How the Tea Party created the debt ceiling debacle - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/print/2011/07/five-reasons-the-house-gop-is-to-blame/242673/

<comment><USER2> I'm not really following USA political market that closely, but is there any investor, politician or economist who has even a slightest doubt that the ceiling will be raised? Or am I too naive?

<comment><USER3> Obama has said he won't raise it on his own, even though he can legally do so. I don't believe him. I think if we got to that point, he'd just do it.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who think it won't be raised, but are they sane? I don't know.

<comment><USER4> Some believe that a default benefits Tea Party politicians, because it will hurt Obama in the 2012 elections. The ideas goes that history will remember the person that was president when the US defaulted, not the politicians that were actually responsible for it. Trump said so himself on TV. Why would anyone let insane people like this run the country?

<comment><USER5> To believe that only 1 party or segment of 1 party is at fault is absurd. Someone posted an interesting video the other day: <http://www.kpcb.com/usainc/>

An alternative story to Fallow's is: [http://blog.heritage.org/2011/07/28/the- truth-about-obamas-b...](http://blog.heritage.org/2011/07/28/the-truth-about- obamas-budget-deficits-in-pictures/)

Which shows that Obama is more to blame than Bush, which is different than what Fallow's used in his article. Situation is normal as each side is blaming the otherside.

I think if you look at the make up of congress when significant increases in deficits occurred, it might give a better indicator.

John Mauldin has a book called Endgame, which is worth reading through Interlibrary loan. It presents some interesting ideas.

But what it comes down to is that the US is acquiring debt faster than is recommended. It is possible to correct the issue, but not sure the political will is present to do so.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Where did all the good clients go? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thischerishedlife.com/index.php/ideal-clients/#sthash.w7MdWxb6.6WZap8lS.dpbs

<comment><USER2> "Unappreciative clients are exhausting" \- That's been my (unfortunate) experience too as a software freelancer. On the plus side, it's taught me to appreciate all the service providers who provide me with some service - electricians, plumbers, waiters...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the number one thing that makes me get down about freelancing. But now I know - it's not just a matter of firing clients you don't want to to work with, it's a matter of attracting people who "get" you. It's made all the difference. Thanks for the read!</comment></comment>


Awesome Tmux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rothgar/awesome-tmux <comment><USER2> As much as I like its functionality, the tmux program ux is terribly unintuitive. From the crash course:

      tmux new -s session_name
        creates a new tmux session named session_name
      tmux attach -t session_name
        attaches to an existing tmux session named session_name
      tmux switch -t session_name
        switches to an existing session named session_name
      tmux list-sessions
        lists existing tmux sessions
      tmux detach (prefix + d)
        detach the currently attached session

The -s/-t feel like they should not be required. They shouldn't even be different in the first place. list-sessions should just be list, since the -sessions is implicit in all other commands as well. Exiting from a session (ctrl+b d) is another new thing too. If that were at least like vim (which is terrible as well, but esc :q), it would be much easier to interact with. Only after reading the man pages these make sense.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you in principle, and feel like tmux was written "for programmers" and therefore the author(s) felt it more important to be consistent than usable. For instance: I'm pretty sure with `tmux list- sessions` because the command inside tmux is `:list-sessions`.

It wouldn't be terribly hard to write a wrapper for the command itself that works the way you want it to. As simple as it seems, I think that would probably be something useful to create and release.

<comment><USER4> Not so much for programmers, but I think certainly for people used to the terminal. If you know how to use the shell or a sophisticated editor like vi or emacs, tmux should not be a particular challenge. The target audience is not Unix beginners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I always start tmux using in a shell function like this

        tms () {
              session_name="${1:-sean}"
              tmux new-session -A -s "${session_name}"
        }

What that does is create a new session or attach to one if it exists. This makes it really easy to detach a session or to log into the same session in multiple windows or whatever.

I can pass a name for the session but if I don't it defaults to my name (so when I'm on a multi-user box my session doesn't clash with other people's). This makes it easy to have separate "work" and "personal" sessions or whatever.

I think for "tmux new-session -A" to work you need a reasonably recent tmux but anything from the last couple of years or so should work.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use tmux in combination with Mosh because the latter doesn't have an usable "scrollback". Or when I need to keep a session running. ^__^;

Sometime I mangle the status line after a copy/paste operation but I haven't investigated why it happens, my only gripe is that I always forget to press Shift before using the mouse when selecting text.

</comment><comment><USER7> For those who haven't used it--

TMUX is awesome!

Give it a try. You'll be glad you did.

</comment><comment><USER8> How do I efficiently copy text in tmux in multi-column mode?! Selecting with mouse grabs the pipe characters and text from other columns, arghh!

<comment><USER9> Ctrl+highlight?

<comment><USER8> genius!</comment></comment></comment>


How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3005681/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how long it will be before other companies start doing this.

At his confirmation hearing, when Alan Greenspan was asked why Townsend- Greenspan employed so many women (> 50%, compared to about 5% in finance at the time), he replied that since he valued women as much as men, but other firms didn't, he could get more work for the same amount money by hiring women. Now, of course, the difference has mostly been arbitraged away, but it took decades to get to this point.

At the time, people gave many reasons sexism couldn't possibly exist in finance; naturally, more men went into finance because women just _didn't like_ finance, and more men had senior positions because simply _didn't want_ senior positions, and so on and so forth (oddly enough, those same reasons are given today, in discussions of sexism in CS and engineering).

In 1987, Townsend-Greenspan shut down, after thirty successful years, because Greenspan became chairman of the Fed. Now, twenty-six years later, the gender gap among MBAs is much smaller than it used to be, but it hasn't disappeared. I hope it doesn't take fifty-six years from the founding of Etsy for someone to be able to make a comment like this about programmers.

I'm afraid it might be a while, though. In discussions about the topic here on HN, the top comment is often something along the lines of how there obviously isn't any sexism in the field, or if there is any, it's rare, and certainly not a systematic problem, and how it's simply impossible that the highly skewed male:female ratio in the field is due to sexism. That's usually followed by a paragraph on how any attempts to address the issue are an insidious cause of reverse sexism.

The top comment in the previous thread on this topic was a comment about how everything Etsy is doing applies equally to all people, not just women, despite a large body of research indicating that, on average, women are treated differently in the workplace [1], and how some simple changes can neutralize many serious problems [2].

[1] Perhaps someone else can supply a reference to a well-known study that I can't seem to look up. When men react with anger, or act authoritatively, that's seen neutrally or positively, but when women do the same, it's seen negatively.

[2] <http://papers.nber.org/papers/w18511>

<comment><USER3> Of course, you can find plenty of sexism in both finance and engineering. And I'm sure it discourages some women from entering.

But it is important to note there are plenty of industries today with high female representation, such as law and medicine, that in the recent past were bastions of male dominance. A female relative of mine went through law school in the 1950s and can tell tales of male chauvinism more extreme than you'd find anywhere today in tech or finance. But somehow, women went to law school more and more, and today represent ~50% of law classes. Something must be different about these fields, but I'm not sure what.

<comment><USER4> Theory: the fields you mention, law and medicine, (historically and still) convey a higher social status on the member. There's also a relatively well trodden path through apprenticeship, successful practitioner, and eventual transition into other stable/respectable paths (politics, judiciary, hospital administration) as your career winds down.

Software engineering doesn't have that (yet?)

<comment><USER5> People haven't aspired to become software engineers for generations. Only the past few years. In 1990, no one told their daughters that they could be software engineers. They told their daughters they could be lawyers and doctors, or maybe Senators, or business executives. Software engineering? Who wanted to do that?

<comment><USER4> Out of 150 students that graduated my year of high school (2003), an all boys school, I was the only one who chose to follow a computing career.

All my friends, even those with a similar (or more advanced) aptitude and interest in computers, chose different paths. Chemistry. Theoretical Physics. History. Politics. Economics.

Nobody wanted to be doing computing professionally. Men were/are afforded to be outcasts or underdogs, socially; there's some romanticism to it. I'm not sure the same has applied for women, but maybe that's changing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Want cognitively diverse teams? It's not as simple as hiring more female technologists._

I'm sorry, is the author implying that men and women approach engineering problems differently (i.e. they think differently)? Is there any evidence of this? I thought "essentialism" was anathema in contemporary diversity circles.

 _Eighty percent of Etsy customers are female, but the company itself used to be known in startup circles as engineer-centric and something of a dude-fest_

So the fact that eighty percent of Etsy users were women despite having an all-male engineering team apparently means that you have to hire more women engineers to attract female users? Again I'd love to see evidence that once a core of female engineers were hired significant changes where made to the site that could only have come from a "woman's intuition" (natch). It seems to me that having a female dominated user base in spite of an all male engineering team disproves the assertion that you need hire women to achieve "cognitive diversity".

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, when approaching an issue like this you cannot do so without adopting a sexist viewpoint yourself. To begin to analyze workers in terms of sex or gender to begin with, itself is sexist, the same way that affirmative action is racist.

It's fine and good that companies want to hire more female engineers. But this article is lame, which you should have picked up on when the author used the word "rockstar"

<comment><USER8> > To begin to analyze workers in terms of sex or gender to begin with, itself > is sexist, the same way that affirmative action is racist.

Which is, again, not sexist or racist at all. *-ism implies institutional bias of a society, not an individual instance of discrimination.

It is _discriminatory_ against men, for sure. But not 'sexist.'

<comment><USER6> _-ism implies institutional bias of a society_

Sexism/racism et al. can exist outside of institutions no? "Hate crimes" for instance clearly do not involve any recognizable institutions yet clearly involve an _-ism of some kind. Nor do_ -isms only exist at the society level. For instance it would be possible for a female owned company to not hire men (female hiring bias/sexism) which would run counter to larger societal biases.

<comment><USER8> > "Hate crimes" for instance clearly do not involve any recognizable > institutions yet clearly involve an -ism of some kind.

Only in the sense that they 'reproduce' the broader -ism. The individual act is one of discrimination, the sum of all acts collectively is an *-ism.

> For instance it would be possible for a female owned company to not hire men > (female hiring bias/sexism) which would run counter to larger societal > biases.

Studies and discussion on this topic are scoped specifically at the societal level for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Recently I watched a documentary in which a researcher told of how he was ridiculed for studying happiness, even though nobody saw anything wrong with studying depression. Then I saw a documentary where a handful of really skinny people were put on a ridiculous diet and their physiological changes were tracked.

Instead of trying to figure out why there aren't MORE women in science, math and engineering disciplines, perhaps we should be talking to the ones who are already there? It seems to me that if we've really had to jump over extra hurdles and deal with lower wages, there has to be something very compelling that keeps us here.

We think these answers are obvious. Maybe they aren't?

ETA: I interviewed with Etsy in 2010 or 2011. It seemed as if I did very well, but it wasn't a career move that warranted relocating the home to Brooklyn. At the time, I thought they were just excited by me, as a professional. I'm feeling a bit sad that it might have just been a "hire more women" drive instead. Bleh.

<comment><USER10> Whast extra hurdles did you have to jump over? Are you sure your wages are lower? Those differences are not very obvious for office jobs, in fact the other day I linked to astudy showing women in tech earn more than men ( till age 30 anyway, have no data on otherrs).

<comment><USER9> My degree is in audio tech, not computer tech. I have always found the latter to be far less challenging in the gender bias department, and had a much easier time, in general making a career "in computers." I do have experiences where I was passed over for positions where men with less experience were hired (I trained them). Also where male peers received training I was denied. Also where I was harassed until I resigned while I was pregnant. I've been asked if I was okay with working 40 hours a week because I have kids or what my kids would do during the day while I was working. Even writing one sentence per experience would make this response tedious.

I have no personal examples of being paid less, because I've more or less felt I was being paid enough to make it not worth asking anyone else what they were being paid. From what I understand, that is a big no-no. The examples I have of women being paid less are from other women in tech, a couple of these for which there is direct proof.

<comment><USER10> Curious about the "willing to work 40h" question, seems fair to ask?

<comment><USER9> Weird. Something ate that post.

The question was, "I can hear your kids in the background. Are you sure you're okay with working 40 hours a week?" From a female recruiter for a previous employer when I specifically inquired about FTE. Her boss (also female) certainly didn't think it was fair to ask.

<comment><USER10> I'm male and not really OK with working 40 hours a week (with a 2 year old at home). I find it annoying that people automatically assume I'm OK with it. Not sure what to think, I mean why the question is offensive. Maybe it is illegal to ask (like pregnancy status)?Edit: I don't know what FTE means.

<comment><USER11> FTE -> Full Time Employee

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd like to see some numbers on how having 500% more female engineers made Etsy ship a better product - which is what I imagine customers ultimately care about. The idea that diversity is good for its own sake in every possible situation is taken as an axiom - which I'd like to see proven.

It seems like the idea of meritocracy - that the best professional for a given job is based on competence is substituted with one of diversity. Ie that in any group of size n, the personal qualities (gender,race,sexual orientation) of N+1 person joining the group is just as (or more important) that his/her core qualifications.

For example - why does company have to have engineers that mimic its customer base? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to have people whose job it is to figure out what customers want and then tell engineers to code it up?

Now - I am not saying that diversity is bad, rather that it's presented as a given, with no numerical justification.

<comment><USER13> On any other problem whatsoever, people would readily grant that having the developers understand the problem domain confers an advantage. I don't see why this should be any different.

<comment><USER12> I am not convinced that males are incapable of understanding whatever it is that Etsy's clients want. After all - we don't look for programmers who are doctors for medical programs, etc.

I'd actually posit that in majority of cases (ie all enterprise software), programmers actually have much less of clue as to what they are working on than in the case of consumer site like this.

<comment><USER14> Actually, you do end up needing a degree of domain-specific knowledge. Do you not think that programmers of medical software don't pick up a ton of medical knowledge while they're working? And that people who are programmers who were, say, pre-med or bio students or whatever wouldn't have an edge? As someone who happens to work in a science/bioinformatics environment with no education on the topic, I can definitely say that I make decisions based on the domain (what I've learned since joining) and the behaviors of our end-users, scientists.

When programmers lack domain knowledge, they're likely to make bad assumptions that will hurt them later. Of course you have to know intended use when you're writing software, it can help you design it properly. A very simple hypothetical: Designing a database to efficiently receive some data set. What if Etsy's users aren't interested in that data? And they care more about something else, which would merit designing it differently? Maybe having a female voice to bring that up would be helpful. Obviously, it's purely conjecture, but I think it's a reasonable scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find this policy of intentionally hiring female over male programmers as highly disturbing. Etsy already proved that female programmers are not needed to successfully sell to females. Is there some sort of magical difference between male and female programmers that I am unaware of? Why throw out equality to promote it?

Would anyone be OK with the reverse policy? Could a company that sells to 99% men systematically exclude more qualify female leads to only hire men? Could a company that only sells to white people refuse to hire minorities? The Internet would be up in arms organizing boycotts in the case of the later (not to mention civil suites).

<comment><USER16> I tend to agree. I thought the whole point of gender equality was to be blind, so to speak, of gender?

If you have to specifically hire female people, it says their quality is lower (otherwise you would just always hire the best person female or male), which is not something I am sure I can support. Women are just as capable of being the best. It seems like an insult to give anyone special treatment just because of gender. Isn't that what we are trying to stop?

<comment><USER14> I mean, being qualified is never the only piece of the "getting hired" puzzle, right? You want someone who fits well in your team, is generally interesting, is eager to learn, and possibly fills some other niche that you feel your team is missing. I think it's a fair question to ask, "Will this person provide a unique perspective within our team?"

It seems simply that Etsy is trying to fill a female niche and add female perspective. It's not like they're hiring random ladies off the street, their hires have gone to hacker school and are clearly capable given the opportunity. Software isn't written is silos where you don't talk to other people about what/how/why you are going what you're doing.

<comment><USER16> You definitely right that being the overall best is more complicated than being the best at one specific thing. However, doesn't the idea of "female perspective" reintroduce the exact same gender bias issues?

If you can justify hiring for "female perspective", what about the companies who only want "male perspective"?

<comment><USER14> I don't think Etsy is acting as though they want only the female perspective, just more of it than what they have. I'm sure there are other areas where they are trying to get more male perspective (e.g. at small liberal arts colleges, to a degree).

Etsy is obviously not starting to hire only women or even mostly women.

<comment><USER16> Teaching is an industry that openly seeks male perspective, but I'm not sure that is right either. Why can't men just reach the level of being the obvious choice for the job, without even needing to consider gender?

<comment><USER14> I think, as the article alludes to, men and women are less likely to consider certain careers/colleges/whatever. So if you ignored gender at a liberal arts school and blindly selected candidates, and the ratio was as skewed towards women as the tech industry is towards men, do you think men would be as comfortable there? Having a gender balance (as well as a balance on other axes that include more minorities) is good for everyone. Maybe that overall environment is better than an environment full of mega left-wing lady commies, or, in the case of tech, "hotshot" male engineers with poor social graces. These are all generalizations, obviously, but I think it's true to the overarching trend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article doesn't really say _why_ they wanted more female engineers, other than "it was vital to the product."

I'd like to see more women engineers, and I applaud Etsy's initiative, but it seems unlikely that adding a few more super-junior (freshly-trained) women developers to their staff is going to meaningfully change the product in the near term.

I suppose (hope) that these women could help prevent anti-female product boo- boos, like the time Microsoft offered "bitch" as the equivalent to "male" in a Windows XP Spanish localization.

<comment><USER18> I didn't know which company was accused of this, but the version I heard was that "female" was translated as "hembra". It does mean that, but you usually hear it applied to animals.[1] Probably an easy mistake for someone to make if they're told to translate a string without being made aware of the context.

[1] The DRAE, considered the "dictionary of record" in Spain, says that female animal is definition 1, and female human is definition 2. <http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=hembra>

<comment><USER19> "Hembra" used to be acceptable some time ago, but right now is controversial and not used in that context. It is still used for female animals, though.

The same goes with the male equivalent: "macho", which now is only used for animals and not people. (Macho can be also used in a similar way as in english, but that's a different acception and context usage)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Doesn't this seem a little sexist? I only hope they give men the equal opportunity to women and don't start "paving the way" to make it easier for women to get a job there than an equally good man. Avoiding sexism isn't about hiring an equal number of men as women. It's about hiring the best for the job regardless of their gender.

<comment><USER21>
      > Doesn't this seem a little sexist?

Had the article been: "How Etsy Replaced 50% of our Male Engineers with Females" you might have cause for concern.

If we were using startup lingo, we'd be saying that Etsy is disrupting the traditional labor market by finding a supply of software engineers where one didn't (or didn't seem to) exist before. We wouldn't assume that the labor supply remained exactly the same size, and that every software engineer position staffed by a woman meant one less software engineer position staffed by a man.

<comment><USER20> It's not whether they're getting rid of male engineers. I just hope they're not giving an unfair advantage to females over males here as I would consider that to be sexist. Equality isn't making sure 50% of workers in each role are of each gender. Equality is making sure that when recruiting/training you always pick the best candidate _regardless_ of there gender.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's great to see Etsy hire more female engineers! But really, they had so few female engineers to begin with (3) that the 500% figure is a bit sensationalist

</comment><comment><USER23> This is a really great plan for hiring top talent in a way that's not immediately obvious. There is a lot of talk of 'sexism' in the tech world, but from my experience, many top male engineers are going to prefer working in a team with a few more females. If the article is correct then this proves this further - they were able to hire some big names simply by having those extra female engineers.

Training up female engineers is also positive as the main complaint about 'diversity in tech' is putting less competent female engineers before more competent male engineers to meet ratio targets. (I'm not saying that females are less competent, but female engineers are harder to find.) By training up female engineers first before giving them the jobs, they are hopefully making sure that their female engineers are just as competent as their male engineers.

Basically it's a win all around, and is much better than just hiring any female engineer regardless of skill to make quota.

"Less headhunters, more hacker school" - Good call, good call.

<comment><USER19> Well, more education/vocation HAS to be the key. There are less female engineers. The objective has to be to have more around, not to concentrate them in a few companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> At that rate, in just over 20 years every woman in the world will be a software engineer at Etsy.

</comment><comment><USER25> You know, gender aside, this is what more companies should do; there's an enormous demand for skilled engineers out there, yet very few companies that acknowledge there just may not be any more in the market and they need to create said skilled employees themselves.

The problem for employers is that trainees and interns are a risk; you need to screen them beforehand, and then you take a gamble about whether they'll get up to the required skill level in six months or a year to be up to par to the rest of the company's team.

I heard about a major consultancy company's success in attracting interns as potential future engineers (Ordina iirc), they said the success rate was about 1 in 20. Which, for smaller companies (<100 people) is simply not enough.

The article itself states they hired eight people from Hacker School, which is daring and commendable. I'm curious as to how those people will develop themselves in the coming year.

<comment><USER26> Companies should also be very clear about what they're actually looking for. If you're looking for "world class" talent, don't complain about a "programmer shortage".

The fact that there were 600 valid applications (the women applying had code examples to show), basically busts the "programmer shortage" myth.

There are a whole lot of people who can program computers, and who could, with some investment, become valuable assets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Large previous thread on HN from 45 days ago here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5177994>

<comment><USER28> True but probably worth discussing again in light of "adriagate"

<comment><USER29> Especially because this is a fundamentally positive story. It's not all crusaders and combat out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Work, after all, is mostly about getting shit done. If there is a shortage of female engineers they are probably overvalued which also means I could hire equally good or better men for less money.

Does the little gain of prestige make up for the huge potential loss of opportunity?

</comment><comment><USER31> What a sexist goal Etsy had, to hire 500% more female(???) engineers. Why engineers are separated by gender? It's 100% sexism.

</comment><comment><USER32> So, they had 4, and now they have 20 female engineers. That sounds like quite a small sample size and quiet a lot talk about that.

</comment><comment><USER33> 500% more female engineers = 500% more risk of sexual harassment lawsuits. If that's not progress, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER34> Progress will be when this kind of thinking doesn't occur

<comment><USER35> Is this kind of thinking incorrect?

<comment><USER36> Probably incorrect.

And I could just as easily posit the reverse. Say we have one woman and nine men. If we add a woman, does it really double the likelihood of a harassment suit? Why would it? Either one of the nine men harasses women, or he doesn't, why would adding a second women change his behaviour?

On the other hand, if we halve the proportion of women by hiring ten more men, I'd say you may have doubled the chances of having a harasser on your staff.

I guess it all comes down to whether you walk around thinking that women cause sexual harassment lawsuits or men cause sexual harassment lawsuits. I think it's the men doing the harassing, but whoo-boy are there a lot of apologists out there who believe that women are making this stuff up.

<comment><USER37> I don't completely understand your argument here, on a purely intellectual level...

In a very simple model, going from 0 women to 1 woman should increase the number of harassment suits, right? Then going from 1 woman to 2 women should have a similar effect, because all naturally occurring functions are differentiable :-) Intuitively it seems to me that the amount of reported harassment should be proportional to how many opportunities for harassment exist, or (under a different theory) how many opportunities for false claims exist, which is the same number by another name.

So it's a little strange to hear you say that anyone who disagrees with you must believe in nasty things like "harassment is made up by women". Do you know how hard it is to figure out causality from observational data? For any possible trend you could find in the data, like "reported harassment scales as the number of women times the square root of the number of men", one could probably make up a just-so story that blames men, and a different just-so story that blames women.

<comment><USER36> I think the onus is on you and those who agree with you to discard all this "intuitively" and other hand-wavy stuff and come up with some hard evidence and/or citations, or back down and say, "we're making this shit up because it suits our biases."

I wasn't born yesterday. If someone makes a claim without a shred of evidence, it's perfectly legitimate to say, "Well, here's another alternate explanation that's just as unproven, so clearly yours has nothing special going for it." I gave you a Flying Spaghetti Monster, and you're telling me that intuitively, God has a long white beard, not a saucer.

I'm perfectly ok with your saying that you choose to believe something without a shred of evidence, to take it as faith.

But that won't change the fact that simply making shit up, asking if it's "wrong," and then saying that you'll stick to it unless someone else proves your unsubstantiated prejudices are mistaken is bunkum.

That thinking isn't thinking.

<comment><USER35> His intuitions are simply basic mathematical intuitions ("natural functions are differentiable") and have nothing whatsoever to do with any prejudices. He isn't "making shit up", he just isn't justifying it with as much mathematical rigor as I did.

It really does not help discussions like this to simply assume and accuse those you disagree with are prejudiced and unthinking.

<comment><USER36> Sorry, what he and you are doing is starting with assumptions you are making up and then saying GIVEN this shit I'm making up THEN given these mathematical intuitions I cherry-pick as simple demonstrations of the conclusions I've drawn THEN the conclusion I drew before I back-filled my reasoning holds.

Again, without even the barest attempt to go out and gather some empirical data. That kind of talk belongs amongst consultants pedalling methodology snake-oil. And yes I am being dismissive of your so-called arguments.

Around here we regularly make fun of the "social sciences" for their lack of rigor. Except, it appears, when we want to throw our prejudices around. Shame on you all for treating Hacker News like it's Reddit.

<comment><USER35> Which prejudices?

I made three assumptions. One was social distance (a harasser will harass only one of the K < N people he has met). The other was _your assumption_ that a harasser always harasses. The third was _your assumption_ that all harassment allegations are true.

I assume that the social distance assumption is the one you believe to be prejudiced?

I'm also curious why you believe your post is any different. You also posited a mathematical model (exactly like mine, except without the social distance), and hinted that those you disagree with must be sexist. Is it merely the existence of an ad-hominem attack that makes your post more valid?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPFS, Again - <AUTHOR> https://macwright.org/2019/06/08/ipfs-again.html <comment><USER2> Who is going to defend the free internet agains Azure, AWS and Google Cloud? They are the very opposite of a free and open internet where everyone can "run a website" on her own machine.

It pains me to see a great idea like the Interplanetary File System _still_ not working. I had similar experiences with IPFS and yes, we do need a project like this, only without the broken incentive structure attached to it. Why a "Filecoin"? We already have a tested and working native internet currency: bitcoin.

I've long believed that a browser itself should evolve to be both viewing visited websites but also to _host_ said website for an x number of minutes/hour/days. A bit like webTorrent aims to work. This way a website that gets visitors gets decentralised hosters as well :-)

<comment><USER3> Filecoin isn't a currency. It's a token that proves "I replicated x amount of data, y reliably, for z amount of time", and (protocol-wise) can be exchanged for file storage services only. The market decides how much file storage is _actually worth_ , by arbitrage.

The same principle goes for Namecoin, incidentally. The token embodies the value of the resource. I actually think this kind of thing is a much more stable base for a currency than Bitcoin's "it's valuable because we say so" system.

<comment><USER4> We don't need tokens.

We need P2P stuff that works.

Like [https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent](https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent) and [https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun)

They're both run in production, at scale (millions of users), and do NOT require any tokens.

<comment><USER5> _> , and do NOT require any tokens._

You're looking at it from a pure _technical_ perspective of pushing bytes around in a decentralized way.

What the folks pushing "tokens" are trying to solve is the _game theory of financial incentives_ to store & serve those decentralized bytes. In contrast, things like Bittorrent/Beaker/webtorrent/etc depend on others' "altruism" to host and serve files.

Because altruism doesn't _scale_ , that's why nobody wants to seed my 100 gigabytes of personal vacation photos. Sure, they'll be happy to seed & disseminate the latest cracked copy of Adobe Photoshop or a bluray rip of the latest Marvel Avengers movie. But my personal files are uninteresting to the current decentralized web.

(But I'm not claiming Filecoin actually solves the incentive puzzle. I'm merely pointing out that the "problem" Filecoin tries to solve is at a higher abstraction level (the economics) than webtorrent (the protocol).)

<comment><USER4> I agree, the problem is that Bitcoin and Filecoin (per author's IPFS scaling issues) do NOT scale though.

You must solve the technical scaling problem first, then sure, heck, add tokens if you dandy.

WebTorrent/GUN/etc. do scale. Add economics to that.

Preferably, add something that is time-scarce so people do not have to lose money (they don't pay FB or Google! If they have to pay Filecoin, they'll still choose free FB), something like BAT or Pirate Booty ( [https://hackernoon.com/hollywood-crypto-behavioral- economics...](https://hackernoon.com/hollywood-crypto-behavioral-economics-of- piracy-netflix-and-the-future-73f093e56130) ).

<comment><USER3> You can't always just "layer economics" on top. Sometimes the problem _is_ economical.

Consider what it would take to replace DNS with a distributed system. In a global namespace, names have value. You can't just operate on first-come first-served - there needs to be a system that ensures that names go to whoever wants it most. In other words, the challenge to be solved there isn't the technical one of having a DHT - that's a mostly solved problem - it's how the hell to make the names cost money, and who the money goes to. (And if you don't think the names should cost money, how do you propose allocation should work?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just today I was looking into IPFS vs DAT, does anybody have any insights about the similarities/differences other than the ones listed here [1]?

From far away, DAT looks smaller and better documented (perhaps less ambitious, too?) Apparently the best IPFS overview is the 2015 paper [2] which looks pretty daunting and does not seem to cover any practical considerations.

1: [https://docs.datproject.org/docs/faq#how-is-dat-different- th...](https://docs.datproject.org/docs/faq#how-is-dat-different-than-ipfs)

2: [https://github.com/ipfs/papers/blob/master/ipfs- cap2pfs/ipfs...](https://github.com/ipfs/papers/blob/master/ipfs- cap2pfs/ipfs-p2p-file-system.pdf)

<comment><USER7> I consider dat:// to be the better protocol, in part because of what you mentioned. Other advantages are the lack of duplicating data on disk (IPFS makes a copy of all data it shares) as well as having a versioned history of all changes. That way app owners can'tp ublish malicious versions while preventing people from using the non-malicious ones.

Essentially, dat:// behaves like BitTorrent but the torrent data can change.

The only downside for both protocols I can think of is that the integration story outside the browser and CLI tools is very poor (there is no FFI/C lib Ic an bind my Rust app to)

<comment><USER8> > (there is no FFI/C lib Ic an bind my Rust app to)

Language choices in both have set off my "this is doomed to obscurity" alarm bells for precisely that reason. You don't write the reference implementation for a new Internet protocol—especially the core library for it, and especially a very complex one—in a language that can't easily be included in most other languages. So, probably C.

Dat in particular seems great but ain't no way I'm relying on a large JS project for anything I don't absolutely have to, on my own time, especially if it deals with my files.

<comment><USER9> With regards to IPFS (don't have much experience with Dat), I have a hard time understanding how choosing Go to implement their protocol, as well as Javascript makes it doomed for obscurity. A lot of distributed/decentralized applications and platforms are being written in Go. This is the first time I've heard this argument.

Not to mention you can call into Go funcs over shared libs from C.

Rust is a great language definately, but not using it is a completely sane design choice. C has been a source of a number of security issues due to memory management, that type safe languages solve.

Not to mention, there are various parts of the IPFS/LibP2P stack that are being written in Rust by other teams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I work for a cryptocurrency company as a software engineer and I definitely agree that a lot of projects backed by crypto funds tend to over promise and under deliver.

It's clear that those who control the funds aren't always the best at judging tech talent. Big tech corporations have had years to settle down and build a reputation to attract top talent. Crypto companies tend to attract greed over talent and it shows in practially all projects.

Its improving for some projects but not others.

<comment><USER11> I've seen this argument before and tend to disagree. There is certainly greed, but I think the larger problem is that crypto doesn't have users.

I don't think it's particularly novel in 2019 to say that a successful app is built off of the feedback of its users. Any app, regardless of intentions or engineering prowess, is going to struggle if it doesn't have a sizeable user base providing feedback (and devs who listen to that feedback).

<comment><USER12> I think you're touching on an important point. There are already other vessels for the niche that cryptocurrency fills—at least as far as websites and web services go—that are way easier to both implement and use. With that said, I'm still rooting for cryptocurrency as a general competitor to state-backed currency, that in turn gives people all over the world more freedom to conduct their business without state or corporate intervention. That is most of all about freedom, and the only bogeyman they've yet to conjure against it is "it's used for criminal stuff". Like the dollar isn't also used for crime...

<comment><USER13> The distinction between "gives people more freedom to conduct their business without state intervention" and "enables crime" seems very elusive.

I can see an argument that enabling crime under oppressive regimes is moral. Or even enabling particular crimes that you feel shouldn't be crimes.

I have trouble seeing the legitimate use case for cryptocurrency in first world countries. If the main use case is crime, money laundering and speculation, it will either be squashed or remain niche.

<comment><USER11> I tend to agree with your assessment, but you are dancing around an important point.

Most people in the world don't live in a first world democracy. Today, many of these countries are stable and providing currency for their citizens. But ask a Venezuelan if they can see a reason why we might want an alternative to a state backed currency and I feel like the answer is self-evident.

Vitalik saw this use case and talked about how disheartened he was by the ICO boom because it was use cases like this that he believed in, so it isn't at all an afterthought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> IPFS is a victim of the great plague of modern software development: over- engineering. They've spent far too much time coding and far too little time thinking of ways to avoid coding by simplifying their algorithms and protocols and most importantly by carefully defining and scoping their problem.

The massive amount of cryptocurrency funny money they raised makes this problem worse, not better. Lots of money leads to too many cooks in the kitchen. Large organizations require immense discipline to avoid scope creep and runaway complexity growth. They need someone to say "no!" 95% of the time and relentlessly exterminate features and not allow things to be released unless they are ready and actually solve a problem.

Most large organizations don't have this, which is why most "enterprise" software is a mass of twine and chewing gum. In the case of enterprise over- engineered bloatware you usually have some corporate requirement forcing its use. No corporate requirement forces IPFS or any of Protocol Labs' other sprawling mega-projects to be used, so nobody is going to use them.

</comment><comment><USER15> This might sound a bit weird, but when I look at the employee base of protocol labs (the makers of IPFS), the most impressive employees are the business people. Multiple Harvard Business School graduates, tons of Stanford degrees. For the technical people, some are impressive, but no where near the stature of the business people. No distinguished ex-FAANG engineers, no principal engineers from notable companies, a few top STEM PHDs (Not cs), but lots of obscure developers. This isn't to dig on them, but with the kind of money that company has, and the level of technical complexity they are trying to solve...why don't they have better engineers?

EDIT: Not looking to argue about whether leetcode filters for good programmers.

EDIT 2: Self taught developers at random companies can be amazing, but for a company "evolving the web" and 300 Million in the bank, they have hired almost no nationally recognized experts, and theyre greater developer base is not made up of people with 20 years experience. But rather a bunch of developers who have been coding for 2-4 years.

<comment><USER16> Something 20+ years of development experience has taught me is that developers vary _a lot_. People who went to Ivy League schools can be amazing and they can be awful, and the same is true for every other dev who went to a 'lesser' college or didn't get a degree at all. Certificates don't tell you much. Output is what matters. You should judge Protocol Labs on what they build rather than where their employees went to school.

<comment><USER17> I do, and I expected much more, unfortunately. The daemon still has problems with rampant memory usage, chews through two CPUs during normal operation, the pinning API is abysmal, DHT resolution is so problematic that you routinely need to connect two nodes directly together so they can discover each other's files, etc.

I don't want to say they're bad at what they're doing, as I don't know how hard it is, but at least a better pinning implementation seems easy to do and relatively useful. Currently, to pin something, the command will block for hours/days or even for ever if the content is large and rare. If my torrent client worked that way, it just wouldn't get used.

<comment><USER18> I agree. Personally I've had similar thoughts but instead of viewing it as a signal of their lack of talent, I viewed it.. sadly, as a signal for their lack of attention to IPFS.

From a largely outsiders perspective, it has felt like FileCoin was the thing they wanted to do. Either that, or they just don't have enough bandwidth to take on all of these projects.

Regardless, it doesn't feel to me as if IPFS has had the attention it deserves _from ProtocolLabs_. I love the idea of FileCoin, but I'd at least like ProtocolLabs to get one thing finished before they chase the next shiny project. Hard to imagine the "next internet" being created with such floaty attention spans.

<comment><USER17> This is exactly the impression I've formed as well. I'm sure they have super smart people (and I've talked to many of them), it just doesn't seem they're interested enough in improving IPFS.

The "canary in the coal mine" for me is that pinning API ticket, which has been open for years and amounts to "please put an async UI over pinning". If something that simple and useful doesn't get fixed quickly, I'm not optimistic about the future of the project.

It's too bad, because I think it's an extremely useful idea.

<comment><USER19> Doing this _right_ is not simple. It requires an entire task management system internally, which (as you know) i've sketched up here: [https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/issues/3114](https://github.com/ipfs/go- ipfs/issues/3114)

Sure, we could hack this together quickly, but we're trying hard to avoid adding technical debt at this point. Adding every feature requested would put us in a bad spot.

Prioritizing this over the countless other things people continually ask for is hard, but we hear you. We welcome pull requests, and since you needed this for the service you were building, helping us out here would be fantastic.

<comment><USER17> I hear you, it's just that the current way the daemon does pinning is unacceptable. For example, I can't tell my customers how much of their file I've pinned, or, in some cases, if I've pinned it at all.

Maybe I'm in a small minority of people who are interested in this feature, but how do people pin things without it? Do they just `screen ipfs pin <hash>` and leave that terminal there for ever? Wouldn't it be in the project's best interest to make pinning work well?

Unfortunately, I don't know Go at all, or I would at least take a stab at this...

<comment><USER19> So, at a high level you want more than just the backgrounding the pin task, you also need to be able to tell what the progress is, periodically. This probably means we need to do something with the api endpoint output (i was initially thinking 'just throw it away and mark completion').

> in some cases, if I've pinned it at all.

What cases would those be? If the file is pinned it should always show up in an `ipfs pin ls $CID`.

In the short term, I assume your service is a server side app that is making requests to the ipfs node, right? You could set some background task in that application that just waits on the `ipfs pin add --progress` call and keeps track of the progress for that pin, that way, when a customer queries it, and its in progress, you can return that information. Agree this should be built into ipfs at this point, but that seems like a reasonable workaround for now.

<comment><USER17> > you also need to be able to tell what the progress is

That would be nice, but not really required.

> I assume your service is a server side app that is making requests to the > ipfs node, right?

Yes, exactly.

> You could set some background task in that application that just waits on > the `ipfs pin add --progress` call

I did that, there were problems with the fact that you can't have too many pinning calls waiting due to resource constraints. I can't just have 100k requests open and waiting, they time out, I need to restart the server, things happen. At that point, every single task needs to fire up again and make an API call to the server.

I did the same thing with batching, but then long-running pins (files not in the network) would block and new files that _were_ on the network wouldn't work. This happens with IPFS Cluster too, I just don't have to write my own code to worry about it.

Believe me, I've spent lots of time on working around this, and the workaround can only be so good with the current system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We've been playing a lot recently with the concept of IPFS websites.

We even created a plugin ([https://github.com/almonit/almonit- plugin](https://github.com/almonit/almonit-plugin) \- unreleased officially yet!) for websites that combine IPFS with ENS (a decentralized DNS). Our repository contains a list of decentralized websites using this method. We found about 20 so far.

 _Technically_ , IPFS work well for us, but we made sure to have a server seeding our website at all times (where we suffer similar problems like the author of the post describes).

Even then, we still had to make sure that the website is available in all main gateways, since most people don't run their own IPFS daemon. The strange part is that sometimes content is available in one gateway, but not in others. Or sometimes it's available in one gateway, but we can't get it on our local IPFS node.

I understand that IPFS is not a blockchain, so I can't expect all the nodes to have the same content. But I do expect the main gateways to communicate more directly with each other.

 _Conceptually_ , IPSF websites are a bit like sending your website to someone via an unreliable slow mail; i.e., it's not that attractive. You can make it somehow more dynamic, using what they call IPNS (it allows you to update your content). But the result is so slow, that even the most devoted monk would lose his patience eventually.

A workaround is using a decentralized name system, like ENS.

This works very well, but the result are still static websites. No comments or anything really interesting happening.

Those websites are censorship-resistance and very robust, you don't have to worry about ddos attacks. But then again, how many people worry about such things?

That said, I still like the concept of IPFS. We are exploring a few options to add dynamic behavior to that now, where the dream is to mimic existing services in a decentralized way.

Surely, they won't work as well, but the pro would be that it will be controlled by the users, and that they will be able to survive financially with no ads.

<comment><USER21> Almonit looks cool. The IPFS in Web Browsers working group has also been collaborating with Nick Johnson et al from ENS to create an "EthDNS" server to resolve ENS names to IPFS content in a decentralized way (along the lines of [https://github.com/mcdee/coredns](https://github.com/mcdee/coredns)). Should be a working demo in time for IPFS Camp in ~2 weeks!

<comment><USER20> Sounds interesting. Is there more info about it or I'll have to wait for the IPFS camp to satisfy my curiosity?

<comment><USER21> Lidel has written a lot about this in issues (nice index here: [https://github.com/ipfs/in-web- browsers/issues/147](https://github.com/ipfs/in-web-browsers/issues/147)), but I think the live (recorded) demo will have to wait. =]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Unfortunately, a lot of the problems in this blog post can only be solved by squaring Zooko's Triangle[1]. Most refutations of Zooko's Triangle depend on some form of blockchain.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle)

<comment><USER23> Just to give an example of a blockchain approach to this: Ethereum Name Service [1].

1\. [https://ens.domains/](https://ens.domains/)

<comment><USER24> I can't support Ethereum as it uses proof-of-work, and while it is a different implementation than Bitcoin, proof-of-work is inherently energy-intensive / environmentally problematic.

If blockchain technology were to become popular and widely used by ordinary people, its already worrying environmental impact would skyrocket, assuming the technology is capable of scaling at all. We need to bring the energy consumption of blockchain technology down to a manageable level, and that means abandoning proof-of-work as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER25> Can someone give a proper counter-argument to this?

I keep telling my friends hyped by bitcoin that I do not believe in its future as a currency for real daily exchanges because of this energy consumption problem.

Is there any serious track to address this issue?

Unlike most technologies, I do not see the traditional efficiency gains when the technology gets more mature. It seems inherent to proof-of-work and cannot be improved in this paradigm

Assuming a solution is found, is it possible to "update" Bitcoin?

<comment><USER26> The Bitcoin wiki has a number of counter-arguments [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths#Bitcoin_mining_is_a_waste_o...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths#Bitcoin_mining_is_a_waste_of_energy_and_harmful_for_ecology)

The future for ethereum is proof-of-stake. This project is called Casper and will be in Ethereum 2.0. For Bitcoin most transactions will be off-loaded to layer-2 networks but PoW will remain on the main chain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anyone remember the P2P craze of the early 2000s'? Or was it late 90s? What's left over from that? Freenet?

What I'm always wondering about: Someone needs to foot the server/bandwidth bills. Who? If you run a Pi on your home network and serve requests with your 5MB/s upload: That's fine. More power to you. We need more of that. (and in that case, you are paying your ISP)

But the transformation envisioned and the bandwidth and compute required doesn't come for free. Someone's gotta pay. In things like dollars. How can this work?

<comment><USER14> The main barrier to P2P isn't cost or bandwidth or algorithms. The main barrier is NAT. As long as IPv4 with P2P-unfriendly symmetric NAT is the dominant way of accessing the network, P2P will remain hard and niche.

One ugly hack to get around one problem (IPv4 address scarcity) has single- handedly transformed the structure of the Internet from a mesh to a top-down monopoly-driven medium. NAT is like literally Satan.

It wouldn't be quite as evil if it weren't so often symmetric, but for some odd reason symmetric is what many vendors implement. I can't for the life of me understand why symmetric NAT exists when the same scalability can be achieved with port restricted cone NAT that falls back to symmetric-like behavior if port preservation is not possible due to resource exhaustion. That would yield working P2P >90% of the time instead of <5% of the time.

<comment><USER28> Things aren't that bad. Hole punching can still work most of the time for broadband and you don't really need all that many nodes with routable IP addresses. Scale makes this problem even less of an issue. Mobile networks are somewhat problematic though, but they cannot be heavy nodes either way and have to be lightweight clients that piggy back from normal nodes.

<comment><USER19> We actually find NAT to be a pretty big problem still. Even using NAT-PMP, upnp, and hole punching, we still see a roughly 70% (sometimes much higher) undialable rate. Especially for people running ipfs in China (though high failure rates are also observed in other countries).

We're pushing hard on getting libp2p relays up and running to help get through this. The idea is that we can use a relay to make the initial connection, then ask the remote peer to try dialing back (assuming that both peers involved arent undialable).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Indeed IPFS performs very poorly in almost every way; it is extremely resource intensive, and generally unable to find objects which are not extremely well known.

</comment><comment><USER30> IPFS is providing some value already for blockchain dapps to deploy UIs, albeit currently with a dependency on centralized ipfs gateways.

Eg. [https://augur.net/ipfs-redirect.html](https://augur.net/ipfs- redirect.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't think this is ultimately an IFPS problem. How I've always understood IPFS is the protocol being a decentralized blob storage. You would use it in place of a CDN, to share files, or other building blocks for something higher- level. This is in contrast to browsing where there are established semantics on addressing absolute and relative URIs, and clustering relevant content under hierarchical addresses in the URI path.

The author insisted on doing this on bare IPFS but I think this is (vaguely) analogous to building a website based on IP addresses and port numbers, not URIs. To the point: the semantics just aren't there.

I could imagine an IPFS based web site being built with a local URI resolution map as part of the bundle of objects that is the web page. The sub pages would refer to symbolic URIs like before but the browser would also download a site map that links URIs to actual hashes of the latest revision, and resolve references like "foo/bar.html" or "/root/foo.html" based on the map. Or a proxy could do this transparently, translating URI requests to hashes and fetching data directly from IPFS, then serving it back to the browser as if it was downloaded from "/root/foo.html" instead of "ipfs://50ad443758222efea0286f3a94db2c25".

The top-level entry to the web page would basically be this URI resolution map which, as content-addressable, would effectively refer to a single revision of the web page. This could be implemented as a separate URI scheme, like ipfs- uri://bb9f6cbcc28829b57dd25102f67b9d37/main/news.html where ipfs://bb9f6cbcc28829b57dd25102f67b9d37 would point to the URI map and the URI handler would resolve the relative URIs such as /main/news.html based on the offered mappings.

But all this does require extra lifting from the browser or a proxy. I don't think IPFS as designed is feasible to replace something like HTTP which was explicitly meant to work with URIs.

<comment><USER32> Yes, IPFS addresses some of the use-cases of HTTP while solving other problems where HTTP falls short. It isn't a complete drop-in replacement, but does set up a foundation for an internet that will _last longer_ and (at some point) perform better across varying network conditions.

> but I think this is (vaguely) analogous to building > a website based on IP > addresses and port numbers, not URIs.

IPNS is a naming solution designed to address this:

[https://docs.ipfs.io/guides/concepts/ipns/](https://docs.ipfs.io/guides/concepts/ipns/)

It's not super fast right now, but there's some work happening now to make it _much faster_.

ENS, the Ethereum name system, is also an emerging way of doing this.

> basically be this URI resolution map

IPLD is a data model that works with IPFS to address the use-case you're describing, where you have a permanent reference to a mutable set of data: [https://ipld.io/](https://ipld.io/)

<comment><USER31> All right so there is already work ongoing to solve these problems, and that work is built on top of IPFS instead of extending the base protocol, and the author who just insisted using plain IPFS was thus suffering from expected difficulties as IPFS really isn't the direct answer to that particular usecase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hey, but it's great if you want to piggy-back a botnet on it, with no way to kill c&c: [https://www.anomali.com/blog/the-interplanetary-storm-new- ma...](https://www.anomali.com/blog/the-interplanetary-storm-new-malware-in- wild-using-interplanetary-file-systems-ipfs-p2p-network)

<comment><USER19> Yeah, we're watching this. They aren't so much piggybacking as they are just using the open source code for libp2p and our pubsub (which is fully peer to peer, not reliant on any central server that could shut it down). However, the way they are doing it makes it really easy to find infected nodes. Running a scraper we see around 3k peers involved

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just out of curiosity, how would you delete something off IPFS? Is the only solution to have the address hash point to a program, or app, if at all possible? Or a space that does not update the hash, iven if the "thing" is updated? I'm new to this interplanetary world... :D

<comment><USER34> From IPFS: You don't. As long as a connected node is hosting the file, it will be available to other peers. For a file where a single host is "pinning" a file (= purposfully hosting the file), it will fade out organically once it leaves the caches of all the nodes that accessed it once.

From IPNS: You point the IPNS entry to something nonsensical and then by default it will be gone once the TTL of the old IPNS entry is reached (kind of like DNS).

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I built some open source tools to accomplish everything that this article tries to achieve. It's _totally_ possible and borderline-easy to use IPFS to create uncensorable websites:

Check it out. Make up your own opinion:

[http://troutsblog.com](http://troutsblog.com)

</comment><comment><USER36> Here's your periodic reminder that IPFS is a _distribution mechanism_ , and _not_ a storage mechanism. It doesn't persist anything. It's like a more granular BitTorrent, and not really a filesystem at all.

This can be very useful in certain situations and projects! But it means that it is _not_ a replacement for a centrally-hosted website... and the IPFS site does a very poor job of conveying this limitation.

(I can't take Filecoin seriously as a 'solution' here either - as far as I can tell, it suffers from the exact same problem as every 'blockchain-backed storage system' I've seen before... it's unable to reliably verify that some peer is actually storing data, without a local copy to verify against.)

<comment><USER19> > it's unable to reliably verify that some peer is actually storing data, > without a local copy to verify against.

Filecoin can actually do this. I'm planning on doing a blog post about how this works soon (in all that copius free time), but a good summary is here: [https://github.com/filecoin- project/specs/issues/155](https://github.com/filecoin- project/specs/issues/155)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> A good alternative to IPFS that works today is magnet links and torrents.

There are "youtube competitors" that offload the high bandwith requirements via webtorrents running in javascript.

You can not host your full webpage with it but you can reduce bandwith costs drastically.

A good alternative to DNS is namecoin. It already works flawlessly and I honestly wonder why it has not been adopted more widely.

<comment><USER38> I think if you're proposing something as a "good alternative", then being able to understand why it got near-zero adoption, and failed in the real world, is probably important.

I would say that Namecoin appears to solve a problem that nobody actually has in practice.

I know advocates are pushing Ethereum Name Service, which does the same thing - but again, what are the lessons learned from nobody bothering with Namecoin?

(Namecoin is interesting, as it was literally the _first_ altcoin. It hadn't occurred to anyone to fork the Bitcoin code and make their own coin until then.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> For years I've been reading HN comments sections for IPFS links for years. In the past IPFS developers would show up to defend it, but for this link at least so far I haven't seen any.

Is this an admission that IPFS is unworkable, and they don't have any prospects of making it usable in the next few years?

<comment><USER40> Hello! o/ We've responded to a number of points here.

You can check out our roadmap

> IPFS is unworkable... making it usable in the next few years

Absolutely not.

The OP brings up a lot of great, useful feedback for us, and we'll respond to it.

But the OP is also simply wrong in saying it's "not usable". There are millions of end users benefiting from IPFS, 100Ks of libp2p nodes, we see PBs/mo of traffic in the infrastructure that we run, and millions of daily requests to our gateway. Look to fully decentralized applications and systems like OpenBazaar, Textile, Dtube, and others.

Beyond that, we're well aware of the many shortcomings, and working on them. We're unfortunately spread thin across a lot of projects (IPFS, libp2p, filecoin, ipfs-cluster, etc), but each is seeing significant growth and improvement.

You can see the long-term IPFS roadmap here [https://github.com/ipfs/roadmap](https://github.com/ipfs/roadmap)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> For all the time you spent on this you could have just posted an onion site in about five minutes and spent the rest building a little web-of-trust indexing site to fill the demand for the less than 1,000 people who want to post personal sites on a decentralized web.

</comment><comment><USER42> Unicornporn thamks for the writeup, saved me a lot of time (I thought IPFS was ready to go for this sort of use case)

P.s I think there is a typo at 'ipfs pin add' where it's used twice instead of 'ipfs pin add' then 'ipfs add' I think?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't write the blog post. Tom MacWright did. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> IPFS looks good on paper. In practice my experience wasn't very good. ZeroNet, on the other hand, feels like the future for DWeb and that's the direction I'm personally headed. What about you?

<comment><USER44> What do you use ZeroNet for ? Does it gives you reasonable latency performance ?

<comment><USER43> I use it for zero-cost, uncensorable hosting. It's fairly trivial to get set- up if you're running Linux. Here're instructions for Manjaro if you fancy Arch-based distros: [https://habd.as/post/surfing-uncensorable- web/](https://habd.as/post/surfing-uncensorable-web/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I agree that IPNS is pretty unusable (do names still expire after 1 day?).

Last I saw, the IPFS devs seemed to be pretty excited by a pub/sub mechanism they were building into the system; potentially to replace the workings of IPNS.

Is that a stable or useful alternative for indexing changing content like a blog? How decentralised is the pub/sub (i.e. do new subscribers need to contact the publisher, or are messages persisted for a time in the network)?

<comment><USER46> The way IPNS uses the DHT faces some deep challenges if you really need the "latest" IPNS update (if you don't there are various ways to make IPNS perform significantly better, see [https://discuss.ipfs.io/t/ipns-resolution-takes-a- very-long-...](https://discuss.ipfs.io/t/ipns-resolution-takes-a-very-long- time-first-time-around/5620) for guidance).

There is also some work to make IPNS work over PubSub independently from the DHT. That work is being tracked at [https://github.com/ipfs/go- ipfs/issues/6447](https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/issues/6447), and should significantly improve IPNS performance as well as add in features like allowing users other than the author to keep IPNS records alive (so no 1 day expiration issues).

As for the decentralized nature of pubsub it is essentially an opt-in system. Random people on the network are not holding or forwarding your messages as they would in the DHT. However, anyone who has subscribed to a topic will propagate messages for you to other subscribers. This means subscribers do not need to directly contact the original IPNS record publisher to get a record, but instead can get it from anyone who has it and is advertising that they do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> >Ready to publish it to the web? Not so fast. Clicking a link brings us back to my issue in 2017 [link]: the way that the IPFS gateway works will break your links.

(following the link to 2017 post)

>And even if I used the base tag to re-route that link so that it points [http://localhost:8080/ipfs/QmR96iiRBEroYAe955my8cdHkK4kAu6SA...](http://localhost:8080/ipfs/QmR96iiRBEroYAe955my8cdHkK4kAu6SApGC2eS5kSzHwt/2017/08/01/recently.html) ... It wouldn't work: the correct URL for that Recently post is, instead, [http://localhost:8080/ipfs/QmTbJ6RSLZDmVYy8dgdoeQLCtKya7UrNT...](http://localhost:8080/ipfs/QmTbJ6RSLZDmVYy8dgdoeQLCtKya7UrNTCqaw93yZCpH5T/). So IPFS content links are fully content-addressed. I suppose to make my site fully IPFS, I'd have to build each individual page and then construct a home page that linked to the generated hashes for those pages. That leaves an open question: how could two pages link to each other? Adding a link from one page to the other would change its hash, so wouldn't it be impossible for pages to reference each other? This might be a lack-of-coffee problem on my part.

They've misunderstood that. Both links of these links would be valid. You would have all the pages be under [http://localhost:8080/ipfs/QmR96iiRBEroYAe955my8cdHkK4kAu6SA...](http://localhost:8080/ipfs/QmR96iiRBEroYAe955my8cdHkK4kAu6SApGC2eS5kSzHwt/) and refer to each other by relative links.

The author's point of relative links or a base tag being necessary for the site to work on the ipfs gateway URLs is valid though.

(back to new article)

>So, links don't work. I posted an issue detailing this issue, and while I got an encouraging response that there's a real solution planned, there's no real solution. People use specific plugins just for IPFS, like this one for GatsbyJS, to get it to work. I ended up writing make-relative, a script that rewrites my built site to use relative links. This is where the story about IPFS being useful here and now for web developers breaks down a little. I've done enough HTML-mangling and path-resolution in my decade in industry that writing this script was straightforward. But the knowledge required to do it is not all that common, and I think this is where a majority of web developers would call it quits, because IPFS's 'website hosting' story would look broken.

You can either use relative links, a base tag, or keep absolute links and only support your domain with dnslink (and eventually when the web gateways support the hash in the subdomain field, or extensions support the ipfs:// protocol, then your site will also work through that). I'm hoping for the hash-as- subdomain support which will make things simple.

>IPNS

Yeah, it's awkward. This is because of multiple reasons (zooko's triangle and hosting of the names) that can only be addressed with a centralized service (see DNSLink) or a blockchain. Thankfully there's the DNSLink option too. I wish the IPFS docs wouldn't push IPNS as much because it's not ready / it's not what most people want.

>That was an incorrect assumption. IPFS-based websites do update their DNS records every time that they update their website, so that they can avoid using IPNS, because IPNS is just too slow. This was a tough discovery, because it works against everything I know about DNS – a system that isn't particularly designed to be fast or scriptable.

IPFS isn't for frequently changing websites. You're not going to host a forum or other dynamic site on IPFS. (Or if you do, it's going to work by being static content hosted on IPFS that contains some javascript that talks to some regular external HTTP(S) servers or maybe even a WebRTC swarm for all of the dynamic content.)

>Unfortunately, once I started getting this set up as a 'pinning device' [server], the fun stopped. I tried running ipfs pin add with the hash generated earlier from ipfs add -r, but it just 'hung' - outputting nothing at all. After a while I realized that, like ipfs pin add, IPFS doesn't communicate very well when it's having a problem. So I figured out how to turn logging information all the way up, and then… I was never able to get past a 'got error on dial' failure, despite trying all potential configurations of the IPFS daemon, enabling logging, upgrading to the newest version, and so on. There are about 63 similar issues in the tracker, 21 of which are marked as bugs.

I think the "got error on dial" errors are just it complaining that it can't connect to some random people in the p2p swarm. Like people who may have recently turned off their computers, etc. You can't expect to be able to connect to everyone in the p2p swarm. IPFS is just trying to connect to tons of people in the swarm until it finds people with the blocks that you're trying to pin, and it's reporting errors that it can't connect to some of the people in the swarm. The real problem is that it should be giving some kind of logs of how it's trying to find some content, it's successfully connected to a bunch of people, but none of them it's talked to yet have it. Also of course it should eventually make a connection back to your computer and successfully get those blocks. I'm not sure why that's not happening and that's disappointing it's not working. I really hope IPFS improves in things like this because the concept of IPFS seems great.

</comment><comment><USER48> Recently I was playing with IPFS: [https://genesis.re/kleros-metaevidence- metahash/](https://genesis.re/kleros-metaevidence-metahash/)

Using another part of crypto ecosystem (Infura)

It's still not straightforward.

BTW... A few weeks ago I saw on HN an automated tool to publish static website on IPFS. It was pretty sleek...

<comment><USER49> Can you link the tool?

<comment><USER32> Maybe this one:

[https://github.com/agentofuser/ipfs- deploy](https://github.com/agentofuser/ipfs-deploy)

Makes it super easy to push static sites on IPFS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> [https://www.shiftnrg.org/](https://www.shiftnrg.org/) might be interesting here too - IPFS-based project targeting web hosting specifically (includes a custom DNS + working on serving dynamic content, CMS, etc).

BTW as a proof of concept their website is already hosted on their own IPFS cluster.

<comment><USER51> Their website is hosted on CloudFlare:

[https://redbot.org/?descend=True&uri=https://www.shiftnrg.or...](https://redbot.org/?descend=True&uri=https://www.shiftnrg.org/&req_hdr=User- Agent%3ARED/1.2%20\(https://redbot.org/\)&req_hdr=Referer%3Ahttps://www.shiftnrg.org/&check_name=default)

They're using DNSLink so basically what we're seeing is that using DNS and a major CDN makes your site reliable, which does not seem like a particularly novel advance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Non-native speaker here, is the usage of "than" in "Your browser than uses DNS, a decentralized naming system, ..." actually correct? I happen to see this a lot and I am not sure if this is a spelling mistake when people want to write "then" or if it is actually intended.

<comment> yoz-y It is a very common spelling mistake.

<comment><USER31> I wonder why? It seems to be common with native speakers.

I'm not native in English but, for me, it would seem to be nearly impossible to mix these two words even in a moment of carelessness. They mark greatly differing meanings and thus they practically live in different slots in my brain. Even a blind typo won't explain it because 'a' and 'e' are not too adjacent on a qwerty.

<comment><USER53> As a native English speaker, words in the language appear to be stored against sound rather than anything else. When trying to write clear English to be read, I am reading it to myself as I write to ensure that it reads clearly, and so it's more an audio process, allowing for confusion of words that sound similar.

I would guess that those who have learned the language have a more logical, grammar based structure and write more deliberately.

<comment><USER54> > I would guess that those who have learned the language have a more logical, > grammar based structure and write more deliberately.

We have our own native languages with their own idiosyncrasies and we don't make mistakes like "could of" or "you're/your" in those languages. There's just no excuse for those simple mistakes...

Greek has 5 very common and 1/2 rare spellings for the sound 'i' (as in 'kit'): ι, υ, η, οι, ει /υι,ηι

Imagine if people who can't tell you're/your and write 'could of' had to face this reality... They are lazy ignorant people and the other native speakers need to stop enabling them and making excuses.

<edit>

I'm not actually sure if 'ηι' exists, google is showering me with irrelevant results.. in any case, furthermore, there's

two ways to spell 'e' (as in bed): ε, αι

two ways to spell o: ο,ω

two ways to spell the av/ev sound: αβ/αυ , εβ/ευ

two ways to spell the af/ef sound: αφ/αυ , εφ/ευ

and more. Maybe the difference is that all this crap makes you actually pay some attention to the language if you don't want to embarrass yourself

<comment><USER55> As a native German speaker, who is basically at the same level in English now, I also started doing these weird mistakes native English speakers do. I never had this issue in German not sure what it is about English, I think it's just the random spelling vs pronunciation in English. Your brain just can't keep up matching your vocal thoughts to the right spelling when typing quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> IPFS is a decentralized file store. It isn't a decentralized website host, although it can be used as one. That is just a nice consequence, not its reason for being. IPFS is a building block. If you want a better experience, build a tool that takes advantage of IPFS.

<comment><USER45> I think this comparison is pretty good: the author's problem with absolute URIs is essentially the same as using `file://` URIs and accessing the site from different directories (although `file://` doesn't have the chicken-and- egg problem of pages trying to link to their own hash; IMHO that would be worse than relative links anyway, even if it were possible).

Still, I think that the author's criticism is valid, since the IPFS project does seem to encourage the view that it's suitable for Web hosting, rather than just "a nice consequence". The author's struggle with IPNS, and recommendation that it be de-emphasised in the docs, is in line with my own experience.

<comment><USER56> The IPFS documentation only provides a "basic example" of hosting a website with IPFS. In general, the IPFS website focuses on its uses as a file system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I tried to port libp2p to c++. Each time, I got discouraged by so many sub projects linked together. I really don't like the way they organize code.

<comment><USER58> There is a C++ implementation of libp2p being developed at [https://github.com/soramitsu/kagome](https://github.com/soramitsu/kagome) with help from the go-libp2p original implementers (and funding from web3.foundation). They've implemented a lot of the major functionality already. I'm sure they would appreciate contributors if you want to get involved. (Full disclosure: I work on the libp2p project)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Anyone tried urbit?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I made this submission. If you want a take on the competition (Dat:// and Beaker Browser) I made another submission here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20162199](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20162199)

Direct link:

[https://www.kickscondor.com/on-dat/](https://www.kickscondor.com/on-dat/)

</comment><comment><USER26> A smile comes on my face whenver I seen IPFS on HN...

The author could have gone an step further and used ENS. IPFS+ENS is becoming a common duo. Web browsers can't do ipfs:// but they can do [https://insertipfsgateway/ipfs/Qm..](https://insertipfsgateway/ipfs/Qm..). With ENS (.eth) domains can resolve to ipfs:// and Metamask picks those up and turns them into gateway links.

There's a list of .eth domains & other ENS+IPFS info here:

[https://gateway.ipfs.io](https://gateway.ipfs.io) /ipfs/QmUJKsA1FQRo4rGKJ9WAXNnv6o6HXy4NoJiWH97gPZUddV/ens+ipfs/list-of_ENSIPFS- websites.html</comment>


New Mac Pro 2013 Teardown - <AUTHOR> http://blog.macsales.com/22108-new-mac-pro-2013-teardown <comment><USER2> I think this will be an interesting thing to watch going forward.

So for years the "AT" and then "ATX" design has dominated personal computers. pushed by Intel as a way to create a serviceable framework for OEMs to create workable computers, all of the "tough" engineering challenges (like heat management) were "designed in" by the modularity constraints. Evolving as a unit, the x86 PC, the Processor, and power requirements (and later GPU requirements) all foisted their own compromises on the builders.

Now Apple had something pretty cool, they started with a platform that is designed for heat dissipation. Basically the entire central column does nothing but suck heat away from things attached to it. And they put a large diameter fan which can be quieter at the top.

Given that most of the things we used to think of as "interface cards" which attached to a bulky parallel bus are being built on top of serial buses, either USB, Thunderbolt, or PCIe. The ability to support the big hitters (CPU/Memory complex) and GPU complex, in addition to a "ports and I/O zone" would be welcome relief for PC makers if they had something similar.

There hasn't been a company, other than Intel, that had the reach to create a mass market form factor for a long time. The last serious change was when VIA created the ITX standard, and it was really pretty modest relative to the ATX standard at the time.

So whether or not you like the 'jet engine' look of the thing, it seems like it brings some nice innovation to the systems design table. I would love to see a generic equivalent that built in a thermal management system as nice as this one. By keeping the 'fins' on the other side of the boards, there is nothing to suck dust on to the circuit boards. And if you've ever cleaned a PC that was stuck under a desk in somebodies house for a few years you will probably find this a huge improvement.

All in all, I give it top marks. But I've yet to see it in person!

<comment><USER3> I actually like the design... I only wish they'd do a consumer grade version... somewhere between this and the mini in terms of pricing... around a $1k price point, I'd get one.

<comment><USER4> If they put decent (read: not mobile chipset) graphics in the iMac's the higher end models would fit the bill as a decent mid-range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Regardless of specs, it's an absolute terrible looking device, a real monstrosity I would say.

I was just looking into getting a MacPro after years of self building my boxes and started to warm up towards the "previous" Mac Pro boxes/towers.

However, getting a MacPro is now longer a option with this "design" and self build suddenly seems quite appealing again.

<comment><USER6> Well, that's just, like, your opinion.

Design is the worst. Searching for bookshelf speakers during the last month was an appalling experience. I think they all look absolutely disgusting, no matter how much you want to spend. HiFi people all have disgusting taste. But that's also just my opinion. They seem to honestly believe that their ugly bookshelf speakers are stunning.

<comment><USER7> If you are looking at the lower end, have you checked out the Audioengine A2 speakers? I have the black ones and while they aren't the sexiest, pure black is pretty good looking.

<comment><USER8> Audioengine A5 + Audioengine S8 + Nuforce Icon HDP is my current rig. Can't be beaten in its price bracket, IMO.

<comment><USER9> Oh it can be beaten.

For hundreds less you can easily build a near-identical system. For example: Audioengine A5 + Audioengine S8 + Behringer UCA202. DACs are grossly overrated when it comes to their influence on sound quality. Regardless, the UCA202 measures outstandingly well.

For somewhat less you can easily build a much, much, much, much better system. For example: Audioengine A5 + Audioengine S8 + Behringer UCA202 + MiniDSP 2x4 + MiniDSP UMIK-1 + Room EQ Wizard. This nets you basic room response correction, plus an active crossover between the speakers and sub. Configured well, you could get a more linear response, better imaging, and better bass integration.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, the reason I got the NuForce Icon HDP is for my headphones (Sennheiser HD650); the DAC is great, but the preamp for headphones is downright spectacular. Anyway, it doubles as my DAC for my speakers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I Went to the First Live Auction for Rare Pepes on the Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ev57p4/i-went-to-the-first-live-auction-for-rare-pepes-on-the-blockchain <comment><USER2> It's less insane than some of what passes for art, and the fact that Pepe became a white nationalist symbol adds extra edginess and irony.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rare Pepe Wallet is interesting because it's not from the US, it was concepted in Venezuela where Pepe does not have the association with the alt-right. The Rare Pepe Wallet project has been part of the movement to reclaim Pepe from the alt-right which is almost entirely complete, most alt-right forums no longer use Pepe as their avatar (although some do).</comment></comment>


US dropped record number of bombs on Afghanistan last year - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/28/us-afghanistan-war-bombs-2019 <comment><USER2> "Warplanes dropped 7,423 bombs and other munitions, the most since Pentagon began keeping track in 2006"</comment>


Ask HN:Why does Bing Map in any web page hogs all the navigation events? - <AUTHOR>

An example is : http://www.amctheatres.com/movie-theatres/amc-tilghman-square-8
Also this: http://locators.bankofamerica.com/locator/locator/2302__Fannin__St,__Ste__100_77002_HOUSTON_TX/bank_branch_locations/action=route
Click anywhere on the web page and hit up down or side way keys, it always moves the map and not the web  page.
Is this a bug? <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable Examples :

[http://www.amctheatres.com/movie-theatres/amc-tilghman- squar...](http://www.amctheatres.com/movie-theatres/amc-tilghman-square-8)

[http://locators.bankofamerica.com/locator/locator/2302__Fann...](http://locators.bankofamerica.com/locator/locator/2302__Fannin__St,__Ste__100_77002_HOUSTON_TX/bank_branch_locations/action=route)</comment>


How Russia Got Americans to Turn Against One Another - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/facebook-google-twitter-russian-interference-hearings.html <comment><USER2> It didn't take Russians to turn Americans on each other. Some Russians just gave it a nudge.

Perhaps some Americans just wanted power and used an effective divide and conquer strategy on their fellow Americans.

Perhaps some Americans need to look down on some other Americans.

Perhaps some Americans are intolerant of other Americans.

BTW this applies to both sides of the political spectrum.

</comment><comment><USER3> Americans didn't need the Russians to turn against one another. I have been here since 2000 and I am still amazed how vicious a lot of campaign ads are and how much a lot of people have bought into the mindset that the "other side" liberals/conservatives is basically evil.

The American system did this to itself. The Russians are just a little sideshow.

</comment><comment><USER2> The very foundation of these companies is influence peddling: pay me money to get people to do what they would not otherwise do. It obviously works else Facebook and Google wouldn't be worth north of half a trillion dollars each.

<comment><USER4> That applies to the nytimes too. They are in the business of influence peddling.

<comment><USER2> True. They are transitioning to a subscriber model though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> '"What they did is wrong, and we're not going to stand for it," Mr. Zuckerberg said.'

I'm sure the FSB are quaking in their boots.

I also think it's legitimate to point out firstly that the US has a long and distinguished history of interfering in democratic elections the world over, sometimes even overthrowing democratic regimes to install horrible dictators, and secondly that Israeli influence on the US elections is considerable and out in the open, but for some reason hardly every reported by the MSM as malign. Funny old world eh.

</comment><comment><USER4> Firstly, we have always been divided and against each other. Rich vs poor, white vs black, rural vs urban, native vs settlers, native born vs immigrants, states vs federal government, etc. What is the NYTimes going to do next? Blame russia for the civil war?

Secondly, the media, including the NYTimes,

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary- cl...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary-clinton-for- president.html)

did far more to divide the country and turn everyone against each other than russians. The nytimes and their fellow media cohorts incessant agenda-pushing via their socio-political propaganda war has soured the nation.

Thirdly, what disturbs me is the coordinated propaganda campaign waged by almost all the media ( nytimes, wapo, bloomberg, cnbc, etc ) all pushing the same message. It almost seems like they are just different mouthpieces of the same propaganda organ.

Fourthly, it's exhausting and quite frankly ineffective to spam "russia is behind everything" everyday. It just makes the nytimes and the rest of the media look like propagandists rather than actual news organizations.

But that's just me. My faith in news organizations is forever lost anyways. Once you peek behind the veil, there is no going back.

</comment><comment><USER6> So we'd all be living in perfect harmony (with Hillary Clinton as president) if it weren't for those 100K in Russian ads?

Geeze. Cmmon NYT. Your anti-Internet Media and and anti-Russian and pro- whoever the democrat is positions are understandable and may even have some merit based on political beliefs, but please, be a little more reasonable, especially with your headlines. It's not like everything was fine and harmonious even if Russia didn't even exist.

<comment><USER4> The NYTimes is upset their candidate didn't win.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary- cl...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary-clinton-for- president.html)

They have to blame someone because they themselves can't possibly be responsible.</comment></comment>


Jeremy Konyndyk's (key figure in Ebola fight) comments on reopening - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/1251007626848190464 <comment><USER2> I'm looking at your west coast governors pact.</comment>


Amazon makes Kindle app Apple compliant by removing one URL link - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle/ref=cm_cd_et_md_pl?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdMsgNo=1&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=TxFSUR2H7D8D9W&cdMsgID=Mx3BSWH85HVSRWI#Mx3BSWH85HVSRWI

<comment><USER2> From Gruber:

> There you go. This is the result of Apple putting its own interests ahead of > those of its users. It's certainly not drastic (as it would be if Amazon had > pulled the app from the store entirely), but in no way can it be argued that > this is an improvement for users.

I think that says it all. If Gruber isn't even going to bother to try and defend it (or even play devil's advocate), then it's probably indefensible.

<comment><USER3> Because it's not really defensible. The best you could say is that Apple stands to make money, which is good for Apple, but even that's not really true, since everyone is just pulling the buttons so they don't have to pay Apple.

<comment><AUTHOR> He just posted an update, for what it's worth: <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/26/frommer-kindle>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really wish they hadn't backed down. Yes, it's Apple's store, they can do what they want, but I feel like they get away with ridiculous changes like this because, well, they're Apple.

<comment><USER5> They backed down alright, by creating a competing app store and presumably a competing tablet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple rejected our iPhone/iPad app for the exact same reason. We had a link to our website in the help section.

<comment><USER7> So you removed the link?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some additional coverage on MacWorld.com: [http://www.macworld.com/article/161325/2011/07/kindle_drops_...](http://www.macworld.com/article/161325/2011/07/kindle_drops_store_button_adds_periodicals.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you want more details on Apple's new policies you can look here: [http://quatermain.tumblr.com/post/8045895465/my-review-of- th...](http://quatermain.tumblr.com/post/8045895465/my-review-of-the-kobo-app)

The Kobo app is another ebook reader, like Kindle. The number of different things they tried to satisfy Apple is breathtaking. Last I heard (via the same Kobo developer on Twitter), one-star reviews of their new app have taken them from 4.5 stars to 2.5 stars in just a few days.

</comment><comment><USER9> I understand that Apple is doing this because of e readers directly competing with iBooks, but according to Apple's new rules it should harm any companies selling products outside of Apple's store.

Does this mean the eBay app will be pulled if apple doesn't get it's 30% cut? What about groupon,rdio, tha amazon store and many other apps that can't possibly hand over 30% of their sales to Apple when they don't have those kind of margins to work with.

</comment><comment><USER10> The original Apple requirements would have required Amazon to pull the app entirely, right? (Or sell all their Kindle books directly through Apple IAP and give Apple 30%, which was never going to happen.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Surely this particular restriction should be considered anti-competitive? Where is the FTC?

<comment><USER11> Probably waiting to act against actual monopolies, I suspect.</comment></comment>