4> Arq? Restic?</comment>


Ask HN: Would learning category theory be useful in my programming career? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Short answer: no.

Even the heavy 'category theory' stuff that some Haskellers are fond of is only loosely related to results of any depth in category theory. To really get anything out of category theory, you need to already have quite a broad and deep mathematical knowledge base.

Deepening your knowledge of linear algebra or general computer science concepts would almost certainly be more valuable.

That said, if category theory interests you, why not? I'm just talking about practical value here.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suppose you learned about category theory through Haskell? I did, and I was wondering the same question as you. After doing some investigation and looking what others say, it turned out that "real" category theory is only loosely related to Haskell, and isn't necessary to understand it to work in Haskell. I then didn't go deeper down that rabbit hole :D.

But, from my experience, already learning Haskell would improve ones programming skills, especially if you haven't been exposed to the functional programming before. It is really a mind-changer and equips you with new perspectives which you can use in other programming languages as well.

So I would definitely recommend investigating Haskell, and maybe after some time you can then also go into the actual Category Theory and see how it connects to your Haskell knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER4> Short answer: No, absolutely not. Your time and efforts would be much better spent learning more about any else on a standard CS curriculum

See Please Don't Learn Category Theory (2013): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7066314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7066314)</comment>


Uber Partners with Betterment to Offer Drivers I.R.A.s - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/business/dealbook/uber-partners-with-betterment-to-offer-drivers-iras.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_dk_20160825&nl=dealbook&nl_art=9&nlid=65508833&ref=headline&te=1&_r=0 <comment><USER2> they sound more and more like empolyees to me. not sure why they don't bite the bullet and make the plunge.</comment>


End of life for myOpenID.com - <AUTHOR> https://support.janrain.com/entries/25983597-End-of-life-for-myOpenID-com

<comment><USER2> I used to use it for Stack Overflow but a little while ago I switched it over to use my Google account for log in.

Just went into myOpenId and deleted my account for good..

</comment><comment><USER3> heh, bottom of the post: "0 people found this useful"

<comment><USER4> Sigh.. I've always found OpenID endpoint interoperability poor.. different versions conflicting, very spotty implementation, etc. So disappointing for such a great idea.

<comment><USER5> That was the idea. Lots of big companies are onboard, nobody small is integrated. Google "Federated Identity"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd rather use Mozilla's Persona and host my identity provider on my web server.

</comment><comment><USER7> Darn. I liked using this because it wasnt Facebook or Twitter or Google. Oh well

</comment><comment><USER8> Too bad it failed to gain traction. It was an excellent idea.</comment>


Apple is Negotiating $4.5 Billion Apple iPad Deal with Turkey - <AUTHOR> http://arabcrunch.com/2013/02/apple-is-negotiating-4-5-billion-apple-ipad-deal-with-turkey.html

<comment><USER2> This is rather disturbing. Event they lower their margins crazily they cannot match say, Nexus devices. Plus this would be a softare-hardware lock-in that Turkish people cannot effort in the future. Very very bad move, if they do this..

</comment><comment><USER3> Quite impressive. What's their current profit margin on iPads? 30%? Not to mention that this won't cannibalise an existing market: this is all extra. People in Turkey who were going to buy iPads probably still will. If anything, it might make more sales as word-of-mouth spreads from the students.

Edit: Just saw the price per unit. Even at $300 there's probably still a good profit margin though, especially if they're non-Retina models.

</comment><comment><USER4> Would that qualify as one of the biggest "sales" ever? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> maybe

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> $300 per unit sounds low. Cheapest iPad 4 goes for $500, and Apple has a ~40% margin. Selling an iPad for $300 will eliminate all their margin.

<comment><USER6> I bet they plan to make up for it with content sales via iTunes and the App Store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's next, Gucci textbook covers? They could buy just as many Nexus 7's, at full MSRP, at 33% savings.

Let's see, $1.5B saved... Average Turkish teacher salary (after 15 years) is $16,000/yr. They could trivially save 93,750 teacher-years of salary?

<comment><USER8> But a more open platform like Android would perhaps produce a less consumerist generation. That would truly be a shame. And what if some of them chose to tinker and build things?</sarcasm>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think the Turkish goverment is wasting thier money, they could have bought the indian tablet which cost below 100

<comment><USER5> that's comparing apples to oranges</comment></comment>


Obama's secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin's election assault - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/obama-putin-election-hacking/ <comment><USER2> We have not yet figured out the tools to fight this new war. Using the old model of war will not work when your enemy uses no bullets and doesn't kill anyone, at least not directly.</comment>


U.S. tries conviction for leak of retroactively classified rotary phone docs - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2015/01/21/u-s-tries-to-convict-jeffrey.html

<comment><USER2> I don't know anything of this case, but this article is biased and propagandistic.

It uses the phrase "rotary phone" to trivialize some secret documents. They may indeed be trivial and improperly classified. However the article does not make this case. Of course it is hard to make this case.

I think this defendant is analogous to a man charged with stealing $10k from work. They search his home and find a power drill stolen from work. Prosecutors want to infer that he also stole the $10k.

<comment><USER3> It's from BoingBoing. By definition, the article is biased and propagandistic. It's their shtick.</comment></comment>


Patent troll says it owns GPS, sues Foursquare - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/07/26/patent-troll-says-it-owns-gps-sues-foursquare/

<comment><USER2> The patent troll does not claim to "own GPS", nor does it make any kind of sense whatsoever to represent the patent by one drawing in the patent document. The drawings in a patent document exist for technical reasons, and are in no way a reliable representation of what the patent means.

What matters are the claims.

The first patent, US7475057, looks very very simple: it's a single standalone claim regarding:

* using a GPS receiver

* to populate a database

* by reading the GPS from a personal computing device

* when the device comes to a stable location

* sending that location to the server

* reading data about the location back from the server

* having the personal computing device request that the server save that information in a record associated with a user

* by using a system of detecting that the device has become stationary involving (i) reading the GPS, (ii) waiting, (iii) rereading the GPS, (iv) seeing if the location changed substantially.

This is a single claim; you'd have to be doing _all_ of these things to infringe that patent.

(It's a remarkably broad claim and a dumb patent, although it was filed a fair bit before personal GPS devices were common).

<comment><USER3> This might sound pedantic, but I get tired of people referring to "GPS" as a mobile GPS naviation app. GPS refers to the entire system of satellites and ground stations. From this system, one can build applications on top of a GPS receiver, which provides the position. So yes, the patent troll doesn't own the satellites and ground stations.

<comment><USER2> This patent appears to more or less very specifically claim Foursquare.

<comment><USER4> I don't use Foursquare, just read the description of the service.

Does Foursquare use the very last step in the description? My understanding is they update location when user "checks in", not when system detects that the user's device is stationary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These seem to be becoming more and more _timing_ attacks. For any given concept in software, it seems there are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of overlapping patents on various applications of the idea. It might be a login authentication, a gps location or an in-app purchase. The point is, it doesn't matter. The actual patent is irrelevant. Trolls have something that's going to work, they just need to wait for that golden moment when a company just starts becoming successful. Big enough to pay out, but too small to defend well enough not to be easy money.

Perhaps we need a law firm that specializes in cheaply delaying troll cases long enough for little companies to build some defenses. Perhaps trolls are more like a manageable chronic disease rather than something that needs an immediate cure.

<comment><USER6> This is why, short of changing the way patents are issued, damages should be based on a meaningful metric like lost sales, or licensing fees, not theoretical damages based on a hypothetical product that was never, ever going to be made.

<comment><USER7> My understanding is that they can claim any amount of damages they want, but won't necessarily be awarded the claimed amount; and that their business model is based on people settling rather than on winning in court.

If this change was made, would there be a shortcut whereby the defendants could simply lose and have to pay close-to-zero damages, or would they still have to choose between "defending themselves in court", "settling" and "paying the claimed damages"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if recent cries for the government to reform patent law is pressuring patent trolls to hurry up and try to cash out on increasingly obvious claims. All shell companies have to start doing it, because their 'colleagues' are ruining the patent troll market with their own ridiculous claims and essentially running each other into the ground.

<comment><USER9> Interesting idea, so the more they try to profit from the crud, then the worse it looks, so more players try to profit off their own crud before their crud becomes worthless, and so on.

Presumably if that is true, there would be a threshold after which you don't have to keep pushing because the behaviour of the patent holders is doing all your work for you and the law gets changed because nobody wants to do business in that environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> WHY have we not reformed our patent system yet? Is it purely because of the sway lawyers have over our legal system and regulatory system (and the inherent conflict of interest that results)?

<comment><USER11> Despite what people might have you believe, lawyers are almost certainly neutral on this issue. Lawyers get paid either way. The patent system is the way it is because it serves the interest of the _real_ monied interests. Too, there is a legitimate argument that changing something so fundamentally intertwingled with lots and lots and lots of economic activity is not something to be done lightly.

Personally, I don't have a settled opinion on software patents. I'm much more offended by the gruesome metastasis of copyright into an finite but unbounded bludgeon.

<comment><USER12> The more contention and ambiguity (in the patent system), the more work there is for attorneys. It would be in their best interest to keep the status quo.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, but the number of practicing patent attorneys is very small. It's not really useful to talk about "lawyers" as a class when dealing with a very specific point of law, like software patents. It's not like changing the patent system will a) put lawyers out on the street or b) even reduce the overall complexity of the system.

The law is complex and difficult because it does so much, not by the iniquitous behavior of a cabal of lawyers. The only way to reduce the complexity is to throw away a lot of what we have decided is best handled through the courts. It obviously can seem perverse and weird, but the world is perverse and weird. Shit, even programming computers is an exercise in weird perversity.

<comment><USER13> This. There are some problems with software patents, but the solution is not to do away with them all-together. We as a country (and our founders in the Constitution) have decided that limited term monopoly is a fair trade for public disclosure. Exempting software would be an insult to software engineers, putting their work on a lower level than other fields. Let's change the discussion from the polarizing "burn it down" to "how can we do better?"

The legal system is complex, as is government, because it represents millions of opinions on how best to do something and has been evolving for hundreds of years. Imagine a 200 year old code repo. The original spec is ambitious in scope but extremely vague, the guys who started the project left the company years ago, and a few hundred co-workers give you vicious code-reviews. The project runs life support for 300+ million people.

Patent lawyers aren't to blame. As of today, there are only 30734 patent attorneys in the country, and only a portion will ever work in software patents. Sure they profit from the status quo, but they'd profit from whatever replaces the current system as well or they'd find work in other legal niches. The idea that there is a secret club of evil patent lawyers pulling the strings is laughable. If you want change, talk to your congressman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At least in France we have a law stating that if a third-party patent owner fails to do something with the patent, the initial patent holder takes all his right on the patent back. No wonder why many lobby want to get rid of this to "have homogeneous laws in Europe"...

</comment><comment><USER15> Not really a well thought out suggestion, but wouldn't we get a lot less of these lawsuits when there were a stronger defense mechanism in case the alleged patent owner looses? It seems that changing the patent system is a long shot project, but making it unattractive to sue could maybe become a quick-fix easier to implement. These kinds of digging-in-the-dark lawsuits are seemingly a by-product for many startups as soon as they get somewhat their feet on the ground.

<comment><USER16> From over here in the UK, the quickest fix would be a _central_ patents court with expert judges and qualified patent lawyers.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure if a central patents court would necessarily fix things. The US already has a central patent appeals court ('the Federal Circuit'), and if anything, it has strengthened the rights of patent holders during the time it has been in existence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cause Foursquare are the only ones using the features in question. NO way that any larger companies will side with Foursquare to squash this before it gets traction.

I hope.

</comment><comment><USER17> I haven't fully reviewed the patents in question, but the oldest looks to have a filing date of sometime in late 2000. I would think that there has to be some prior art out there for many of the claims of this patent. For example, the sport of geocaching was founded in May 2000, and people pretty quickly started writing software applications to assist in finding caches.

<comment><USER19> oh there is prior art. the military used GPS way before 2000

<comment><USER20> The patents aren't on GPS; they're on obvious uses of GPS. (In both cases, the entire technical value of the patent could fit in a single Tweet.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting, my company I work at is based entirely on GPS... Wonder if this could affect us.

<comment><USER22> Not unless your company is worth around $1 billion.

<comment><USER21> I'd say about 500mil... We're a relatively young company still.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> should call up drew curtis [http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_curtis_how_i_beat_a_patent_tro...](http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_curtis_how_i_beat_a_patent_troll.html)

<comment><USER24> I just wondered if it would be possible for a company to sign something saying that they will not accept any settlement (larger than $0) with the other company (and that if they do they'll have to give an obscenely large amount of money to someone else). Since patent trolls don't usually want to go to court, precommitment should be enough for them to drop the case most of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Intellectual Ventures shell company again?

</comment><comment><USER9> As well as reforming the rules under which a patent is granted, we should also double the pay of patent examiners, then make them professionally part-liable for court costs arising from the granting of illegitimate monopolies in the form of invalid patents.

<comment><USER26> This is a terrible idea. If you read the AMA from the patent examiner on reddit, he described that an shitty patent passes because, even though its obvious to the examiner, they can't mark it as bad unless there is prior art that they can find. They can't conduct exhaustive searches for these prior arts and if they can't find prior art then they have to validate the patent.

We need to change the system from the ground up. Not start to make liable some poor fella who happens to work at the USPTO who would have no idea that a legitimate patent would cause a multi-million dollar case.

<comment><USER9> That's why you have to change the rules first. It should require a much higher level of innovation to qualify for patent protection. And if we are going to grant temporary monopolies, then there should be the relevant resources to keep the system honest, otherwise it is just massive economic friction.

The idea of part-liability for examiners on costs is so that the liability of a particular examiner is limited and is decided in the court and covered by professional insurance, much like an architect, so it is not going to bankrupt you, but getting too many of them could ruin your career and it is automatically on public record.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think the federal government would disagree with assertions of private ownership of the GPS system....

Which is why the patent at issue does not claim ownership of GPS. It claims ownership of a different method of location detection, somewhat similar to the non-GPS system that Google and Apple use.

This article has been flagged for being incorrect and linkbaity. Who would have thought that the quality of GigaOm would actually fall below that of PandoDaily?

<comment><USER27> Guys, I clearly said the article does not claim ownership of GPS. It can't, because the federal government was using GPS for that for a decade or two before the system was opened up to the private.

What is covered by the patent is _other aspects of location tracking_ , specifically at issue here, the use of a central database to store detected locations and to make use of detected locations for other purposes. In this context, the patent claims _any form of geo-location technology_ which is used to contribute to that database.

<comment><USER28> Well, the first patent most certainly does use GPS for location. The server is used to retrieve information about that location.

Claims 1\. A method, using a personal computer device having a GPS receiver, of populating a database comprising:

 _determining, by the personal computer device using its GPS receiver, a location at which the personal computer device becomes relatively immobile;_

(rest of claim 1 ommited)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I do not appreciate editorializing in titles. Don't slur some organization as a "troll", tell me what, exactly, they are doing that might be objectionable.</comment>


Keurig 2.0 Genuine K-Cup Spoofing Vulnerability - <AUTHOR> http://caffeinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/12/keurig-20-genuine-k-cup-spoofing.html

<comment><AUTHOR> As seen on [http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Dec/37](http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Dec/37).

Some prior discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7334778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7334778)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8241039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8241039)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8444077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8444077)</comment>


Ask HN: Why haven't we built a decentralized exchange for bitcoins? - <AUTHOR>

It seems to me that a lot of the latest bitcoin crash is attributed to MtGox being a centralized place and unable to handle so much trading activity.
The question of centralization has come to bite us multiple times over the last 10 years, as the internet has centralized around AOL, then Facebook, Google etc. Every time there is a single point of failure and various problems can arise from the disconnect in policies of the provider and the customers.
I wrote about this issue 2 years ago, and I believe eventually we will find better decentralized solutions to a lot of the challenges today (social networking, trading, etc.)
http://myownstream.com/blog#2011-05-21
But if BitCoin was a tour de force for decentralization of currency, why haven't we had a prominent decentralized exchange to go along with it? <comment><USER2> Bitcoin itself is unable to handle the rate of transactions. Currently, the Bitcoin network can verify about 0.75 transactions per second, because of the block sizes.

This was what broke in the 0.7/0.8 fiasco. 0.8 would have increased the block size and upped the transaction rate, but broke backwards compatibility and blah blah blah.

</comment><comment><USER3> You may want to read further about the Buttercoin project. The promise is an open source exchange software that runs on commodity servers. It's still in the early days, but seems pretty possible. If this project were successful, then multiple exchanges could sit on top of this software and in effect decentralize the exchanges.

<comment><AUTHOR> What are the main challenges that explain why it hasn't been completed yet? Seems like a clear win over centralization, kind of like git/mercurial vs svn.

<comment><USER4> > What are the main challenges that explain why it hasn't been completed yet?

Because its pretty hard to define even what "decentralized currency exchange" means, and, particularly, to identify a mechanism by which you could do order matching in such a system so that wouldn't leave you with just a bunch of disconnected exchanges that are far less efficient at market clearing than a centralized exchange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know this space well, but if I understood the SVForum EMTech talk I attended last week, that's what Ripple is doing.

<https://ripple.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> How does ripple work? Everyone is charging 2% fees...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> OK, how do you build a decentralized currency exchange? No one knows.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well if you have a decentralized ledger of transactions, it can't be that hard to also add another ledger where people transfer bitcoins one or more virtual "channels" where others could buy them? These channels wouldn't actually correspond to any servers but would just be virtual bitcoin users?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bitcoin is a decentralized exchange for bitcoins - it's built into the system.

<comment><USER8> No.

<comment><USER7> Um, yes.

<comment><USER9> When people say exchange, they don't just mean exchange, like change hands, they mean something akin to the NYSE.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kube Framework: It's Not Twitter Bootstrap - <AUTHOR> http://kubeframework.com/

<comment><USER2> it looks nice and professional but do we need this ? What I think is : are most of new guys on the market these days all about difference philosophies but actually do the same thing ? Skeleton: <http://www.getskeleton.com/> \- This guy is not new but very first time, it does very good job as being a simple and compact css framework. Kube: <http://kubeframework.com/> is also nice, cool. And good slogan : "It's not Twitter Bootstrap" ? You name the others ..

Whatever it is, we have to customize and change it to make it our own which is the truly beautiful things. So let's focus on creating beautiful things, framework helps us cutting out the boring, repetitive parts and we do the rest. Don't just create other stuffs which do the same thing. Twitter Bootstrap does it well, very well. It's getting popular so you don't have to adapt your new framework to your current workflow. It's supported everywhere so you can find your answer easily. Again, it helps us cutting out boring parts now it's our turn to create creative things on it and it's unlimited.

Sorry for my bad English.

</comment><comment><USER3> It feels more like "Kube Framework: It's trying to be Twitter Bootstrap" to me to be honest.

Nice project but it doesn't seem to have any real use (to me personally) when TB is so refined at this point.

</comment><comment> m-i Interesting project. I tested on several devices and browsers and: "typography", "grid" and "goodies" look good, but "forms", "tables" and "buttons" aren't quite polished IMO.</comment>


Did a Jewish Holiday Kill the WeWork IPO? - <AUTHOR> https://thehustle.co/09182019-wework-ipo-holiday/ <comment><USER2> How convenient, it has nothing to do with all the shady things the CEO did nor the fact that this company is nowhere near its current valuation. It's purely a timing coincidence.</comment>


An Extremely Consequential Supreme Court Decision Slipped Under the Radar - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/06/27/american-express-supreme-court-ruling/ <comment><USER2> The Supreme Court is just interpreting the law. If you don't like their interpretation, amend the law so that it's clear. If you aren't able to get that done, maybe it's because a lot of people disagree with you about what the law should be.

I am not much educated in this particular issue, but I have to say the language of this blog post led me to doubt that the author is a credible source of information.

<comment><USER3> Saying that the 'Supreme Court is just interpreting the law' is a bad way of excusing some of the more terrible decisions they've handed down over the past few months.

With this particular case though most of the lawyers and law podcasts I follow haven't touched upon it so I can't say I'm particularly knowledgeable about it either. However I would say it's fair to look at any decisions with extreme scrutiny going forward.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I understood as the significance of this ruling is that it establishes a different precedent for companies that are considered to participate in "two- sided markets" in relation to anti-trust law.

I would be curious to hear some commentary on the interview below that discusses this ruling, maybe it would have made for a better submission:

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

<comment><USER4> You can also read Breyer's dissent, at PDF p25 (as the PDF counts it) of the decision, available at [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-1454diff_6579...](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-1454diff_6579.pdf) .

It is not opaque bafflegab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know some local artists and a gas station that tack on an extra fee if customer pays with a CC. They're just trying to cover the costs imposed by Amex, Visa etc. Does this decision make that illegal?

<comment><USER6> Not necessarily _illegal_ under criminal law (e.g. in CA), but it is generally a _violation of their merchant agreement_ with the processor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a LOT of nuance in _every_ Supreme Court case and this author either doesn't understand it, or chooses not to; and _both_ of those options are dangerous to helping the public better understand the reasoning behind _any_ decision handed down by the Supreme Court.

> in their quest to utterly dominate the global political economy

> featuring Justice Neil Gorsuch rather than Judge Merrick Garland

> Supreme Court rulings like the lifeline given to the practice of > gerrymandering, the endorsement of Trump's Muslim travel ban, the gutting of > public sector unions, and the defense of bakers who don't want to serve gay > people

To me, there is extremely biased (political) language throughout the entire piece.

<comment><USER8> Not sure why you are being down voted. For people down voting, let's look at some of the rulings.

1) gay marriage and the baker. This was a 7-2 ruling that basically set zero precedent. It just ruled that the council that ruled on the case originally was extremely biased in their ruling.

2) unions: only 28 states have forced union dues for collective bargaining. As well, the Federal government does not allow forced union dues. As an example of a union that exists without the protection of forced dues: the postal service union. Public unions aren't dead, but will need to try harder to keep their members now. The federal unions have shown that they can still exist without forced dues.

3) travel ban: while this law was the third attempt at it, and was rooted in some very horrible rhetoric from Trump, the judges that ruled in favor of it to reaffirm that the president has the executive power to do such. The majority was very clear they were not happy with his actions, but the law is written as such to allow him to do what he did here.

<comment><USER3> If you read the dissent on the travel ban decision, you can understand why it is bad and also deeply ironic. The Supreme Court sided with the government in the original Korematsu case saying that the government did indeed have the constitutional right to throw people of Japanese descent into camps.

They overturned Korematsu in this decision, only to uphold something similar with similar racist sentiment behind it. Whenever you think of the Supreme Court affirming that the executive has the power to do something, you should always keep in mind that they had originally considered the executive had the power to toss people in camps for 'security' purposes.

And on a similar note, the punting they did on the Baker case was almost entirely made up by the court based on a completely irrelevant line by someone tangentially related to the case. I highly recommend listening to episode 180 of the Opening Arguments podcast to understand how utterly ridiculous their decision was.

<comment><USER8> Baker: there were a number of reasons I believe SCOTUS punted on the case. (1) it was founded on a bad initial ruling and they would rather have a cleaner cut case to actually evaluate. (2) It originated in 2014, before the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges case (that allowed gay marriage). So Colorado didn't even allow gay marriage yet. With the above 2 points, it complicated their ruling to be able to set a larger precedent.

Travel Ban: Korematsu was about American citizens being detained, and as the majority said was a horrible ruling the day it was set. The travel ban is going after countries that are unable to vet their citizens that were trying to travel to the US (non-US citizens). US Citizens are able to apply to get around the ban. Also, there were a few countries on the list that were not Muslim majority countries (Venezuela, North Korea, and Chad). The law outlined ways for countries to get off the list, which Chad succeeded in doing.

<comment><USER3> For the first: your facts of the case are wrong. It originated in 2012 and in 2014 Colorado allowed for same-sex marriage. However that's irrelevant to the case because even though same-sex marriage was not allowed, Colorado had the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act prior which prevented businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, among other things. Saying it was a bad initial case is outright wrong considering the facts they make up in their ruling.

The travel ban is also incredibly racist. North Korea being on the list doesn't matter because North Korea rarely allows people to travel to the United States and the Venezuelan ban only bars a few high-level officials. Those countries added to the list are an excuse for the government to say 'look we're not racist we have non-Muslim countries on the list!' while the rest have little to no actual security rationale behind it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "In a 5-4 ruling _along party lines_ "

I wonder if anyone else finds this disturbing? I thought the Supreme Court was supposed to be beyond partisan politics. Why would "party lines" have anything to do with this case, or is it some kind of coincidence? And which party has more reason to help credit card companies, and why?

I hate America sometimes. All that shit we learned in civics class was just idealistic propaganda if it all comes down to party lines.

</comment><comment><USER10> _gutting of public sector unions_

Stopped reading there. Mandatory funding of the Dem party is not gutting of unions.

<comment><USER11> From the article that that text links to:

> Unions say that reasoning is flawed. Nonmembers are already entitled to > refunds of payments spent on political activities, like advertising to > support a political candidate.

> Collective bargaining is different, the unions say, and workers should not > be free to reap the benefits of such bargaining without paying their fair > share of the costs.

<comment><USER12> I've always wondered: Can I choose to bargain for myself, and not have the union do it?

Best as I can tell, the answer is: No. The union forces me to pay them to bargain for me.

That is unethical.

> should not be free to reap the benefits

Every single article on the subject always implies that there are benefits. What if I feel they are actually drawbacks?

An easy test: If they were actually benefits people would chose to use them, no? So let people work under union contracts, or on their own, as they chose. But you'll never see a union suggest that, will you? They always want to force people to "gain the benefits".

<comment><USER13> To your first point, non-union companies allow, in fact require each person to bargain for themselves. Generally the power imbalance at a reasonably large company means that employees accept what they're offered, because their only alternative is to quit and be replaced easily. This is the reason that groups of workers organize to form unions in the first place.

Game theory suggests that each person should want to avoid paying union dues, and yet have everyone else pay theirs, so that the union negotiates good rates for all, including them. The obvious outcome of voluntary dues, then, is for each person to eventually realize this and stop paying their own dues, so that the union collapses, shifting all power back to the employer and making employment worse for all. Humans are short-term thinkers, though, so that would be nigh-inevitable in most cases.

Eventually, see point one again. The mandatory dues are an attempt to stop the several-year cycle of shifting back and forth between a union and non-union shop, I believe.

<comment><USER4> I'll add a concrete example. My dad worked for a TV station. Of the 5 VHF stations in town, one was public TV, three were network, and one was independent.

One of the other stations was union. My dad's company was not. The owner of his company did not want the union. The owner kept the union out by paying everyone $1 more than their counterparts in the union station.

My dad thought this was great. He got the benefits of the union - higher wages - without paying union dues.

I look at it and think about how Dad could have gotten higher wages by being represented by a stronger union. Union power, like most things, is non-linear. A bigger union can pay for better negotiators than a small union can. That's a simple economy of scale - a larger union can have dedicated, full-time lawyers, for example, who stay on top of the laws and potential changes to the law.

When the owner died, and the station got bought out by a private equity firm, the firm did the usual round of layoffs, and it sold off the company into parts. A union might have been able to fight some of those layoffs. But there was no union.

But when he boasted about how he made more because he was non-union, such alternatives and futures were out-of-sight/out-of-mind. As you say, "Humans are short-term thinkers".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Australian law: 2 year data retention, warrant canaries illegal - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/australian-government-minister-dodge-new-data-retention-law-like-this/

<comment><USER2> _" During the relatively quick passage of the amendments, the Australian government made the usual argument that metadata needs to be retained for long periods in order to fight terrorism and serious crime"_

A side effect of International trade.

TPP is signed [0], data retention laws are passed and corporate streaming services are released in Aus [1]. Snowden lets us see the behind the scene negotiations. [2]

[0] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/trans- pacific-p...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/trans-pacific- partnership-a-guide-to-the-most-contentious-issues)

[1] [http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/netflix- v-s...](http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/netflix-v-stan-v- presto-v-quickflix-v-ezyflix-v-foxtel-play-your-guide-to-streaming-video- services-in-australia-20150324-1m6h46.html)

[2] [https://wikileaks.org/tpp- investment/press.html](https://wikileaks.org/tpp-investment/press.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I feel that the actual headline is very difficult to parse, hence my alternative.</comment>


Treasury Designates China as a Currency Manipulator - <AUTHOR> https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm751 <comment><USER2> duplicate [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20619715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20619715)</comment>


Physician named in 4 Hour Body does not support findings - <AUTHOR> http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3373698

<comment><USER2> Did somebody really thought you get great results without discipline?

One truth from me: No pain no gain.</comment>


Geophysicists are ramping up their efforts to monitor major undersea faults - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/news/the-fight-to-save-thousands-of-lives-with-sea-floor-sensors-1.22178 <comment><USER2> I found this really interesting. I was curious about the Japanese realtime sea-floor sensors they mentioned so I went hunting.

The data appears to be available here:

[http://www.jamstec.go.jp/scdc/top_e.html](http://www.jamstec.go.jp/scdc/top_e.html)

After registration [1] you can download data in some funky binary format. Looks like there's a 10min delay on data. It looks like an interesting dataset, and I hope to play with it a bit.

[1] includes such joys as password being set to username, and the seeming inability to change your password citing "invalid chars: 1" error.

<comment><USER3> I used to work at an exploration geophysics firm, these data formats less scary than you'd often encounter in that world. There are a number of interchange formats in geophysics, notably SEG-Y, which date back a long way – most vendors then have their custom formats that they ingest that interchange format into:

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

Fundamentally you've usually got one to three dimensional data, metadata for the entire file, and then metadata for (potentially) each column along some axis of the file. It's interesting that CDF, etc have had zero traction: I guess it's just that each field has its little data format subculture and there's not much incentive for collaboration?

<comment><USER4> I currently work at an exploration geophysics firm and was just talking to my boss about this yesterday. His comment was that data acquisition had an arms race to the bottom in the late 80s and has become complete commodity object. This has results in data from the 80s through today being no different as they're still using the (mostly) same tools and techniques.

There is no incentive to better your seismic surveying since stuff from the 80s is "good enough" for all the processing shops.

<comment><USER3> Yep, that sounds about right, at least on the data formats. A survey now is gathering orders of magnitude more data than it would have in the 80s (especially 3d/4d surveys), but I guess the formats didn't really need to change.

I don't miss writing code to guess whether a file has traces encoded in IBM floating point or IEEE; or handling SEG-Y headers which ought to be EBCDIC but are sometimes ASCII :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A sci-fi apocalyptic story starting with the underwater monitoring of the Juan De Fuca fault: Peter Watt's Starfish.

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66479.Starfish](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66479.Starfish)

Free in various formats on the author's web site

[http://www.rifters.com/real/STARFISH.htm](http://www.rifters.com/real/STARFISH.htm)

<comment><USER6> I highly recommend his Blindsight & Echopraxia duo, too. Also with dense appendixes at the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if US military takes part in the project: ultra-precise pressure gauges may be exactly what's needed to detect subs

<comment><USER8> Actually, you wouldn't get a signal from a sub going overhead with these.

They're focused on recording relatively low-frequency response, so they don't pick up sound (hydrophones do a great job of that, and they're dirt cheap). Subs are neutrally buoyant, so there's no pressure anomaly. There will be a tiny one from the bow wake, but that's the sort of thing you're trying not to detect.

Part of the entire point of these is to sum out things like waves (and possible minor blips like the bow wake from a nearby sub). You're summing over time to get a very precise average height of the water above the sensor. You're deliberately designing the sampling system to not be sensitive to small temporal blips and filtering the data to remove any that show up.

Basically, if you want to detect subs, there are far cheaper and easier ways to do it. These tools are designed to do something very different.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I was thinking about bow wake as it's probably very hard to hide that (as opposed to silencing the sound).

Thanks for your explanation, it makes ton of sense!

<comment><USER9> you may not need to hide it so much as disguise it. There are lots of things swimming in the oceans, some of them big. None as big as a sub, but a well designed sub can potentially present that wake signature. (maybe not all the time, but a sub can choose to go at a slow hiding pace or a fast but visible pace)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chrome and the BEAST - <AUTHOR> http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/09/23/chromeandbeast.html <comment><USER2> Additional security blogs regarding this vulnerability:

[http://hackersmag.blogspot.com/2011/09/beast-beating-ssl- tls...](http://hackersmag.blogspot.com/2011/09/beast-beating-ssl-tls-what-you- can-do.html)

[http://www.phonefactor.com/blog/slaying-beast-mitigating- the...](http://www.phonefactor.com/blog/slaying-beast-mitigating-the-latest- ssltls-vulnerability.php)

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/09/man-in-the- mid...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/09/man-in-the-midd_4.html)

Some comments: Appears RC4 is not FIPS approved if you need to do government work. Also, not all sites are RC4 compatible.

<comment><USER3> This one is from Eric Rescorla, a coauthor of many of the recent TLS RFCs: [http://www.educatedguesswork.org/2011/09/security_impact_of_...](http://www.educatedguesswork.org/2011/09/security_impact_of_the_rizzodu.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      > note I don't have their paper) they say they don't need any heightened
      > Java privileges. What's a little confusing here is exactly how
      > they are getting past same-origin issues.

They don't need same-origin. Juliano confirmed this to me a couple of days ago. And the leaked paper shows how they do it.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3032278>

Edit: Either I got copy-paste fat fingers or he changed the blog post; but I did copy that part from somewhere...

<comment><USER5> You copied it from [http://www.educatedguesswork.org/2011/09/security_impact_of_...](http://www.educatedguesswork.org/2011/09/security_impact_of_the_rizzodu.html)

<comment><USER4> Oops, thanks. My bad.</comment></comment></comment>


The Cabinet Files - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-31/cabinet-files-reveal-inner-government-decisions/9168442 <comment><AUTHOR> _" Hundreds of top-secret and highly classified cabinet documents have been obtained by the ABC following an extraordinary breach of national security."_

 _" The documents were in two locked filing cabinets sold at an ex-government sale in Canberra. They were sold off cheaply because they were heavy and no- one could find the keys. A nifty person drilled the locks and uncovered the trove of documents inside."_</comment>


Ask HN: Migrating to New Zealand for job, how easy it is? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys.
I was wondering is anyone here have some experience about migrating to New Zealand and getting work visa as developer without college education.
I live in one retarded country and planing to move somewhere.<p>I am 32 years old and have full time work as system/network administrator (linux machines) and i do freelance developer work (mostly ruby and php) for more than 8 years.
Like i said no college education and i am wondering what are my chances? Anyone with experience and similar preferences? <comment><USER2> Hi, I migrated from the USA to NZ in the early 90s.

1) Lack of certification could hurt more than lack of university ("college" = high school in NZ). Got Cisco or Redhat certs, or something similar? Also, knowing some Microsoft would not hurt. Many companies mix technologies, and most sysadmins are generalists, I think. That doesn't mean specialists can't make money, but specialists usually have certs.

2) Go to reddit.com/r/newzealand and read the FAQs on the right side of the screen. Don't post anything until you read the FAQs ... it is a NZ custom to mislead people who don't do the basic research.

3) What city are you thinking about? There are sub-reddits for the bigger cities. They have FAQs too and the posters can help you out. Did I mention you should read the FAQs? Those sub-reddits have FAQs too.

4) The other posters have the right idea, I think. Even the Aussie guy. Cost of living in New Zealand is NOT cheap. Living in the USA is mostly cheaper. If making money is a problem ... think carefully here.

5) If you are the paranoid type, remember that NZ is a member of Five Eyes ... we have fairly close spying relations with the USA. Will you be more comfortable here? One plus: religion is less dominant here.

6) Every country is retarded in its own special way. Before you decide to move to a country, research its news sites for a few weeks. That doesn't give you an unbiased view, but go into this decision with a cool head.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi. I'm a dev manager for Powershop, which is a New Zealand company based in Wellington, and a good chunk of my job is recruiting devs.

Wellington is suffering a bit of a drought of good, available developers at the moment. We've had so many tech companies start up here in recent years, and the working conditions in most companies are so good, that people are generally content where they are. Given that, we all advertise internationally. I'd say about half of our applicants that pass initial screening are international now.

Qualifications are mostly meaningless – don't worry about that, especially if you spent the time you would have been at college doing practical work.

It's a risk hiring someone from overseas, so we look for you to prove three things: 1) that you're experienced in your area 2) that you are highly skilled in the things you claim to be 3) that you are likely to stick around for at least a couple of years

Links to open source software you've written is great at demonstrating the first two. People you know here, prior experience with the country, a family enthusiastic to move will all go towards demonstrating number 3. Whatever the case, you need to be able to quell your interviewers' fears by having very solid answers to those questions.

Given our developer shortage, getting a work visa is a straightforward process once you have a job offer.

Hope that helps. I'm @mogest on twitter if you have any other questions.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am not familiar with Visa application process, only from the hiring perspective. I am sure most of my advice is generic and will apply in many locations.

\- Any time we open a position there are a large number of applicants who have recently emigrated, often without a Visa and hence are looking for sponsorship (this is possible). Standing out of the crowd is important.

\- Ensure your english is up to scratch - spoke and written. (Triple check CVs for grammar etc).

\- Introductions go a long way, so technology networking meetings are your friend. Meetup.com is helpful, at least in Auckland.

\- Direct sponsorship by an employer is possible. However this would be difficult for a standard developer role - if you can sell yourself as a niche expert this would be beneficial.

</comment><comment><USER5> The NZ govt site [https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/move-to-nz/new-zealand- vis...](https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/move-to-nz/new-zealand-visa/work- visa) is a good start for your research. My sense is that degrees count untowardly for permanent residency/migration. However, I don't think they're so important for temporary work (NZ has "skilled occupation shortages" and most types of sw development is on it). I know that [http://catalyst.net.nz](http://catalyst.net.nz) are a massive open source employer in NZ—check them out. Good luck!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all of answers. Area12 thanks for advices. mogest i've followed you on twitter. I definitely have more questions.

</comment><comment><USER6> Being a kiwi I can't really answer your question, but coincidentally there was a report on national radio here this morning about how people were traveling here on student visas to study, staying on with a job after graduation and getting residency that way. That maybe something worth looking and a good opportuninity to address the lack of college education at the same time. You'd need some reasonable savings to afford the education and living costs for up to 3 years.

<comment><USER7> If NZ educations costs are the same as Aus education costs, I'd estimate "reasonable savings" at about $100,000.

20k per year education, because it won't be subsidised by the government, 7.5k per year as minimal living costs, and that's _really_ minimal.</comment></comment>


Commission proposes updates data protection rules for EU institutions - <AUTHOR> http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-16_en.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting part is EU have decided all these cookie accept banners are a PITA and so users should be allowed to set cookie permissions in "software applications enabling accessing to the internet"

Which was suggested when the original law came to pass in 2012.</comment>


Google launches blog about the social web - <AUTHOR> http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2009/02/introducing-googles-new-social-web-blog.html

<comment><USER2> Funny, how Google is so all about being 'open' and such when they aren't in control of the market.</comment>


Sorry internet, Sinbad never played a genie and 'Shazam' doesn't exist - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/amp/mashable.com/2016/12/23/sinbad-shazam-kazam-shaq.amp <comment><USER2> Source article from 2 weeks ago, 50 comments. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13235091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13235091)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sinbad/Shazam vs. Shaq/Kazaam -- isn't it obvious what has happened here? Clearly, this is yet _another_ unintended consequence of Flashpoint[0].

[http://www.tvguide.com/news/the-flash-recap-flashpoint- chang...](http://www.tvguide.com/news/the-flash-recap-flashpoint-changes- barry/)</comment>


The CSS Paint API - <AUTHOR> https://css-tricks.com/the-css-paint-api/ <comment><USER2> I think we're making CSS do too much. Next thing you know it will include a full fledged compiled language separate from JavaScript for implementing custom properties. Let's throw in a raytracer, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if this will open the door to more timing attacks?

</comment><comment><USER4> Really cool, a bit like shaders for CSS, but I can already imagine the debugging headaches!

</comment><comment><USER5> You know... What if we just forgot about CSS and just had a big paint() function for the entire page? :p

</comment><comment><USER6> You can draw lines in this, you just need some way to apply styles to them ... some sort of style sheet ?</comment>


How likely is your Crypto going to be hacked - <AUTHOR> https://quiz.cypherock.com <comment><USER2> It depends , if fundamentals of cryptography are in danger then yes else no. Currently most probably not in current systems and infrastructures.</comment>


Github turns five - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1470-five-years <comment><USER2> Congrats on 5 years to Github! They are true pioneers for creating a social network for programmers, and not limiting it to just experienced programmers. I barely knew how to program but I was suggested to try Github with the little HTML/CSS/JS I knew and it is been my favorite, not to mention most effective, way to practice to become a better programmer. Collaborating with fellow hackers on projects is more fun than I ever imagined. They have actually found a way to make programming a social and fun experience! The beauty of Github is that it attends to programmers of all experience levels, so I really don't see myself straying away from it even as I become a better programmer. Here's to hopefully more than another 5 years!

As an afterword, I guess the big question is: What comes after this? What will make Github irrelevant?

<comment><USER3> GitHub rocks. I would only switch for the yet to be invented GitGrub. If you'll request is accepted, you get a free burrito.

<comment><USER4> GrubHub! My favorite Hub. GitHub is second. Though if they partnered...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Github is probably one of the biggest innovations in web since Google. Sourceforge was okay, but it felt clunky and inaccessible, not to mention it lacked really any kind of social aspect. Github brought source control to the mainstream and made open source cool again and made it felt like an actual social thing as opposed to single developers making commits without context to a repository.

If it weren't for Github I probably would never have open sourced the amount of work that I have done since its inception nor contributed to the amount of projects I've committed too.

<comment><USER6> > _Github is probably one of the biggest innovations in web since Google._

I love GitHub as much as the next guy, but 99% of Internet users neither know what git is, nor have any need of it. There are a little more than a million users. (EDIT: well no, there are now 3 million.[2])

By contrast, Google is used by over a billion people every month.[1]

[1]: [http://www.statista.com/topics/1001/google/chart/899/unique-...](http://www.statista.com/topics/1001/google/chart/899/unique- users-of-search-engines-in-december-2012/)

[2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub>

<comment><USER7> Innovations in infrastructure are usually unknown to most of the people using that infrastructure--until they fail. Think of what would happen if Github was down for a week: how many users would now have the name "Github" on their lips (probably with a negative connotation) after some web service they _do_ use said "sorry, the fix on that showstopper bug has been delayed a bit; Github is down, you see."

<comment><USER8> The very fact that git is distributed means that if github was down for a week your development shouldn't suffer, just become more annoying maybe, but you can easily so without GitHub I'd you know the ABC of how git works.

Your theory doesn't hold when comparing github with infrastructure everybody uses but few people know about, just because its used by many people that write programs that are used by many other users doesn't mean it's an infrastructure like an Internet backbone.

<comment><USER7> > your development shouldn't suffer, just become more annoying maybe

Right, that's why I wrote "has been delayed a bit", not "has been delayed indefinitely." If you run a distributed OSS project, where your main point of contact with your collaborators is _through_ Github--and your workflow relies on using Github's _collaboration_ features (its wiki and issue tracking, its pull requests, etc.) then Github going down can greatly _impede_ (though not halt) that workflow. (In fact, I might say that if your workflow _doesn't_ rely on the collaboration features, you're not really "using" Github--you're just using git, and syncing with Github, like any project which has a Subversion repo with a Github mirror.)

A more major problem with Github going down, though, would be needing to pull an update from a third-party library to fix a bug, when _that library's_ canonical repo is stored on Github. (A problem with any centralzied repo host, really.) If you have any git:// URL dependencies in your Gemfile, or you use Bower at all, you might have a problem deploying your updates...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Without Github, contributing to OSS would have been much harder for me (being a noncoder). Thank you for giving us a tool with tremendous leverage in many aspects, both technical and nontechnical.

<comment><USER10> In which ways do you contribute to OSS on github without being a coder? Through issues?

<comment><USER11> From his website, "In my spare time, I contribute to the open source Fluentd Project's documentation." In fact, you probably don't even need to understand Git, since pretty much everything can be done via the browser now. Clicking on the "Edit" button on README/documentation pages automatically forks the repo and makes it trivial to submit patches.

<comment><USER9> Yup :) I'm involved with the docs.

While it's true that everything can be done in the browser, "saving = committing" there so I prefer to use the terminal and emacs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Github mainly succeeded because of the various shortcomings in Gits command line interface. Github made certain models of cooperative development incredibly easy, and since most or almost all of the open source development is just that the time was 100% ripe for something like github.

Still, it is an incredible achievement and I hope that github will be around for a very long time to come.

For a laugh:

<http://svnhub.com/>

<comment><USER13> Github succeeded because they have build a fantastic platform, order of magnitude smoother, better looking, easier to use and faster than any of the similar projects. Try to navigate <http://sourceforge.net/> or <http://code.google.com/intl/pl/> for a while to get a feel of how free VC hosting looked like before Github - nobody approached the problem with a normal (in the industry) professional product design approach, it was just developers throwing things together, those are almost showcases for how bad developers can be at user experience design when left by themselves.

<comment><USER8> Actually, read the history of how github got started, they started exactly the way you describe: a hack put together by developers that needed that and built it as a side project without thinking about releasing it as a product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Github has been a great boon to the D programming language community <https://github.com/d-programming-language> . There's been a very obvious 'before' and 'after' we moved to github.

<comment><USER15> Was the improvement from increased visibility for the project or from changes in the development process using GitHub?

<comment><USER14> Both. What also improved enormously was participation by people who previously thought it too clumsy to. Github brought an organized, easy method of contributing. It was like night and day.

Switching to github was probably the best organizational decision we made.

From a business standpoint, I've also found that github's severs are fast and reliable, and the turnaround for tech support questions is fast and accurate.

I'm very impressed with github.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I LOVE github, their little project forever changed the way I think about & write software, and their ideas (blogposts/presentations) about how to build software are truly a massive inspiration for me.

PS: Would be awesome to see who has the oldest github account on here. I joined April 20 2008.

<comment><USER16> January 11, 2008. User id 4[1] :D

[1]: <https://api.github.com/users/wycats>

<comment><USER17> Incidentally, this id is why we call wycats the "gate to enlightenment" -- it's proof that he's the "Mu" programmer.

A monk once asked, does JavaScript have a Buddha-nature or not?

Wycats said, "nil".

The monk said, "Above to all the Haskells, below to all the crawling Javas, all have Buddha-nature. Why is it that JavaScript has not?"

Wycats said, "Because it has the nature of karmic delusions."

([http://blog.bigbinary.com/2008/06/23/why-the-id-of-nil- is-4-...](http://blog.bigbinary.com/2008/06/23/why-the-id-of-nil-is-4-in- ruby.html))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's just been _five_ years? It feels like I have been reading about it forever. Never got to use it because of limited private repos.

</comment><comment><USER19> Say what you want about Git, GitHub is awesome.

<comment><USER20> I haven't heard too many people say bad things about Git.

<comment><USER21> Git is like linux in... 1996 maybe. The underlying technology is pretty awesome, but it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of usability. Git is enormously powerful, but it has some key weak spots that can lead to intense frustration, and it doesn't exactly guide users into using it in the best way possible.

<comment><USER22> Mercurial is like a git designed for humans. Basically the same design (distributed, branching and merging is very easy) but with slightly higher- level command line options that removes some of the rough edges. I kind of wish it had won over git.

<comment><USER23> The obvious counter is that Git is like a dvcs designed for maintainers and only incidentally for developers. I started out using bzr and eventually switched to git, partly to try out github, and things like rewriting history have become a major part of my workflow (I'm picking that one because it seems to surprise people coming from other vcs systems how easy it is to rewrite history in git).

I'm sure mercurial is nice, and given its users passion for it I might recommend it to people starting version control for the first time (I'm in academia, version control is surprisingly rare), BUT... I'd use the term "very sharp edges" and not "rough edges." My impression is that they're meant to be there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow, I had no idea Github had 158 employees. I guess I mostly hear about their engineering team here on HN, and didn't realize the rest of the team was that big. Congrats on 5 years guys, it's a great service!

</comment><comment><USER25> Github is the reason I have an awesome internship this summer. Thanks :)

</comment><comment><USER26> What I really love about GitHub is that it's one of the really exciting companies that has never really disappointed nor sold out like Twitter did.

I'm as excited about GitHub as ever.

<comment><USER27> > What I really love about GitHub is that it's one of the really exciting > companies that has never really disappointed nor sold out like Twitter did.

To be completely fair to Twitter, it's been less than a year since Github raised their first round of funding ($100MM). Twitter has raised $1.6 _billion_ over the last seven years.

It's a lot easier not to sell out when your investors aren't pressuring you to pull a profit yet. (Also remember that almost all of Github's funding comes from a single investor).

I like Github, but it's a bit premature to say that they've "never sold out".

<comment><USER26> That just means that GitHub were much quicker to find a profitable business model than Twitter, though. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> x-sam Happy birthday Github! You are rocking opensource.

It's just amazing so easily be able to fix some software, to make some commitments into project you do love!

But, 6 million repositories for 3.5 million users? Really? How many bots do you have? I'm not sure, that general user has 1.7 repository. I thought the number is higher, at least 3 or something. How many repositories do you have with forks?

</comment><comment><USER28> I joined on April 12 2008 [1], I wonder what's my user id :)

[1] <https://github.com/igorgue>

<comment><USER29> It's in the early 7000's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Amazing work github! Now get those sticker packs back in the store so I can buy a few and stick them everywhere :P

</comment><comment><USER31> Yay!

BTW, I live in SF and I _REALLY_ want one of those octo-nyan-cat stickers for my laptop. Just sayin...

</comment><comment><USER32> Hard to imagine a world without GitHub now, it's become that pervasive. Great service, great people there. Hopefully we'll be saying happy birthday in another 5 years with even more people using it for open source projects.

<comment><USER33> GitHub really become the standard for open source projects in such a short space of time, even the big name projects felt compelled to switch. Congrats GitHub.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Happy Birthday, GitHub! I use it every day to collaborate with fellow hackers that don't live anywhere close to me. It's indispensable for me. Here's to 5 more years!

</comment><comment><USER35> How did _you_ learn Github?

<comment><USER36> For me, it was this: <http://try.github.com/>

I've been on the verge wanting to learn Git and GitHub for a long time, but that was what pushed me over the edge.

<comment><USER35> Looks great. Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Happy Birthday. Project is awesome and so are the people.

</comment><comment><USER38> the same birthday for Meteor(<http://meteor.com/>)

</comment><comment><USER39> It's also my Github birthday, as I joined on April 11th, 2011!

</comment><comment><USER40> Hub Hub Hurrray Gitters!

</comment><comment><USER41> Git and GitHub have both made monstrous contributions to the software development landscape. I've acquired incredible new powers, for free!

What other power-tools are on the horizon? What's next?

</comment><comment><USER42> Moderators edit titles all the time but now it's been 7 hours and no one still has corrected "Github" to "GitHub"?</comment>


Ask HN: Adwords tips for a SaaS business - <AUTHOR>

I run a SaaS tool that helps screen printers manage their shops.  I'm looking into Adwords and optimizing my campaigns.  Does anyone have tips that worked for them?<p>Currently what I'm running with a .13% CTR is this: http://d.pr/n/byja (pasted so you can see the linebreaks). <comment><USER2> My personal experience with AdWords is that it's worthless to try to figure out whether an ad is good/bad until you dial in your keywords first. People post on here all the time about their ads and their CTR but it's meaningless without a discussion/understanding of the keyword(s) that triggered the ads.

As such, it leads me to question your keyword selection. You need to know "What were the keywords that actually triggered my ad?" This is possibly VERY different from the keywords you entered (particularly if you are using broad match). My guess is you're wildly off the mark in terms of your keyword selection/filter. Adwords expands broad match keywords to the point of unprofitability IME. You have to find out what people are actually searching for that trigger your ad and "trim the fat" by modifying your keywords so that you don't pay for unrelated things.

For example, let's say you have "print shop" as a broad match keyword. That is so general that Google is going to auto-expand your keywords to synonyms and "things that Google thinks are like print, shop, and print shops". So if you used that as a broad match keyword, you might be surprised to find that your ads were served for the following keyword searches:

* Shopping for printer

* printer repair shop

* what store can I print my paper

etc, etc, etc - if your ad was triggered for any of these keywords, you can see why you'd get a 0.00% CTR over 30,000 impressions for all of those. Those sort of results would take a good ad and make it look like a crappy ad. Let's now add in this keyword that triggered your results:

* print shop

You look at the metrics and find that your ad has a 5.00% CTR over 10,000 impressions. But when you combine the results, your aggregate CTR would be a miserable 1.75%. Thus you'd be making decisions ("Scrap that ad, make a new one") based off of misinterpreting the data.

I'd suggest you review the actual keywords that are triggering your ads and look into more refinement on the keywords. Once you have the keywords dialed in, you can better work on the ads.

<comment><USER3> Great points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You are probably getting such a low CTR because you are mixing Search and Display. First step is always to separate Search and Display. You can push description line 2 to the display url. \----- Do You Run a Print Shop? Try Our CRM for Print Shops. Over 300 Happy Clients. Start now. Printavo.com/Free- Trial \----- Print Shop Management Saves You Time & Money. Free 15-Day Trial. Start Today. Printavo.com/{KeyWord:Free-Trial} \-----

 _Always A/B test, continuously. Never stop testing new ads until it is blatantly obvious that one ad-copy is superior._ *Make sure that your keywords can be found in your ad-copy. If your keyword does not appear in the ad-copy, you WILL have lower CTR. I guarantee it!

</comment><comment><USER4> Hard to say much without seeing the keywords you're running this ad against. I'd say the biggest problem is that the searcher has no idea what you do from your ad. For all they know you could be selling wholesale shirts. So #1 get your main benefit/feature up front and center.

Get Your Act Together Cut Waste. Streamline Your Shop from Your Browser. Start a Free Trial Today.

Obviously you have to play with it but that should send you in the right direction. It's all trial and error though. Good luck!</comment>


Linuxbrew – The Homebrew package manager for Linux - <AUTHOR> http://linuxbrew.sh/ <comment><USER2> So this purports to solve a problem I've had in the past on out-of-date systems. I can compile a new gcc with an old gcc. I can compile a new glibc with my newly compiled gcc. But then I can't actually use that glibc. Maybe I'm not using the right configure options. (Specifically, I was trying to build Qt5.7 on CentOS6, including the QtWebEngine. This was a little while ago when 5.7 was current.)

<comment><USER3> did you jump between major versions of GCC or glibc?

Doing so breaks all manner of things, sadly.

Sadly distros have lead the FLOSS world to get sloppy about backwards compatibility, as they assume that most people will "dist-upgrade" ever so often rather than attempt at introduce newer versions of libs and programs into existing installs.

<comment><USER2> > did you jump between major versions of GCC or glibc?

Indeed both, and I'd be keen to know if what I was trying was totally impossible or just harder than I thought! We had to tell a customer, "we're unable to support CentOS 6." Which given the age of CentOS 6 is pretty reasonable, but it was still a personal defeat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Too bad about the x64 limitations, as there are some 32-bit installs out there that would make use of this.

That said, there is no way this will work for GUI stuff on older installs, because certain elements of xorg has changed too much over the years...</comment>


Google's IPv6 Stats Pass 3% Less Than 5 Months After Passing 2% - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2014/02/googles-ipv6-stats-pass-3-less-than-5-months-after-passing-2/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting how seasonal this data is. There's a massive spike on weekend traffic.

Is this because there's a lot less overall traffic on the weekend and the IPv6 part is fairly constant, or is there some other reason why IPv6 traffic should spike* during the weekends?

*As a proportion. It jumps about 50 basis points on the weekend.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was puzzled about this at first, but my guess is that the weekend spikes are because people are going home and accessing Google's services from _residential_ networks where many ISPs have started to roll out IPv6. Then on Monday people go back to work where there may be less IPv6 access.

<comment><USER3> I concur with this speculation. My work access is all IPv4 but at home I'm native IPv6 for my whole network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good, I hope the trend continues to accelerate.

That said, I recently had to disable IPv6 on my parent's ISP for bandwidth reasons. They live in France and are served by Free[1], who enabled IPv6 a few years ago. This christmas, I was surprised by their terrible bandwidth, which was worse in the middle of Paris than something in a village in the alps! I ultimitely traced it to the IPv6 option, though I didn't do deeper tracing to find out why.

I suppose it's because many legacy backbone routers don't handle IPv6 at their top capacity, as they have HW to accelerate IPv4 but not IPv6. See for example the question "What is the difference between hardware and software IPv6 acceleration?" in this FAQ at Cisco: [2].

[1]: [http://www.free.fr](http://www.free.fr) [2]: [http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/iosswrel/ps6537/p...](http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/iosswrel/ps6537/ps6553/prod_qas0900aecd803715bf.html)

<comment><USER5> HW acceleration won't matter at residential network speeds. It's mostly useful for edge/core routers handling traffic in excess of million PPS.

<comment><USER6> A lot of home gateways have really feeble cpus and rely on HW acceleration to process packets.

<comment><USER7> Software on feeble CPUs does OK up to 100Mbps or so, and I doubt he's complaining about problems at that speed.

(I have a 5+-year-old Geode-based router at home, and it can do full pf rule evaluation and forwarding at about 300Mbps.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm guessing that Google's new "Reduce Bandwidth Usage" setting is helping to increase the IPv6 utilization metric. (It was released in January.) [1]

eg, with the setting enabled (Chrome/iPhone), [http://test- ipv6.com](http://test-ipv6.com) shows a User Agent / v6 address corresponding to Google's proxy farm.

[1] [https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/data- compre...](https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/data-compression)

<comment><USER9> Interesting, I didn't realize Chrome Mobile did that now. IIRC that was one of the features of Opera Mobile that was somewhat unusual at the time.

<comment><USER10> Amazon's Kindle Fire browser (Silk) uses a similar data compression proxy (using SPDY) through Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I will say just from a user standpoint, ipv6 is amazing. I recently made the switch to ipv6 on as many of my devices as possible purely because I can then access all of them directly, no network finangling.

Since all my devices have publicly visible ipv6 addresses, I can access them e.g.

        laptop.lelandbatey.com
        homedesktop.lelandbatey.com
        phone.lelandbatey.com

because I use tunnel brokers, sometimes the speeds not amazing, but the fact that I can connect at all makes it awesome. Also, those example hostnames are fake : )

<comment><USER12> I do have to ask - what's a tunnel broker, aren't you worried about security of those devices and - is it really that useful?

Edit - if it is really that useful, is it not instead the death of cloud storage?

<comment><USER13> Yes, it really is that useful. The ability to directly connect to machines on my home network without mucking with VPNs, port forwarding, etc is fantastic. The key thing it does is reduces friction when creating or using anything that could be accessed from off the local network. The ability to assign static addresses to custom DNS entries makes it even better. The more services that throw up IPv6 support the more useful it gets. If I could pull from Github over IPv6... or run SSL Labs TLS tests against an IPv6 VM...

In particular, it is better than other VPN/port forwarding type solutions because it works transparently and universally. It works on your phone (where VPN can be more tricky). It works in environments where you aren't allowed to install special relay software. It works when you are a guest somewhere else without them having to change their network setup.

As for cloud services... yes and no. In a world with direct addressing you open up many opportunities for innovation in the home cloud appliance market. However, many cloud services are made affordable because they can leverage shared infrastructure, sell usage metadata, or add and remove capacity instantly. Whether home based solutions could be competitive in price and reliability without those abilities. I see some categories of service that it makes sense for, others, less so.

Security is a concern, yes, but one that can and should be addressed by good security tools and practices (firewalls, automatic security updates, good backups, not running services you don't use, etc) not by crippling your network with NAT.

<comment><USER12> I guess I had become so used to NAT it just seemed the natural order of things. I do think the security is still a major issue but then I like building my servers as if they are alone on the Internet so it makes sense

And yes, a good point about the reliability of cloud services - but still at 50 bucks for 2 TB and iCloud costing me 20 bucks a month I think Shared infrastructure savings have a long way to go !

<comment><USER13> Large capacity media servers are something I think makes sense as a home appliance. I also think that if people end up willing to put their money where their mouths are that there will be a market for devices that provide cloud like services with the privacy of local hardware.

Re: security. Cloud services aren't doing a lot better. They are repeatedly broken into and have huge password lists stolen, many have governments have direct programs for extracting datas from them, and someone else can call up their customer support reps and practically ask for your password. Many effective security best practices amount to obscurity (change ssh port number). Large central services are very attractive and lucrative to hack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you already have IPv6, check out this Chrome plugin (not mine, just a user) that tells you which IP version you are using to access a site: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ipvfoo/ecanpcehffn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ipvfoo/ecanpcehffngcegjmadlcijfolapggal).

<comment><AUTHOR> There is also an "IPvFox" version for Firefox: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/ipvfox/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/ipvfox/)

I have this installed in both Chrome and Firefox and its great to see which websites are available over IPv6 and which are not. (such as HN, sadly)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> And the award for most confusing headline goes to!

<comment><USER16> Should've been _...pass 3% in less than 5 months..._

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm curious how much of this is due to mobile devices. For as long as I can remember, I have had IPv6 addresses on both Verizon and T-Mobile (though only T-mobile allows IPv6 traffic as of last year: [http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/145765-ipv6-makes- mobile-n...](http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/145765-ipv6-makes-mobile- networks-faster))

<comment><AUTHOR> I think mobile networks do play a good bit of a role here. My iPhone 5s is on Verizon's LTE network and connects over IPv6 to sites. If you look at the latest World IPv6 Launch measurements from Jan 16, you can see that 40% of the traffic that was measured coming from Verizon Wireless' network was coming over IPv6 - [http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/](http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/)

(Those measurements show the % of IPv6 traffic from various operator networks seen by Akamai, Facebook, Google and Yahoo.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Source ⌘ [https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html](https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html)

<comment><USER19> It's too bad that page requires flash just to display a graph.

<comment><USER18> Sorry, I didn't notice. Flash ought to die.

<comment><USER19> I notice it a lot more since I don't have Flash installed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wonder if the timing has anything to do with companies upgrading networks/equipment over Christmas/New Year holidays? For the US at least, a lot of workers take off significant amounts of time during then so it's often a good time to upgrade or perform maintenance.

December 24: 2.57%. January 25th: 2.92 %

</comment><comment><USER21> So, do all your (startup's) domains have AAAA records yet, and servers IPv6? I just enabled IPv6 on my stuff, which took much less work than expected.

<comment><USER22> Oddly enough we don't, though we added full IPv6 support to our products (which are management tools for hosting providers) years ago, and years before any of our competitors. So, I feel kinda silly for not taking that to the next step and actually enabling IPv6 for our own website. Gonna get on that problem this week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm happy to say my ~20 odd devices made the move to IPv6 this month

</comment><comment><USER24> I would not have expected US to be at 6.5%, though I suppose vzw helps a lot.

<comment><USER25> Comcast, as well.

<comment><USER24> Though for some reason they're going state by state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is somewhat unrelated to the stats, but is related to IPv6: If you have experienced issues with YouTube videos because your TelCo ISP is messing with the routing, give an IPv6 tunnel a try. I have found that it works great and my last two ISP's (TWC and Comcast) have not yet gone to the point of deliberately slowing down IPv6 or YouTube over IPv6.

</comment><comment><USER26> It would be wonderful to see a contrast with non-human internet users -- I seem to recall an article recently saying that bots now utilize more port-80/port-443 bandwidth than humans do, and that the trend will only get more skewed from now on.

<comment><USER27> That report was incorrect, but it would be interesting to see that data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why ipV6 traffic is larger on weekends? see the graph by google, it is periodic and if you zoom in peaks are on weekends

<comment><AUTHOR> There's an earlier comment thread on this question: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7212411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7212411)

Probably relates to people being at home accessing Google's services over residential networks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sadly, I downgraded my network from IPv5 to IPv4 this weekend, since I couldn't quickly figure out how to get OpenWRT to hand out correct IPv6 addresses. Maybe I'll work on that again this weekend.

<comment><USER30> Make sure you're using a Barrier Breaker trunk build. The IPv6 address management code has been completely overhauled since 12.09.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, I'd hoped to go with stable, but I think this weekend I'll be moving to Barrier Breaker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hooray. All my servers have gobs of IPv6 addresses, but I've yet to get that IPv6-y goodness in my home. I think that part is a long way off.

<comment><USER14> Not as long as you think. Check out TunnelBroker.net and SixXS.

<comment><USER31> Huhhhmmm. Interesting. I already have a linux WLAN gateway between my desktop computer and my router, I guess I could set up the tunnel there and it would be pretty much hassle-free. Thanks for the link.

<comment><USER14> Yes. Depending on the type of tunnel and the provider you may have to put your Linux gateway into the DMZ. The one type that does not require this is AYIYA (Anything-in-Anything) from SixXS. Here it will be using putting IPv6 into IPv4/UDP packets which traverse your NAT transparently.

All other tunnel types use IPv6-in-IPv4 directly, so they don't know anything about the IPv4 NAT. This is called protocol 41 (the version number for 6in4, see [http://www.iana.org/assignments/protocol-numbers/protocol- nu...](http://www.iana.org/assignments/protocol-numbers/protocol- numbers.xhtml)).

If you run into trouble, email me; my address is in the profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's all because someone decided to buy a ton of cheap 1c IPV6 proxies to scrape Google's search results.

</comment><comment><USER33> question: percentage-wise, how many addresses in the IPv6 scheme have we used so far?

<comment><USER34> 0% near enough!

In reality it is more complex as the address space is split in two, the bottom 64 bits rarely has any density, only a few devices. End users get a /64 or a /48 (or a few); a VPS will probably get a /64 by default.

<comment><USER35> Even counting by percentage of /48 blocks allocated, it's still approximately 0%. There are roughly 40 thousand /48 blocks per person in the world.

<comment><USER33> Well that is reassuring. For a second there I thought I read that "3% of the address space was used up" but I knew that couldn't be true. I remember learning about IPV4 back in Computer Science class and having to learn subnets and everything. This seems way more confusing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have no idea how facetious the author of this article is being.

<comment><USER19> >Prior to that it had taken 11 months to go from 1% to 2%.

I don't think they're being facetious at all. The Internet Society cares about things like this.

<comment><USER37> Then why did they have to start the article with "Oh GOD This is SO Boring. Please Kill Me!"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> IPv6 hater here... I'm armed with my asbestos underwear so flame away.

The best advice about IPv6 is to just disable it. IETF designed a terrible protocol that doesn't even address the underlying major issue: routing table size. Instead they just made it much worse.

You won't see me deploying IPV6 for another 20-30 years at least. Hoping it's replaced by something actually usable by then.

<comment><USER39> I've got native IPv6 at home and we enabled IPv6 on all services at work (hosting web applications and services) and we have _zero_ issues. IPv6 solves a staggering number of architecture problems for us compared to IPv4. For us IPv6 is a net positive.

See? no flame.

<comment><USER40> Could you please give some examples of the problems IPv6 solve for you?

<comment><USER13> Marginal Cost. IPv4 addresses are expensive, IPv6 practically free.

Direct addressability. Removes the need for slow, expensive intermediaries like NAT boxes and certain types of proxies by allowing security policies to be applied independently of network addressing.

Simplified network planning. Enough address space to make an address layout based on your actual needs rather than being forced to carve up your limited v4 allocation in weird ways. You no longer have to guess what the right long term size of your subnets are (they are always big enough) or worry about putting unrelated machines on the same subnet because you are out of space for new subnets.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Battleweb, a FPS MMOG played over the entire internet (Chrome ext) - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/battleweb/camcgbdclnckjdfkeeodfggfbaiogcof <comment><AUTHOR> This was a labor-of-love experiment into how far I could push Chrome extension functionality. Install it then come back to HN and battle with us.

It's a game you can play while you're working on or browsing the web. Shoot at or chat with other players who are on the same site as you. Or just blow up DOM elements.

Built with a few thousand lines of ES6 and Firebase.

Would appreciate any and all feedback.

</comment><comment><USER2> I love the idea.

I would have preferred an RPG or turn-based strategy game for the domination of websites, but this should be good also.</comment>