Laplace's Demon - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2014/08/08/laplaces-demon/ <comment><USER2> For me the main problem with the "if the demon says TV then I listen to the radio" paradox is that it asks the demon to predict its own computation.

Take as an example COnways game of life. It is perfectly predictable in the future - given current state, I can easily predict the state N steps in the future (I just run the simulation on my side computer). And clearly my side prediction will have no impact on how the game-of-life evolves. I can even insert my prediction into the game-of-life by changing the value of my cell (alive=watch TV, dead=listen to radio). Even if a "perverse" in-game character chooses to do the opposite of my prediction, it doesn't alter the fact that I can perfectly predict future of the game universe.

But if I am asked to make that prediction _inside_ the game of life using a program embedded in the game-of-life, then that is a lot harder. It seems very unlikely that I could encode the state of the universe in a way that allows my prediction program to run in any way more efficiently than just letting the game-of-life play out. I'm pretty sure that the Halting problem could be used to demonstrate this.

So for me it makes a big difference whether you constrain the demon to "in universe" computation or "out of universe" computation.

<comment><USER3> To me, there are two more issues with that demon paradox.

First, that it is assumed that its answer has a physical representation in reality. The fact that solving a non-trivial maze from the inside is impossible without moving through the maze doesn't mean the maze cannot be solved without moving. It can be solved from above the maze. Similarly, assuming quantum mechanics is accurate in that every particle has a random nudge in its position and velocity, if we had access to the random generator, we could create that demon; otherwise, the solution would be expressed in terms of what that generator produces: a solution which doesn't have a physical representation, but is merely a probability distribution.

Second, there is this assumption that its answer be crystal clear for us to understand. Any amount of work with symbolic computation gives the intuition that sometimes, the answer isn't atomic. In that case, the demon's answer could be "if I say that you listen to the radio, what you will do is watch TV. Otherwise, you will listen to the radio".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't mention of chaos theory irrelevant? Chaos is the effect you get when you can't measure something accurately enough, or you can't (don't have enough computational power) to run a perfect reality simulation with those measurements (even if they're good enough in theory to form the basis of an accurate prediction) in reasonable time, or both.

I think the main premise rests on the same confusion about free will that shows up in Newcomb's paradox. Either there is free will that transcends anything's ability to predict, even in theory (perfect knowledge/measurement and infinite computation), or there is not. If there is not, then a demon/AI/God setting up a test/prediction based on your future decision may be possible, but your awareness of that fact will simply be an input into your future decision-making... an input that the demon/AI/God already accounted for when making the prediction. Just because something is recursive does not mean it's not deterministic. I happen to believe that Laplace's demon exists, it's called physics, but its state is the physical world, so it predicts things will happen at exactly the moment they happen (the prediction/computation being entropic decay); unfortunately that doesn't seem very useful for predictions in the practical sense.

If there is free will that transcends physics, then prediction is fundamentally impossible by something bound to physics—so it's a thought experiment where some things are bound to the laws of physics and others are not. What is the purpose of conducting thought experiments about the physical world, based on supernatural axioms? "Free will exists," the claim goes, and yet "here's a thing that can collapse free will and issue arbitrarily accurate predictions on human behavior." And then, "Let's see what happens when these axioms are applied to someone in the physical world choosing whether to try to make more money or less."

<comment><USER5> > Isn't mention of chaos theory irrelevant?

That was my first thought as well, but consider a chaotic system in a Newtonian universe. Laplace' demon must then have the capability to simulate the universe to be able to predict it. What chaos theory brings is that this simulation would require infinite precision to be done without diverging from reality at some point (and sooner rather than later as the error grows exponentially). Then you could use Cantor's diagonalization theorem to prove that no such simulator could exist, even for a finite system, because even a finite system would require an infinitely large state to represent it, and no finitely sized simulator could represent it.

<comment><USER4> The universe represents itself. Doesn't that imply either that the universe is capable of infinite computation within a finite (though increasing) space, or that it doesn't require infinite state?

There's Planck length and Planck time (entropic decay resolution?) to consider. If those are the basis for physical laws, isn't everything finite?

<comment><USER5> The universe represents itself, but no part of the universe is able to predicts its own future in detail, and is as such no simulation, at least not of itself. It just exists. The reason I said "a Newtonian universe", is precisely because quantum physics represents a discretization, which Newtonian physics does not, and the Planck length is a part of this discretization. The simulator would have to be bigger than the system it simulates to be able to represent its state, but the Cantor diagonalization argument would no longer apply.

<comment><USER4> But we don't live in a Newtonian universe, do we?

If the universe requires infinite computation to "go", it's doing that computation somehow, isn't it? If the universe at perceivable scale is not capable of infinite computation, but infinite computation is required, perhaps it's spawning infinite universes that do computations instantly with respect to our universe's arrow of time?

I don't understand the difference in computational requirements between predicting (in "advance") a future (entropic future) state of the universe, and predicting it JIT.

A functioning Newtonian universe must be capable of infinite computation, therefore Laplace's demon can exist (for that universe), even if only by being a copy of the universe, right?

<comment><USER6> There are two outcomes of your argument:

1) a functioning Newtonian universe is impossible

2) functioning Newtonian universes are infinitely complex

The laws of physics already established 1, making 2 a moot point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        consider that there are only two options: (1) watch TV or (2) listen to the radio.

isn't the idea that there would be only one option, the future that already depends on the answer? the demon should know its internal state, its answer, and the reaction to the answer. if any answer gives a logical contradiction, it will not give it. Also: being able to see the future does not imply being able to tell it. A kind of cassandra curse.

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem with the last two proofs is that they move the question to "the demon must be able to predict the future, then say the prediction, and then have that prediction be true".

The demon might see that you will watch TV, but if it says that you will listen to the radio. If it sees both of those, even if it says something that becomes false, that doesn't mean the demon couldn't see the future or doesn't see the future. It merely means that the demon cannot accurately manifest the information.

Similarly, in the paradoxical question before, it makes the assumption that demon is honest; that it answering the question incorrectly is tantamount to it having predicted incorrectly. To me it seems clear that the constraint that the demon must be only honest and must transfer the knowledge into the system it is predicting the state of without changing the state is utterly silly.

</comment><comment><USER9> Just like all such problems the 'TV and the Radio' problem shares its root with the liars paradox. The root cause, of course, are self referention, determinism and recursion.

The problem is the 'prediction loop', which has no clearly defined exit. There's no path that can be followed that will terminate it:

The demon understands every part of your brain, and knows that if it says that you're going to watch TV while you're determined to prove it wrong will make you listen to the radio instead. So it enters the next iteration of the loop. This cycle would continue for infinity, which is where we perceive a paradox.

There are several naive resolutions that come to my mind. Assuming that predicting the future takes some time, even if it's only a fraction of a second, will allow a way out. The Demon will simply enter the loop and exit it once the evening has passed and every possibility of 'predicting it' has vanished. Of course this could be considered cheating, it has never been established if the Demon's computations take time or not, but asking this question can be considered cheating as well, since it's probably impossible to have _only_ two possible things you could be doing. Which introduces the second solution.

The Demon is more intelligent than you are, and while you'd sworn to yourself that there were only two possible outcomes to this evening: doing the opposite of what the Demon predicts, the Demon sees beyond the 'two' possibilities and correctly predicts a third possibility that you didn't envision.

The last solution attacks the notion of free will, if the Demon can exactly predict the future than this implies that the universe is deterministic. So instead of having only two options, or a third invisible option, there is only one real option and the demon cannot be wrong or it cannot be right.

All of these 'solutions' either introduce a new or alter a previous assumption and are thus not really solutions to the question asked, as it stands I think the question is unanswerable and introducing new concepts and ideas is inevitable.

<comment><USER10> >So instead of having only two options, or a third invisible option, there is only one real option and the demon cannot be wrong or it cannot be right.

This third neither right nor wrong option reminds me of 'Mu' found in eastern philosophy and highlighted in Hofstadter's GEB and it forms another crucial part of self-reference and recursion as mentioned earlier in your comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The best demon would simply answer "you intend to do the opposite of whatever I tell you." \- this would most accurately define the future state of the universe.

Alternatively, the demon could say one thing, and send a delayed timestamped message with the opposite.

<comment><USER12> This. Constraining the demon to two responses can't work. The demon needs to be able to give an answer with at least as much information as the entire universe's state -- not yes or no answers. The issue with the person only exists because the person's actions cannot be represented with a single bit of information. But the person cannot hope to outsmart the demon if it's response has more bits of information than the person can possibly respond with.

<comment><USER11> I think the best summary is:

The disproof assumes free will, but Laplace's universe assumes free will is an illusion. Devise an experiment to work out which is right -- a Laplace demon, if such a thing can exist, is probably a good experiment to test this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Certainly it seems impossible to construct a device that could capture the state of a system of which it was a part, to me that's the paradox of the watching TV/listening to the radio prediction - it transfers information from the model into the system it models.

However perhaps a device which could capture the state of a defined system, model it and monitor its boundary as a means of prediction would be possible? The question is could it be possible to capture the state of a system at a single instant and without altering the system?

</comment><comment> d--b These disproofs are completely missing the point. Laplace says: the laws of nature are deterministic. The answers are: there is free will in the human mind. It's no proof, these are just contradicting metaphysical statements. A disproof that may make more sense though is to say that: in order to be able to write the equations and know the state of the entire universe, the universe itself cannot be infinite. Let's assume the total information of the universe at time t could be represented by a N bits. Then in order to exist and to calculate things, the demon needs to materially represent these N bits by at least N elementary particules. But this means that the state of these particles also needs to exist in the universe, and so the universe plus its representation would be represented with at least 2N bits, which is bigger than the size of the universe. So the demon cannot exist. In fact this is just saying the only device capable of predicting the future is the universe itself, and its prediction is the realization of the present itself.

</comment><comment><USER14> An interesting take on the above:

[http://dresdencodak.com/2009/02/16/exorcising-laplaces- demon...](http://dresdencodak.com/2009/02/16/exorcising-laplaces-demon/)

</comment><comment><USER15> my attempt at a short proof about laplace's demon (they may not necessarily be correct, however..);

laplace's demon is part of the universe.

to simulate the universe, laplace's demon must simulate itself.

assuming P!=NP, this self simulation cannot be more efficient than the "lower level" simulation.

so either the "self-simulation" hole will become increasingly deeper (to infinity), or the resources required to do the simulation at each level will exponentiate away.

proof 2;

the smallest space at which a single bit of information is storable is O(a subatomic particle). but that subatomic particle is defined by more than one bit of information.

therefore to have knowledge of the entire state of the universe at some time requires more matter than exists in the observable universe.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.hawking.org.uk/does-god-play- dice.html](http://www.hawking.org.uk/does-god-play-dice.html)

Physics oriented explanation

</comment><comment><USER16> The Demon for the "radio/TV" problem just has to predict whichever option is more likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.</comment>


Efficient development with Docker and docker-compose - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Empanado/efficient-development-with-docker-and-docker-compose-e354b4d24831 <comment><USER2> Great Article. Informational too. I am also using docker at my company to create, deploy, and run applications by using containers. Our developers use this to package up an application with all of the parts it needs, such as libraries and other dependencies.</comment>


How the 2016 Candidates Are Getting Their Money - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/28/435186527/charts-2016-presidential-donors-millionaires

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: this is coming from someone who's voting for Bernie Sanders.

I find it a tad ironic that, in terms of the paper trail, Donald Trump is one of the most authentic candidates right now. Obviously he doesn't need the money from huge donors, but still ... it's interesting at least.

<comment><USER3> Well in the past he ran for president, too, always on a hype-media issue like Obama's birth certificate that wouldn't actually give him any chance of running, yet allowed him to put his name in the media. (exposure is probably his biggest business model, the more exposure he has, the more people view him as a success, the easier he can get a TV show or license out his name for some building or golf resort he doesn't own). So in the past he never actually did anything a normal politician would do, i.e. fundraising, or indeed divulging his financial assets when officially filing the paperwork, because he just used the presidential race as some form media platform for a few weeks, very much like say Kickstarter, for his business.

This time around it's a bit different, he seems to actually be campaigning, participating in debates, filing the paperwork. But even now I still don't think he's serious about running. I mean the way he talks about policies is just a joke. 'I'm gonna make America so great, I'm gonna make you soooo proud, you're going to become the happiest people', I mean it's just laughable. Anyway my point is that he doesn't have any real policy plans. He's like some of the Dutch politicians we have over here that make policy promises that they can't keep because they break Dutch, international and European laws and agreements that the Netherlands has signed. Everyone who knows anything about how the world works laughs at this, but people eat it up. So I'm still not convinced he's actually interested to run for the office all the way, (although I'm less sure about it than ever) and if that's true he's not going to be serious about raising millions from big donors, so Trump's paper trail isn't surprising in the least. Here you can see how little he raised as of earlier this month [0] That type of money can't sustain popularity in the real elections when people spend $300m on attacking every single thing you do from every single angle all over TV, Radio, print and the internet, which is why people are skeptical combined with Trump's lack of policy plans, lack of solid political team who's working on real policy plans and disingenuous campaigns in the best (I wanna be president cause Obama is from Kenya).

Beyond that, it's early days. The last presidential elections all had $1b dollar budgets for both candidates of the ruling parties for example, and both parties spent about $1b each. (Obama, Romney, McCain), and both candidates had 2/3rd or more of their money coming from large donors. Lastly, it's an interesting note to make that Obama spent 2x as much per vote than McCain in 2008, and about 40% more than Romney per vote. I don't think it'll be much different for anyone who wants to win this day and age, Clinton, Bush, Trump or Bernie.

Also if you look at fundraising, nearly half of it goes through parties rather than individuals, and those parties then put their weight behind the nominee. That fundraising isn't covered in this article, and it's exactly that fundraising which is most lopsided towards large contributors. So really I think it's much too soon to make any sweeping conclusions. After all, a guy like Bernie earlier this month had raised just $15m. That's top 6 by the way, not a small amount, but given the winner of the election is likely to spend more than $1 billion, the distribution of 1% of the early funding days probably isn't very significant.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/electio...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/election-2016-campaign- money-race.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish Bill Gates would run. Maybe do what Bloomberg did for NYC. Current crop of leaders are just depressing to watch.

When the history books get written, I can't imagine anything worthwhile being written about any of them.

<comment><USER5> Nonsense. Nerds have no understanding of politics. Please read: [http://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9214015/tech-nerds- politics](http://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9214015/tech-nerds-politics)

<comment><USER4> That was an unnecessarily long and boring write up wishing for more or less the same thing I am wishing for.

As the tech industry grows in power and influence, and government inefficiencies stand in the way of progress, it's a safe bet politicians will feel the pressure to change.

This cycle has already played out many times over with Wall Street, Defense, Energy, Pharma etc getting involved in politics. The same incentives that made the Rockefellers, Bushes, Cheneys and Trumps to get involved will see future Gates, Zucks and Musks stepping up too.

The difference between the tech sector and other sectors however, unseen before historically, is the speed and scale at which they are able to turn what was previously considered impossible to possible.

The first serious govt vs tech industry conflicts are just beginning to emerge whether in energy, telecom, privacy, security, payments etc. Government and traditional politics doesn't stand a chance. They will be subverted.</comment></comment></comment>


Y Combinator Universe is news about Y Combinator and YC funded companies - <AUTHOR> http://ycuniverse.com/

<comment><USER2> Oh god, apologies, but the layout is absolutely horrible. Absolutely horrible.

<comment><USER3> The amount of clutter is ridiculous...They should take a hint from Engadget/Slashdot/etc, space is a good thing

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note that: "This website has absolutely no affiliation nor endorsement with Y Combinator."</comment>


Ask HN: How do you identify your life goals? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> through experience</comment>


Welcome to the DECC 2050 calculator tool - <AUTHOR> http://2050-calculator-tool.decc.gov.uk/

<comment><AUTHOR> I found out about this site from David MacKay's blog ([http://withouthotair.blogspot.com/2010/07/2050-calculator- to...](http://withouthotair.blogspot.com/2010/07/2050-calculator-tool-at- decc.html)).

Apparently there will be a revised version of the site released later in the year, that will include financial calculations.</comment>


19% of dial-up users say nothing could persuade them to upgrade to broadband - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/some-people-just-love-dial-up

<comment><USER2> Anyone who says "Nothing could persuade me to do X" is just showing a lack of imagination.

</comment><comment><USER3> pretty tough sounding people. I bet if you gave them the choice between paying for dial-up or getting free broadband, they'd choose to pay, because they are that tough.

I understand if people can't afford it or cant get access, but come on, when aunt susie emails all those pics, these people don't think there is a better way?

</comment><comment><USER4> Time will laugh at them. Time, the original gangsta, will change their ways.

</comment><comment><USER5> Fear of change is the greatest motivator for sitting still.</comment>


Artifical Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity (1976) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://homepage.univie.ac.at/nicole.rossmanith/concepts/papers/mcdermott1976artificial.pdf <comment><USER2> This is a dupe of a post made about a week ago. The earlier post included a link to a _MUCH_ better copy of the paper.

The better quality copy of the paper can be found here: [https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/irm/mcdermott.pdf](https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/irm/mcdermott.pdf)

<comment><USER3> But the one linked by OP is OCR'ed, or however you call it (the text is searchable).</comment></comment>


What makes this tomato-sorting machine so freakishly fast? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/9/16751220/tomato-sorting-machine-fast-gif-video <comment><AUTHOR> It's fascinating how simple / elegant this design is. Although you probably could use machine learning, etc for this a basic optical sensor is 'good enough'. With all the exciting new tech out there it's easy to forget that many things can be done much simpler.

</comment><comment><USER2> "When tomatoes ripen in California, for example, they're harvested in a 12-week period that has sorters running round the clock, up to 24 hours a day, processing as much as 800 tonnes of _vegetables_ an hour."

Fine and dandy... except tomatoes are _fruits_.

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit#Botanic_fruit_and_culina...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit#Botanic_fruit_and_culinary_fruit).</comment></comment>


Assange: Google should be of concern to people all over the world - <AUTHOR> http://espresso.repubblica.it/internazionale/2014/09/15/news/assange-google-should-be-of-concern-to-people-all-over-the-world-1.180095

<comment><USER2> I don't know if anyone else noticed this during the Dotcom / Mega / NZ Internet Party broadcast when Assange was on, but I got the impression he looked sick. He looked hagard and sick.

If I was really pissed at Assange, and I had the power of the state behind me, I'd do a quasi-Alexander Litvinenko on him.

Drill through the walls and pump something nasty into the embassy until he got so sick he would have to leave of his own volution to visit the hospital, or die.

Nasty cough that. Of course this [1] Russian propaganda 'news source' is talking crap, but he must be starting to wonder about his health stuck in that little box room.

Or maybe he just has a cold and I have an overly active and vivid imagination.

[1] [http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/05-01-2012/120158-so...](http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/05-01-2012/120158-south_america-0/)

<comment><USER3> Let's focus on the message, not the messenger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Though I think targeting FISA laws etc is a better idea and asking Eric Schmidt to leak things like FISA requests was a bad idea, the claims reminded me of the anti poaching scandal:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7623873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7623873)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8156005](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8156005)</comment>


Malware and Hacking Forum Darkode Is Shut Down; Dozens Arrested - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/15/423196810/malware-and-hacking-forum-darkode-is-shut-down-dozens-arrested <comment><USER2> As someone who has crushed a hornet's nest in his hand (when he was about 10), and well remembers the 36 stings afterwards (something of a record in these parts) while running away bravely, I'm not sure that's the analogy they should have chosen.

<comment><USER3> That's an amazing story. I thought hornets were poisonous?

<comment><USER4> They are, that's why their stings "sting"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The really interesting part is the last paragraph:

      In a related case, Aleksandr Andreevich Panin, aka
      Gribodemon, 26, of Tver, Russia; and Hamza Bendelladj, aka
      Bx1, 27, of Tizi Ouzou, Algeria, pleaded guilty on Jan. 28,
      2014, and June 26, 2015, respectively, in the Northern
      District of Georgia in connection with developing,
      distributing and controlling SpyEye, a malicious banking
      trojan designed to steal unsuspecting victims' financial and
      personally identifiable information. Bendelladj and Panin
      advertised SpyEye to other members on Darkode.

Note that they were arrested in Georgia. Do they mean the country of Georgia, enemy of the Russians and friend of the US? Or do they mean the state of Georgia in the US?

Either way, the US has them in custody, which suggests an arrest on US soil (come visit the US trap style) or a foreign arrest and extradition.

I'm guessing by the tone of that last paragraph that this is how the FBI got in. They flipped them and offered them a pkea bargain. We'll find out at sentencing.

<comment><USER6> I'd assume they mean the state Georgia, based on the fact that they specifically refer to the "Northern District of Georgia" and the press release came from the DoJ.

[http://www.gand.uscourts.gov/](http://www.gand.uscourts.gov/)

</comment></comment><comment> liviu- One of the arrested ones is 20, and he allegedly created Dendroid — a malware that can take remote control of an Android device. He designed, developed and deployed this software (bypassing Google Play's malware detection system) which seems to be quite complex and capable [0]. This proves that he possess a certain set of marketable skills that are quite south after in the industry.

So I'm wondering - is this really bad news for them, or will it just bring them enough spotlight to be contacted for some security roles that pay better than what they were earning prior to the arrest?

[0] [https://blog.lookout.com/blog/2014/03/06/dendroid/](https://blog.lookout.com/blog/2014/03/06/dendroid/)

<comment><USER7> Many former criminals do lead successful careers, so it's quite possible. However it should be noted that circumventing the Google Play store malware detections is not particularly hard - it's definitely a start, and maybe even a conference talk, but for real notoriety in the security industry you'd want to be consistently discovering novel vulnerabilities in Android, not just figuring out how to sneak malware onto the operating system.

Now, all that said, if you are a competent reverse engineer and can reliably circumvent DRM/license protection, develop binary exploits for high-severity vulnerabilities or perform advanced malware analysis, you can easily earn north of half a million dollars a year in this industry. It is an extremely lucrative time to be working in security.

You don't need to start out as a criminal though. If you want to do things like this then work through CTFs like Microcorruption and OverTheWire and learn how to develop privilege escalation and sandbox escape exploits on very widely used software and operating systems.

<comment> liviu- >It is an extremely lucrative time to be working in security.

Is it though? The average salary of a security engineer seems to be lower than that of a software engineer, and there seem to be considerably fewer positions available. Those very high paid positions seem few and far between.

<comment><USER8> I wonder if the high power security positions just aren't publicly listed. That seems like the sort of job you fill exclusively by recommendation or pursuit of candidates, rather than a job listing on LinkedIn.

<comment><USER7> Bingo. I'm not talking about "cybersecurity" positions. I'm talking about people doing advanced work in exploitation, reverse engineering and cryptography on a consulting basis or those who work in boutique shops.

I pass the $300k mark annually through AppSec consulting, and this is not at maximum utilization, nor is it a particularly "hard" discipline in security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not clear that the value of closing this outweighs the value of being able to track exploits.

I assume that the Android rootkit mentioned uses known exploits- the companies not pushing out fixes bear some responsibility as well.

<comment><USER10> Nothing guarantees that they weren't monitoring this from the start. Nothing guarantees they haven't set-up the successor to this board already themselves.

We know the FBI actually engages in systematic lying about how they gain information about criminals - see "parallel construction".

We know that in efforts to end drug cartels, the DEA will enter into long term alliances with one cartel to eliminate others.[1] We know the US tolerates the rule of the drug-track caste in Afghanistan for the pursuit of "higher ideals".

Just in general, the paradox of mafias, cartels and so-forth is that it easier to use state power to take over such operations than to root them out. Moreover, taking them over has many appealing aspects. The problem is that the more the state moves into simply managing rackets, the greater the temptation to corruption gets, for both the high policy makers and for the low level operatives (you remember the FBI agent engaging in his own embezzlement etc during the Silk Road investigation). But this problem has been around for a long, the state by now are probably at a "steady state" in their corruption.

So it seems very possible that the FBI already knows what comes next but can only tip it's hand when the next raid comes in another two years.

[1][http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-government-and-the- sin...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-government-and-the-sinaloa- cartel-2014-1)

<comment><USER11> >The problem is that the more the state moves into simply managing rackets, the greater the temptation to corruption gets, for both the high policy makers and for the low level operatives

Well, that is if you ignore the far larger elephant in the room of the government running an illegal operation. It reminds me of the times I hear of the FBI taking over some TOR server hosting abusive images and continuing to host it as a honeypot. By their own admission, looking at, hosting, sharing, etc. those images constitutes concrete abuse of a child, yet they directly engage in such. It would be like if the FBI busted up a brothel with children and kept running it to catch more criminals. The ends in no way justify the means.

<comment><USER10> The ends don't justify the means, yet it is also useful to explain, to the people who think they do, that _nefarious means generally only lead to nefarious ends_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They should have just sold that stuff to the Feds and helped keep America safe /s

<comment><USER13> Why would the Feds pay for something they can just take?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is the current state of the law such that possession of these tools themselves is illegal? I would have thought that possession of most "hacking" tools would be legal i.e. for penetration testing and defense - usage against a non- consenting entity would then be the illegal act. I guess I could see some of the cell phone hacking stuff being illegal via FCC regulations...

<comment><USER15> I don't think so, no. I think they also need overt acts in furtherance of a conspiracy to use the tools. It's probably not as cut and dry as "you have to actually use the tools to break into someone". It's a bit of a tightrope, though, because if you're a predecessor on the graph of people involved in an actual crime, sharing tools can drag you into a prosecution.

So far as I know (this is sort of my profession), there's no _federal_ "burglars tools" law regarding malware.

<comment><USER16> > So far as I know (this is sort of my profession), there's no federal > "burglars tools" law regarding malware.

To be fair, many "burglars tools" laws require possession of the tools _WITH INTENT to perform a criminal action_. The intent piece is key. Merely possessing lock picks is usually fine. But sulking around masked in bushes outside an office building with a pickset, rope, and an empty duffel bag might get you in trouble.

A good list of Lockpick laws collected and indexed state-by-state at [http://toool.us/laws.html](http://toool.us/laws.html). You see that in most jurisdictions intent is required.

While malware laws are still much less mature, I would hope that similarly there'd be an intent requirement. Possessing malware for purposes of reverse engineering to develop protections is obviously important, and clearly an activity we would want to remain lawful (and hopefully unlicensed/regulated).

Conspiracy is probably the easier route to a conviction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I always wonder about these sort of sites, exploit marketplaces, etc. Of course since I'm nowhere near being in the loop on such matters (I don't even know where the loop is or what it looks like), I probably would never even see one before it's shut down and moved elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ah... these hackers just don't understand that hacking, invading people's privacy and stealing their money is a government monopoly.

<comment><USER19> This could be an _arrest-hire_... who knows

<comment><USER20> "Work for us, or spend the rest of your life in the salt-mines".

Yeah, I can see how that would be a compelling argument. I wouldn't put it past various government agencies to think of exactly something like that.

<comment><USER21> I'd say it would be pretty stupid to entrust people working under duress with sensitive information but what do I know?

<comment><USER8> Maybe, maybe not? I'd bet it depends on the people, depends on the job. Are you an anarchist assigned government drudgework? Bad news. Are you a chaotic neutral "forced" into fascinating meaningful government work? Might be great for everyone even if you wouldn't have taken the job normally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Because of the embarrassing back of the Office of Management and Budget, the feds needed a high-profile "win" to give the voting public the appearance of competence.

That's the story.

</comment><comment><USER23> "...used his botnet to steal data from the users of those computers on approximately 200,000,000 occasions"

Must have some fast fingers to use nearly anything 200 million times...

</comment><comment><USER24> Why not keep this website in China or Russia, beyond the reach of the law?

<comment> liviu- The website was important only for facilitating the illegal activities. Keeping the website alive while being under surveillance by FBI wouldn't be of much benefit to the members of the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> What strikes me is the fact that they are tracking visitors with the following Google Analytics code: UA-51054600-7.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Investigators say that while the forum's existence was widely known, they > hadn't been able to penetrate it until recently. Darkode operated under > password protections and required referrals to join. On Wednesday, the site > consisted of an image saying that it had been seized by authorities.

> The arrests come after a two-year FBI undercover operation that infiltrated > the forum, said FBI Special Agent in Charge Scott S. Smith. Wednesday's > announcement reflects work in countries that range from Brazil and Costa > Rica to Latvia and Macedonia, the Justice Department says.

For various meanings of the term "Recently". So they've been trying to get in for 2 years and only just now got in, by pretending to be from Latvia?

<comment><USER27> Where did you read they pretended to be from Latvia? They worked in multiple countries, including Latvia.

<comment><USER26> In lieu of details, I assumed this from the article details.

Are you saying that they also pretended to be Macedonians?

<comment><USER28> they probably had a partner agency bust someone in one or more of those countries and flipped them

<comment><USER26> So you're saying that they couldn't even get in on their own? They had to find someone with what I'll call a "legitimate reason" for connecting to the darkforum, and had to sneak in that way?

<comment><USER29> Yes it would seem that way. Check out the top comment, it has a quite where it looks like they turned someone in January and someone else in June. So the first was the person who got them onto the board, probably just a user\low level carder, the second was likely an admin with more privileges, perhaps even access to PMs. Once they had the admin they were able to close it all down.

<comment><USER26> Where are you seeing that? The top comment is the dumb one about hornets.

<comment><USER29> Ctrl+f junto

The really interesting part is the last paragraph: In a related case, Aleksandr Andreevich Panin, aka Gribodemon, 26, of Tver, Russia; and Hamza Bendelladj, aka Bx1, 27, of Tizi Ouzou, Algeria, pleaded guilty on Jan. 28, 2014, and June 26, 2015, respectively, in the Northern District of Georgia in connection with developing, distributing and controlling SpyEye, a malicious banking trojan designed to steal unsuspecting victims' financial and personally identifiable information. Bendelladj and Panin advertised SpyEye to other members on Darkode. Note that they were arrested in Georgia. Do they mean the country of Georgia, enemy of the Russians and friend of the US? Or do they mean the state of Georgia in the US? Either way, the US has them in custody, which suggests an arrest on US soil (come visit the US trap style) or a foreign arrest and extradition. I'm guessing by the tone of that last paragraph that this is how the FBI got in. They flipped them and offered them a pkea bargain. We'll find out at sentencing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


An iPhone App to Sidestep AT&T - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/technology/personaltech/25pogue.html

<comment><USER2> Google voice denied and Line2 accepted? Interesting steve...

<comment><USER3> Interesting indeed. In my book that smells like the 'unfair trade practices' type of interesting.

<comment><USER4> There was a well publicized policy change between the two events.

<comment><USER5> Which policy change?

<comment><USER4> Google Voice was rejected in July of 2009. In October of 2009 AT&T unilaterally (maybe after seeing how the FCC was thinking) amended their customer agreements to allow VOIP over the cellular network. Once that camel nose came under the tent the difference between VOIP phones and the builtin phone started to go away. Now in March of 2010 Line2 has been altered and accepted to deliver VOIP on the cellular network.

As submitted, Google Voice had several problems, including a massive privacy violation that would have held up any app. It is reasonable to think that they could have worked through those. The "duplicates the dialer, voicemail, and SMS" seems to be the key objection that Google could not, or chose not, to work around, but at least for voice calls that is changing as evidenced by Line2. I never saw SMS come up explicitly, but surely AT&T would not be happy to see that cash cow vanish. The question is if they had enough foresight and clout to get it protected in their agreement with Apple.

<comment><USER6> But Line2 was originally accepted, with all it's iPhone-duplicating functionality, in September 2009: [http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/02/google- voice-alternative-li...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/02/google-voice- alternative-line2-is-now-live-on-the-app-store/)

And, at least if you believe the statements to the FCC, AT&T has never had anything to do with the acceptance or rejection of the Google Voice app. So Apple ends up looking rather hypocritical here, when all of it's stated reasons for rejecting Google Voice also apply to Line2's app and yet that app was accepted.

<comment><USER4> Not true. Line2 was wifi only and was positioned as an additonal line, not a replacement.

I think the prevailing meme is clearly missing something. Like, why did google quit instead of addressing the flaws. Apple stated officially on the record that google voice was not rejected, in december, did google get discouraged and give up? Are they still in queue? Are they happier with a reason for people to buy android phones than fir iPhone users to be able to have convenient access to their google voice accounts?

Did people even want a native google voice app for anything other than subverting their voice/SMS contract? I use google voice, and I'd like a native voicemail viewer for it, but I don't need to replace my SMS program or dialer.

<comment><USER6> I'm not disputing that Line2 was originally wifi only. That's not relevant though, since Apple didn't complain about Google Voice using the 3g network to initiate calls in its FCC statement. From the TC article linked above:

"When [you get a] call, the service can either relay the call to your 'real' number (the AT&T number assigned to your iPhone), or it can send it to voicemail, depending on the way you've set up your call filters."

This is exactly what Google Voice does, and Line2 even included a similar "visual voicemail" feature from the start. It also duplicated the iPhone's dialer _pixel for pixel_. In Apple's FCC statement the stated reasons for Google Voice's rejection were re-routing of voicemail, duplication of "visual voicemail," and duplication of the iPhone's native dialing functionality.

Is there a claim in the FCC statement against the Google Voice app that doesn't also apply to Line2's app?

And Google didn't address the flaws, because there were no flaws to address! As the acceptance of the Line2 app makes clear, all of Apple's stated complaints about GV weren't real, so why try to get around them when the app will just be rejected for some other completely ridiculous reason?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Taking bets on how soon this app will be ejected from the AppStore. Especially considering:

 _The Line2 app is a carbon copy, a visual clone, of the iPhone's own phone software._

</comment><comment><USER8> For those of you wondering if Apple is going to remove this from the App Store: they almost certainly won't.

Line2 was first submitted to the App Store in August 2009, which was really bad timing because it was in the middle of the Apple/Google Voice storm. A month later it was approved (after the founder pestered Apple a lot). And I'm pretty sure the version Pogue is reviewing was actually released last month (<http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/line2-google-voice/>).

In other words, none of this is news to Apple, though it's clearly hypocritical on their part. Also, no way Apple would pull this after a Pogue review — he'd probably write about it, and he's proven before with his 'Take Back The Beep' campaign that he can incite quite an uproar.

</comment><comment><USER9> How is this substantively different from the Skype iPhone application, with an in-bound phone number? The major usability barrier to me there is the inability to have Skype run in the background on the phone (reasonably so, since it would kill battery life); does Line2 somehow work around this?

Edit: Never mind, I should have finished reading the article before posting. Line2 routes calls through the cellular network when the app isn't running.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I use it on my iPhone, dropped my unlimited plan to 450 minutes, saves $30/month Toktumi is only $15/month so saves $180/year and now I can actually use my iPhone at home. Very cool app, going to test on my iPod one of these days too.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm happy that iPhone owners now have something even better than Google Voice. But how can Apple possibly defend the Google Voice rejection now? I hope the FCC gets involved again. I'm offended on Google's behalf.

</comment><comment><USER10> Damn Line2 does exists, for one moment while reading the article, I thought the author was joking and talking about that imaginary VoIP app of everyone's dream. Then I searched in iTunes and it's a reality.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is great publicity for Line2, assuming Apple doesn't decide to remove their app from the App Store due to the attention this article will bring to them.

</comment><comment><USER12> link to the app in itunes [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/line2-2-lines-1-iphone/id3191...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/line2-2-lines-1-iphone/id319185557?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER13> Oh this will be interesting on the 3G iPad. $30/mo 3G VOIP?

<comment><USER6> Does the iPad have a microphone?

<comment><USER14> Yes. From <[http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/>](http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/>):

      Input and output
        * Dock connector port
        * 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
        * Built-in speaker
        * Microphone
        * Micro SIM card tray (Wi-Fi + 3G model only)

It's likely the headphone jack is even iPhone-compatible (accepts headsets with inline microphones), though the wording above isn't clear.

<comment><USER15> It is compatible.

See <http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/ipad/faq.html>, question "Does it work with Apple's remote earphones?".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To read the article, you'd think VoIP was a completely new, unheard of technology.

<comment><USER17> VoIP on your phone pretty much is.</comment></comment>


Looking for technical co-founder, with a side of integrity.   - <AUTHOR> I don't if its just me, but does having a business background add no real value to the start up community? It seems like if I am to pursue a route into high tech, the technical guy has all the power to control the direction of a startup.
Currently, I am looking for a technical co-founder to help with the programming of a mobile application. I am currently applied to MassChallenge, check us out here: http://masschallenge.org/content/vesync
Our past co-founder put in little to no work, and has recently "resigned", due to the immense pressures of "too much work". I am looking for there a candidate that is willing to work part-time in helping me build Vesync from the ground up. I may not have funding but I have the drive to take up all the responsibilities of the marketing and business end. You would only have to program on your spare time. I am looking for a technical co-founder who has the commitment to actually build something together. If that is you, please message me back! <comment><USER2> Without knowing anything about the relationship between you and your previous co-founder, the fact that you don't hesitate to bad-mouth him and his contributions in public like this is a huge, gigantic red flag.

Re-read your post with the words 'technical' and 'business' swapped. Do you want to work with that person?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do not understand how you find this "bad mouthing", since my ex co-founder did not put in any work. I am just stating the truth of his work ethic and contribution. Also I left my co-founder anonymous, so that his image would not be tarnished.

<comment><USER2> Remember, we don't know anything about your ex co-founder. So it's not about whether you are right or wrong, it's just that anything to do with him is completely irrelevant - bringing him up can only hurt your pitch.

The fact that you complain about him (and the power imbalance between tech/business founders) instead of explaining why you and your project are awesome is really off-putting.

You're looking for a co-founder: you should be selling yourself and selling your project!

<comment><USER3> This x 1,000,000

I'm a business guy (with some front end tech skills) and I found the rant about power imbalance whiny, at best.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm 100% sure you wouldn't have done anything to be helpful anyways. If I wanted to talk to a troll, I would've went under a bridge.

<comment><USER3> You have a pretty piss poor attitude. I'm not trolling, just calling it as I see it.

I would work on that problem first before trying to get a cofounder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny thing is no one asked you. Obviously, you would only do this on the internet, try "calling it as you see it" in real life, see what happens.

<comment><USER3> Cheers, good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To clarify, I have been cold calling, email, and networking with many individuals to get advice on building a successful startup. My ex co-founder who joined said he would also do his part, however, he avoided most of his duties and never helped with anything substantial. I am not asking for much, just the same amount as any entrepreneur working on their startup. Also we are both undergraduate students, that may help even out the thought process.

</comment><comment><USER3> How do you know he can code it all "in his spare time?"

<comment><AUTHOR> He won't be able to. It's not a one man job, however, it is possible to code out a demo. I have some cs friends who are willing to help out, but are not fully committed to be a technical leader. In a sense, I am looking for a technical co-founder who will be able to commit enough and lead a few other friends of mine that are willing to help out.</comment></comment>


An Arduino-type board for AC power (phase-fired) control - <AUTHOR> https://nathan.vertile.com/blog/2019/04/07/vertile-powercore/ <comment><USER2> Photos are not appearing - but still an interesting device.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx for the feedback and the heads up. What browser are you using?</comment></comment>


Sparrho raises $3M to democratize access to science research - happy-go-lucky https://venturebeat.com/2017/07/10/sparrho-raises-3-million-to-democratize-access-to-scientific-research/ <comment><AUTHOR> Can someone describe the differences between this and something like ResearchGate [0]? The article here, which reads like a press release, does not provide much information beyond 'democratizing access' and 'curating content'. Oh, and throwing some punches at the big journals.

A cursory browse of their website seems to indicate they are just indexing abstract repositories and providing links to arXiv or the journal articles. Further, searching a topic like climate change science [1] yields only _89_ (!!) results, of which only 24 are displayed. And those appear to just be the most recently published--little value added.

From the headline, I was hoping this would be a paradigm-shifting new publishing company fostering a variety of open access journals. Instead, it seems to be a "machine learning applied" version of ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and many other similar platforms.

[0]: [https://www.researchgate.net](https://www.researchgate.net) [1]: [https://www.sparrho.com/search/climate%20change%20science/](https://www.sparrho.com/search/climate%20change%20science/)

<comment><USER2> Well, researchgate likes to tell me I'm not elite enough to join their services despite having preprints and journal papers waiting for peer- review...

"Sorry, we were unable to approve your account request. We've sent you an email to ask you to provide some information about your research so we can reprocess your request. Please click on the link in the email to do so."

Oh yeah, and they never actually sent me an email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So I have briefly played around with this and it seems quite neatly engineered. Quick search.

I just have a hard time seeing how this will turn into a sustainable business.

One way of looking at this is that it is a high-end competitor to arxiv-sanity - at least in STEM. I understand that it integrates from many more sources but that actually is a problem.

A brief search for the niche I am in (a subfield of machine learning and comp sci) gives me thousands of results but hardly anything I would consider relevant in scope. It feels more like being inundated with anything remotely relevant, which is the exact opposite of what I want - it is already stressful enough to keep up with arxiv uploads.

I might not understand what the actual use case for this is and who would be the customer (as opposed to the user). Maybe it is more relevant to other fields (especially biology, medicine and so forth) as I have a hard time thinking of anyone in my research circle who would get value out of a subscription here. Then again, this is a highly biased view as STEM has made greater strides in open access than other fields. Nonetheless, I would not be surprised if researchers in other fields might feel inundated with new work just the same.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi everybody, I'm Vivian, co-founder and CEO of Sparrho. Thank you very much for your interest and feedback.

Our discovery engine focuses on making it easier for anybody to discover the most relevant papers to them as soon as they're published - across all fields, regardless of the impact factor of its affiliated journal, or whether you're somehow connected to the authors by citation or social following (like in ResearchGate's news feed).

Some of you have commented we are not a publishing platform for open access journals and that's absolutely right. What we mean by curation on Sparrho is allowing experts to build pinboards that bring together peer-reviewed articles, patents, and their own expert summary to help others understand and explore niche fields of research, like PhD student Mark here: [http://www.sparrho.com/pinboard/liquation-cracking-in- high-t...](http://www.sparrho.com/pinboard/liquation-cracking-in-high- temperature-materials/162826/)

Enabling open access to scientific research is nonetheless part of our long term mission. That will require collaboration, something that's in our DNA as a company. Most recently we've worked with oaDOI to make 10 million free-to- access papers and author manuscripts discoverable through the Sparrho platform.

Following your comments, we've also tuned our quick search to a broader setting. @FTA, please try [http://www.sparrho.com/search/climate%20change%20science/](http://www.sparrho.com/search/climate%20change%20science/) again to see if the results are more like what you expected. We're seeing >6.5k results for "climate change science" and >48k for "climate change". :)

If you have any more questions, you can always reach me and my team at firstname.lastname@example.com or contact us on our Sparrho community Slack channel at [http://heroes.sparrho.com](http://heroes.sparrho.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> I sometimes get the feeling "democratize" is the new "disrupt"

</comment><comment><USER6> Sci-Hub ([http://sci-hub.cc/](http://sci-hub.cc/)) has done more to "democratize access to science research" than this company ever could, and is much more deserving of this money.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, going to be an unpopular opinion here: Sci-Hub submissions were, in fact, illegal, even if it did do more to democratize access. As such, I don't feel like they should receive this money. A company trying to accomplish democratization legally should be getting this money. That, or change copyright law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The proper title should be "pinterest for science". Basically it just collect publicly available abstracts, like a better RSS for daily skimming.

For the actual access to content, it does nothing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Always interesting to see new ways to access useful material.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish they would have just donated $3M to sci-hub.</comment>


Four Chrome OS Contenders that Could Take on Apple's iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.thechromesource.com/four-chrome-os-contenders-that-could-take-on-apples-ipad/ <comment><USER2> I think this just shows that Apple is far ahead with the iPad. Two of those are just concepts, one is just a comment from a CEO and the third doesn't ship yet. This area might be more interesting in a year or 2/3, just like with the iPhone

</comment><comment><USER3>
      (along with an app store, we hope)

Is it me, or are people beginning to forget that Chrome OS does not run apps natively, and instead that web apps are Chrome apps? I'm actually looking forward to a Chrome tablet, because of several things:

      1. very elegent multi-tasking, as each task is just a tab in the browser

      2. circumvents the need for an app store by using "native" web apps

      3. no need to specifically target new apps at it. build once for the web, put in zero extra effort and have a chrome app.

      4. simplified target for developers: web standards

      5. no need to learn another framework for another device

As such, I think a Chrome OS tablet could become a very succesful, yet quiet, replacement for the iPad. As (I believe) Google said before, the internet is Chrome OS's killer app.

<comment><USER4> You may be right that Chrome OS is a more attractive target for devs. But for the consumer, an iPad (which includes Safari) seems strictly better than a ChromePad. No?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll believe it when I see it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Google needs to get serious in regards to shipping a ChromeOS tablet for cheap. They made the nexus one happen, so chromeos tablet is doable. They would need to do it far cheaper than the iPad too though and have 3G I believe.

</comment><comment><USER7> Also worth keeping an eye on: the TouchBook, a netbook with a detachable touchscreen display: <http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/>

I'd love to see an open-source product that rivaled the utility and UX (and fun!) of the iPad, but I'm not holding my breath. Put simply, the free software community doesn't have a great track record when it comes to interfaces and behavioral design. What makes the iPad great isn't the hardware, it's the OS and the APIs.

</comment><comment><USER8> Come on, can it really be so hard to build a serious iPad contender? You don't have to differentiate yourself by adding loads of crap just because the iPad happens to not have it, why not something minimalist just like the iPad?

I don't want Apple to get crazy so please buckle up!

</comment><comment><USER9> So is the FSF opposed to Chrome OS? Stallman's latest essay ([http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really- se...](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html)) seems to suggest this.

<comment><USER10> Looks like he confuses control with freedom. Sometimes I get a lot of freedom exactly by giving up control for someone else to worry about.

Now I then I see Amazon's Kindle incident mentioned. And in context like this they conveniently forget to mention that Amazon made it possible to download the book again or get a refund. Nor do they quote Amazon spokesman: _"We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances."_

First don't use Word and iWorks, now don't use SaaS. Don't use this, don't use that. I can now longer grasp Stallman's vision of freedom, but now I am pretty sure it scares me.

If RMS is willing to paint himself into the corner of his cave, all power to him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whats wrong with the existing array of tablet PCs with superior features? Not enough marketing hype to make them "good" enough?

<comment><USER12> Unless I'm entirely wrong, most of those older tablet PCs have keyboards (and larger screens, worse battery lives, and so forth). That's the difference - and, because multitouch/touchscreens as the only input is a big thing right now, it's ignoring all the older ones which are basically laptops with rotating touchscreens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _cough_ flash support _cough_</comment>


Ask HN: Which cloud provider do you use? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER3> Depends on the project

Small websites (local businesses) - digital ocean Little larger - <USER2> cloud

My most recent project that went live last week uses divshot for hosting (because firebase hosting doesn't do SEO and divshot uses prerender.io), firebase for the backend, cloudinary for image / video manipulation, mailgun for system email, stripe for CC processing, google business apps for office email, raygun for bug tracking, rackspace cloud for admin systems

</comment><comment><USER4> SpiderOak and Mega.</comment>


HTML5 is no silver bullet for apps - <AUTHOR> http://chriseidhof.tumblr.com/post/12170749641/html5-is-no-silver-bullet-for-apps

<comment><USER2> I think this article is somewhat based on a misunderstanding of HTML5.

I've developed an "HTML5" application using Phonegap for Android and iPhone. But the difficulties he described is more of a UI issue better handled by responsive frameworks like JQuery Mobile.

I'll be honest though, I still have hacky code making up for some UI framework deficits, and the "touch" version of my webapp is much more simplistic. But the cross-compatibility and "write once, run anywhere" aspect of Javascript/HTML5/CSS development is too hard to pass up when you have limited time and hope to reach a wide market.

<comment><USER3> > let their next app be an HTML 5 app.

That's what he's talking about. People saying to do that.

Yes, a good mobile app needs a bit more than simple HTML 5 web tools (as opposed to a mobile site, which can look quite good using a more unified toolset).</comment></comment>


Nobel prize winner and buckyball discoverer Harry Kroto dies at 76 - <AUTHOR> http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2016/05/harry-kroto-fullerenes-buckyball-nobel-prize-obituary <comment><USER2> RIP. Buckyballs have a ton of potential on the materials science world, and it's sad to hear that a pioneer is gone.</comment>


Hasblog, part 2: Html Flavour - <AUTHOR> http://vegai.iki.fi/haskell/hasblog-2 ...where simple HTML flavours (by blosxom terminology) are implemented. Also can be viewed as a primer of GHC's Text.XHtml combinator library. <comment><AUTHOR> ...where simple HTML flavours (by blosxom's terminology) are implemented. Also can be read as a brief intro to the Text.XHtml combinator library.</comment>


Why a Stupid App Like Yo May Have Billion-Dollar Platform Potential (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/26/why-a-stupid-app-like-yo-may-have-billion-dollar-platform-potential/ <comment><USER2> Well that never happened, did it?

I really, really enjoyed the US Geological Service's Yo system for Large Earthquakes. Then a year in... it stopped working, and I stopped caring.</comment>


Apple's design process - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2008/03/apples_design_p.html

<comment><USER2> This does not really help. Yes, they put in a huge amount of time and they do it right. OK, but really how do they do it? Nah, not for today.

<comment><USER3> one of the commentors there mentioned how apple starts from the form and then works on the function. in others words, first think: "what do i want?" and then worry about "how do i do this?" to me that's obvious, but i realized most companies don't see it that way when i saw how crappy every single mp3 player except apple's was. as much as i don't like apple, they deserve where they're at right now thanks to other companies hiring and letting permanoobs design their crap

[http://www.slideshare.net/dansaffer/gaming-the-web-using- the...](http://www.slideshare.net/dansaffer/gaming-the-web-using-the- structure-of-games-to-design-better-web-apps)</comment></comment>


It is time to stop rewarding failure - <AUTHOR> http://om.co/2014/07/17/rewarding-failure/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised the article discusses failure at the corporate level when first thing that came to mind is stopping rewarding at the startup level. (e.g. pity acquihires of zombie startups)</comment>


Ask HN: How are your friends making money online? - <AUTHOR>

Most of my friends that are making consistent money are building websites and/or offering SEO and marketing services.  Very few are building anything new or unique.<p>Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Selling squatted domain names, running b2b startups in their spare time, making games for iOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you elaborate on the selling of squated domains?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> a friend and i do small web businesses (not together). First year we both did some seo to push traffic, when we realized that wasn't working we started ppc and that's how we bring food home

<comment><USER4> Any chance on elaborating your PPC business? I'm looking into that space and could use some resources! Email would be great, too.

<comment><USER5> I think she means she uses PPC to generate traffic for her business, not that PPC _is_ her business.

<comment><USER3> true. Basically we sell a digital service, we get %22 of visitors to sign up, %2 of them buy the full version.

Our day to day business is to a/b test and get the percentages up a notch. When you know how many ppl buy from your total visitors you know how much to pay for ppc - And then seo becomes almost irrelevant.

<comment><USER4> Ah, gotcha thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Retiring Early Could Kill You, New Study Finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2017/12/25/retiring-early-could-kill-you-new-study-finds_a_23316761/ <comment><USER2> Seems to be based on this paper: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3089523](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3089523)

There appears to also be presentation slides for a preview of this paper at: [https://siepr.stanford.edu/system/files/FITZPATRICK_Age62mor...](https://siepr.stanford.edu/system/files/FITZPATRICK_Age62mortality_151007Stanford.pdf). Apparently, the effect is not that large; ~2% jump in mortality rates for males and ~1% for females.</comment>


PHP, the web's most popular programming language, is coming to mobile - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/02/php-andi-gutmans-future-mobile/

<comment><USER2> PHP's killer app is the LAMP stack and $5 hosting. Unless you can replicate that familiarity on a phone, PHP wont find traction. There are far better programming languages out there with more backing, and I don't think not having PHP has been a major hurdle for mobile development

PHP is the core web language because PHP devs (for the most part) are cheap, replaceable parts. You need to be smarter than that for mobile development, and anyone smart enough for mobile dev won't use PHP if they don't have to.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but that last line sentence has really touched a nerve, maybe I'm being trolled, but here comes my 2 cents anyway.

I personally use PHP all the time, I love it. I can code large, maintainable and secure applications with far more speed than any other language I've ever used ( and trust me I've used a lot ). It's my language of choice when I'm building web applications.

Not only is it available everywhere! but it's been established for long enough that there are a wide range of top quality frameworks and libraries written for it. Oh and these have been written by developers who I'm _certain_ are much smarter than us both.

And why the hell is mobile development any harder than web development. It's just _code_ , not arcane magic. Trust me I've seen, and will continue to see, just as much badly written/badly performing code for mobile applications as I do for web based ones. Just because you're using Objective C / Java as the tool of choice doesn't make you any better or smarter a developer.

If there is a mobile offering coming up based around PHP, I'm looking forward to trying it. If it allows me the same benefits as the language does on the web then I'll be using it, regardless of how many people think that makes me "not smart".

<comment><USER4> _If it allows me the same benefits as the language does on the web then I'll be using it, regardless of how many people think that makes me "not smart"._

That was part of the OP's point. "PHP's killer app is the LAMP stack and $5 hosting."

That option makes PHP useful in many cases where arguably better languages would not be smart choice.

But, without that same value in the mobile space, what's the case for using PHP over, say, Objective C or JavaScript or Ruby or Lua, other than not knowing Objective C or JavaScript or Ruby or Lua?

<comment><USER5> Let's go over those:

\- Objective C: not a competitor as it doesn't do multi-platform, which I assume will be PHP's main angle.

\- Javascript: weird OO model (compared to PHP's traditional OO), much smaller set of API's, typically tied to a web UI (PHP would probably wrap around native UI API's). Along with C# I consider this the strongest contender, but I can see why people would prefer PHP.

\- Ruby, lua: does anyone actually use those on mobile? I'm sure they have their qualities, but those are really niche languages (on mobile). To me these are not serious competitors.

<comment><USER6> Lua is very popular with iOS game developers.

<comment><USER7> Lua is very popular with most game developers.

<comment><USER4> There is a Lua mobile game framework as well (which is why I popped Lua into that ad hoc list).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> <rant>

The link intrigued me that PHP was coming to mobile but the only sentence in the entire thing that spoke to that was "But, he hinted to me, PHP and Zend will be providing client-side app-enabling tools." The rest of the article is just filler about the history of PHP.

I mean really, this is the definition click bate: a bunch of filler and one tiny smidgen of information.

</rant>

Personally, while I'm not a huge fan of PHP it is one of the most useful languages I've learned so I think that mobile PHP is pretty exciting.

</comment><comment><USER9> The accessibility is a huge selling point, but also (and often overlooked) is the non-prescriptivist nature of PHP. For so many jobs (and yes, even in enterprise) you just need to get the project done and out there. It doesn't have to conform to perfect OO standards and doesn't have to follow certain architectural specifications. PHP is great for that.

When you need to take it to the next level and establish a really good and efficient standard, there are extremely well-done frameworks to assist you. But when you just need to get something done, sometimes PHP's "do it anyway you can" nature is it's biggest feature.

It will be interesting to see what mobile play Gutmans et. al. have. If they can bring that same "let's just get it done" mentality it may have a chance. Interested to see how it goes down.

<comment><USER2> It's hard to write "do it any way you can" code when you're dealing with a GUI object model. PHP works because all you're doing is writing to stdout.

<comment><USER10> Your junior-level knowledge of web development is coming out in your overly negative and anti-PHP ranting today. The end result of any backend web service is quite simply "writing to stdout". That's how HTTP works. How exactly does the transport mechanism have any bearing on the platform?

Let's not forget web development today consists of a substantial amount of both back-end and front-code, the latter of which operates in a fashion much like GUI object model.

<comment><USER2> > Your junior-level knowledge of web development

Lets not make personal attacks here, okay?

<comment> paul-woolcock You mean like this one?

> PHP is the core web language because PHP devs (for the most part) are cheap, > replaceable parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In other news, the world's largest manufacturer of hammers has announced a new model accepting hex-bit screwdriver tips in the end of its handle.

</comment><comment><USER12> What PHP needs is the ability to run websockets natively without extra setup. Right in a mod_php or PHP-FPM. None of the current platforms have this right. You always have to run extra web servers in place of Apache or Nginx. Yes, this is also a thing that Apache, and Nginx have to figure out. Running node.js or Go web servers is too immature.

<comment><USER13> If you're afraid of immature technologies, why use websockets to begin with?

<comment><USER12> Good question. I see this more or less like chicken-egg situation. Right now it seems that client side is quite well maturing. Client side is the easier part of websockets. PHP's whole model is 'shared nothing', that's why it fits so poorly with websockets. 'Real-time' two-way communication with the server and the clients is getting more and more common in web apps, and even web sites. I'm not sure how the server side of the websockets are going to be solved. If PHP gets it right, it will probably have great future ahead. These days we need to revert to dual solution, main system behind Apache or Nginx, and websockets with for example custom node.js servers. It is far from optimal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm skeptical that PHP is the "web's most popular programming language", and feel it serves no other purpose in the title than to be inflammatory.

From the article: "Wikipedia says 75 percent of websites use PHP."

From wikipedia: "PHP is used as the server-side programming language on 75% of all Web sites"

However, that's not what its source says.

From wikipedia's source[1]: "PHP is used by 78.1% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know." And I'd be willing to bet that PHP (and the runner-up, ASP.net) are easy to identify considering the pages end with particular extension (which isn't the case with other technologies).

The article gives no other proof save an unverified quote from Zend that states that PHP runs 35% of web requests. It even gives evidence to support the conclusion that PHP's popularity is declining.

[1] [http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_languag...](http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_language/all)

</comment><comment><USER14> This article is perfect example of PR Speak passed on as news.

in the article head, it says "PHP, the web's most popular programming language, is coming to mobile" but then nowhere in articles author mentions about this except in the end where it says "Coming soon"!

WTH?

<comment><USER15> It's a press release (well really a comment made to the press) used as a nice link-bait filler news article. Drew Curtis of Fark.com fame wrote a great book with this and more examples of news industry behavior that is even more true in the link-bait world.

<http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-News-Fark-Media/dp/1592403662/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Malaria, the world's most popular disease.

</comment><comment><USER17> For an article whose title is about PHP moving to mobile, it's quite disappointing that they literally spent only 3 sentences on it... at the end. And didn't even say anything worth reporting. Link bait.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think this might be the angriest, most uncivil HN discussion I've seen so far.

<comment><USER19> Is this your first PHP thread? Pretty much all of them turn into a "ha! ha! you use php!" and those of us who use it to build things justifying our decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Coming from the .NET world, the single biggest problem I have seen with PHP developers is their lack of life cycle concept understanding. This will probably prove to be the most challenging part when PHP developers start to engage with singletons, IoC etc. For example any .NET developer would laugh/cry with this: [http://www.slideshare.net/go_oh/singletons-in-php-why- they-a...](http://www.slideshare.net/go_oh/singletons-in-php-why-they-are-bad- and-how-you-can-eliminate-them-from-your-applications)

<comment><USER21> Interestingly, that's why a lot of my colleagues and I dropped .Net (and Java) like a bad habit... Singleton, IOC, Dependency injection, GoF hell.

NOT that PHP is a good alternative; Only different perspectives on the same issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Heads are exploding all over Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER23> PHP's core strength is that it is a DSL for serving websites. While it can be used for other things, I see zero benefit in bringing it to mobile.

<comment><USER24> Also, the philosophy of PHP is a batteries-included approach of bundling everything so you rarely need an external library. Both of these things seem fundamentally at odds with mobile development, but who knows, maybe they can chisel something out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why is this on front page? It is a total fluff piece with no real value.

"But, he hinted to me, PHP and Zend will be providing client-side app-enabling tools."

There are already bunch of client-side app-enabling tools thousands of devs are using with PHP already. Holy shit .. but .. Zend is coming up with some _awesome batshit secret new sauce for client-side_ that will work with PHP! Mind = Blown!

</rant>

</comment><comment> SG- PHP article yet the 'nice' image at the top seems to be OSX booting in verbose mode.</comment>


In-App Purchase Scams in the App Store - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/2017/06/in-app_purchase_scams_in_the_app_store <comment><USER2> See also the discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156)

I just can't fathom why any $5k/year in-app subscription should be legitimate.

<comment><USER3> You think an app can't provide more than $5000 in value to a customer in a year? Under any circumstances? Any kind of app?

<comment><USER4> It should be enough to raise a flag for someone at Apple to thoroughly review the app before approving it for release. Not to mention that software worth $5,000/yr isn't often, if ever, paid for through an app store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't it in Apple's financial interest to look the other way? The scam generates money for Apple so the incentives here are misaligned.

<comment><USER6> I highly doubt that these apps are generating such a significant amount of income for Apple (when taking into account their entire income from the App Store) that they would consider looking the other way.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ex-founder looking for work, any tips? - <AUTHOR> I worked on a failed startup as a technical co-founder for the past ~9 months. I'm now looking for work. Are there any special things I should/could do when looking for a new job? or effective ways I can market my experience? Experiences from people in similar situations would be helpful.<p>Additionally, if anyone knows of opportunities in the South Bay (Palo Alto/Mt View/surrounding area), feel free to contact me. My email is in my profile. <comment><USER2> Story-telling, story-telling, story-telling!

You need to take that 9-month sprint (and futher back) and turn that into a story.

      - What was the startup?
      - What was the company trying to acheive?
      - What was your role?
      - What milestones did you hit / exceed?
      - What toolsets/stacks did you use and learn on?
      - Did you get any press, anywhere?

      - Why did you guys fail? What was the lesson learned?

      - is there anything you did not get to learn that you would like to learn in your new role (eg - elastic search, AWS, AZure, machine learning, etc?)

Then take this story, post it on Medium. Put that on your LinkedIn profile. Push this to your network.

Make yourself easy to hire. Create an engaging story that makes a hiring manager / CEO want to dig into your story.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you should do what anyone should do:

\- reach out to your network for opportunities

\- focus on 2-10 companies that are doing things that interest you and see if you know anyone who works there (yay, linked in)

\- before the interview, do your research and be prepared to ask intelligent questions about things that a hiring manager would care about--even better, have some answers

As for marketing your experience, if you can and would enjoy writing about your startup experience, I imagine that would be both useful for marketing your services to employers and interesting to others.</comment>


Ask these 3 Questions before Quitting - <AUTHOR> http://[AskThese3QuestionsBeforeQuitting-Berlocks.com-Medium](https://medium.com/@billdinh/ask-these-3-questions-before-giving-up-72bdbb70f763) <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, wrote up this article to help our users stay motivated. Hope it helps.

<comment><USER2> The link doesn't work.

<comment><USER3> Should be:

[https://medium.com/@billdinh/ask-these-3-questions-before- gi...](https://medium.com/@billdinh/ask-these-3-questions-before-giving- up-72bdbb70f763)</comment></comment></comment>


Save Homeworld (PC game) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/24/crowdfunding-homeworld-thq/ SEGA bought Relic Ent group but left Homeworld franchise. Now there is a campaign on Indiegogo to raise money for it. Why not Kickstarter??? <comment><AUTHOR> Why they chose Indiegogo instead of Kickstarter? And why SEAG decided to buy Relic Entertainment but leave Homeworld franchise behind? Sadface</comment>


Akamai's peak load so far is 12 million requests per second - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/04/11/akamai-3-4-terabits/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to really put that into perspective ... the other day someone posted a real time guage of doubleclick's activity with DART and their staggering 300k ads per second. In that submission someone else said the unofficial number they've heard is another mil per second for AdSense .... so in total Google's ad interests may be doing a mere 10% of the traffic Akamai peaked at.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1247358>

<http://qos.doubleclick.net/>

<comment><USER2> I expect google could easily beat that with a few services combined.

<comment><AUTHOR> That'd be cheating... besides Google advertising is pretty much synonymous with the entire internet which makes it a good metric for comparison (although the numbers I suggested are questionable).

<comment><USER2> Well Akami is, for the most part, static content. So it's "cheating" anyway :) to compare the two.

<comment><AUTHOR> lol fair enough, what should we compare it to then?

<comment><USER2> I don't know. It would be interesting to see some numbers for Amazon's S3 service perhaps - a lot of static content gets hosted on there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Man... I wish all I had to do was push static content. Must be nice.

<comment><USER4> Because Akamai doesn't do application acceleration, live streams, PCI compliant card payments etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am glad the all important Library of Congress unit of measurement is still alive. I wonder though, do people using this unit of measurement take into account the growth of the LoC. I mean since the LoC should include most published materials in the US, it should be growing at a pretty brisk rate.

Thus, the LoC, like the dollar is one of those units of measurement that change their meaning over time.</comment>


Show HN: Magic Sandbox – hands-on Kubernetes training on real infra - <AUTHOR> https://msb.com <comment><USER2> Wow this is great! I've been meaning to play around with k8s and this looks to be a good first time experience with the subject.

I had a difficult time trying to figure out how to use the text editor to open a file and was stuck on a particular step for a bit. Would be nice to give users a quick intro on the basics of the UI.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely a lot more work to be done to polish up the ux! Thanks for the compliments and thanks for pushing through the issues

<comment><USER2> No worries!

Okay, honestly this is great. The content, flow, and ramp-up in complexity is wonderful.

Please, please, please add a way to resume your learning session without starting over from scratch. I didn't click on "Start next class" once and was booted out to the main menu. There seems to be no way to resume my "next class" without restarting the entire module. Once you have this, I'll be a paying customer.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have this on the roadmap, but it's not as trivial as it seems, since there's a real cluster behind and it's very opinionated

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretty good platform for learning k8s. Nice UI, clear explanations. Of course my "inner QA engineer" came out and I had a few observations:

* On the intro page about typing "kubectl delete <item1> <item2>", autocomplete only worked for <item1> and I had to manually type <item2>

* Whenever I clicked "Check" button after running a command to go to the next task, I would lose focus on the CLI window and would have to click back into the window. It would be nice to have <ctrl-Enter> be an alias for clicking that "Next|Check|Start Tasks" button.

* I clicked "Previous" to scroll back thru one of the lessons, and the state of the cluster didn't roll back, so to reproduce something I had to start from the beginning of the tasks. This would probably be difficult to make "Previous" a real-Undo function, but it would be cool. Kind of like "upgrade/downgrade" when using SQLAlchemy to manage a database.

* When on the page asking me to type "kubectl describe deployment", the auto-complete would always jump to "deployment.app" instead of stopping that the command parameter "deployment"

* For viewing the details about the dashboard elements on the right hand diagram, the slide out showing the metadata, etc. would only change between objects when clicking on just the title in the object's box. There's no visual signifier that the title is any more important than the rest of the object's widget for selection. Maybe allow clicking on anything inside an object's frame instead of just on the text of the object's title?

* on the "/deploy-an-application" lesson, the introduction page is highlighting the wrong elements in the YAML when you hover over the anchors in the description text

\-----

I guess these are all more-or-less nitpicks in what looks like a really well polished experience for learning k8s. It's nice enough that it sucked me in to spending a half hour going through it and sending back these suggestions :)

Good luck with the product. I'll pass along a pointer to our k8s guy.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for such a great feedback. Undo/redo - this is gonna be super-tricky to build, but we had similar ideas, mostly we were thinking about smth like redux'ish time travelling along the cluster state updates, slow-mo replays, things like that. But undo/repo over real cluster states is definitely an interesting idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I being stupid or is the terminal window not responding to typing?

edit: my bad: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21283632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21283632)

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you using chrome? We can occasionally have some issues on some browsers. Sorry to hear that. A refresh will probably help

<comment><USER6> Like really? You are optimizing your product for (google's spyware) chrome? You are part of the problem.

"some issues in some browsers" \- shouldn't fly in 2019, IE6 is gone!

<comment><USER7> This is just a small company getting off the ground and you're going to bash them because they don't support every single browser that exists? Seriously, cut them some slack.

<comment><USER6> Feedback loop is extremely important, especially when the product is young. To grow, you need to learn and perfect your abilities same applies to software and companies. I did not leave that comment out of malice, I shared an important market feedback.

<comment><USER8> I think there are better ways to get that point across than opening with the tone of "Like, really?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks awesome! I am a complete beginner in Kubernetes (even in automated container deployment), but wants to learn it. Will I be able to understand the basics of it using msb?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Our goal is to take you from a beginner not knowing what a Pod is to doing advanced deployments. You do however require basic knowledge of how servers or backend technologies work

<comment><USER9> Great! Looking forward to try it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Since I'm teaching Kubernetes I'll definitely take a deeper look into it. Recently I tried RedHat Labs, but unfortunately these resources were not lasting (only available for 2 months, which is not good if your students start the lab over the course of 6 months...)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! send me an email at mislav at <this-domain> and I'm happy to walk you through and discuss future plans

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great platfom. If you want to learn/understand kubernetes, this is the right place to do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes, congrats on relaunch! I'm on Brave and get this message when trying to "login with google" \- shields down and 3rd party cookies enabled.

"This browser is not supported or 3rd party cookies and data may be disabled."

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you getting it at the google sign-in popup? That's out of our control unfortunately

<comment><USER12> I'm getting it as an alert on msb.com. However I already created an account with email, and it works great!

Your "Magic dashboard" looks great! This UI looks so refreshing. It would be great to use it to monitor own clusters.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are thinking of spinning it off as a separate monitoring tool later, but for now we're focusing on the teaching aspect. Thank you very much!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is so good looking, cute UI, smooth flow. Clear explanations at lessons and convenient coding. I think that's perfect place to learn K8S, even for complete beginners.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are you planning to work on accessibility? It's pretty bad and much can be improved. I can help if needed, I'm my hn username at Google's mail service.

<comment><AUTHOR> will email you, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> what are differences between msb and katacoda?

<comment><AUTHOR> We think katacoda is great! I'd say our two major differences are the interactive visual layer representing the real time state of the system, as well as having much more advanced content. Our main content developer is Nigel Poulton, the author of The Kuberentes book, and our goal is to cover the whole of k8s in the next few months

<comment><USER3> I did pop over and take a look at katacoda (which is also a pretty cool platform I didn't know about before, thanks for the tip!). Walking thru the first couple steps of their getting started with k8s, if I hadn't already been thru what I'd done on MSB theirs would have been a _lot_ more confusing :)

I totally agree that the interactive visual layer was a huge bonus for my understanding, and the ordering and transparency of what the commands do in the intro lesson on MSB was a lot better. That said, katacoda seems to have a much broader focus on many more technologies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our hypothesis is that we should go super deep and focus on one technology before thinking about something else, and this is the mistake that other vendors are doing. We see msb doing deep dives in things like relational databases, elasticsearch and rxjs in the future, but doing it properly one step at a time

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hi, I registered before and used it. I am a solo developer, will I be able to use the training for free?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a large free tier to teach you the basics of kubernetes, definitely

<comment><USER16> Glad to know. Thanks for your reply. It's awesome. Really like it.

When we cross the free tier, is it one time fee? Or month by month?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently we're having an early access fee for one year. As I said in another post, we have Nigel Poulton, the author of The Kubernetes book, developing the content, so we're hoping to cover the whole of kubernetes in the next few months, and we're very serious about the quality of the content there</comment></comment></comment></comment>