Elixir multiple processes: Basics - <AUTHOR> http://whatdidilearn.info/2017/12/17/elixir-multiple-processes-basics.html <comment><USER2> I'm in the process of learning Elixir and the observation I'm about to make may be completely off-base. With that said...

Seems like the section on "When to use processes" is selling processes short a bit. Certain kinds of state management would seem to call for processes to either manage or even hold state... but processes (as I understand them) are also key in designing for reliability. So I would think I may well want to organize my code relative to processes as I'm also figuring out the supervision trees and various failure scenarios. And yes, concurrency issues as well. If I'm wrong on this, I'd be happy to be set straight.

Anyway, yes, the section I speak of does get to some of the other parts of what I mention, but the emphasis on state management seems to distort and unbalance the view of what you might want as a process.

[edited a touch for clarity]

<comment><USER3> You are correct.

That's something I've been a bit worried about with people coming to Elixir thinking it's basically a faster/robust Ruby: are they absorbing the full Erlang Weltanschauung?

<comment><USER4> (I had to look it up)

Welt·an·schau·ung ˈveltˌänˌSHouəNG

a particular philosophy or view of life; the worldview of an individual or group.

\--

Personally I came for the faster/robust Ruby first and then over time discovered (and am still discovering) the other powerful pieces. I think that's ok.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely that's ok. Everything's a journey.

(I tend to get lazy about learning, so perhaps I doth project too much.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe I'm thinking about this incorrectly but when it comes to web application development and concurrency, the things I would typically want to run in a separate process are very important tasks.

For example, let's say you're sending emails out.

In Rails, Flask, etc. you would typically offload this to a background worker like Sidekiq or Celery. These are dedicated libraries that run in their own process and handle job processing.

Both tools allow you to see if that job was successful or failed and deals with retries. They also use Redis as a back-end so your state persists outside of the application code.

If you just willynilly spawn a process and start sending stuff through it, how do you ensure everything works as expected and what happens to all of your state if the Erlang VM goes down?

I love the idea of doing this, but in real world practice, it sounds like you would still need the Elixir equiv. of Sidekiq / Celery to handle ensuring these spawned tasks are trackable, right?

<comment><USER2> I don't think so. First, just to make sure there aren't any points of confusion... Erlang/Elixir processes are not OS processes ([https://elixir- lang.github.io/getting-started/processes.html](https://elixir- lang.github.io/getting-started/processes.html)). As such, we really can't speak of processes in Erlang/Elixir and other kinds of systems on any sort of equal footing. In Erlang, processes are much lighter weight than OS processes. And you do expect them to go wrong... so Erlang has the idea of "Supervision Tree" where there are Supervisor processes whose job it is to monitor other processes and to manage their failure when it occurs. There can be multiple Supervisors which influence one another, or not, as you design them too (thus the "tree" bit). Naturally you plan for these sorts of failures in designing what is/is not a process, what dependencies there may be, what any Supervisor watches and how the Supervisors relate to one another.

Erlang/Elixir also seems to have one of the strongest availability and concurrency stories out there on its own. Part of this comes from the aforementioned built in assumptions around isolating and managing failed processes, but the other is in terms of the relative ease of starting processes as needed, and accessing the processes of other Erlang VMs (same server or not). It's clear you have to architect and build things correctly to take full advantage of these capabilities, but I think you can get to the place you describe without necessarily taking on a bundle of different applications for different purposes.

For example, for many of the use cases I think of Redis, Erlang offers a number of different ways to deal with such task out of the box: [https://blog.codeship.com/elixir-ets-vs- redis/](https://blog.codeship.com/elixir-ets-vs-redis/) Again, you have to think about how you architect things, but you can use the same toolbox for much of the work.

I'm still new to Elixir/Erlang, but I've been studying capabilities and architecture for several months now. I think there are sufficient differences in Erlang's approach as compared to other more common stacks that it really does benefit one to come at it fresh and not make very many comparative assumptions. In my own learning I've found that to just get the basic feel for what this Erlang/Elixir animal really is, that the Elixir side is more approachable. The documentation tends to be a little more direct and tends to be more beginner friendly. After I got the very basics down, I was able to look at the Erlang side and understand really what they were trying to say.

<comment><USER6> Saša Jurić's Solid Ground talk is a lovely demonstration of Elixir's processes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO4_Wlq8JeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO4_Wlq8JeI)

(Saša is also the author of Elixir in Action; a highly recommend read once you have your head around Elixir's fundamentals.)

<comment><USER2> Yep, that's one of the Elixir books I've read. Agree that it's pretty good. Thanks for the tip to the video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool. I'm adding this to my list of easy concurrency tools. The main thing I like is the statelessness. That's where most people screw up parallel programs.

Seems like there are many languages/libraries trying to make concurrency easier to implement in practice. Most notably for C++ (my fav since I have to use it for most of my work projects): Intel TBB (definitely the go to for most things), RaftLib (saw at C++Now last year) is probably the easiest to understand (same theme as this post, super easy concurrency for c++). Even Java seems to make concurrency rather easy with it's thread pools and relatively strait-forward synchronized sections.

<comment><USER8> Okay, taking a step back - this isn't just another concurrency tool. This is a language built for concurrency.

Taking another step back - this isn't just a language built for concurrency. This is a language built for -resiliency-.

Taking another step back - this isn't just a language built for resiliency, this is a language built atop a VM built for resiliency -over 30 years ago- (the Erlang VM, aka, the BEAM, which Elixir runs on).

Okay. Why does this matter? Well, the thing is, resiliency encompasses concurrency and distribution, both. It prioritizes error minimization and, more importantly, the ability to recover from errors. This isn't just a try/catch; this is a "something you completely failed to even expect caused things to fail in a way you can't even imagine, and the system still handled it".

It achieves that via immutability, concurrency, and distribution. Ensure your data is immutable, so that state has to be very explicit (it's not stateless...a process has state. But it's very explicit state; as a developer you can't help but handle it and be very aware of it). Ensure bad states are dropped, and the system can recover the execution unit from a good state. If it can't, allow a user defined subsystem to fail, as the intricacies between the entire subsystem are implicitly stateful, and restart the whole thing from a known good state. If even that fails, keep climbing the supervisor tree, restarting larger and larger subsystems, until you restart the entire -application-, assuming that the intricacies across subsystems have gotten into a bad state, and again, restart from a good state.

These principles have been around a long time, but Erlang is one of the first languages to put them into practice, again, over 30 years ago. There's been a lot of time since to see they actually work, and to further refine them. The difficulty with concurrency is not actually being concurrent (per your post, there are a LOT of ways to implement concurrency); the difficulty is doing it in a way that it behaves how you want it, even in the face of user's doing things you don't anticipate, external resources doing things you don't anticipate, your own code doing things you don't anticipate, etc. The design decisions that went into Erlang focused on minimizing errors...in so doing, it provides a way that most kinds of errors are handled transparently (from logic bugs to actual machine failure), while making it much harder to do things that it can't recover from (memory leaks are comparatively difficult to cause, as are deadlocks, for instance).

To give you an idea, the first commercial product built with Erlang boasted (famously) 9 9s of uptime. Meaning something on the order of ~30ms of downtime a year. That includes planned downtime, visible errors, etc.

I've seen Erlang systems in production...even with a rather critical bug in one, the system just -worked- for -years-, before someone noted an oddity in the logs, dug into it, and went "Oh my God" over how severe the issue was. But, again, Erlang's supervisor process just restarted it, and it was never noticed.

I helped write CNN's current video ingest system in Erlang. It's been working without issue for years, despite no maintenance or attention (to where even most of the developers have left, but it still just...works). Even much less complex Ruby, Java, and Javascript systems are plagued with constant bugs. I would not say the devs on this project were just that much better (though the process was a little different, with little product owner involvement), but that the language we picked was so much better geared toward fault tolerance.</comment></comment>


Three Prominent Video Game Developers Accused of Sexual Assault in One Day - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb5dp4/three-prominent-video-game-developers-accused-of-sexual-assault-in-one-day <comment><USER2> Sadly theres a high chance because of the presence of Zoe Quinn this will turn into another polarized outrage war. The game industry seems to do nothing but continue to spiral down as anger rises over lootboxes, poorly made games,and appalling behavior from executives.</comment>


New physics equation to explain "impossible" soccer kick - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5628135/physics-forced-to-come-up-with-whole-new-equation-to-explain-impossible-soccer-kick

<comment><AUTHOR> here's the details on the equation for those especially interested in the physics: [http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/12/9/093004/fulltext#nj3...](http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/12/9/093004/fulltext#nj349541s4)</comment>


Gov Most Certainly Seized Gox's Coins - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/E8iU1kbK The interesting part starts at: But Numbers Don't Lie <comment><USER2> One big assumption that this document makes is that MtGox wouldn't refill the hot wallet until it was empty. Why would they do that?

I think MtGox was pretty incompetent, but I don't think they were so incompetent that they didn't know enough to refill the hot wallet when it was getting low so that it didn't get completely empty.</comment>


Launch HN: Got-it (YC W19) – Bluetooth labels for tracking things at work - <AUTHOR> Hi Everyone,
It's Brian and David here and we want to share what we've built — ultra thin Bluetooth labels called Got-it (https://got-it.com).  It's like Tile, but for B2B or Enterprise.
Got-it is for tracking things at work as a team.  Simply peel and stick, no different from a barcode sticker.  But, these are active Bluetooth labels.  They're flexible and roughly the size of a little Avery barcode label (28mm x 76mm) and less than 0.5mm thick.  They communicate with the phones already in employee pockets, even in background mode.  That means no scanning like RFID, and no readers or gateway infrastructure to install in the ceiling or the doorways.
A few photos here: (https://imgur.com/gallery/rApt25P)
We started Got-it as a solution for all that really simple stuff that went missing at home.  There were loads of little things, like iPhone charger cables or even Chapstick, that when forgotten or went missing, made life a little difficult.  Sure, I could put a Bluetooth tracker on everything… but they're expensive and a little clunky, especially for a $1.99 stick of Chapstick.  The reality though, is that when stuff around the house goes missing, it's just kinda annoying.   At work, it's a different ballgame.  It costs money.
Here's how it works for businesses.  Anyone at work sticks a label on shared things like tools, equipment, storage boxes, or packages to ship.   By everyone just walking around as normal, in a warehouse, factory, or campus, the Got-it app picks up a beacon from the labels.  The location of the item (within an approximate 10 meter zone) and who it's been with, is then shared with the team if a coworker needs to know.
Our integrated software stack makes it happen.  We stumbled on a way to make our Bluetooth beacon firmware more reliably trigger background processing in phones, while still preserving ultra low power consumption.  To do so, we ended up writing low-level embedded code, in less than 1.5KB and 135 Bytes RAM, to control the radio registers directly, without a BLE stack.  Phones receive just enough information from our labels to enable a lean, low-power positioning algorithm we wrote.
The labels we make ourselves, in house, here in the USA and UK.  It's a reel-to-reel manufacturing process (like making tape) that we developed.  We're printing circuits using coatings on thin films.  We can create passive components, like inductors and capacitors using these inks and laminates by taking advantage of the thin geometry of the substrate itself.  Our bill of materials is just a few lines long, so sourcing in China isn't needed.
We also came up with a way of electrochemically coating our circuit to form our own battery source that lasts over a year.  That's particularly why we decided to keep the manufacturing in-house.  The process is fully automated, involving just the machine we built, and an operator.  It just didn't make sense to hand over the manufacturing IP to a contract manufacturer or outsource this to China.
Manufacturing ourselves, locally, also helps in avoiding tariffs and contract manufacturing mark-ups.  That's key since the labels will be sold in volume at very small margins.   The company makes money from a recurring SW model around asset and inventory tracking services.  Note, the $99 pricing for ten labels on our website is just for the kit to get started today with your company team.  Our target cost at scale will be less than $1.
We just ran our first pre-production lot, and are pre-launching with some inventory to ship right away.   It'd be great to learn your thoughts on how Got-its might work for you or applications we might be missing.    We're ramping our manufacturing line into higher volume production in the Spring of next year.  Keep tabs on our twitter @realGot_it for launch announcements.
Thanks in advance! Brian <comment><USER3> This is cool as hell. Would love to see this re-adapted for regular end-user (non-business) use, as my husband and I use tile for this and it's sort of crap. Why is tile crap?

* the find-your-phone feature activates by accident all the time in our pockets, which can be pretty embarrassing. If I could I would just disable that feature as google home can find my phone just fine.

* when I actually lose my keys/wallet, the tile typically won't connect. In a meeting when my keys press against my wallet, it connects without fail.

* the batteries die pretty quickly, and the only recourse is to buy a new tile

* there doesn't seem to be (and should be) some sort of proximity tech based on roundtrip time -- make it beep rapidly as roundtrip time gets shorter (waiting for massive comments about why this doesn't necessarily indicate proximity)

<comment><USER4> Our decision to go down the B2B route rather than the B2C route is predominately two fold:

\- We think the product works better as a solution in the B2B space.

\- At the moment we only really have the resources to focus on one product.

At some point through I'd really like for us to have a B2C offering but realistically it won't be for a while - sorry!

"there doesn't seem to be (and should be) some sort of proximity tech based on roundtrip time -- make it beep rapidly as roundtrip time gets shorter (waiting for massive comments about why this doesn't necessarily indicate proximity)"

To be fair to Tile, this is a limitation of BLE and the hardware on phones. Measuring round trip time would require hardware support on the phone and probably a much more expensive tracker. Instead what is available is RSSI or received signal strength indicator. It's an ok measurement but suffers from:

\- Multi path, signals being reflected and arriving from different directions

\- Antenna that aren't perfectly omni directional

\- Signal absorption e.g. large bodies of water (usually people) not being great at letting signals go through them.

That said the new BLE 5.1 standard ratified at the beginning of this year provides angle of arrival and or angle or departure for bluetooth signals so you can tell which direction a bluetooth signal is coming from. We're eagerly waiting to find out if it will be supported on smartphones as it's an optional part of the specification and requires additional hardware. Honestly though it's a long shot - getting one antenna working well on a smartphone is difficult. Getting 4 (which 5.1 A0A requires) may end up being too difficult / not worth it for smartphone manufacturers.

<comment><USER3> Totally understand about the B2B thing,

Regarding BLE -- is that really a limitation though? Even if the hardware / API won't give you a good indication of signal strength, surely there is nothing stopping you from taking a timestamp, sending a packet to the BT device, taking a second timestamp when the response arrives from the device, and using t2 - t1 to measure "strength"? There are papers on how people have been able to triangulate a physical location based on three ping times -- this seems a lot simpler as it's the 1-D version of that problem. Worst case scenario you need a nano-second precision clock, but the principle should still work.

<comment><USER3> Clarification: researchers have been able to triangulate a physical location based on ping times to 3 widely-spread locations.

<comment><USER5> And you can do the same with signal strengths.

Basically, anything that varies with distance can be made to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is so incredible.

Not every HN reader designs circuits day to day but to put this in terms of you may be able to relate to - most circuits are designed the same way within one or two standard deviations. This is like 20 standard deviations away from how it's usually done. Aside from a great use case this is some very clever lateral thinking.

Incredibly unique and special. A great hack. Blown away really.

<comment><USER7> Wow, that is high praise. Can you explain in more detail what's unique and special?

<comment><USER6> All commercial circuit boards are designed with computer aided design tools. An unfortunate consequence of these tools are monocultural, emergent styling decisions that stem from the tooling's schema. John Maeda has half a dozen books on this - he suggests one must design ones own tools if you don't want to look like everyone else and compete with the same strengths and weaknesses as everyone else. For obvious reasons, most people don't.

The default way of designing circuits is in 2D planar view. It's uncommon to think about circuits in 3D and uncommon to think about the material science of these things.

What makes Got-It special is not just that the broke the conventions of the traditional EE design patterns but that they broke them in so many _different_ places. Where most people would use a readily available Bluetooth Chip, it sounds like they sourced the core to half-a-chip (Bluetooth MCU chips are often a combination of Arm processor, memory, radio, power management, and communication cores - it's not common to just take a few of these things - they're sold as a package but all those parts take power and this thing has a very tight power budget). They wrote their own Bluetooth stack (this alone is a multi-year project). That stack they wrote took into account weird specification...divergences...that the Bluetooth SIG says one should do but Apple/Android don't. The circuit they designed only works with the manufacturing process they had to develop for this chip - designs are usually done on rectangular boards, not tape. Most people don't make their own passive components they source them. Most people don't think about their circuit in 4D (that is 3D+movement as it bends in use). Most people don't think about making their own manufacturing equipment to serve a SaaS like business goal. I'm not even getting into the battery part which is bananas. The list goes on, as Brian enumerated above, but the combination of so many of these things represents a radical departure from 'business as usual' and the start of a new design movement as has happened when people transitioned from using drafting tables to computers decades ago.

It's not so much that they broke walls, as they broke walls that people didn't even realize were there AND that they broke so many of them.

Again, well done!

<comment><USER8> The engineering behind this is indeed rad, but (playing devil's advocate): doesn't this go against the lean startup (also, YC) way of releasing MVPs that don't "scale"? In this case, re-engineer circuit design, write your own bluetooth stack (in part). Wouldn't they have gotten to market faster and learned faster with off the shelf parts to test their idea out?

<comment><USER9> Yeah it does seem like they put a ton of effort into this before proving demand, but fuck lean startup. This is called "building great stuff".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hi Brian! Big Tile user here with some chemistry backround, this is super interesting. Couple of questions:

1\. Can you go a bit more into how the battery is integrated into the device? If it's integrated, is it still using standard anodes / cathodes and redox, or is it a capacitor, or is the battery still a separate component? This is normally the trickiest thing (vs the printed circuits on thin films) so this is why I ask.

2\. How durable are the tags? Tiles can take quite a hit and still function pretty normally, which is why people use them for things like tagging cats. Do they work underwater? Do they work after element exposure? Any testing around this?

3\. How flexible are the tags? Can I wrap them around round objects (this would be huge for me, since right now I am duct-taping tiles to things that are round, which is sub-optimal.

4\. Do the devices broadcast how much battery they have left? Tiles have a great feature that tell me early on when they need to be replaced.

Thanks!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

— In the current ones we're shipping right now, the battery is one of those thin lithium primaries, ~0.45mm. But, in the version that's coming out, we're coating the anode and cathode materials on two different substrates and laminating them together on a reel-to-reel process.

— They're pretty durable, but they are labels (laminated polypropylene and PET) with a very thin layer of polyurethane foam less than 0.3mm. Water resistant: yes, but underwater, probably not. Those that are shipping now aren't fully hermetically sealed, but the next version will be, as the lamination stack-up forms part of the battery pouch.

— Yes, they are flexible. The only issue we're having at the moment is their thickness of 0.5mm and dissimilar materials of the stack-up causing some pulling-back of the laminates around really tight radii. But, we think we've solved this in the next version, targeting an overall thickness of 0.3mm and different materials.

— The battery level is something that's included in the beacon message, and is updated once a day.

<comment><USER10> Thanks Brian! Sounds awesome.

EDIT: Found your website, ordering a few now. Can't wait for android support!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very very cool!

I run a warehouse with ~10K slabs of granite/marble. We currently use barcodes. There is a barcode on each slab and there is a barcode on each bin number. We have a tough time making sure we know what's where.

Question:

\- Any way to code multiple properties onto each label (to map to our ERP system)?

\- What happens when batteries start running out? Warning at certain battery life?

\- Do you have a web version and/or API for this?

\- Can I map out my warehouse on the got-it app and label stuff so I know where each slab is in context to the warehouse?

These might be silly questions, but your project got me really excited about all the possibilities!

Edit: Just ordered the starter pack.

<comment><USER4> Any way to code multiple properties onto each label (to map to our ERP system)?

> Coming very soon, should be in pre-prod before Christmas

What happens when batteries start running out? Warning at certain battery life?

> Not an imminent problem but we do currently get back data on battery life > and well before batteries start to fade this will be there.

Do you have a web version and/or API for this?

> There are more enterprise specific features coming including web interfaces. > This is being tracked by customer demand. API is not currently on the > roadmap.

Can I map out my warehouse on the got-it app and label stuff so I know where each slab is in context to the warehouse?

> We have pilots doing this and it's coming in a more integrated way Q1 next > year.

I'd really like to talk to you in a bit more detail about your use case and how we can support you. My email is firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 10 labels and app for $99 is a great price, even for the home user. I imagine that would get cheaper with time and scale? I could imagine this product as a "Shark Tank" kind of product. Parents would pay $99 to stick this on their kids most important items (school bag, etc.) to save time getting ready. Most people would use it on their keys. Would be handy on a phone too even if it has a find function using gps.

</comment><comment><USER13> This looks great. A dream I've had is to put some sort of tag on everything I own, and put readers in closets and drawers. That way when I need a, say, 10 ft USB A to mini B cable, I can just ask my computer where it is and go get it. Instead I take everything out of the drawer where I think it is, fail to find it, move stuff out of the way so I can go up to my attic, root around up there for a while, fail to find it, order a new one on Amazon, put it away when I'm done... and then repeat the process again.

This technology is new so it's a little cost-prohibitive for that use case... but I hope that we're getting closer. Can I sign up for a mailing list to stay up to date on this? (I don't use Twitter.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Love it. Though, not sure what we've got going here would work the best in that particular scenario. It's really more for work, where things are spread out over larger areas. We're leveraging the phones already in peoples' pockets to be the readers per se. Nonetheless, shoot us an email at email@example.com and we'll be sure to keep you in the loop.

<comment><USER14> > We're leveraging the phones already in peoples' pockets to be the readers > per se. Nonetheless, shoot us an email at email@example.com and we'll be sure > to keep you in the loop.

In some industrial settings, it's probably reasonable to kit this with devices that could communicate with a switch / network for large-scale asset management without phone apps.

This is a great idea, guys, and serious kudos to working it out. I'll be passing this along to our process guys and upper management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How is the tech different from [https://www.wiliot.com/](https://www.wiliot.com/) and how did you guys manage to be first to market as I thought they were the pioneers of the ultra-thin thin bluetooth stickers?

<comment><USER4> Absolutely - you can buy ours today and we'll ship tomorrow!

I guess we haven't been very vocal about what we're doing, we wanted to have something that worked and was tested before shouting about it.

> We have a very small power source inside our labels - this gives us a range > of 20m+.

> Williot don't have a battery and I imagine instead reflect signals. Having > previously worked in the RF energy harvesting space I would imagine their > range is at best 3ft.

And so while their tech is extremely cool (provided it works, once burnt twice shy as they say) it's a different use case.

<comment><USER15> follow up question - does it need at least a few active users to triangulate the sticker position or would 1 user be enough?

if so, how are you able to determine location from a single bluetooth beacon and user? I know for example the tile app will only tell you how far you are from the tile as opposed to the position of the tile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think this is a really neat idea. I am always interested by the being able to find my stuff items.

Although I wonder if having a lot of bluetooth devices will overwhelm devices. For example, when you're in a plane or in a hotel is not the time to pair your bluetooth - there are so many devices in the list that sometimes it's impossible to find it or search on that list. These lists are usually deep in the OS so they are kind of tricky to work with. Have you figured out some way to handle this? Does it not apply due to some kind of device type filtering? I'm also curious as to how many bluetooth devices one phone can connect to! Maybe I've just had a lot of bluetooth problems.

<comment><USER4> Hey David here from Got-it, we're not forming BLE connections which require handshakes every 20ms and thus the difficulty in paring in crowded BLE environments. We just need to pick up the occasional radio event for our solution to work. As you've correctly identified phones are also limited to the number of connections they can form. We have successfully tested with 1500 labels all in the same cardboard box and that worked well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have a 3yr old with glasses. Well, sometimes he has them but often he doesn't. Would these work for helping to track/find his glasses? Obviously his frames aren't super large and he's curious so if it isn't secured well it may end up being removed and stuck on a cat at some point but even if it only lasted a few months it could be a god-send for us.

Is this a scenario that would benefit from your product? If so how can I get a pair - even if just to try out for your v2 line. Anything you can do to help relieve the stress of a few parents frantically searching for glasses would be very welcome.

<comment><USER4> Hey really sorry to report but I honestly don't see people putting one of our labels on glasses. I think it would make the glasses kinda uncomfortable - <USER2> we are very much targeted towards B2B applications. Sorry again :-(

<comment><USER18> As a parent of a small child with glasses, yes a product like this, as a very tiny sticker, would be critical for many things, toddler's glasses cost $700 plus tax and there are so many expensive and difficult to replace medical items that children and patients of all ages lose constantly, (orthotics, arm braces, teeth retainers, dentures) and they lose them most often when in hospital, or in a nursing home, or school. Yes I understand you are interested in B2B only, but, as I sit here in my living room, I am surrounded by 13 different items that send out Bluetooth signals. It's doable. And when my did lose the first pair of $700 glasses--it was in a park. I spent hours carefully going back and forth, dividing the place into grids, on my hands and knees before giving up. May I suggest you talk to companies that manufacture glasses? Or online retailers like www.zennioptical.com Or popular children's label manufacturer www.MabelsLabels.com Which would allow consumers to buy them, and dear God then I could track the irreplaceable priceless, stuffies my child cannot lose. If you are not a parent, I realize that you won't understand, but I am telling you, nursing homes and daycare sales alone could make you a billion dollars. Somehow, hearing aids have microscopic Bluetooth inside and it has utterly changed that industry, but they don't make them as tiny stickers. Tiles are too large, and don't stick. Best of luck--and if you can't do consumer sales, can someone else on this thread please do it! :)

<comment><USER19> I don't think anything is preventing you or anyone else from plunking down $100 and testing Got-Its out for consumer use. I just wouldn't expect it to be greatly supported in the near term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love your unique process! This way of thinking about manufacturing always charmed me, best of luck to your team!

<comment><USER4> Cheers, really appreciated

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hi, although it works with phones, would you be interested in smart home/building applications? We build open-source smart switches/outlets/modules ([https://crownstone.rocks](https://crownstone.rocks)) and would love to integrate with your product!

<comment><USER4> Let's chat, my email is firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Cool product, and terrific thread. I know this is enterprise targeted but if that price point comes down it opens up some interesting consumer possibilities. For instance an Escape Room / ARG where objects can give you clues for the next stage ;)

</comment><comment><USER23> Could these be used as a general purpose bluetooth beacon in terms of just ranging/detecting? I work on an app that uses beacon detection to indicate when users passed through an area, but most bluetooth beacons are a bit unreliable.

<comment><USER4> Definitely possible, but it would depend to some degree on the requirements for your system. For now we're focussed on our end to end asset tracking solution for teams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I work in a large urban hospital. Equipment belongs to a unit (a hospital bed belongs to Unit X and specifically in Room Y). Equipment gets moved around all the time and we often get All Staff emails saying "Has anyone seen equipment X, we are missing it and need it back for a patient."

I think the use case is obvious in hospitals and I know there are other RFID based solutions out there. Perhaps bluetooth might be a better solution as you won't have to install large readers at doorways etc.

Additionally we also have "Code Yellows" daily which means a missing patient (or patient that hasn't returned to unit on time).

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. This is very much an intended application. It's also perfect for hospitals because of the density of staff with phones and tablets as they walk around. Not having to install readers and gateways, as you mention, is also helpful in reducing barriers to deployment, i.e. by avoiding the network security issues of connecting directly into the network. Re: Code Yellows — Interesting. One thing we've been thinking about is putting the labels on to those patient bracelets you get when you're admitted. They're almost the exact same size. The app would know where a patient is located in the hospital, as well as what doctors or staff, along with what equipment was also with that patient.

<comment><USER25> The tracking of which doctors are with the patient is HUGE. Especially for insurance billing.

<comment><USER26> Do doctors typically have smartphones on them? I guess that shouldn't be a surprise, but I wouldn't have assumed.

<comment><USER24> Yes, everyone has a smartphone on them. My healthcare system has policies that say smartphones aren't allowed in patient care areas, but that isn't followed or enforced. Physicians definitely have phone since many use app for clinical care (there are a lot of online risk calculators, reference materials etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nice thing. I like in the description how you use NFC just for association. But when will you add eink and other hardware options?

I use mostly similar hardware made in China. The real added value is eink, so the label is also readable by humans (text) and existing machines (QR). When you have eink prototypes, I may have clients for you.

Also, do you plan to have temperature sensors? It is an easy addition, and opens a large new market.

Another good thing to have can be 433/868/915 Mhz - some companies like to leverage their existing radio, but the protocols can be a pain to deal with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Yeah, e-ink and other sensor hardware is something that we've been considering down the road. It could be added to our reel-to-reel process. But for the moment, we really want to stay focused and keep the hardware very low cost for asset tracking applications.

Agree, temperature is easy to add. We're not quite setup for it at the moment, but considering it in the future for the right opportunity.

Funny you should mention 433/868/915 MHz. That's my background in previous wireless sensor based technology companies. The barrier to entry problem we always ran into was having to install gateways. The approach with Got-it is to leverage the phones already in employees' pockets, making it really easy to integrate at work.

<comment><USER27> Besides protocols, hardware for the gateways is another big problem. SDR offers you a few alternative options - especially if you are not scared by coding the whole thing yourself instead of using a stack.

Please announce you future hardware updates here! Temperature or eink (and especially both) would be very interesting to me.

<comment><USER4> We will. We will also be posting all launch announcements to twitter: @realGot_it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I know this is b2b, but I would love to stick this thing on every single item in my house and track them digitally. Any thoughts on whether that'd be possible, in terms of cost and the tracking algorithm?

Edit: in case it's not obvious, I spend so much time looking for things around the house that I'm willing to pay a significant amount of money to solve this problem. You mentioned the target cost is less than $1. If I have 1000 items that's $1000. Even if that's cost per year, it's not completely out of the question.

<comment><USER4> It's not really designed for that use and probably wouldn't be that helpful. It's more for finding things in areas larger than houses. e.g. Factories and Warehouse's, knowing where things are on a supply chain e.t.c

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Really cool!

But, a few questions:

\- Can a sticker be associated to multiple companies?

\- Can you name stickers (either saved to the sticker itself or saved to the app)?

\- Additionally, can you save metadata to the sticker (should some one else find this item, they'd know who to return it to)?

\- Can the custody of the item be confirmed by a nfc tap?

\- How old does the chain of custody keep record of?

On another note, you guys have an ability to create an industry, don't stop here. I will definitely keep an eye on got-it and try to convince my org it's a good investment.

Keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER30> What is the physical size of the labels? I want to make sure they will fit on smaller parts.

What type of adhesive is used? I wouldn't want it to be too permanent.

Sounds like you are building an asset/inventory tracking system. You might want to think about Equipment Calibration too. I've seen a lot of asset tracking software - most of it cannot keep track of calibration dates, certificates, vendors, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> The size of the labels is 28mm x 76mm x 0.5mm. We'd love to get smaller, but at the moment, we're concentrating on making them thinner. The adhesive is acrylic-based and pretty strong. Some of our initial applications are things like tools and storage containers. Down the road, there might be applications for a more re-stickable variant with an adhesive similar to that used for Post-it notes. Interesting thought regarding equipment calibration labels (i.e. electronic test equipment? scientific or lab equipment?). Maybe even food staples like coffee beans, oils, or longer term perishables like pharmaceuticals even.

<comment><USER30> Thanks! That is helpful.

Yes, in my case its test equipment (tools, lab equipment, scientific instruments, all of that). I know that tiny torque wrench is in the lab somewhere and I know it needs to be calibrated. Now if I could only find the damn thing...

I want to walk around the lab and get alerts for things that are out of calibration, or will be out of cal within 30 days. Most of our items need calibration every year, a battery in your device that lasts more than a year would be a necessity for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wow this is really cool, good luck to yall. A few years ago at one business the head dev and I brainstormed a solution to some issues we were having, and our result was essentially this without the phones, but no one had really done it yet or at least well. At the time we were leaning towards rfid instead of bluetooth for security reasons, (range sucked though) but the concept is the same.

<comment><USER4> Cheers, really appreciate the karma!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there any way to connect multiple devices to a single label? I've tried things like Tile so my wife can find her car keys, but if the tile is tied to a device that isn't there, we are out of luck. If I tied to my phone, and I'm not home, she can't do anything. If we tied to her phone and she has lost this and her keys, we are out of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. That's very much how it actually works, except there are no actual Bluetooth connections or pairing formed that directly link a single phone to a label. Instead, multiple devices (the more the better) all listen for beacons from labels that can be shared as a team. In this way, it works really well at companies with lots of employees walking around the office, warehouse, campus, etc., and needing to keep track of shared assets.

Similar to Slack, anyone at an organisation can create a team and invite people. Then, things labeled by a team member are visible to other team members who can see it's current location, along with who it's with and where it's been over time. Note that it works different than Tile. For instance, in that it doesn't beep when searching for something. Rather, it's location is shown on a map. The application space is targeted more toward industrial or commercial applications from hospitals to factories, warehouses to laboratories, etc., where sound might not be very helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Very cool. For my clarity:

Any pictures demonstrating the flexibilty?

What happens after a year, when the battery dies? Do I have to peel this off all my tools?

Proximity to employee I understand, but how do you get absolute position? Employee phone's GPS?

Have you considered some kind of flexible solar cell? Even indoor fluorescent would probably power the few uW this would sip, quasi-indefinitely.

<comment><USER4> Any pictures demonstrating the flexibilty?

> Absolutely, hot off the press: > [https://imgur.com/a/R2vUkVO](https://imgur.com/a/R2vUkVO) definitely not > losing my wine!

What happens after a year, when the battery dies? Do I have to peel this off all my tools?

> At the moment - yes - although we'll let you know before the label dies. We > have an R&D roadmap that will steadily increase battery life but for now > we're at a year.

Proximity to employee I understand, but how do you get absolute position? Employee phone's GPS?

> Yes, phone GPS. Indoors you can place labels as positioning labels to > provide anchor points, this is mostly targeted at larger deployments.

Have you considered some kind of flexible solar cell? Even indoor fluorescent would probably power the few uW this would sip, quasi-indefinitely.

> I'm going to quietly avoid this questions. But would welcome you to follow > our twitter @realGot_it for announcements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How would this solution work in the scenario of a delivery service (ie pickup/dropoff), can you get detailed metadata?

<comment><AUTHOR> Simply put, yes, the app is currently setup to show a chain of custody over time, which may mean providing the metadata you mention. Specifically, the app currently shows who had a specific delivery at what time, and where, shown chronologically.

But this is also an example by which we're building a platform for other more sophisticated tracking that could extend beyond just one carrier. For just in time supply chains, Got-it labels could enable automatic updates as deliveries go from one carrier to the next. The carriers themselves don't need a specific scanning tool for barcodes or RFIDs. It's all automatic. On the receiving side, when packages arrive on receiving docks, or even on a construction site, we can automatically signal into systems or directly to people that are awaiting the delivery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Awesome product! As someone who often loses things or has trouble keeping track of things, this would be super useful for me and better than Tile as it's adhesive based. I understand your current business model is B2B but are you thinking of introducing a B2C aspect of your business to allow individuals to buy?

<comment><USER4> Our focus at the moment is B2B. I'd love for that to change at some point but right now it's not on the roadmap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Will you be getting an Android app any time soon?

Also, without making any changes to the product you could easily put together a consumer page and sell them. Maybe provide different colours... I know so many people who would love these in their personal lives

<comment><USER4> We are targeting Android end of Q1 next year.

To some extent I'd agree with you and eventually I'd love for this to become a consumer product. Here are some of the reasons we haven't taken that approach though.

\- We have relatively limited resource. We would have to be choosing between features targeted at consumers and features targeted at factories tracking 1000's of tools.

\- We currently can track things to within about 10m. That's about the size of a house. In a factory 400m by 350m on the other hand it's a massive help - people actually spend hours looking for things. Products like Tile solve that problem with a buzzer - our form factor and price point make that very difficult. Sounds also don't work in a noisy factory environment - you usually can't hear the phone in your pocket.

<comment><USER37> I would absolutely love using this to track the shared tools at my place of work - we have had constant problems with people using them and forgetting they had them in their possession. I was about to order a 10-pack to try out until I noticed Android support is not here yet - nearly our entire team uses Android, I can only think of one person (of about 25) who has an iPhone. This is true for most people in my field that I'm aware of - iPhones are relatively rare for whatever reason.

We have job sites within a few hundred mile radius and around ten trucks - just seeing the last known location of the tags would be a massive help determining who has the tool. It's far better than our current group text "Who has X?" method.

And yes, we've tried a sign in/out logbook for the tools but it never caught on. I like that apparently as long as you have the app for Got-it installed the tools should be tracked.

Milwaukee has a very similar product (their TICK trackers) that use Bluetooth, but are in a ruggedized plastic enclosure that's great for tracking larger items but falls short on smaller tools. It also doesn't help that their app is incredibly fickle and can be difficult to use.

Once the Android app comes out, I can see us easily ordering 100 labels to track all our (expensive, small, easily misplace-able) tools.

<comment><USER4> Hey, happy for you to ping me at firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll be in touch end of q1 next year when Android is released.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is really cool. Do you guys have an API (or do you plan on having one eventually)?

</comment><comment><USER39> Just some feedback on your landing page... I think you could do a LOT better in showing that this is an actual hardware product that tracks "things."

Perhaps show a 1,2,3 step process.

1: Place tracker on your things 2: Track using our software 3: Find in seconds

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback, I kinda agree, at any rate it's on the backlog for internal discussion at our next product meeting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> From the privacy policy [https://www.got-it.com/privacy- policy](https://www.got-it.com/privacy-policy)

"If you tell us where you are (e.g., by allowing your mobile device to send us your location), we may store and use that information to provide you with location-based information and advertising. If you want to deactivate this feature, you can either reinstall the App(s) or deactivate Bluetooth on your mobile device."

Do you plan to advertise to users based on location? Is this an important part of your monetization plan?

<comment><USER4> To be honest we've never even had a conversation around advertising - so the answer would be no. It's not really something we'd associate with B2B applications.

Our monetisation plan is simple. We plan to sell what we are calling "market vertical" applications on top of our core platform.

The app in the app store which is great for small teams and pilots.

When you move to large scale deployments for a particular use case e.g. tracking inventory across 10,000's of stores the software needs to look very different. You need reporting, alerts, business rules, access control levels e.t.c Here we plan on selling labels as close to cost as we can and monetise the Enterprise software on a subscription basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wow this looks very cool!

Silly question you mention lithium battery technology, I assume currently they're not re-chargeable lithium? But could you possibly make the label re- chargeable with a coil + lithium ion chemistry?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Correct, it's not rechargeable. Rather, primary (non-re-chargeable) lithium-based electrochemistry in very tiny amounts on thin films. We do have some energy harvesting stuff up our sleeves here too, but that's down the road a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just ordered a set. I've been hearing about this from Brian for years now and am so excited it's finally live and available for purchase. About to tell all my midwest manufacturing friends...

</comment><comment><USER42> Very cool! I wonder if it would be possible to make these work with the Helium network ([https://www.helium.com/](https://www.helium.com/)).

<comment><USER4> Maybe, not something we've looked into. Feel free to drop me your email (we have chat on www.got-it.com) and I can get back to you in slower time when we've had time to investigate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> If I had a dollar for every time I crawled around a warehouse store room counting boxed of crap that hadn't moved in ages...I would have more than enough to invest in this product ;)

</comment><comment><USER44> These could work super well for large camera rental houses that are constantly checking gear in and out. Lots of little parts to check in after a rental. This could save a ton of time.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is brilliant and I can see so many use-cases for this in particular across manufacturing, travel, transport and logistics in heavy asset maintenance organisations - very many organisations pay over the odds for such sensors that don't give this level of flexibility, cost and scale. Unsure if the product has a hardware platform interface for direct integration, however that would be great to plug into existing asset management systems.

</comment><comment><USER46> Have you given any thought to encryption over bluetooth?

I'm thinking specifically about the DOD/ITAR material traceability market. They would eat this product up at $1 per label.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've heard from those in the military about scenarios where the whole site or compound goes into lock-down if one little piece of equipment goes missing. Putting labels on everything even remotely sensitive could be doable with a simple label. We've been thinking about how to enable really strong low level encryption without burdening the overall cost. Agree, that's important for these kind of applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> How does it work if you have 100s of them in a close range such as tracking inventory? Also will you be able to print anything on the labels?

<comment><USER4> Hey David here from Got-it. We've tested about 1500 in super close proximity (all in the same box) and that works well.

Three further points here:

1) We don't rely on forming Bluetooth connections (which require handshake signals every 20ms) which allows us to have significantly more BLE devices than some other solutions.

2) Only a small percentage of radio events need to be picked up for the solution to work.

3) The offering is a B2B one where typically there are multiple people at work all with smartphones that are able to pick up the signals. This further increases the probabilistic chance of picking up multiple labels.

Our labels are printable (check out the image link to see what that looks like). No promises but the next generation should come portfolio stacked and ready to be fed into a thermal label printer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I have a site that could use help tracking items, but it would be strange to have users download another app. Is an API in the works?

<comment><USER4> Hey David from Got-it here. Honestly not at the moment, it's something we are considering but first we'd need to see the demand and what it would mean in terms of shifting focus. Happy to talk through your use case - ping me at email@example.com

<comment><USER49> I can think of several different ways our product in the agriculture sector could use these. We would also need an API for it to be useful. Do you have plans for an Android app as well or is it going to be iOS only?

<comment><USER4> We absolutely have plans for an Android app, we started with iOS because it's the more restrictive of the two platforms with regards to BLE in the background. We don't have a firm date for Android yet but it's most likely end of Q1 next year.

<comment><USER48> Maybe a simple solution while the API is being developed would just be to make the end points (transmissions) from the labels known.

<comment><USER4> It's possible, theoretically we already have an api and a mobile SDK.

The question for us would be around support, SLA's e.t.c our capacity as a team and what we would have to drop in order to be able to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Is this iBeacon advertisements? Some other custom BLE header? I already ordered a kit :) This is truly amazing. Fantastic job.

<comment><USER4> Cheers. Yup, iBeacon albeit with some minor modifications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Would these survive being in my washing machine? I'm desperate to find out where all my socks are going off to.

</comment><comment><USER52> What kind of background do you need to understand a decent amount of this tech? I basically only understand software and there seem to be many different areas advanced in this product.

Maybe the kind of answer I'm looking for is: are there any documented DIY projects that touch some of the tech used here?

</comment><comment><USER48> Does it give a warning before the battery dies or is the idea to just replace after about 1 year?

<comment><USER4> Right now we get battery updates fed back into the system. We don't do much with the information at the moment (other than store it) but alerts when batteries are low is definitely on the roadmap and we will have alerts before there is any chance of this first crop of labels dying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is so cool! Congratulations!!!

For durable items will the battery be rechargeable somehow?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. At the moment, unfortunately it's not rechargeable. We've reduced the bill of materials count to almost nothing. It's just a few parts, mainly adhesive tape and aluminium foil, so it's meant to be used more like an RFID label that works without scanning. That said, we do have some R&D going to implement an energy harvesting method that could extend the life for several years (that's actually how David and I met years ago, in roughly that technology space).

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Very cool! I'll bet we could use this to make it really easy to document any unique issues that come up while assembling iterations of our satellites.

<comment><USER4> Awesome idea, would be great to talk to you and see how we might be able to help you. My email is email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Does each phone have to be paired with each tracked item?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not paired via a BLE connection, but associated with the Got-it app by tapping an integrated NFC on the same label substrate. It's a non-connectable beacon. This way, all the phones that are associated as part of a team can listen for all the items that other team members may have added as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Wow, I'll be keeping my eye on this. Sounds terrific for our small construction business tracking equipment across multiple sites.

</comment><comment><USER57> Congrats on the launch, this looks awesome!

</comment><comment><USER58> I love everything about this, but the landing page hurt my eyes — perhaps make it a bit less bright?

</comment><comment><USER59> _lasts over a year_

I'm guessing this depends on how often the device broadcasts?

</comment><comment><USER60> Needs Android. Desperately.

<comment><USER61> Not the OP, but my company also makes something similar for pets. The problem with Android is that Google severely crippled BLE to a point where you can only perform a single BLE scan every 15 minutes when the app is in the background. The only other option is enabling a foreground service to always run, which really ruins Android battery life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Are these tags FCC ID authorized (for sale in the US)?

</comment><comment><USER63> very interesting and cool technology. Will there be an SDK for developing in- house apps?

</comment><comment><USER64> Well done guys. This is so cool.

</comment><comment><USER5> Huh. Looks like the certificate for got-it.com is hosed?

Maybe it was signed by a CA that is not in the standard list accepted by Firefox 71?

<comment><USER5> Also not liked by Brave Version 1.1.21 Chromium: 79.0.3945.79 (Official Build) (64-bit)

<comment><USER5> At least some of the queries for this domain name are coming back pointed to 188.8.131.52 (184.108.40.206.bc.googleusercontent.com), which seems to be okay on the SSL certificate (see [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=got- it.com](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=got-it.com) ) even though they offer TLS 1.1 in addition to TLS 1.2.

However, other DNS queries get pointed to 22.214.171.124 (hit- adult.opendns.com), and according to testssl.sh offers only TLS 1.2, but doesn't have server cipher order, and has an incomplete chain of trust.

The latter IP address also seems to be vulnerable to Secure Client-Initiated Renegotiation, and BEAST (CVE-2011-3389), and maybe LUCKY13 (CVE-2013-0169).

<comment><USER4> I've manually flushed open dns and dig is now only reporting 220.127.116.11 any chance it's now working for you?

<comment><USER65> Nope. Still borked on OpenDNS.

<comment><USER4> Looks like it's been content blocked with Open DNS on their family friendly DNS servers. I've submitted a request for it to be categorised. Previous experience is that this takes a few days.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Diaspora Found Its Tiger Stripe in the Midst of a Paypal Fiasco - <AUTHOR> http://blog.diasporafoundation.org/2011/10/19/how-diaspora-found-its-tiger-stripe-in-the-midst-of-a-paypal-fiasco.html

<comment><USER2> As a business owner who once had their Paypal account frozen (mistakenly, but frozen nonetheless) 10 years ago and now does $10,000+ every month through Paypal I can say they're doing something wrong. Paypal doesn't need to steal money, they make billions a year, they don't need your $45,000.

Something smells rotten and it's Diaspora. $200,000 and over one year later and they have nothing to show for it and they're still begging for money. They promised a finished product for $10,000, they received $200,000 and they're still not done. Why are people still giving them money? If a contractor said $10,000 to replace my roof and I gave him $200,000 and he came back saying he needed more I'd call the police and sue, not give him another $45,000

So what happens when they get another 20k or 60k or 200k and they say "oops that's not enough", everyone gets a refund? Or does Diaspora walk away? Or do they hold another donation round in a year?

Sooo disappointed in Diaspora, so many startups could have been created with $200k but they burned the money and now they're back asking for more, like watching a homeless guy buy alcohol with the 20 you just gave him and he comes back asking for more money.

Zuckerberg was just an average programmer and he made Facebook with almost no funding while attending college, these four get $200,000 and make nothing.

I'd love to know what these donators are thinking, can anyone give me a good reason why it's a good idea to keep giving Diaspora money when they already show no progress from the first $200,000 they were given? If you're a donator how will you feel when they receive another 20 or 200k and Diaspora is still a flop?

<comment><USER3>
      ...over one year later and they have nothing to show for it
      and they're still begging for money.

I have no dog in this fight, but your comment confuses me, because there seems to be quite a lot going on. If I look at the "contribute" page[1] and the list of sites publically running diaspora at this stage[2], I see a great deal of progress and useful code. Not a finished product yet, by any means, but they definitely have something pretty concrete to show for their efforts so far.

[1] <http://diasporafoundation.org/get_involved>

[2] [https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Community- supporte...](https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Community-supported- pods)

<comment><USER4> I believe his comment was relative and not to be taken literally. Yes, code has been written, but that is hardly a counter argument to the facts presented.

<comment><USER3> It appears that not only has code been written, it's been publically deployed and used for social networking. I'd say that's a fair step beyond "nothing to show for it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "When PayPal mysteriously and arbitrarily decided to freeze everyone's donations..."

"...We had raised $45,000 in just a few days, and then PayPal froze our account."

Not so mysterious. Believe it or not, no payment service is going to allow you to collect tens of thousands of dollars in a few days with just a name and an e-mail to identify you. The criminal abuse would be rampant. If that doesn't raise the red flags at the risk department of any processor they'd be out of business in no time.

Just another rehash of the same story we've seen on HN a dozen times this year, as recently as ~2 weeks ago with the game developer taking preorders for an undeveloped game -- who eventually satisfied PayPal and later wrote a post about how Google Checkout was worse and PayPal was not so unreasonable after all.

"Yes, you heard that right. PayPal gets to earn interest on all of our donations for 6 months"

If PayPal's agreements with its underwriting banks are anything like the rest of the merchant processing world, then reserve accounts are always non- interest-bearing to prevent any incentive to create them without proper justification.

<comment><USER6> "Believe it or not, no payment service is going to allow you to collect tens of thousands of dollars in a few days with just a name and an e-mail to identify you."

Using the email address and name is hardly the best way to evaluate the trustworthiness of Diaspora.

There are lots of reasonable questions about how to scale underwriting systems, and how this might work generally, but we shouldn't neglect the fact that in this particular situation 1) Diaspora not being able to receive donations is a bad outcome, and 2) there isn't exactly a paucity of public information about them.

<comment><USER5> For all PayPal knows at the point they freeze the account, it's some teen in Romania that has no connection to the project and is using its name to collect donations for personal use. First they have to stop the potential fraud from growing even more damaging to them by freezing the account, then they need to figure out who they're really working with, then they need to evaluate the risk of accepting those payments.

<comment><USER6> From the post: "Even though we've complied with every PayPal request, including providing them with our certificate of incorporation, they still won't give us an explanation for any of their moves."

It seems that Diaspora weren't unwilling to verify their identity.

<comment><USER5> Yes, although the blog post that their account was frozen is dated yesterday, so who knows if anyone at PayPal has even had a chance to review it yet. That indie developer (I forget their name to look it up again) had also posted on their blog that their account was closed, then a few days later PayPal reversed itself and reopened it -- that may still happen here. I hope it does, as on its face Diaspora doesn't seem like an organization that would attract too much risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, lots of talk here about a service that none seem to have used.

You all are probably way more involved in creating software and doing private finance than I will ever be, so I can't speak to those areas.

I've been using Diaspora for about a month now - maybe a little while longer and while there are growing pains, I've been really impressed with the way the service works.

While there are lots of people who use Diaspora and Facebook, I ( hopefully ) deleted my Facebook account as I got tired of being the product and use Diaspora exclusively.

And like I said, I'm no tech guru. Any operational questions that I posted were answered promptly and courteously. The folks there are still claiming its alpha, and it works pretty well for me.

Oh, and to the registration question - I Scroogled ' diaspora pod ' and the first listing was for [https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Community- supporte...](https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Community-supported- pods). The fourth listing is the pod that I belong to diasp.org - I had no problem signing up the first day I tried.

Try it for yourself and then let us know what you thought

</comment><comment><USER8> The most mysterious thing is that people actually donated to diaspora? If we've seen what they can achieve with $200k I somehow doubt $40k is going to get us more than... nothing.

> Obviously, PayPal's behavior is unacceptable, which is why we have asked our > lawyer to get involved.

oh wait, that's where any money is going to go.

<comment><USER9> I agree that they weren't the ideal recipients of $200k, but they have produced a fairly functional and usable product. I don't understand the hate they get on HN.

<comment> k-mcgrady The problem is that most people haven't seen the product. I asked for an invite the day they opened them and still haven't gotten one. It has taken them that long that I won't be using it now. Facebook's timeline is great and Google+ is also a good network.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I have no idea why they're shooting themselves in the foot like that. You can sign up and use the product at lots of other places though (see <http://podupti.me/> for options).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Diaspora is up and running and is it is a great project. They are non- commercial, do not sell your info, and survive on donations and grants. Everyone should open a free account and donate if they like what they see. <https://diasp.org/> No invites needed. Please boycott someone else.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just shows the naïveté of the Diaspora team. No surprises here.

<comment><USER9> Is expecting Paypal to give you your money really _that_ naïve?

<comment><USER12> Yep.

If you're not shipping physical products within a day or two of accepting the money, and shipping them via a service which allows you/your customer/paypal to track the deliveries, then you're in the category who should expect Paypal to decide to hang on to any money put into your account.

Surely anybody who's got access to Google can find that out before getting caught out by it?

<comment><USER9> Googling "paypal donations" doesn't immediately yield that information. My expectation would be that since Paypal advertises a donations service, they probably provide one, and that it probably ought to result in you being able to collect your donations.

<comment><USER13> Sure, if you are in fact a non-profit.

Everybody is allowed to receive the occasional donation (pretty generous of Paypal, as they don't charge commission on that), but if you build a "business of receiving donations" you need to proof you are a non-profit.

It's that obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hmm, all sounds a bit strange.

While I don't approve of PayPal freezing payment's I can kind of get it with a conference which may or may not take place. They need to protect themselves from having to hand out potentially thousands of dollars in compensation.

What I don't get is why they would freeze an account getting donations. It is a donation. You are not paying for a service which may or may not arrive. Seem's very very strange.

<comment><USER5> Money laundering. Selling illegal products or services in the guise of donations. Posing as an organization you're not even affiliated with to ask for those donations. Just because someone, who PayPal only knows as a name and an e-mail address, claims to be taking donations does not mean that's actually what's going on. When those donations go from $0 to $45,000 in a few days, it behooves them to identify that customer and check out exactly where all that money is coming from and what risk is associated with it.

Even if they are bonafide donations, if there are expectations attached to those funds (that the company is going to build a product or perform a specific service, or put it towards a certain cause) and there's a risk those expectations won't be met, then there's a risk for PayPal that some of those donors are going to be upset and do something about it -- like cry fraud and charge back the payments. PayPal has to carefully manage its chargeback rate like every other merchant.

<comment><USER15> How do flattr get around this problem? They use paypal and it looks like they could be used for money laundering

<comment><USER5> By not having a huge spike in volume on a new account, providing information about the business to PayPal at some point, and by having a track record of low risk. It's not a problem to open a PayPal account and start accepting payments, it's only a problem to do that, not have any verified information in your account yet, then also do something to raise red flags. And for most people, even when that happens, once you give PayPal enough info to convince them you're not doing something shady, they'll unfreeze the account and you take payments without a problem for years after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Oh come on people, it's not a fiasco. Has nobody watched Breaking Bad? Money laundering!

<comment><USER3> Obviously, the solution is bitcoin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have a paypal question..What happens when you plan ahead and supply paypal with additional information such as incorporation papers, etc when setting up a new account?

</comment><comment><USER18> The Diaspora crew suffers from Münchausen syndrome.</comment>


Quick Redis Benchmark: AWS vs. Azure - <AUTHOR> https://zapier.com/engineering/quick-redis-benchmark-aws-vs-azure/

<comment><USER3> Having used their Linux offerings in 2012 - the only thing that I can say is whilst Azure does provide good performance for the price. You lose out on stability, sanity and on choice.

I know the cloud is supposed to be a place where the servers are volatile ... BUT ... random reboots with non-writeable disks when they come back as well as network connectivity problems between servers are not something that I've experienced at Rackspace or AWS.

The support at Azure is pretty laughable ("what's a public key?" from one of their so-called TCP/IP experts) if you manage to get a phone call with the folks over at Redmond. Otherwise all you have is forum support where you are basically treated like an idiot and blamed for their mistakes unless you can prove otherwise.

The Windows offering is a little better, more stable for sure - but, then you run into crazy firewall issues if you are using something like AzureRunMe to do the work and set-up bespoke web app servers.

For what i spent the best part of a month failing at getting set up at Azure, took me a few days to set up at Rackspace, with configuration management and service monitoring.

I wont be rushing back to use Azure again any time soon and be warned that this benchmark is only a small glimpse at what is otherwise a mighty shit sandwich.

<comment><USER4> I can't comment on linux but I've had no issues with Azure using windows, in fact I would say its fantastic. I been have using cloud services web/worker roles, messaging, blob and SQL azure too... I have been also integrating cloud TFS publishing, and automated deployments. Its been a dream so far. I am looking at the elastic scalability block also for scaling out and in, it all looks great.

I mean transitioning from staging to production is just a virtual IP swap, sweet...

So if you get your setup right and go with the Microsoft cloud setup I think its smooth sailing.

<comment><USER5> Check out [http://metricshub.com](http://metricshub.com) (acquired by Microsoft) that provides a great dashboard of billing usage, but also lets you auto-scale resources, all for free.

<comment><USER4> This looks very good, will definitely try it out..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another recent benchmark:

Cloud Server Performance: A Comparative Analysis of 5 Large Cloud IaaS Providers

[http://www.cloudspectator.com/cloud-server-performance-a- com...](http://www.cloudspectator.com/cloud-server-performance-a-comparative- analysis-of-5-large-cloud-iaas-providers-3/)

<comment><USER7> Interesting that Windows Azure comes up at the top not only purely in performance but also in the price performance ratio as well.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, they're matching AWS' prices for IaaS, at least on pay-as-you-go. For reserved instances there seems to be a difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Color me impressed, 3x throughput for the price(60,000vs20,000) for azure might be enough for me to create an account. Can anyone comment on what accounts for the differential? It doesn't seem like the hardware would do it,but I could be wrong.

<comment><USER9> EC2's virtualization is pretty terrible for Redis [http://redis.io/topics/latency](http://redis.io/topics/latency)

The newer m3 instance types are better, but for the most part Redis is scarcely usable on EC2.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't go as far as calling it scarcely usable, but EC2 does add some overhead to running redis. I've been using it on EC2 for over 2 years (some of the metrics in the doc you linked are on my machines BTW :) ), and you just have to find workarounds for persistence because of the high fork times - <USER2> adds a bit of complexity, but a dedicated slave for saving is not that big a deal, and can reside on the same instance as the master).

We've recently moved to m3 instances and the problem has completely gone away, hopefully Amazon will migrate all instances to use HVM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Try linode, numbers are going to surprise you.

</comment><comment><USER12> The AWS medium tested is a single core. The Azure is dual core. Context switching could account for the difference in preformance.

Just because they are both labeled medium doesn't mean they're comparable. The Azure is also about %50 more the AWS last time I looked..

Edit: I was wrong about the pricing. They are similarly priced.

<comment><USER13> They both cost $0.12/hour unreserved, so it's a fair comparison if you are thinking performance per dollar.

<comment><USER12> [http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual- ma...](http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/)

Azure is listed at $0.18/hour.

Edit: My mistake. Windows is $0.18/hour, Linux is $0.12.

Edit2: Now that's interesting, Microsoft charges more for a Windows VM.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an honest approach: Windows VMs include a license.

<comment><USER14> You'd think that Microsoft wouldn't have to license their own software.

<comment><USER15> It would probably be seen as anti-competitive if they licensed between business units for free.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Justice demands 1.3M IP addresses related to Trump resistance site - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346544-dreamhost-claims-doj-requesting-info-on-visitors-to-anti-trump-website?amp <comment><USER2> Ummm... Organizing a legal protest is supposed to be actions that are protected by free speech.

Requesting server logs and IP addresses is something that should require a warrant and proof of criminal action.

How in the world does organizing a constitutionally protected protest qualify as a criminal action?

This is some gestapo level shit, regardless of whether you agree with Trump or not.

<comment><USER3> These days "free speech" means giving a platform to white nationalists/supremacists, no matter what.

If you're not concerned, you're not paying enough attention. This continues to go bad places very quickly.

<comment><USER2> It might go bad places, but nowhere near as bad of places as shutting down free speech. We have history to prove this fact, which is why it's part of our constitution.

We don't get to just repress free speech because we disagree with it. If white supremacists have a platform, then we need to meet them head on and fight their ideas with our ideas.

<comment><USER3> Germany would disagree with you. Hate speech laws have proven very effective in other countries, but as usual, America refuses to look outside its borders for any answers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15011636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15011636)

</comment><comment><USER5> We already know about neo-nazi racists and gov already investigates them. However, Antifa and these Marxist Resistance groups are newly radicalized and dangerous groups that regularly entertain violence against Trump and his supporters. Remember the shooter who tried to assassinate Republican congressman anybody? They deserve to be investigated as it effects the stability of our country.

<comment><USER6> Sure but you don't go fishing for antifa, you get a search warrant if you have a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.</comment></comment>


Life in Life (2012) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP5-iIeKXE8 <comment><USER2> From the comments, see...

OTCA Metapixel - Conway's Game of Life [http://www.instructables.com/id/OTCA- Metapixel-Conways-Game-...](http://www.instructables.com/id/OTCA-Metapixel- Conways-Game-of-Life/)

[http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/OTCA_metapixel](http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/OTCA_metapixel)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern)

[https://thewalnut.io/visualizer/visualize/3631/987/](https://thewalnut.io/visualizer/visualize/3631/987/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Watching this is the closest thing I've had to a religious experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> OMG!

The first program I did in my Bally Astrocade so many years ago was Life. I remember thinking what a dream it would be to be able to run a 100x100 grid at one generation per second. I could not have dreamed of this.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiEQg- SHY1g&t=58s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiEQg-SHY1g&t=58s)

I found this to be a really cool interpretation of the game of life, as the computation creates a visible state.

</comment><comment><USER5> People who are intrigued by Conway's Game of Life and cellular automata (CA) in general may enjoy tinkering with them in Golly [0], an open source sandbox for CAs.

[0] [http://golly.sourceforge.net/](http://golly.sourceforge.net/)

</comment><comment><USER5> The Game of Life is probably the first program I ever wrote. I (somehow) managed to get it working on a Timex Sinclair 2068 using a BASIC compiler which could only support one dimensional arrays.

</comment><comment><USER6> It shows the recursion of our entire universe.

</comment><comment><USER7> That was a beautiful thing. Thanks for posting that. Made my day.

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool video of self organization, which led me to this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X-gtr4pEBU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X-gtr4pEBU)

</comment><comment><USER9> .

</comment><comment><USER9> что это</comment>


China Has Dominated the West Before - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/china-west-portugal-macau-taiwan/612379/ <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_silver_trade_from_the_1...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_silver_trade_from_the_16th_to_19th_centuries)</comment>


How to Make Pages on Your Website Load Via AJAX - <AUTHOR> http://experimentgarden.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-make-new-pages-on-your-website.html <comment><USER2> Why does this webpage keep reloading every few seconds?

<comment><AUTHOR> Which webpage are you talking about?</comment></comment>


Back to Paper Calendars - <AUTHOR> http://blog.radic.com/back-to-paper-calendars

<comment><USER2> I've been using taskwarrior for organizing/scheduling most everything: <http://taskwarrior.org>

</comment><comment><USER3> It's impressive to me how much paper vs. digital matters.

This isn't true for everyone, but for me:

Paper (or a whiteboard) = thinking

Digital = consuming or gathering info

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally, there's something about putting a pen to paper that makes me focus</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to find good beta users - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN, I developed an app that uses substantial computing ressources and thus I cannot afford to simply have an open, yes not even a closed beta in the common sense of the word. Nonetheless I'm looking for some users that would take the app out for a ride without breaking the bank.<p>So my question to you is, how do you find quality beta users without the need to prescreen a large quantity? (That would be impossible as I'm a single dev) <comment><USER2> Anything that is closed but looks exciting makes people apply for it. Having a private beta for which users have to apply might help. Once you have a list, you can identify people from the applicants.

</comment><comment><USER3> HN is actually a great resource for this.

I would suggest expanding on your OP here with some details about the app, perhaps I might be interested :P

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an app about measuring the virality of your content in social networks. For more details you can contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also try <http://betali.st> and <http://startupli.st>

</comment><comment><USER5> I've had good results with FeedbackArmy</comment>


The origins of a 7000 year old fairy tale - <AUTHOR> https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-origins-of-an-ancient-fairy-tale <comment><USER2> (2017); the original research is [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4736946/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4736946/) (2016).</comment>


Ask HN: What's your coding setup like? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to improve my coding setup - both in terms of productivity and comfort.
What I currently have is a high-end macbook, which I use both in the office and at home, and very occasionally in bars or eateries. This has worked for me for years, but I'm starting to notice wrist pains and eye strain that weren't there before.
I've read conflicting accounts of using exotic external keyboards (such as typematrix or das keyboard), large external displays, curved or not, with high contrast or high dpi or both... no one quite seems to agree what the best (affordable) setup is.
What setup do you use, what have you tried and discarded, and why? <comment><USER2> For ideas about what to use, I recommend perusing [http://usesthis.com/](http://usesthis.com/). Most setups are pretty standard, typically a MacBook or similar connected to a large external monitor. Some are unusual (like Richard Stallman[1]) or obvious jokes (John McAfee[2]).

Really though, most people don't need anything special to work comfortably. Standard keyboards and screens should be fine. Correct adjustment of chair, screen, and keyboard certainly help, but the important thing is to take breaks regularly. And _stop typing_ if you feel pain. RSI can take years to treat. Some injuries can even be permanent.

1\. [http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/](http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/)

2\. [http://john.mcafee.usesthis.com/](http://john.mcafee.usesthis.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a 24 inch 2560x1440 monitor attached to my laptop.

A dark gray Happy Hacker Keyboard 2.

I am running Debian with the i3 tiling window manager.

I use PHPstorm and VIM and have those open all the time on different workspaces.

I can easily open firefox next to the developer tools next to 2 small shells.

Or php storm with two shells at the bottom and one at the side.</comment>


Xbox co-creator Rob Wyatt sues Atari for failure to pay for VCS console design - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2020/04/02/xbox-co-creator-rob-wyatt-sues-atari-for-failing-to-pay-him-for-design-of-vcs-console/ <comment><USER2> How many times now has "Atari" come back as an investor stripping scam, based on nothing but memories of the one time there was a _real_ company using that name?

<comment><USER3> At least they can blame the Coronavirus (which they did). I think you'll see a ton of insolvent companies doing this.

If you want an Atari, buy a real console. Better yet, build a MAME cabinet. You can run all the 2600-7800 games in there, with much better controls. CRT emulation (raster and vector) is pretty impressive on a 4k monitor.

<comment><USER4> I've always wanted to build a MAME cabinet. Do you have any good resources you could share on how to build one?

<comment><USER5> [http://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/introduction.html](http://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/introduction.html) for building joysticks.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/cade/](https://www.reddit.com/r/cade/) has a lot of people building/rebuilding cabinets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish I had never backed this train wreck. The last 'update' I got from Atari was that they're building a cryptocurrency casino: www.casinoatari.com

That didn't give me quite as much pause as the "Atari Hotel" they were promoting a few months ago.

<comment><USER7> Kodak (or whoever has bought the rights to the name) tried to start some stupid cryptocurrency. Worse, the investors actually bought into the bullshit: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin)

<comment><USER8> Not only start a silly cryptocurrency but got into the mining hardware business [1]. As a number of family members were and are lifelong photographers, seeing Kodak's long fall from grace was particularly hurtful for nostalgia's sake.

[1] [https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/11/kodak-kashminer- bitcoin-...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/11/kodak-kashminer-bitcoin- mining-machines/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Note that they also released not one, but _two ICO tokens_ \- one Atari Token, in Gibraltar, and one Pong Token, in Kenya.

They also released plans for cryptocurrency casino, called Atari Casino - [https://casinoatari.com/](https://casinoatari.com/) \- connected with the first, Gibraltar-based ICO

I think SEC are going to be highly entertained

<comment><USER10> Atari Token is under Atari Chain Limited, which is a licensee - a new company registered in Gibraltar. Their online imagery has the logo of ICICB Group.

A quick search reveals Atari gets 30% of the revenue from the token sale. This is presumably for lending their name to ICICB.

ICICB Group get 70% of the revenue raised from the token sale. Can't find any details on who these people are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In case anyone else is as confused as I was when I started to read this article, this has nothing to do with the original Atari VCS, but relates to a new upcoming console which Infrogrames has ingeniously decided to also name "Atari VCS".

</comment><comment><USER12> What is all involved in being a 'co-creator' of something like the Xbox? I realize it's a huge project but Rob Wyatt's name isn't even mentioned on the Wikipedia page.

<comment><USER13> His profile [1] states he was the systems architect of the original xbox. He also worked on the PlayStation 3 according to an interview [2]. Another reference at [3]. Wikipedia is not an exhaustive or authoritative resource; a starting point at best.

[1] [https://about.me/rob_wyatt](https://about.me/rob_wyatt)

[2] [https://venturebeat.com/2011/11/15/the-making-of-the-xbox- pa...](https://venturebeat.com/2011/11/15/the-making-of-the-xbox-part-2/view- all/)

[3] [http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/02/exclusive_getting_u...](http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/02/exclusive_getting_under_the_hood_of_polymega_the_clone_console_to_rule_them_all)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Shady clients is what retainers are for.

<comment><USER15> Yup, as a consultant, this was poor client and accounts receivable management.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, that is a really large irrelevant video that site just forced on me for trying to read that article.

<comment><USER17> Install NoScript, it makes the web far more usable.</comment></comment>