1M People Use Facebook Over Tor - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-over-tor/1-million-people-use-facebook-over-tor/865624066877648 <comment><USER2> Alec Muffet has done a lot of work to get Facebook running on TOR and he's a true believer. I really enjoyed working with him when I was at Facebook. He also did a lot of work to get .onion domains to be recognized by registrars as a special purpose domain name. This let us issue certificates on .onion.

I don't know if the story behind the facebookcorewwwi.onion domain name itself has been talked about much, but we wanted a memorable name for the domain so we took a new cluster that hadn't been put in production yet and threw something like 500k cores at brute forcing onion names till we had a memorable domain name. Alec had a script that looked for hashes that started with facebook and then he picked the one that seemed to fit the most. And that's how we have facebookcorewwwi.onion now.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand quite, why so much brute force?

<comment><USER4> Onion names are sort of public keys. You generate a secret key, then that's transformed/hashed into the public key that is your onion address.

Since onion addresses are essentially random strings of a certain length, the only way to get a "vanity" onion address is to brute force it.

<comment><USER5> Also, if I'm not mistaken, this means that if YOU can brute force a vanity domain, anyone else willing to throw down the same amount of computing power can perform the same brute force and discover your private key, taking over your onion site?

Edit: probably wrong, see below

<comment><USER6> Sure. The same is true for anything that uses public key encryption (Bitcoin for one). But the amount of computing power needed doesn't exist.

According to this person's math [1]: "It would take ~6.7e40 times longer than the age of the universe to exhaust half of the keyspace of a AES-256 key"

I don't know if Tor uses AES-256, but I'm sure any reasonable encryption algorithm would be similar.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/1x50xl/time...](https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/1x50xl/time_and_energy_required_to_bruteforce_a_aes256/)

<comment><USER7> The energy calculation assumes the computation is irreversible. If you use reversible computing, there is no lower bound: you can compute as much as you want for as little energy as you want.

The time calculation assumes our current computers and disregards Moore's law.

<comment><USER8> You have to create the algorithm to reverse an arbitrary AES-256 key, which is considered to be impossible, so that doesn't really make a difference. Your comment about current computers fails to grasp the scale that we are talking about here:

> It would take 10^38 Tianhe-2 Supercomputers running for the entirety of the > existence of everything to exhaust half of the keyspace of a AES-256 key.

Let's assume that Moore's law is true for forever. In 300 years we will have a super computer capable of cracking a single AES-256 key in 37 millennium. However claiming that Moore's law will stay the same for 300 years when many think it won't last 30 is foolhardy.

<comment><USER7> >You have to create the algorithm to reverse an arbitrary AES-256 key, which is considered to be impossible, so that doesn't really make a difference.

What? Why is brute force impossible to code? I don't understand what you're claiming.

I agree that adding in Moore's law doesn't change the numbers by much. Moore's law plus weakening of cryptographic assumptions might do it, though. Plenty of previously-believed-to-be-strong crypto algorithms have been cracked, it's reasonable to think that we just don't have the tools to create unbreakable codes yet. (E.g. RSA is known to be breakable with quantum computers with Shor's algorithm.)

<comment><USER8> > What? Why is brute force impossible to code? I don't understand what you're > claiming.

You claim that a reversible algorithm takes zero time. I said that requires a reversible algorithm that applies to an arbitrary AES-256 key which is currently thought to be impossible.

Brute forcing is not breaking but instead simply enumerating the key space and is subject to the slow downs we are talking about here.

> I agree that adding in Moore's law doesn't change the numbers by much. > Moore's law plus weakening of cryptographic assumptions might do it, though. > Plenty of previously-believed-to-be-strong crypto algorithms have been > cracked, it's reasonable to think that we just don't have the tools to > create unbreakable codes yet. (E.g. RSA is known to be breakable with > quantum computers with Shor's algorithm.)

But you are missing the point of cryptographic systems, the goal typically isn't to be forever uncrackable, it is to be effectively forever uncrackable which includes upgrading the strength of your cryptography over time.

If we were talking about cracking crypto within 100 years then maybe we could talk about reasonable fear, but all of these things involve timelines that are longer than that (including quantum computer work).

<comment><USER7> >You claim that a reversible algorithm takes zero time.

No, you misread my comment. Reversible computing can take almost no energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related: Please Facebook, let me peek over your walled garden. Taking a privacy-friendly stance, with the current Facebook, hurts my social life.

I do not trust your company, and I think you are bound to act unethically in the future. But I do not ask you to become a trustworthy ethical company. Mess with the accounts of my friends all you want. I just want to be invited to the next BBQ. People have stopped using e-mail for announcing these social events, and _all_ use Facebook. Could it be possible for me to not be on Facebook, yet still stay up-to-date on what my friends, or hell, even my parents now, are doing? A more advanced social graph API that hooks into email, RSS, Twitter, whatever... ?

I'm sure you also have my email-address from the address books of my contacts, so you could verify me.

As one of your longest non-users (I remember when TheFacebook required a Harvard-email for invite), please let me become a semi-user. It won't pay you a dime, but it will make the world a better place.

<comment><USER10> Facebook users can invite non-Facebook users by email to events, if they want to.

But for viewing what your friends and parents are doing on Facebook? Well, they could change their privacy settings to be public, but that would hurt their privacy. You want to be in their social graph, but not have a Facebook account. What does that even mean? Do you just not want to have a password? There's no rule you have to post any content, if you just want to view other's.

<comment><USER9> > Facebook users can invite non-Facebook users by email to events, if they > want to.

This stops after a while. Even when you stay a pleasant person, you'll always be "that guy" requiring an extra action to contact. The social ripple/ping of an event stays inside Facebook.

> You want to be in their social graph, but not have a Facebook account.

In the ideal form this would be a totally open protocol (with backing of Facebook, Google, ... and W3C).

In the current form, I do not know enough about Facebook to suggest a good system. Yes. I want to be in their social graph, but not have a Facebook account or be under Facebook TOS. If that is meaningless at the moment, maybe we should make it mean something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Or 1 person uses 1M facebook accounts over Tor...

<comment><USER12> Which would not surprise me a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've recently tried using FB via TOR (Browser) for the first time, but was unable. After entering the onion address and my FB credentials, I was informed that the account is temporarily blocked (presumably because of first access via TOR). I was presented with an option of unblocking it by recognizing a few photos of friends and matching them to names - but unfortunately, all those photos showed as blank, white squares!

So, I wasn't able to login via TOR via the purposefully created .onion address. Also, sent an issue report via non-TOR login about this, but never got any response.

Note also that this seems to mean to me, that there may be people who are cut off from FB via TOR same as me, but who don't even have a way to notify FB about the fact. And thus not having any chance of having the bug fixed.

<comment><USER14> That's a standard challenge if you try to log into your FB account from a new machine / IP address that geolocates somewhere you don't typically seem to be. Of course, that's pretty ironic since your Tor exit could be anywhere, but it's not specific to Tor anyhow. I have seen the same behavior using VPN, too.

<comment><USER13> The problem is not the existence of the challenge. The problem is it is broken in a fresh, unmodified install of the TOR Browser. Sorry, but I can't recognize a pure white square properly as a person.

<comment><USER15> That test is a Captcha. You failed it. Are you sure you are not a robot? Sorry to announce it to you like that...

<comment><USER16> > but unfortunately, all those photos showed as blank, white squares!

It sounds like the test was just broken.

<comment><USER17> Or he's a robot and is just claiming to have seen blank white squares.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Please explain it to me if I'm wrong, but doesn't logging into Facebook on Tor defeat the purpose of Tor?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, you retain all of the properties of Tor hidden services: censorship resistance, authenticated end-to-end encryption, onion routing that hides your source IP.

Obviously if you log into a Facebook account with your real-world identity then all actions performed on the site will be linked with it, but that is expected.

<comment><USER19> I think his point is that if you are using Facebook, you are still limited by the level of trust you have with them. That should be quite low for any privacy conscious internet user. That you are using a different IP and a pseudonym might be a hoop for them to jump through through to figure your identity out should be considered in the context that they are likely already collecting data about you without your consent from many different sources. When it comes to jumping through these kinds of hoops, Facebook is a circus lion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's funny that they say people use Tor "for a variety of reasons related to privacy, security and safety". They left out "firewall circumvention", which I have to believe is the #1 reason, at least in China.

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately, it's been a very, very long time since Tor was last usable in China.

<comment><USER22> Can you elaborate? Someone above commented that Tor was the only way they were able to get out of the GFW.

<comment><USER23> China uses fairly complex artificial intelligence to detect TOR connections. Anything that "behaves like" TOR or a VPN is quickly caught on to and blocked.

There are a few attempts designed to make TOR look more like standard web traffic, which are really interesting.

It's definitely a cat-and-mouse-style game. Some have more success than others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell I use "Tinfoil for Facebook" on my Android phone. It's a wrapper around the mobile site with some extra features, and you can tell it to use "Orbot" (Tor client for Android), and you can tell it to use the onion address as well if you want (which I do). Which means I can use Facebook over Tor without using the official app which steals god knows what data from your phone.

You don't get mobile notifications this way, so I just get my notifications via email instead. And I uploaded my public PGP key to Facebook, so the emails they send me are encrypted. Getting notifications via email also means that Facebook doesn't even know if or when I've read a particular notification.

To read those encrypted emails on my phone I use K-9 Mail with OpenKeyChain. My Yubikey Neo acts like a smart card reader to my phone over NFC so I don't need to give my phone direct access to my secret PGP key.

This setup works for me because I try to limit my Facebook usage, keep my number of "friends" on there to a minimum, and lie to Facebook whenever they want me to explicitly supply information.

</comment><comment><USER24> Given Facebook's real-name policy, and the fact that it's literally a social network of your best friends, then since all Facebook pages are HTTPS anyway, the idea of using it over tor is... Uh... a bizarre

in theory the only thing you're leaking over a plain https is, "Hey this guy has friends." (this connection is visiting facebook).

meanwhile in theory I'd expect facebook to leak everything else on their end, because come on. I have next to zero expectation of privacy on facebook.

by that I mean you think people are planning terrorist plots over facebook? come on.

so I find the mashup of tor with facebook to be kind of bizarre.

<comment><USER25> If you expect facebook to leak everything they know about you then connecting through tor allows them to know one less thing about you (the location you used to visit facebook).

<comment><USER9> Actually you share one more, important, datum: This user uses Tor. Likely uses Tor for other, possible nefarious, purposes too. Likely has a high X_keyscore.

Your real profile and location can be inferred from your browsing habbits and friend's data.

Unfortunately, with the current size of Facebook, even "not having an active Facebook account" shares data, especially when you are in an age category where all your peers do have profiles. It's a negative signal to recruiters and employers ("must have something to hide...").

<comment><USER26> > It's a negative signal to recruiters and employers ("must have something to > hide...").

Fuck them. Is this the line of thinking you want to align your live to?

We need to work together to stop that from happening. In the end the best fake profile win's and it's a competition in hiding your sins. Medieval ages called and complained that you used them to compare to this mess.

Every second/third? totally fine, everything perfect guy has some unhealthy addiction but the guy who uses Tor for playing around or ordering drugs is suspicious? It's laughable. You only get some collections of narcissists and psychopaths as employees that still do occasionally harm to your company and use drugs like everyone else.

What the fuck is going on. It's 2016 and I'm feeling like 1516.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wish Google and Apple would roll out .onion Gmail and iCloud services, respectively.

</comment><comment><USER28> Maybe bot networks are included in that number?

<comment><USER29> For sure there is a huge amount of bots in this number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does Google allow searches from Tor network? Last I heard it didn't.

<comment><USER31> URL: [https://ahmia.fi/](https://ahmia.fi/)

There are search engine(s) specialized for TOR. As per Wikipedia[1]: 'Ahmia is a clearnet search engine for Tor's hidden services'. It was part of Google summer of code in 2014[2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmia) [2] [https://blog.torproject.org/category/tags/gsoc-2014](https://blog.torproject.org/category/tags/gsoc-2014)

<comment><USER32> Cool, been looking for something like this. However, it should be noted that this is not what parent asked about. Parent was wondering if Google was usable for regular web searches using a client that came from a Tor exit node via the Tor network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder how many of these accounts are sock puppets?

<comment><USER34> Probably not a lot. I use it to bypass firewalls sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I thought .onion addresses were for anonymous hidden services, which Facebook is not. What's the advantage of accessing a .onion versus using Tor to visit the normal facebook.com?

<comment><USER36> Try reading the introductory blog post[0] before asking redundant questions.

[0] [https://www.facebook.com/notes/protect-the-graph/making- conn...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/protect-the-graph/making-connections- to-facebook-more-secure/1526085754298237/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> and how many of those are for spam...?

</comment><comment><USER38> Terrible title. I was wondering in what use case Facebook makes sense as an alternative to Tor

<comment><USER39> Seems clear enough to me. But the misreading is hilarious. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER38> I just think when we are talking about two technologies like this, something like "via" or "through" is a bit clearer.</comment></comment></comment>


Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science - <AUTHOR> https://introtcs.org <comment><USER2> Took his course in college. Could not down vote this post more. I have much PTSD from his lectures because Boaz was figuring out how to teach mid-lecture. If you read the textbook you'll find many typos and a plethora of mathematical notation that lacks any intuitive explanation. On the upside, I guess I know what a Turing machine is now...?

<comment><USER3> Do you know of an alternative resource over this one?

<comment><USER4> Sipser [1] is the standard and deservedly so.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_the_Theory_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_the_Theory_of_Computation)

<comment><USER5> Used this book in my CS course. Loved it. I felt like it was clear and well written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Author here. Thanks to whomever posted it! Would appreciate any comments or typo/bug reports on the GitHub repository. (Linked from the page)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting decision to start with Boolean circuits rather than automata. I wonder if that has any effect on students' ability to learn the material.

</comment><comment><USER8> Two questions on theoretical CS:

1) Anyone know of a good roadmap, breaking down what the major sections are and offering summaries? (Or if they cared to post their own here, that'd be great :) doesn't have to be super comprehensive.)

2) Can anyone recommend a good second book for readers who've already gone through Sipser? —or is there not even a natural follow up since it just depends on which specialization you want to go in from there?

<comment><USER9> I took Sipser's class and read his book. I found Barak's textbook pretty good after that. You can read it out of order, and it has pretty good citations so you can always look confusing topics on your own.

"Computation Complexity: A Modern Approach" by Arora and Barak

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How was this website generated from the Markdown files in the GitHub repo?

<comment><USER11> At the bottom of the page:

>Produced using pandoc and panflute with templates derived from gitbook and bookdown.

[http://pandoc.org/](http://pandoc.org/)

[http://scorreia.com/software/panflute/](http://scorreia.com/software/panflute/)

[https://www.gitbook.com/](https://www.gitbook.com/)

[https://bookdown.org/](https://bookdown.org/)

<comment><USER6> Yes I use a custom pandoc filter that transforms the markdown to both latex and html (using the bookdown/githook template).

At the moment the code is rather messy and somewhat tied to my windows setup , but eventually I plan to open source it as well.</comment></comment></comment>


GNU nano 3.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-nano/2018-09/msg00000.html <comment><USER2> I'm a Linux/Unix "devop" since 15 years and I still use nano every day or second. It's the default $EDITOR in Debian and derivates and at some machines I did not consequently set EDITOR=vim.

Congratulations to the developers of nano. It's a timeless modern terminal editor which can be operated by novices as well as experts.

<comment><USER3> Have you considered using sshrc? [https://github.com/Russell91/sshrc](https://github.com/Russell91/sshrc)

It lets you take basic shell config with you when you ssh. You could ensure you always had your $EDITOR set to vim and have a basic vim config ready.

It's also really nice to take my prompt with me and not have random vanilla/terrible shell prompt that's set on whatever server.

<comment><USER2> Wow, this looks like a gem.

However, I can imagine many scenarios when this fails if the target machine has a very different software version setup (and older different Linux distribution, for instance). Would require some fine tuning of parameters, but sounds promising!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I moved to micro[0] editor a while ago. It saves me a couple of seconds every time I need to edit something in /etc/* (especially when copy-pasting some text sections in the middle of the file). But it is not adopted by all distributions yet.

[0] [https://micro-editor.github.io/](https://micro-editor.github.io/)

<comment><USER5> > But it is not adopted by all distributions yet.

Is it adopted by _any_ distro as a default text editor?

<comment><USER4> Looks like fedora has micro in her default package repository[0]. I doubt it is set in $EDITOR by default though.

[0] [https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/micro](https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/micro)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have to give myself a kick in the pants at my own irrationality. For some weird reason, I use vim. I'm not very good at it, and I only use it for basic things like editing configuration files. Every time I use nano, I prefer it, but somehow just am in a habit/rut of typing vi blah. And I call it irrational because vim is totally non-obvious and not self-describing how do the most basic tasks, and yet I keep hitting my head on a wall. Maybe I should remove vim, install nano, and make vi an alias of nano!

<comment><USER7> Recently made this argument to someone. They open vi/m just to immediately jump into insert mode and never leave.

I love using vim and would encourage anyone to go through vimtutor and start learning it, but if you're just not interested, using nano can save you a lot of headache.

<comment><USER8> I second vimtutor for the interested. This Vim help page is indispensible to those who aren't:

        :help index

Every Vim shortcut is there and organized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nano is what I teach my kids (5 and 8) to code on the terminal in. It's fantastic!

<comment><USER10> Oh man, that's some hardcore parenting. Big respect. Would be nice if you could share you journey with your kids after a couple of years

<comment><USER9> Thanks :) Let's see how far I (they) get!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congratulations

[https://nano-editor.org/who.php](https://nano-editor.org/who.php)

</comment><comment><USER12> What are the alternatives to nano? (Just out of curiosity)

<comment><USER13> This is a pretty open ended question. Alternatives include everything from vi/vim, ed, emacs, to pico (and probably some I have forgotten..)

<comment><USER14> Vim and emacs are huge, powerful texteditors that aren't competing with nano. Ed is...unusable in 2018. So just pico.

<comment><USER15> (ed was unusable in 1988) :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The controversy behind the death mask of Napoleon - <AUTHOR> http://www.artandforensics.com/Death_Mask_of_Napoleon.html

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see the data and not just an assertion that the RUSI Mask is a better match.</comment>


You Might Not Need Underscore - <AUTHOR> https://www.reindex.io/blog/you-might-not-need-underscore/ <comment><USER2> There is some really good points here. However, i feel a lot of these 'You might not need...' articles are often a straw man response to the idea that developers only use libraries because they are easier to code, not because (some of them) solve cross-browser issues or provide better performance, offer features that there isn't a 1:1 native method for etc.

<comment><USER3> Exactly this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the advantages of underscore (and lodash) is that you can iterate over arrays AND objects indistinctly in most cases. How would you do:

      var a1b2 = _.reduceRight({a:1,b:2},(memo,val,key) => key+val+memo,'');

or:

      var two = _.find({a:2,b:3,c:4},(val,key) => key !== 'a' && key !== 'c' )

Until I see _.chain, _.compose, _.partialRight, _.zip or _.throttle (among others) implemented in the standard library lodash is a no-opt.

With iterables and the "for of" loop javascript is definitely not going in the direction of functional programming though.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article doesn't touch at all on the performance of lodash compared to underscore or even native functions. In many cases it is more performant. So while you do have to decide if the extra library load is balance by the better performance in your specific use case, it should be considered.

Also, there is the simple fact a lot of people like the abstraction compared to the native solution - it is often simpler to use and remember.

<comment><USER6> > In many cases it is more performant Imho, choosing to use a library like > lodash in the beginning of your project for performance reasons is a > premature optimisation. In 90% of the projects, the speed of > Array.prototype.map compared to _.map will never be part of the performance > bottleneck.

> it is often simpler to use and remember Maybe people are used to one > library's api, and expect the native counterpart to be more difficult, but > the examples given in the article are counter examples to this statement.

<comment><USER7> You use something like lodash from the start so you know out of the gate you're getting something modular, consistent, feature rich, that also happens to perform well. Using a library like lodash gives wiggle room between you and the language. This wiggle room allows for increased consistency, added features, and performance improvements. For example ES6 introduces changes in `Object.keys` to support string values. Lodash standardizes the behavior so it's consistent across es3, es5, and es6 environments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting post with a few neat things I didn't know (spread on an object? Very cool)

But then you still have. To deal with awesome functional helpers like denounce, not to mention insanely useful things like cloneDeep and zipObject. Instead I'd note to use the natives tuff wherever possible and use lodash to pull in just the functions you need piecemeal.

Oh and you should certainly mention Function.prototype.reduce and Object.assign

</comment><comment><USER9> Underscore : _.each(array, iteratee) ES5.1 : array.forEach(iteratee)

And all the other elements...

Yes, you are right. But... The "array" is not always an Array. document.getElementsByClassName( 'myClass' ) is not an Array but a DOMNodeList. So document.getElementsByClassName( 'myClass' ).forEach(iteratee) will not work. Same for map, reduce...

Underscore (or lodash) makes more that just polyfilling es5 methods.

<comment><USER10> Do something like: NodeList.prototype.__proto__ = Array.prototype;

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What about _.flatten()? E.g. to flatten an array before find()?

Just thought of 1-level flattening [].concat(...array). But it not that explicit. Also, array.find(i => i.foo == 'bar') isn't as readable as _.find(array, { foo: 'bar' }).

</comment><comment><USER12> `Array.from({ length: n }, (v, k) => k + x)` this is a terrible way to create a range, it only works incidentally. Please do not use it.

<comment><USER13> Which part of the spec makes you think it only works incidentally?

[http://www.ecma-international.org/ecma-262/6.0/#sec- array.fr...](http://www.ecma-international.org/ecma-262/6.0/#sec-array.from)

<comment><USER12> The part where you're abusing an old "array like" and the way Array.from works with it and uses the index argument in the mapper argument to force it into a range. How many people do you think understand what `Array.from({length: 5})` works?

<comment><USER13> Your comment sounded like it only worked because of implementation details in the JS engines. That would have been a much bigger deal than just not liking the style.

Out of curiosity, how would you do it yourself?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> true but underscore had the features first... so, i might not need es2015. also i have no idea how to install es2015 or the browser compatibility it brings.

thx for the info though. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out Babel ([https://babeljs.io/](https://babeljs.io/)). If you're already using some kind of build setup for your JavaScript, adding Babel is very easy and quite a few projects are using it already.</comment></comment>


How Power Peg Brought Down a Knight - <AUTHOR> http://www.futuresmag.com/2014/11/01/how-power-peg-brought-down-a-knight <comment><USER2> This is a little long, but it's a _must read_ for anyone interested in real- life consequences of computer bugs.

Basically, new software was pushed to seven of eight servers at Knight, one of the biggest players on Wall Street. A flag activating the new software was repurposed from very old inactive software that was still on the servers.

The new software ran fine on seven servers, but the flag activated the old software on the eighth server, which promptly started doing something completely insane as far as financial markets are concerned. A few minutes later people removed the new software. But didn't change the flag. So then:

       (the old software) jumped in to fill that void
       and was now running on all eight servers
       simultaneously, buying on the offer,
       selling on the bid.

Knight lost over $400 million in under an hour, and was forced to eventually sell out to one of their biggest competitors.

<comment><USER3> 45 minutes to be precise: [http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2013/34-70694.pdf](http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2013/34-70694.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A little surprising to me that when you're trading hundreds of millions of dollars an hour that the software wasn't built with a NASA style of redundancy built in that would have caught the mistake.

<comment><USER5> NASA style redundancy comes with a significant cost, that is delivery times. The opportunity costs of time to markets in electronic trading are huge. Some opportunities disappear in weeks (though these systems were not targeting those sorts of opportunities).

Also, redundancies/qa are hard to quantify from a cost benefit perspective and trading firms are very short term P&L driven (pay is frequently heavily bonus based).

<comment><USER2> > The opportunity costs of time to markets in electronic trading are huge.

That's probably 90% of it right there. But perhaps the remaining 10% is that the "big swinging dicks" that run the brokerages have nothing but contempt for anyone who isn't a broker or a trader. IT is a cost center, nothing more.

Even after the debacle, one of the executives said:

       "The IT guys were arrogant."

Well, maybe they were. And, maybe, because of the arrogant attitude the executives had, they couldn't attract any non-arrogant IT employees?</comment></comment></comment>


China, Not Silicon Valley, Is Cutting Edge in Mobile Tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/technology/china-mobile-tech-innovation-silicon-valley.html <comment><USER2> I grew up in China, and I'm now living in the bay area. I just went back for a month for vacation. I too saw a more living mobile ecosystem.

and wechat is indeed in the center of this system. For example, a fruit stand would now accept mobile payment via wechat. those who run fruit stands are usually farmers.

I think it makes a lot of sense to build mobile payment into a a social app. because any currency would require a social network. and transferring money is a key social activity.

building independent mobile payment without the support from a mature social network is a bad idea, for example square and apple pay (only useable in the apple ecosystem, a partial mobile ecosystem).

China never seemed to have a credit card era, it jumped directly from paying cash to paying with mobile. whereas in the U.S., credit card is so convenient, people don't want to change.

for many years, wechat has been combining new features with its social network, whereas whatsapp wanted to be a pure chatting app and missed many opportunities.

you can use wechat to order food at restaurants, you can log into public wifi with wechat ....

This is just one example. Another thing I noticed is online shopping. At the gate of our apartment, each day, there are many deliver guys on tricycles. They have a more efficient and cheap delivering system.

For example, in the yard of our apartment we have storage cabinets with password locks. The deliver guys won't deliver each package to your door, as it is inefficient, especially because apartment buildings are tall in China, you have to take elevator. Instead, they put packages into one of the cabinet doors. And you will receive a password on your phone. Put the code in, the cabinet door will open. you can then get the package.

This is not a complex idea, but hard to implement in the U.S., because we don't have the same population density here. When you build an infrastructure like this, you want to serve as many people as possible.

<comment><USER2> guess I should also write the other side of the story -- things I don't like about China.

Overall, I feel that China is like the U.S. in its early days (1920s). Or the 1999 Silicon Valley

There are a lot of opportunities, but less rules. It's a jungle basically. For people with tech depth and want to build something steadily, China is not the best place.

a high percentage of young entrepreneurs there are just opportunists. They are not interested in sitting down and building something useful. Instead, they just want to quickly raise/burn money and go public.

There are way more theranos' there in China.

And you need to have connections to success in China. This is a historical and cultural thing.

I don't know how many of you noticed the recent news of didi acquiring uber China. The leaders of the two companies are actually from the same family. One is the daughter of the Lenovo CEO. The other is the niece of him. Probably coincidence,but you see coincidences more often in China.

My attitude towards China is that I take it seriously. I admit what it does better. But I don't think I'm strong enough to fight in the jungle.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, you can get success more easily in US if you have connections which is the same as China. Maybe Bill Gate and his mother's background is a similar example to what you referred about DiDi.

<comment><USER4> Don't be ridiculous. If it were actually the same, then Bill Gates could have used his influence to get Netscape's site blocked from the internet or depending on the depth of his connections with Bill Clinton at the time, get Marc Andreessen thrown in prison.

For those who do manage to become billionaires, the game often becomes even rougher: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/raykwong/2011/07/25/friends- dont...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/raykwong/2011/07/25/friends-dont-let- friends-become-chinese-billionaires/#749f921d11fd)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article has a pretty shallow definition on how China is 'cutting edge' in mobile tech. Apparently cutting edge means:

a.) can do things without switching apps. (?!)

b.) uses QR codes (invented by Japan, popularized by Japan)

c.) pay things on phone (invented by nokia, popularized in europe)

and the dominance confirmed by

a.) a single quote from kik founder (who is trying to convince people qr code is...good?)

b.) bigger mobile user base (well of course, they have more people)

c.) uber lost in china (if you're a foreign company in China and you haven't learned yet Chinese government only lets Chinese companies win, then...)

<comment><USER6> > _a.) can do things without switching apps. (?!)_

This actually is "cutting edge" if you compare it to the bullshit we in the West have to deal with daily. I have _way_ too much apps on my Android phone, none of which can talk to each other (despite intents) and half of which should be infrastructure-level anyway.

> _b.) uses QR codes (invented by Japan, popularized by Japan)_

... and almost completely ignored by Europe and the US. That they turned something potentially useful into actually useful is interesting in its own right.

> _c.) pay things on phone (invented by nokia, popularized in europe)_

Except it is 2016 and in Europe (and presumably in the US) it only barely works somewhere, sometimes, for some things.

I mean, let's not play double standards - if it's entirely fair to call Western companies (especially SV startups) "innovative" for wrapping something common in a Bootstrap theme, or turning something that should be a product into a butt service to extract rent from people, then it's entirely fair to call China "cutting edge".

<comment><USER7> QR codes is interesting. The tech companies here considered QR codes low tech and backwards, ironically, and basically didn't invest in it in the hopes of going with BLE (bluetooth low energy) beacons and at a time NFC.

NFC was considered inferior to BLE too but BLE has come and literally no one uses them.

The reason why QR isn't adopted is because none of the major platforms has invested in it. Apple, facebook, don't have native QR support.

In China QR is built into wechat, which everyone has.

<comment><USER6> I think part of the reason both QR and BLE don't fare well in the West is related to the point a), about doing things without switching apps. QR codes and BLE beacons are things that should be interacted with on the OS level, not requiring a separate app for every possible vendor that decides to use codes/beacons. Alas, the primary application of BLE today is trying to trick people into spending more on shoes and clothes. What a waste of a potentially very useful technology.

<comment><USER8> When I had a look at the proposed BLE specs for iPhone I was disappointed that it seemed an app could only see it's own beaons. I'd quite like an app that could show any beacons around and say who's they are and if there are any offers or cool stuff associated. I think as it is store A's beacons can only be seen with store A's app and store B's only with store B's and who wants that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sorry but this article is not honest. All the example here have counter- examples of USA first apps.

lot of apps used QR code since the iPhone had apps, Uber hail ride is present in several apps since long, Google Maps, CityMapper, ... There are apps to order pizza. Live streaming video app like justin.tv, ustream or livestream Tinder is not the first dating app, it just popularized a new model to begin a conversation : the double validation model, Badoo or Grindr existed long before.

The WeChat model is NOT great, it means a monopoly on apps, they can remove you from their micro app store if they want like they did with Uber and remove you from the country. We are far better with an equalitarian app store like Play Store or (in lesser ways) the App Store. I think WeChat is the result of the pseudo banning of the Play Store in China, and it should NOT be a thing of desire.

<comment><USER10> I had not heard about Wechat removing Uber. Do you have a link on that topic?

<comment><USER11> [http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougyoung/2015/07/20/tencent- snu...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougyoung/2015/07/20/tencent-snuffs-out- uber-on-wechat/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> To get anything done in China there must be some sort of state sponsorship. Just look at the crackdown on original journalism recently. This intentionally causes only a few approved firms to prosper and allows for these ecosystem apps to flourish.

I find it hard pressed to take seriously the claim that being able to live in the WeChat app is an innovation. I can certainly see the appeal to companies interviewed by the New York Times like Facebook and Kik who probably look at that kind of usage model enviously, but I think it's important to note that the use of non-Chinese services is _not_ looked upon highly by the Party and this can be seen as an expression of regional favoritism. As much as Facebook would hope you live and breathe in their ecosystem 24/7, 365, it's harder to get away with that in places outside of China.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the "living in a WeChat ecosystem" proposition doesn't hold much appeal from a user perspective, but from the perspective of companies looking to build apps it can be quite appealing. Native development is very expensive, and being able to plug in to a platform with identity, location, payments and social network is a huge win for a company looking to get a product out quickly and cheaply.

<comment><USER6> IMO it holds very much appeal from the user perspective - tight integration of various services is a big win, and it's something we in the west don't enjoy - with each company trying to steal your attention for themselves, instead of cooperating to build actually useful ecosystem of tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yeah, I should have qualified that with "developing applications in non- native code for native platforms doesn't have much appeal from a user perspective". ie: it would be great if the Official Account apps available through WeChat were native (and users would like that) but they're not; broadly speaking, webviews are typically less appealing than native layout. I 100% agree that the tight integration of services is a _big_ win from the perspective of a user.

<comment><USER6> Ok, I'll agree with your clarified point. Personally I'm alergic to webviews, I can immediately tell which application is native and which is a thin layer on top of the browser, by the very virtue of the latter sucking hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> A "long press" on a link in an app can often assist in separating the native "wheat" from the webview "chaff".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have lived in China for some time and I am kind of tired of refuting nytimes, washingtonpost propaganda about China.

Everything you read on those newspapers is about propaganda, propaganda to influence most small investors(what they call dumb money)on one of the financial centers of the world New York, or propaganda to influence politicians on the US political center of US, Washington.

The elite financial industry that rules USA really admires China authoritarianism.

China is an enormous country with lots of great things, but innovation is not one of their "fortes". There is a big bubble there that is going to do bang and is not going to be pretty.

Not so good important things about China( that of course the propaganda omits):

-Their internet is shit, capped by Government and closed to the outside world.

-There is an army of spies(more than a million) working for the State, everything you do is controlled.

\- There is way less women than men because the Government let people basically kill girls with selective abortion or after being born.

-They are communist, the interest of the individual is always subordinated to the community. If you have a girl with a Chinese woman outside China when you visit China they can refuse to let the girl go out. China needs girls.

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi Why is being communist bad for innovation?

In 40 years, the Soviet Union went from a medieval-like society with 95% of the people being peasants working their lords' lands, to inventing LEDs, grid- scale nuclear power, orbital launches, artificial satellites, manned space flight, commercial supersonic flight, seminal work in transplantation and artificial organs, etc. It became the second world superpower in science and innovation, which by the way, it no longer isn't after the fall of communism.

It was pretty much an economic miracle, like the so-called "German miracle" and "Japanese miracle", although of course most current thinkers won't recognize it because Communism is Bad(tm) and it seems we can only think in black and white (as the Soviet Union had an autochratic and murderous regime, apparently we can't say what they did right).

So I don't think the statement that communism is bad for innovation holds water historically. It's bad for other things, but not necessarily for innovation.

<comment><USER14> I can't believe we are still debating about Communism in this day and age because it has been proven inferior in every way but...

Communism is bad for innovation for two major, connected, reasons. First, there is very little, if any, competition. Most innovation comes from trying to beat the other guy and there just isn't any competition in a system that wants the state to run everything. Second, entrepreneur's are non-existent because there is no way for them to make money off of their inventions outside of cozying up with the State.

Also, your point about them moving from a medieval society to a modern one is ironic considering the USSR's pathetic technology. Outside of military applications they were failing in almost every single way. Just read some stories about the East Germans trying to flee to West Germany or the USSR's Olympic team visiting the US and thinking that our grocery stores were fake because of all of the food.

<comment><USER15> Well their scientific output (not only for military applications) was actually very high, but they already had a great scientific community before Communism.

If they didn't then they wouldn't have been able to keep up for such a long time and Russia today couldn't be such a big geopolitical adversary to this day.

If they had not implemented Communism after WWI I believe they could have been a second US.

<comment><USER14> I think we are in agreement. Russia has done fairly well in spite of their past economic system and today would be far better off if they had adopted our, American, system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Traveling to major cities in China (and Korea) is like a preview of where the US will be in ~5 years from a technology-society integration perspective. Easy payments on your phone, electronic communications for official notices/correspondences, mobile-electronic interactions with government, many/most people playing games and socializing about them, non-personal-car transportation (taxis/didis, buses, bikes), hyper-dense cities as populations urbanize.

It makes sense that China (and Korea) have leaped ahead. They have relatively high average IQ populations. They have cultures that celebrate education, intelligence, and hard work (not sports and broism). They have heavy governmental investment in infrastructure (eg internet, cell networks) and they heavily regulate industries so as not to stymie utilities such as the internet.

Hopefully the US and Europe can create a cultural shift (particularly the US on this front) and can see more government investment in infrastructure for technology and ease of access. If so, the US/Europe will maintain/grow their competitive edges vs China at least, as they have better property rights, fairer courts, more developed financial markets, more meritocracy of opportunity, etc. Korea has the best of all worlds in many ways, but not a large enough population or enough natural resources to be a contender for one of the top few economic powers in the world.

<comment><USER17> > leaped ahead

I think there's a big element of not being handicapped by 'legacy' infrastructure here. The US won't roll out chip+pin because it already has magswipe POS systems in too many places. Whereas places in China which have _no_ existing system can deploy whichever is most convenient to get started with - which sounds like wechat at the moment.

<comment><USER18> This.

When the West moved toward a thriving ecosystem of web applications, the web scene in China was a complete mess. Not many people were confident enough to use the Web, let alone trust a random website with their bank account which has no dispute channel. Plus the web is full of malware and scams and almost all PC ran pirated Windows XP with abysmal if any antivirus software.

When most people equated internet with the IE icon, people in China did it with the dorminating IM software made by Tencent.

The explosion of mobile ecosystem speaks to the lackluster of a thriving web ecosystem and to some degree a clunky financial system and lack of meaningful consumer protection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The article pretty much sums up my experience living abroad as a Chinese.

A few years ago when renren.com was still the most popular social media for Chinese users, it was filled with people __sharing __funny pictures and videos, interesting news and discussing trending topics automatically suggested by the site.

Around that time on Facebook though, people are still posting their vacation photos, text status updates and nothing more. Nobody was __sharing __anything on the platform.

Now Facebook has became Renren No.2, while Renren lost to WeChat.

<comment><USER20> Renren had already lost to QQ Space before Wechat existed. Which I find hilarious, the Myspace clone where you can annoy viewers with auto-playing music and atrocious Javascript beat out the Facebook clone.

<comment><USER19> As far as I know, QQ Space was way earlier than renren. It was renren that beat QQ Space. Many of my friends followed the migration path of QQ Space -> renren -> WeChat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's sad to see the recurring condescending attitude of HN crowd towards China and it's recent (and well deserved) technological prowess. C'mon guys, all said and done, China is kicking ass. You've got to give credit where it's due.

Cutting edge or not, the next century will be driven by China simply because the momentum that they have generated.

The only thing that still remains a red flag for me is China's lack of democracy and political instability that may come due to it.

<comment><USER22> Ok we should give credits to China:

\- stole most techs from us/Japan/Europe

\- innovated...nothing

\- copied apple products down to the last screw

\- prevented Google and Facebook to compete, even though they claimed to be open market to wto

As for your momentum, don't forget the trillions of state debt, the wto membership expiring this year, xi the dictator closing down news channels, billions in capital outflow

<comment><USER23> While it might be true in modern times regarding copying, Europe and US also did take a lot from them in past centuries and looking at historical documents, we didn't always pay for it.

<comment><USER24> Industrial revolution started in the US by stealing IP from the UK. Heck, even writing were stolen by much of the world from its (few) inventors.

<comment><USER6> All of which seems to point out that the very concept of "stealing IP" (and IP in general) is ridiculous.

<comment><USER24> It is definitely controversial. We need some protection, limited time ostentatious seem reasonable, or there might not be an incentive to invent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wechat/Alipay change China a lot. Now I rarely use credit card. Not all gas stations accept credit card, but every one of them happily takes wechat. In many restaurants you can order in wechat and pay with it.

Not that I love the idea of a monolithic app controlling everything in our life, but the next big thing to take its place need to live up to its level of convenience.

</comment><comment><USER26> I travel often to China, yes not just Mobile Tech, but also many fronts it is taking the lead. The bottom line, East Asia has the highest average IQ on the globe, and China produces almost 4x engineer degrees each year of what US has.

With globalization in a world that is flat, and the extremely hard working attitude plus education-first tradition there, the future looks great on its side.

In US, we're dealing with so many social issues while other countries are catching up on many key fronts.

<comment><USER27> Here the ideological elite is set out to prove that everybody is equally capable, and IQ is a construct. The creation of value is increasingly being replaced by value redistribution among the poorest and value transference among the upper middle classes. In corporations, professional management is replacing value creation with politics and stupid games. Yesterday I watched two people launching a professional DJI Inspire drone. The iPad app for this drone is more complicated than Airbnb or Uber apps. I am not talking about the drone itself.. DJI is a Chinese drone company with a billion dollar revenue. The consequences of these trends will be rather grim for the American economy in 30 years. I expect to get about -7 karma for this , since denial is the crucial part of the problem.

<comment><USER28> "Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that you expect to get downvoted."

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think most of the innovations and trends mentioned in this article are also true in Africa and India: primacy of the smartphone over computer, importance of chat apps, daily functions like payments integrated into the phone, etc.

The common thread is that each area has had millions of people ascend into the middle class after cell and then smartphones were "good enough" to replace landlines and PCs.

</comment><comment><USER30> Software is a hit-based business on which winners scale very large, very fast.

All other things (education, market) being equal, the biggest pool should generate the most hits, and the most advancement.

<comment><USER31> "All other things (education, market) being equal, the biggest pool should generate the most hits, and the most advancement. reply"

The problem is there are many, many, many factors. Too many to count.

'Education' \- even that is hardly comparable. Rote learning/memorization, a culture of copying vs. a culture of learning in innovation. I'm not saying one is better or that one country is necessarily more of the other, just giving one small example of quite radically differentiation even in one comparable vertical.

It's really hard to compare US and China tech side by side.

I think it's best to just look at them independently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> And I hope they become number one in journalism because frankly the NYT is a shell of its former self. It's more of "all the news fit for clickbait" rather than print.

<comment><USER33> I'm upvoting this post, the article reads like sponsored content is rife with factual inaccuracies. Not sure if Paul Mozur is a shill (must be hard to report the truth from Dongcheng) or just incompetent.

<comment><USER34> I disagree with the assessment of shillage. It's just another article in the vein of "scary Orientals and their Tiger Moms are outperforming us!" Mozur's article would better be categorized as a lazy sensation article.

A sliver of merit exists in the article; Chinese internet companies do match American ones when it comes to scaling their infrastructure. Many Chinese software developers, designers, and architects are similarly talented as their American counterparts.

Otherwise, this department-store-esque vertical integration of different features is just an artifact of the domination of fewer players with SOE connections and not a sign of dominant innovation. Is payment provider lock-in really something the rest of the world wants to emulate? At least American consumers can choose between 3 major credit companies.

Could you point out the inaccuracies? Aside from the QR code non-sequitor, nothing jumped out at me.

<comment><USER35> > Could you point out the inaccuracies? Aside from the QR code non-sequitor, > nothing jumped out at me.

It's an article about homegrown internet services that does not mention the Great Firewall, as you alluded to somewhat. Given the myriad reasons listed for the services' success, this could be considered by some as a lie by omission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I feel that this is a typical NY Times tech puff piece:

"Already in China, more people use their mobile devices to pay their bills, order services, watch videos and find dates than anywhere else in the world. Mobile payments in the country last year surpassed those in the United States."

Yes this tends to happen when you have a population of 1.2 billion people compared to 330 million.

Also seeing how outside of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong you need a VPN(and even this is a constant game of whack-a-mole) to access Facebook and Google, it's hardly a level playing field. Economic nationalism in China has been discussed pretty extensively at this point.

"But China's tech industry — particularly its mobile businesses — has in some ways pulled ahead of the United States. Some Western tech companies, even the behemoths, are turning to Chinese firms for ideas."

Nowhere in the article does it go on to substantiate how they have "pulled ahead." Have they pulled ahead by using QR codes? By using dating apps? Have they pulled ahead because of in app purchasing? (Hello, Uber Eats?)

Different cultures respond differently to different services, this is evidenced by US/European music streaming apps that have had a real difficult time getting traction in the Asian market. Does this mean they have "pulled ahead" and are now setting the pace? Perhaps ocal entrepreneurs understand their local market and culture better?

</comment><comment><USER37> the censorship brigade killed this post from someone else so, reposting (he's mostly right):

Ugh, this US/China dichotomy makes for good headlines but I hope the good people of the actual tech industry are able to see beyond it. The supporting examples are ripe with confirmation bias: - Yes, MoMo is older than Tinder but Badoo is older than MoMo - Drones took off worldwide - "walkie-talkie" = sending audio messages are you kidding me - QR codes were tried and not adopted by consumers in EU a century ago (recall the Economist being all up in arms about how they were going to revolutionize everything back in 08), no wonder companies were reluctant to bring them back

Yes, Messenger surely wants to become wx but with a user base that's infinitely more fragmented -- it's going to take infinitely longer to launch a global payments solution that partners with all banks everywhere and obeys all regulations.

You know why apps start in wx? Because there is no single app store.

Yes -- China has some awesome mobile stuff going on, but this whole "TIL Chinese people also use the internet and it has other stuff???" fascination is just sad.

</comment><comment><USER38> In CHN, lacking of credit card and personal credit records make internet industry find a efficient and fast way to receive payments —— that's why alipay and other third party payment such popular. Although just some Paypal copies in the beginning, they are such behemoths now.

<comment><USER39> I keep hearing this thing about lack of credit cards in China being one of the reasons Alipay and, later, WeChat payments, took off. But I don't see how credit cards are relevant here.

It takes 15 minutes to open a bank account and get a bank card which can be used at ATMs, POS transactions, and online. 'No credit card' doesn't mean 'no bank card'.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER40> It basically means the lacking of credit systems and mature fraud detections. If you lose your (credit) card or leak your credit card number, the bank won't probably reimburse your financial losses. Compared to credit cards, mobile payments may be more secure.

<comment><USER41> That may well be true but why compare them with credit cards at all? Debit cards have all those functions and a _much_ lower fraud incidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Sounds like the greatest advantage China has is a non-segmented software eco- system where a few companies dominate the market with apps that can do many things. In contrast to the US where companies focus on just a few key features and users have multiple apps doing various tasks.

There are definitely pros and cons of both ecosystems. But from the common everyday user's perspective, I can see how China's ecosystem is more user friendly. Perhaps that's also why they have traditionally non-tech savvy adopters (farmers, fruit stand owners) using these apps.

</comment><comment><USER43> China has the advantage of adoption en mass of mobile tech due mainly majority people has access to the net via mobile. Mobile payment is common. And they have a whole money making industry build on top of live tv apps (like vine, periscope). Scale and speed of adoption are keys. China has less tech people who're fixate to certain "ideology" such as JavaScript everywhere, HTML5 for everything, functional all the way etc. They just choose the tech that makes money. China is cutting edge in making use of tech to make money.

</comment><comment><USER44> "in China, its three major internet companies — Alibaba, Baidu and the WeChat parent Tencent — compete to create a single app with as many functions as they can stuff into it"

It's not obvious to me that this is a good thing. Doesn't this just pass the buck down from the phone's operating system and app ecosystem to the do- everything-app's ecosystem? I'd sooner see mobile OS and app software improve their inter-app communication and APIs so that the do-everything app isn't necessary.

</comment><comment><USER45> A little off topic, but non-tech people in the USA seem to have unrealistically negative views of China's tech abilities. Yesterday morning 4 non-tech friends and I were getting our exercise working in our community garden and all 4 of them were going on about how far advanced the USA was compared to China. I pointed out that at least in my field, a good fraction of new research papers are from Chinese researchers and I also gave them the example of WeChat pay.

</comment><comment><USER46> WeChat is the old AOL/Compuserve concept on mobile, nothing more,nothing less.

An abstraction layer on the Internet, needed for China due to the langauge barrier of the Western/English-language Internet/WWW.

Most of the stuff the West uses on the Internet is utterly useless for Chinese (also due to blockage by the Great Firewall), hence a walled garden makes perfect sense.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think China's mobile tech is leading the world rather than Silicon Valley. Most cutting edge of mobile tech is still sourced from US or EU. But you have to admit China's big companies and Alibaba and Tencent or some unicorns really integrate techs, business and people's life better and faster.

</comment><comment><USER47> mobile was _the next big thing_ ten years ago and US was the key innovator there. Now SV has next _next big things_ around AI and VA/AR and is certainly leading and going to lead here. So it is not surprising that SV might not be leading in mobile anymore, even though such a claim is still questionable

<comment><USER48> Baidu is no as slouch. Most of the Bay Area is much closer to mobile than ai/vr. I don't think we value mobile in the US; many with money are resistant to change. Some people still don't use email and are shocked(!) when retail stores now require one to ship to the home address.

I'll admit, I've never gotten Apple Pay to work myself. The interface is confusing as hell; I prefer cash or plastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Arright time to include China for my job search then. Question: how well do the jobs in China pay? Can an English speaking person survive there?

</comment><comment><USER50> When will Foxconn realize they don't need Apple?

<comment><USER51> when will Foxconn become too expensive to make sense to Apple?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> "China is now low-cost, high-quality" \--Jack Ma</comment>


Hacking outdated payment protocols – 32c3 "Shopshifting" session slides - <AUTHOR> https://lab.dsst.io/32c3-slides/7368.html <comment><AUTHOR> These are slides from this talk:

[https://srlabs.de/pos-vulns/](https://srlabs.de/pos-vulns/)

[https://events.ccc.de/congress/2015/Fahrplan/events/7368.htm...](https://events.ccc.de/congress/2015/Fahrplan/events/7368.html)

Video:

[https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7368-shopshifting#video](https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7368-shopshifting#video)</comment>


Samsung's Rival for the iPad Loads on the Features - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/technology/personaltech/samsungs-rival-for-the-ipad-loads-on-the-features.html?_r=1&ref=technology <comment><USER2> You know, it's funny. Whenever a new android feature or device comes out, there seems to be this expectation that it has to jump through all these hoops to even interest anyone. When you see all the mainstream "tech journalists" go on in the same way, expecting Samsung and Google to create some sort of miracle, whereas Apple gets the benefit of the doubt, it kills me.

They try to innovate with NFC and styluses and voice, but it is only after Apple has used the same things that it suddenly makes sense. Until then it is seen as just a gimmick.

I'm really tired of people hyping up the iPad when there are tablets that are clearly better, like the Asus transformer that I have. Sales figures mean nothing - that device is really rock solid as something to take around with me.

<comment><USER3> What's really funny are the contortions people go through to avoid admitting that Samsung have no design sense or creativity and hence resort to copying everything. They have no manufacturing quality either and so this PoS is what happens when Samsung try to do something without copying Apple, confusing and lame but also cheap and flimsy.

Oh, and "sales figures mean nothing" is this a fandroid's way of saying that you think the "Android is outselling iPhone" claims have been a lie all along?</comment></comment>


Braess's paradox: adding capacity can reduce performance - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braesss_paradox

<comment><USER2> There's a typo in the url. Should be <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess_paradox>

[EDIT: or <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox>]</comment>


Security Analysis of a Cheap Chinese IoT WiFi Camera - <AUTHOR> https://eriknl.github.io/reverse-engineering/2017/09/07/WiFi-camera.html <comment><AUTHOR> I had that camera, and got root access in 30 seconds (user: root, password: [blank] in my case, it was DOG-1WNEW)

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

I returned it to the store for a refund. No way such a thing is going anywhere near my network or my home.

Also, it seems the manufacturer Cylan has not learnt anything, as new models also have gaping holes: [https://github.com/offensive- security/exploitdb/blob/8cbfa5d...](https://github.com/offensive- security/exploitdb/blob/8cbfa5df7f3b17199106a2ddf4804b5778516f27/exploits/hardware/webapps/46993.txt)

Shenzhen Cylan Technology Co.,Ltd - [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shenzhen-cylan- techn...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shenzhen-cylan-technology- co-ltd)

The offending camera: [http://www.jfgou.com/camera/camera- wifi2/](http://www.jfgou.com/camera/camera-wifi2/)

A teardown: [http://sirlagz.net/2017/11/20/reject-shop-special-home- secur...](http://sirlagz.net/2017/11/20/reject-shop-special-home-security- wifi-camera-teardown/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'd be interested to know if these type of cheap cameras are safe to use after fixing / replacing the default firmware or does the hardware itself have some kind of backdoors to allow easy exploits even if the firmware is updated.

<comment><USER3> It's common practise to put these devices on their own VLAN that is completely isolated from network access, except for the controller device (NVR, etc).

I'd consider these items completely and utterly unfit for purpose, even these from branded manufacturers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, AFAIK, the so-called Cloud cameras that don't require (nor support) an NVR must be allowed to call-home, whether for setup or regular functioning. They don't do anything inside the LAN. That way they can be easily watched from anywhere, as they don't require open ports on the router, and can work even behind CGNAT. The obvious downside is the video is sent to the company's servers, and given how cheap the device is and how expensive storing and streaming video is, you can bet they're monetizing it somehow...</comment></comment></comment>


Providing Promo Codes - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/iTunesConnect_Guide/Chapters/ProvidingPromoCodes.html <comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I'm late to the game but it seems Apple now allows all developers to create promo codes for IAPs as well :)</comment>


Offer HN: I will work for free this Wednesday in São Paulo or REMOTE - <AUTHOR>

I want to meet startups in São Paulo or nice remote ones and I thought of trying new things, so... I'll do anything. No task is big or small. You could have me move boxes, enter data, clean up the floor, but here is a list of areas where you could find me most useful:
- Sysadmin - Python Programming - UX - Translations- Analytics - Finance
About me: mathematician/programmer/sysadmin, worked in startups and in the financial market. Loves to wear as many hats as possible. Recently took an sabbatical to go to meditation retreats and is coming back to the market.
If you have nothing for me to do, I'm just as happy to drop in for a chat.
Send me an email: tiagofassoni at gmail
Or look my resumé: http://a.fancyresu.me <comment><USER2> Let me make this clickable: [http://a.fancyresu.me](http://a.fancyresu.me)

Really fancy! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Tiago, this week we have the Campus Party, with a huge are of startups called Startups & Makers. More than 200 startups will be there on the free are ( the Open Campus).

A great place to meet new startups! I will be there with mine, if you want to meet there, email me!

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey Tiago,

Always great to hear from other Sao Paulo-based people on here. Hit me up @ firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER5> hey man, send me an email firstname.lastname@example.com if you want to grab a coffee.</comment>


Show HN: Phineas – build realtime apps with DynamoDB - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/jatins/11aac836f25257148a1d61def2c7270c <comment><USER2> Wow! This was a fun read. Give rethinkdb a try as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the read, Dipankar! Yeah, RethinkDB is definitely great for realtime functionality.

However, with this the aim is to make your existing databases like DynamoDB, Mongo etc realtime.</comment></comment>


Using Raspberry Pi to build a commercial grade wall information dashboard - <AUTHOR> https://blog.clevertap.com/using-raspberry-pi-to-build-a-commercial-grade-wall-information-dashboard/ <comment><USER2> Worth reading! Is it possible to show more than one screen after some interval of time?

<comment><USER3> It should be simple to switch what's displayed on the screen using javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> very cool</comment>


How to trick out your terminal in less than 10 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/trick-out-your-terminal-in-10-minutes-or-less-ba1e0177b7df <comment><USER2> Archive link in case you bump into that annoying paywall: [http://archive.li/Zv03h](http://archive.li/Zv03h)</comment>


Show HN: A lightweight tool for managers to get insights and build team trust - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
Humble Dot (https://humbledot.com) is a platform that helps managers get insights from team members and build trust through positive reinforcement.
Our mission is to foster stronger teams. We believe that the team is the building block of the modern company, not the individual. Thus, it follows that strong teams are the key to productivity and success. We hope to fulfill our mission by building a platform that will enable teams to cultivate trust and feedback, better delegate resources, and improve planning.
The current product offers a weekly lightweight check-in that surveys team trust, value, acknowledgement, conflict resolution, and prioritization of team results over individual gain. It also lets team members give public praise of their teammates via shout-outs. You can take a look at a demo of the check-in right here: https://humbledot.com/check-in/demo.
We have had a lot of interest in this product from directors, managers and direct reports. Could you see your team using this? We would love to hear some techniques that your teams are using to build trust and chemistry.
We would also be happy to answer any questions as well as hear any feedback you might have! <comment><USER2> Have you tested this site on iPads and iPhones?</comment>


Orson Scott Card's Amazon Review of Ender's Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/review/R3SKPG9XEJYASE/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0812589041&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode= <comment><USER2> "No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading."

Is that really true? The first Orwell book I read ( _Homage to Catalonia_ ) was required for a history class -- a class that had previously assigned some truly awful literature. So I was pessimistic and I read it grudgingly at first. But halfway through the book, I realized I loved it.

<comment><USER3> I had the same experience with Watership Down: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watership_Down>

I was set to read it when I was 14 or 15 in English. What 14 or 15 yo boy wants to read a book about a rabbit? I was wrong, and loved it, then went and read every other book Richard Adams wrote.

So I guess it's not _impossible_ , but at the same time I was probably broad minded enough to change my mind. Many people won't.

<comment><USER4> OT, but I can't thank you enough. I read part of this book as a kid in my school antology, loved it butn ever read all of it. Now that I know it's name I can go and fix that missing part of my life :)

<comment><USER3> Always glad to be of service :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunately does nothing to change my view that authors should probably keep away from their own reviews. If he'd had some brilliant new insight that would be one thing, but instead he just comes off as slightly more defensive than anyone who has sold tens of millions of books should.

I guess it was 1999 when this was written, though, so the norms for online reviews had not yet been established.

<comment><USER6> I felt similarly. "Why not write a blog post?" I thought.

<comment><USER7> A blog post in 1999 is asking a little much.

<comment><USER8> But then again, Ender's Game _included the general idea of blogs as a plot point_... (Not sure what else you would classify Peter/Valentine's self- published online essays as.)

<comment><USER9> Aren't they explicitly described as forum postings?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, it's described as something more akin to Usenet than anything else from what I remember.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I always thought of Ender's Game of something like a child's book. Something like Harry Potter to LoTRs. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, I mean, Harry Potter got a whole bunch of people reading. But seeing this explanation helps me better understand why I feel like that, and what it means.

I'd call this an analysis more than a review. Whatever you think it is, I found it a pretty honest and open piece coming from someone who has such a personal stake in the book.

<comment><USER12> The short story was much better.

There is speculation that the full length novel was ghost written. Essentially somebody asked Card a bunch of questions about it, and he didn't know the answers to any of his questions...

see also: <http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/22428/7034>

NB: I'm not claiming it's true, just pointing out that a claim has been made

<comment><USER3> I call BS on premise of that link, and on the original essay (which is now online: <http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html>)

Claims like this fail the Occam's Razor test:

 _I've seen Elaine's notes and heard Card on the phone, and there is no doubt in my mind that the Hitler Hypothesis is correct; it is simply impossible that Ender's Game and Speaker were written by someone who did not have a very detailed knowledge of Adolph Hitler's life. There are very exact parallels in there that you wouldn't even notice unless you read the footnotes to the most detailed Hitler biographies. I also tend to believe that Card does not have that level of knowledge about Hitler._

It would be simpler to assume that a story where a person causes the extinction of a species would have some similarities with a war in which genocide occurred.

I've read Card's books and I have reasonable knowledge of Hitler and I didn't notice any particular parallel. I suspect that the claim that he doesn't know his own books comes more from a reluctance to engage in a telephone debate rather than the idea that he didn't write them

I say that as someone who really liked _Ender's Game_ , but thought _Speaker for the Dead_ was crap. I had always assumed that _Speaker for the Dead_ had some kind of Mormon message, but I think these accusations go way too far and are unsupported by the evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'll just point out that the thing I didn't like about enders game was that the book felt too monotone. It has a great twist at the end, but everything leading up to it is linear, predictable, and while initially exciting, quickly becomes uninteresting.

<comment><USER14> I've read through Ender's Game more times than I can count, and have worn through two paperback copies. It is a powerful book with plenty of great object lessons. Quality is, of course, in the eye of the beholder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _I found that the less I put on the stage, the more the audience would imagine a much more compelling set than I could ever build_

Analogous to Card's statement, lately I've come to realize that I like movies better when they don't explicitly tell you everything. I think a good formula for writing is to lay all the facts out, then remove one or two of them from the script.

<comment><USER16> I'd almost agree with you, but as you describe it, the result would just be _deus ex machina_. It's not fair to just pull a resolution out of your butt, that couldn't possibly have been predicted.

Better to have all the facts there, but not in your face. Commonly, a film with focus on a key point, or dwell on an image, to ensure that the viewer gets it, and I think that's a mistake. A good example of a movie that gets it right is _Silence of the Lambs_ , in which all the information is there, but the viewer needs to separate the wheat from the chaff.

<comment><USER15> I didn't mean _deux ex machina_. You can provide the information and let the audience infer the result, or you can explicitly show the result. As you build the storyline and subplots, judiciously allowing the audience to interpret what happened at intermediate points in the story or at the end can make it more interesting than simply laying it all out.

<comment><USER17> It's always a balancing act. Chances are any specific level of detail will belabor the point for some readers/watchers, while simultaneously leaving others in the dark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's hard to see an author so defensive about their work. There will always be naysayers. Ender's game has persisted for so long in a way that so many of it's peers hasn't.

We have to remember that negative experiences effect our users more, and complaints will in general outnumber the praise, even if the the number of users who are unhappy are outnumbered by happy users by orders of magnitude.

Alternatively, haters gonna hate.

<comment><USER14> I don't find it challenging or difficult or upsetting at all to see an artist vigorously defend his work. What I find "hard" is someone poo-pooing another person's passionate defense of something they care about.

<comment><USER19> You don't have to put quotation marks around hard; one of its definitions is an adjective meaning painful or difficult to endure.

<comment><USER20> GP used quotation marks because it was a quote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The problem with Scott Card is that he substitutes proper character development with "let's make all the characters naive children who eventually realize all the adults are manipulative". Its a total copout, and he doesn't just do it wth the ender books.

Oh yeah, that and his crazy is often showing...

<comment><USER22> > "let's make all the characters naive children who eventually realize all the > adults are manipulative".

I can't agree. Speaker for the Dead (and sequels) characters have a lot of complexity in their arcs – perhaps because they're mostly not children. I'd say the Speaker series is a perfect example of how to create characters with nuance, depth and multiple motivations.

<comment><USER21> Check out 'A Memory of Earth'.

(Or better yet, don't. It, enders game, and enders shadow all did it. Three strikes and you're out imho, certainly when one of them is the book the author is known for)

<comment><USER23> Three books out of thirty.

And two of those books are the same story told from the perspective of different characters. And although that is part of the plot of those books, I don't see how you can say that's all there is to those characters. The pivotal moments in Ender's life are his acts of violence, not the adults' manipulation.

And the other isn't really about naive children realizing adults are manipulative, either — the characters just happen to be young. Volemak (the main adult in the story) actually is a good man, and the children who oppose him are the _antagonists_.

Seriously, I have a laundry list of complaints about Card's writing (the Homecoming series in particular), but your complaints seem pretty shallow and sound like you're levying heavy criticism without ever giving them a chance.

<comment><USER21> This particular complaint of mine is purely technical. I think that, based on three of his three book that I have read, he demonstrates a significant lack of skill when it comes to character development. Trust me, if I was going to get into nontechnical complaints, I would undoubtably be downvoted simply for creating an unreasonably long post alone.

Anyway, my time is worth too much to be scientifically rigorous. I gave him the benefit of the doubt twice already, and am not willing to do it again. And to be honest, I would suggest that anyone who thinks I somehow "missed something" in his works is giving the man far to much credit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It is a little funny to see Ender's Game on HN today. Tomorrow I'm going on a fishing trip with my 10 year old son. As our evening entertainment, he wanted me to read him Ender's Game. I've got the book already packed in my bag.

</comment><comment><USER25> Very classy. Plus gives a little insight into how a writer approaches it as a craft. Love to read things like this.

</comment><comment><USER26> I love Ender's Game and all of OSC's other books, but it seems like he might be a terrible guy... more on that in this very interesting interview: <http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/02/03/card>

<comment><USER27> The author misunderstands what Card is trying to say in response to her questions. Also, she evidently misunderstood Ender's Game quite a bit as well.

Ender was suited to be a brilliant military commander precisely because he _hated_ killing so much. A more bloodthirsty commander would have fallen for certain traps, committed certain errors of judgment that Ender was immune to. The nuance here is that Ender's strategic advantage came from a tremendous empathy with his adversary.

In the end, Ender had to be fooled into destroying the Buggers precisely because of this empathy. He never would have been able to commit a genocide if he thought it was actually a genocide, but he could do it in the context of a video game.

And, for what it's worth, the childhood bullying delivered by Ender's brother was also a function of Ender's love for his brother. We see very soon that Ender is capable of tremendous violence, but he tolerates mistreatment from Peter because he loves him so much.

It is this victimhood which endears Ender to any reader who has felt victimized, by showing that in some cases there is great physical and moral power beneath the surface.

The author of this strange hit piece is clearly trying to rile up various reactive political groups against Card. Sure, card is a Mormon and appears somewhat socially conservative in his personal beliefs. He is clearly not homophobic and became defensive when he sensed that the author was trying to broach the subject which had probably caused him much pain.

Sure some people believe that anyone who doesn't advocate same sex marriage qualifies as homophobic... The author of the Salon piece clearly thinks that state recognition of same sex marriage is hugely important.

I'd argue that through his books Card has done far more good (by enlightening people about important moral issues) than any harm caused by his traditional view (restricting the word "marriage" but not the state sanctioned bond between two people).

The remarks about Card yapping and flirting suggest a very immature person wrote the article. Clearly at a certain point Card was trying to be polite and let the interview finish without incident... something that was framed as "shutting down"... Bizarre stuff.

<comment><USER28> I would take issue with your view that Card isn't homophobic.

From "The Hypocrites of Homosexuality" by Orson Scott Card:

"Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message to those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society."

So the man actively opposes it gay marriage. He supports laws that make homosexual acts illegal. He doesn't think that gays should be protected from getting fired because of their sexuality. How is that _not_ homophobic?

<comment><USER29> "Homophobic" gets bandied about to the point of losing its meaning. "Unreasoning fear/antipathy towards homosexuals/homosexuality" is what the dictionary spat out, and I suspect Card would say 1) it's not "unreasoning" 2)"antipathy towards homosexuality" != "evil."

<comment><USER28> I'm pretty sure a reasonable person would consider it antipathy towards homosexuality.

<comment><USER29> You're absolutely right. My comment probably implied that I didn't think Card is homophobic. Rather, I meant to get across that I don't think he minds.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Couldn't sleep; added 960gs support to jMockups - <AUTHOR> http://jmockups.com/demo

<comment><USER2> I'm glad you couldn't sleep because otherwise I wouldn't find out about jMockups. :) This is going to come in handy!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I hope you like it. Let me know how I can make it more useful to you.

<comment><USER3> Placeholder images - really, stretchable white boxes with borders would be fine - or the ability to upload an image would be helpful. having to put in a URL means I have to stop my workflow to create and FTP or whatever an image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel dumb for having to Google "960gs"... Other than that, looking good!

<comment><USER5> Googling for things you dont know is a mark of intelligence, not stupidity :)

<comment><USER6> "Not knowing is not a sin. Not learning is."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't worry about the detractors, they may well be right but the only way to find out is to go on and make this tool as good as it can be. Then we will know if there is a market.

<comment><USER7> What are the detractors saying? This looks totally awesome.

<comment><USER5> That mockups should be wireframes like Balsamiq. They are right that is the stronger model (I love Balsamiq) but that doesnt mean that there isnt room for other ways.

<comment><AUTHOR> With respect to Balsamiq, the strongest model is to do both. :)

<comment><USER5> Agreed, did I read somewhere that you were contemplating offering a wireframe version as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love both the tool in general and the "couldn't sleep so i coded" sentiment. I had the same burst two nights ago when I made <http://fstr.net> (not nearly as cool as jmockups, but not bad for an evening's work).

Kudos to you! What's more, I may try to redesign my layout in jM. I tried to use a 960gs style "formula" for the buttons and ads... but really just did back of the napkin calculations. This might help :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice! One thing I like about this service is that I can pretty rapidly wrap up a prototype of the layout of a site I'm about make a design for, and then try out different colors, fonts, paddings and margins etc. Excellent tool to get a rough idea on how to further expand a design.

</comment><comment><USER10> Would love to see an export to code button. Just to see it live in a browser. Love this new demo though!

</comment><comment><USER11> It would be awesome if you could start from an existing web-page and work from there.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks really nice! Any possibility of adding other grid systems, or perhaps a customizable grid? I'd love to be able to specify column and gutter width.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that should be doable.

Do many people use grids other than the 12-col 960gs? (You can email me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you want to continue this off-HN).

<comment><USER12> I believe that a lot of people use Blueprint's grid system. By default that's 40px/10px at a total width of 950px.

<http://www.blueprintcss.org/tests/parts/grid.html>

I may email you with more details later. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> looks nice! minor point (maybe i'm too used to looking for small differences): when you do the browser test the font doesn't match in my browser (FF 3.6 on Mac), suggesting the answer to the question "Do these match?" may be 'No'. Maybe a "Do the words match?" may be clearer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. Can you send me a screenshot? email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Stutters like crazy when I drag any elements around the canvas. Looks promising, otherwise!

<comment><AUTHOR> This could be your browser/local machine or it could be because there are a lot of element on the canvas and when you try to move one around, it tries to snap to all the other ones.

I'm not sure what the best way around this is though, as snapping is a key feature. Any ideas?

<comment><USER15> Perhaps holding a modifier key while dragging could disable snapping?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea--I'll see what I can do.</comment></comment></comment></comment>