Show HN: Create your own crapcoin in 3 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://crapcoin.solutions/ <comment><USER2> "The characteristic feature of the loser is to bemoan, in general terms, mankind's flaws, biases, contradictions, and irrationality — without exploiting them for fun and profit" -Taleb

OP: If you want to make some money with this, send me an email.

I get about 3 requests a week from get-rich-quick-minded people who want their own crypto.

Not serious players, not credible businesspeople, just average Joes who want to get in while the getting's good.

They would probably pay $500 or more.

We could make this work.

<comment><USER3> Interesting to see this comment here, and upvoted. I think it shows just how divergent the news.ycombinator community has diverged from ycombinator (the incubator). Or maybe the community is simply a reflection of what the incubator has become.

If you look at ycombinator's about or principles page, it's filled with words like helping, teaching, advise, benevolence. I for one, disagree wholeheartedly with the spirit of that quote, and find it disappointing to see it here.

I'll finish with a couple quotes found on other pages on this site that I hope still reflect the the purpose of this community/incubator:

"The most successful founders are motivated less by money than by a consuming interest in what they're building."

"...empirically the benefits of benevolence are greater than the costs"

[http://www.ycombinator.com/principles/](http://www.ycombinator.com/principles/)

<comment><USER4> But do you seriously believe that the most successful founders' comments are represented in news.yc?

HN is about denominators. We all want to get rich. Some of us are willing to work, some of us are willing to hustle, etc.

The ideals of YC don't correspond to Internet commenters. Hell, half of the comments here probably don't even correspond to the true intent of the author's opinion.

Disclaimer: I'm just some moron on the Internet. No need to wax philosophical over Internet comments.

<comment><USER5> We really don't all want to get rich. Some of us just want to solve problems, help people, or alleviate suffering. Some people want to achieve that by getting rich first (not me). A large proportion of even those who want to get rich for selfish reasons don't want to do that by screwing other people over.

<comment><USER6> I wanted to solve problems without money, but I quickly realized that I can solve significantly more problems with money, than with less money.

I sold out, took a high paying job. I pay interns to write articles and finance a charity.

I spend my evenings writing an app(that I hope makes billions). I can only imagine how many people my charity will teach healthy, low cost food skills if I had millions at my disposal.

Its kinda awful, but if I dont do it, I dont think anyone is going to teach kids how to cook low cost foods.

<comment><USER5> Cool, but other people have found ways to solve problems (often leveraging large amounts of other people's money) without personally enriching themselves.

Personally, I found that having a lot of money myself brought more problems than solutions. Perhaps I'm just not good at whatever skills it takes to be rich and an effective altruist. But I'm pretty good at helping people with money decide how to spend it solving problems I care about. Now I make enough to pay other people to handle things I'm bad at, while enabling me to pursue my goals. But not more.

I don't have anything against people who pursue personal wealth in order to do social good. That's admirable. But to suggest that it's the only way to so social good (which you didn't do, but grandparent did) is just wrong.

<comment><USER6> > I found that having a lot of money myself brought more problems than > solutions.

Can you explain this further? I'm in my 20s, have over 6 figure income, and I'm curious what problems you ran into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This idea is obviously stupid but it really does expose the missing consistent, friendly front end experience for dApps. I have no idea what contract this is pointing to and what happens when I submit the transaction. MetaMask tells me some info but very little really. I don't know which buttons are going to trigger a MetaMask prompt and start an on chain transaction and which point to a centralized backend etc.

Compare that to the web where I know underlined text takes me somewhere else, hover over will give me the URL, there are standard browser components for input fields, buttons etc.

I'm really hoping there's a drop in framework for this which reaches mass adoption soon.

<comment><USER8> We've been trying to tackle this at Hexel. We recently launched our own wallet and Discord integration so that you can send coins for free, to any email or Discord user. You can link your token to your Discord server and let anyone send it via chat. This makes it easy to actually use your token after creating it, and no MetaMask is required for most users (everyone except the token creator).

<comment><USER7> Discord is a private proprietary service, right? Why did you choose to solve distribution over that instead of something more widely used, like the web?

<comment><USER8> Discord is just an integration we offer. We also have a web wallet that lets you send tokens to anyone by email or username.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Surely, SURELY this should have been called "Craptocurrency"

<comment><USER10> I can't believe I've never seen this before, just brilliant sir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there a reason you didn't use the SafeMath library for protecting against overflows?

[https://ethereumdev.io/safemath-protect- overflows/](https://ethereumdev.io/safemath-protect-overflows/)

<comment><USER11> My guess is that, in the spirit of all Ethereum Crapcoins, it's been coded with minimum attention to security and maximum attention to marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12>
      > 4. Viola!

Why not a cello, or a octobass?

(should be ' _Voila!_ ')

<comment><USER13> I think 'Viola!' is just perfect for this.

<comment><USER14> Absolutely. I use this in person whenever revealing something mundane or ridiculous. Guaranteed laugh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Is it free? This website is free. But you have to pay a small amount of ether as a transaction fee for deploying your cryptocurrency contract."

Shut up and take my money... to the moon!

<comment><USER16> I think the OP should make a crapcoin and sell it in order to be able to spend it on creating more crapcoins!

<comment><USER17> That would be so meta and craptacular. It must be done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Funny what the Crypto world has now become. Why I still believe in Crypto? For any new innovation to well, be sustained, it needs funding to last. Speculation helped get Crypto there just like speculation helped the dot-com to thrive. However, speculation wouldn't keep us there. We need to stop with the scams and jokes and get rich quick schemes (bitconnnnnnnect) in order to build lasting innovations.

</comment><comment><USER19> This should be renamed. Garbage ETH tokens are not cryptocurrency they are 'shittokens'.

This is 'Create your own (crap)token in 3 mins'. Not that its actually this hard -- copy paste ERC20 (and use a better version than this junk, maybe try SafeMath?).

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't trust a shitcoin generator that doesn't know the proper nomenclature for the shitcoins it's generating.

<comment><USER21> But people who also dont know that proper nomenclature may very well trust it.

<comment><USER22> You don't have to be outsmart the bear, just outsmart the guy next to you.

Bearcoin anyone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >Q: I don't want to spend any real money. Can I still create a cryptocurrency?

>A: Yes! You can create your cryptocurrency on one of Ethereum's test networks, instead of its main network. First, change the network to Ropsten or Rinkeby in MetaMask.

So you can create fake crap currency for free! Free fake crap is much better than costly real crap, because it's not actually crap, while it's actually free.

</comment><comment><USER24> You should make an ICO out of this project.

<comment><USER25> 1 token = 1 credit for creating a crapcoin?

That would probably probably raise a decent amount of money...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What's the point of this if you can premine 50% of the coins and dump them if it ever takes off?

</comment><comment><USER27> > 2\. "Install MetaMask and get some ether"

When programming stopped to be fun not requiring money?

<comment><USER28> You're in luck!

> I don't want to spend any real money. Can I still create a cryptocurrency?

> Yes! You can create your cryptocurrency on one of Ethereum's test networks, > instead of its main network. First, change the network to Ropsten or Rinkeby > in MetaMask.

Viola!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm just sad this doesn't include a random shitcoin name generator

</comment><comment><USER29> Dumb question but what does this create? Is it a new smart contract for a new currency on Ethereum?

<comment><USER30> It seems to be creating ERC20 tokens. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERC20](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERC20)

I've invested up to 99c to make some TimCoins and should be able to sell you a few shortly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Greatest domain name ever submitted.

</comment><comment><USER32> That's so true and some people are paying a lot of money for that.

</comment><comment><USER33> We already have Coinbase for all of our shitcoin needs though.</comment>


Anonymous lashes out at Norway massacre suspect - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20083025-83/anonymous-lashes-out-at-norway-massacre-suspect/

<comment><USER2> Wow, so Anonymous has decided to censor and alter something online. They are getting just as bad as the government(s) they claim to be against.</comment>


Ask HN: Can an alert or popup triggered with webassembly overide a blocker? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Creating next generation of spam?

<comment><AUTHOR> nah. It seems like webassembly doesn't provide much so I am slightly against it or at least neutral. If you could compile an overrirde i would be full on extremely negative on it. Brendan Eich tweeted it wouldn't matter, but he had some caveats.</comment></comment>


The modern law firm: not all partners are created equal, data and billings rule - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/being-a-law-firm-partner-was-once-a-job-for-life-that-culture-is-all-but-dead-11565362437?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> Isn't any job for life basically gone now? It's the clarion call of the millennial generation - don't expect loyalty from any company you work with or for.

My understanding is that those with law degrees see a ton of competition in the market, because it's such a prestigious professional calling on the order of doctors but with better work environments. Why wouldn't it affect those at the partner level?

<comment><USER3> Law degrees, even from the best schools arent in finite supply like they used to be. Every lawyer now has tons of competition for a small amount of cases, which mostly just plea out these days.

There was some literature in the past showing the legal fields prices haven't been reduced to reflect the new reality of the marketplace supply as it has an insular and protective group who want to maintain an aura of "masters of some dark arts" and maintaining their "prestigious" class which is heavily self regulated. There's a lot of pressure on smaller-time lawyers not to undercut the rest of the firms.

If the prices got reduced there would be a lot more case supply to go around as lawyers would be far more accessible to the average person widening the market. It's not just going to stay the same size, just with lower rates. Instead today it's kept artificially high and while the best work is limited to a small group, while other law degree holders fade into other fields or niches.

A reduction in prices and eliminating the lawyer's false perception of exclusivity and class would also reduce the amount of people getting law degrees [1] which would offset the decline in price so it doesn't entirely cannibalize itself, still being a decent middle class job.

Plus there will always be some cushy law gigs available, especially in corporate law, but it will be a status no longer applied to everyone with a law degree, which limits the entire market as a result.

[1] assuming we don't even further disconnect both the financial costs of an expensive education + lengthy time investments they require (aka opportunity costs) from post-graduation job prospects. Especially when compared to other degrees, industries, and alternative job training/apprenticeship opportunities.

<comment><USER4> I'd guess that if prices fell the pressure on the justice system would grow even more, and I've heard they are already stretched to breaking. So, the government is probably also against lowering prices and making "justice" more accessible.

Such an interesting, and horrible, time, when justice is de facto denied to all but the wealthiest of us. If this was explicit that would be one thing; but we still pay lip service to principles that we have long since abandoned.

My belief is that the justice system, in particular jury trials, should become shorter, more frequent and exclusively online. You should be able to file a lawsuit and have it resolved in a week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No surprise at all. They heydey of litigation is over -- everything settles, what doesn't goes to arbitration, and the sliver of work that doesn't go to arbitration goes to trial. In the meantime, the market is absolutely flooded with new grads who are eager to live the life. In addition, the old guard is retiring later. At the same time, there is a tremendous amount of legal work to be done in our ultra regulated economy.

The end result is pretty predictable. Salaries are abysmal. Associates compete brutally with each other to handle mind numbing hours of document review 7 days a week. Trial experience is very rare making it difficult to move up and do 'real' litigation.

I think the starting salary for an attorney fresh out of school in my city is around $40-50k, 60-80hr weeks. Hardly what most people imagine when they go to law school!

</comment><comment><USER6> The traditional law firm pattern is that the Partners at the top are "rain makers", and its their job to find and bring in new business. That's it.

In the middle layer, we have Associates. The senior Associates work closest with the Partners, and supervise the junior Associates. But they're too busy learning how to "make it rain" and supervising clueless junior Associates to do any real work.

The junior Associates do most of the real work that involves stuff where a law degree would help.

Below that, you have legal secretaries, etc...

In essence, the amount of real legal work you do goes up as you go further down the stack, but also you get lower pay. All the money the Partners make has to be paid for somehow!

In essence, it's a Ponzi scheme. And you know who the only people are who make any real money in a Ponzi scheme, right?

There are law firms that get rid of the unnecessary overhead, and where you have Partners doing real legal work, but charging the same rate as the larger firms do for their junior Associates. And those Partners are still taking home a much higher percentage of what they bring in, because the firm has much lower overhead.

Those Partners choose to work this way because it gives them more control over their work-life balance. They're done being the General Counsel of some financial services company with over 22 trillion Euros of assets under management, and want to have some time they can spend at home on occasion with their spouse and their cats. Or travel for pleasure, or any of those other things "normal" people might want to do.

Get rid of the Ponzi Scheme law firms. Find one of the smaller firms with a high concentration of very talented lawyers who don't want to have to deal with the "big law firm" kind of shit.

<comment><USER7> > In essence, it's a Ponzi scheme.

Calling it a ponzi scheme is a distraction to your point because you're mistaken about the essence of a ponzi scheme.

The key element of a ponzi scheme is that it captures resources primarily by in the process of new people being recruited to join. But junior associates don't need to "buy in" to a law firm when they get hired. They get paid a salary. The firm captures resources by getting paid by clients. It just seems that their salespeople are also former junior associates.

Your argument has nothing to do with ponzi schemes. It has much more to do with the efficiency of hierarchies. This point becomes more clear if you think about your use of the phrase "real legal work":

\- How much code is written by the CTO of a company with 120 engineers?

\- How many burgers are flipped by the owner of a restaurant with 12 locations?

\- How much coal is shoveled by owner of a coal mine?

You can argue that because the manager of a mine isn't gathering resources at the coalface, he's not creating value. But that is a different argument than saying the coal mine is a ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER8> Top law firms are somewhat special, though. I agree it is not a precise fit for a ponzi scheme, but I can see where the comparison came from.

My ex worked for one of the largest law firms in the world in London. She was billed out at 200 pounds+ and hour fresh after qualifying, but her hourly salary accounting for unpaid overtime was lower than that of her secretary, because graduates to top law firms "buy in" by quietly accepting accepting working conditions that at least in the UK means meeting expected billable hours that are close to physically impossible without violating working time regulations, even after signing a "voluntary" opt out of the parts that can be opted out of.

These companies are only able to post the profits per partner they do because graduates work at well below their market hourly rate for years as a "buy in" in the hope of making it back as partner years down the line. The vast majority never make it, of course.

Someone who is capable of getting a graduate position in one of the Magic Circle firms in London for example, can earn far more _per hour worked_ elsewhere, but at a lower yearly salary. For starters they could get a job as a secretary or other support staff in a Magic Circle firm... It takes years before the effective hourly salary of lawyers in those firms outpace the hourly rates of support staff or lawyers at many less aggressive firms.

These graduates are not directly buying in by paying the firm, but they are indirectly buying in by accepting those reduced hourly rates in the hope of that future payoff that most of them will never see.

This kind of milking salaried employees to boost payoff at the top certainly happens in other business too, but the big law firms have elevated it to an art. I've never had a tech company try to sell me on what my salary will be 10 years down the road to get me to work massive amounts of overtime, for example. Some do try to play up their expected value of stock options, though, which is somewhat similar, but where in tech it tends to be startups that can't afford to pay high salaries now, in law it tends to be the big firms that _are_ paying out high profit shares to partners now, which feels distinctly different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone explain why those big profits don't get competed away?

Why don't the corporate employers of the big firms negotiate better prices?

<comment><USER10> A couple reasons:

• If you have a bet-the-company litigation matter, your GC will choose an expensive, well-known firm. They may be somewhat price-sensitive, but they will be more sensitive to picking a firm that is very prestigious. That way, if the litigation doesn't go well, the GC can say: "well, I went with [super pricey firm], so it wasn't my fault we lost!"

• Some lawyers are just better than others, and the legal profession has gatekeepers (bar associations) that prevent a flood of new entrants. Equally importantly, there is just a limited supply of (for example), battle-tested litigators with experience in a particular field. Ditto for seasoned corporate transaction attorneys who know your company's space. People pay a premium for that experience, and competitors can't pop up overnight because it takes decades to accumulate the experience.

source: I'm a former corporate lawyer

<comment><USER11> Underscoring the value of "battle-tested" lawyers is the implicit and very real factor of hidden information. These top litigators have tons of it, relationships and reputations with judges and courts, knowledge of poorly documented procedures, etc. it's not that they're smarter or better lawyers than anyone else, just a most protected class of people who have done it before. And the only way to be admitted to the club is to work under someone in the club. It's protectionism through bureaucracy at its purest. The drivers of this, of course, are the judges. Who through hubris and incompetence foster these conditions. It's not that they're in on the game, really, it's just that they're dictators of their own court and have no motivation to make their courts accessible to anyone, and feel empowered to punish clients represented by attorneys that don't know their preferred formats and fonts. It's a silly situation that should be dealt with

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did anyone else find this hard to read? The story jumps all over the place with no flow. The subject was interesting and I was reading it to compare to the valley VC structure and startup % ownership. I expected better from the WSJ.

</comment><comment><USER13> It sounds like the right answer the next time VCs complain about startup salaries is to ask how much the partners at their lawyers' firms take home. Total compensation in the millions per year is pretty nuts, even if it does take ten years to get there.

Mind you, I think some of the salaries software developers get paid are nuts too. I don't feel like _I 'm_ worth $300k/year, but I hear plenty of stories of people getting more than that...

<comment><USER14> Curious - what do the people making > 300k/year do? According to GlassDoor, even in San Francisco you have to be a director or VP to get that. Even Software Architects seem to be in the $150-$250k range, and that tends to be a high-paying post on the technical side.

<comment><USER15> Salaries of $300,000 are common among the top companies, at 1-2 promotions above entry level.

See [https://www.levels.fyi/charts.html](https://www.levels.fyi/charts.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this will have a destabilizing effect on these "big law" firms. If you're compensated based on how much business you bill for, it's in your interest to poach from your "partners."

<comment><USER17> Speaking as a lawyer with a lot of big law friends -

Big law firms did not need any help being destabilized already :)

(Google around and you'll see they have been going bankrupt/etc at an accelerating rate)

Something like this is just a drop in the bucket compared to the larger issues around how their client base is changing.

<comment><USER18> > compared to the larger issues around how their client base is changing.

Can you expand that on that. Very curious.</comment></comment></comment>


SecurityDocs - <AUTHOR> https://securitydocs.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to find a good way to organize 8000 technical IT security papers. One option is a category and subcategory list like DMOZ. Another option is high level categories only. I use tags, so in theory tags and search may work.

Appreciate your input.</comment>


News.YC open-sourced - <AUTHOR> http://arclanguage.org/item?id=3426

<comment><USER3> We've found an interesting use for it in our offices already. I tossed it on our main server and we're using it in conjunction with our version control system to keep track of who is working on what, what has been completed, and to ask questions if someone needs help with something. We are also using the voting aspect to present new ideas. If a majority of us have voted yes, it is then added to our queue of features.

Thank you very much. As most of use are used to social bookmarking sites, it integrated in to the work flow beautifully.

</comment><comment><USER4> OK boys start inventing those modding algorithms.

Let's see if the last weeks talk of fluff has been just that, or whether someone here can come up with something great. My intuition says yes...

<comment><USER5> Theoretically there could be dozens of news.yc front pages, each based off a different algorithm but all drawing from the same new page. Then you could vote front pages up or down, with the algorithm of the currently-winning front page hot swapping with the the previous algorithm. Of course you would need to do the same to select the algorithm that controlled the gravity on the algorithm voting page, to make sure that people didn't vote for fluff algorithms. And so on. Maybe the ideal news.yc is just news.yc all the way down.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ultimately (after some refactoring and removal of YC-specific stuff) it turns out to be 1411 LOC.

<comment><USER6> PrettySocial (<http://www.prettysocial.net/>) is 1367 lines of python code. Glad to see my code is relatively succinct :)

<comment><USER7> Interesting! I especially like how you handle automatic image extraction - <USER2> it open-sourced?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone else gets curious about the hardcoded in domain that gets you auto- banned, I'll state what should have been obvious and say that it _really_ isn't worth it.

<comment><USER9> At least now I can say that I've been rick rolled by PG himself.

<comment><USER10> i just had to go digging in news.arc and find that url..gah

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome to hear! I've been poking at lisp dialects a lot lately and it'll be nice to have a the code of an Arc-based system that I've used before.

Possibly just me, but just staring at code listings alone doesn't do much for me. But picking through the code of something I can then go play with in the wild is a huge help.

Thanks again!

</comment><comment><USER12> As an outsider: Well done Paul. It takes a lot to open source a working application.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome. Great work Paul. just got it working with mzscheme v352: <http://flickr.com/photos/pauls/2290165597/sizes/l/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Definitely a cool thing. I wish I didn't stop with my Scheme programming 3 years after my SICP class! It would have helped dive into all this LISP code...

...now if only PG would share with us how to grow an online community of thinkers...

</comment><comment><USER14> this action would really make me spend some time, at some point, with Arc by trying to understand the code</comment>


Not a Hacker or a Hipster – How I Got My First Startup Job - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tech-london/not-a-hacker-or-a-hipster-how-i-got-my-first-start-up-job-922399a7dfbb#.qaysnclo5 <comment><USER2> > talk to people around you, they're surprisingly willing to be involved in > what you're doing if it's interesting and not too onerous for them. Counters > the general assumption that if you talk to strangers they'll think you're > crazy.

Maybe if you're a young woman (as the author is) approaching someone at a coffee shop, then sure.

Reverse the genders and watch the interaction take on a dramatically different character.

<comment><USER3> And yet two guys were able to ask everyone in an entire coffee shop what they were working on with a 95% "super friendly" rate. Perhaps some problems are perceived rather than real.

[https://medium.com/life-learning/what-are-people-working- on-...](https://medium.com/life-learning/what-are-people-working-on-in-coffee- shops-cdf351e28b6#.sbxwsk5yx)

<comment><USER4> I suspect that in a coffee shop in a good area, it really is this easy, male or female. People are generally pretty social if everyone is on equal footing, not obviously busy, and not creating discomfort.

Anyone who's tried to get petitions can attest that doing this on a street corner is a much different beast, but I think hallway testing (or lead finding, or whatever else) is more viable than most people think.

I'm also reminded of the study about asking people for their seat on a subway - it's almost impossible to _ask_ , but surprisingly easy to _succeed_.

<comment><USER3> Petitions are a different animal. When asking what people are working on you are taking interest in _them_. When you want them to sign a petition you are asking something of them, and making them take interest in what you care about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I LOLed so hard at "The thing was at first I couldn't find one start-up I wanted to devote the next year or so of my life to building."

Hint: startup is more like 7-10y+ unless you're just playing at it, or it fails. If you go into it expecting it to be a year, it probably will be.

<comment><USER6> I think it's a fair characterization of some sort of minimum commitment as an employee. Especially if you're new to the industry sticking around for 5+ years is going to be a waste of time, rarely will the company match your market value.

<comment><USER7> Keep in mind what was written in the article regarding the author's job at the time was:

      The job was technically sales ...

And:

      Yesterday was my last day there as I'm
      now moving on to something new — planning
      to develop my currently non-existent
      technical skills full time.

So categorizing the author as being new "to the industry" at that point in time (2015/07/30) is nonsensical unless peripheral exposure counts. Not to say this remains the case, mind you, just that the perspective you describe is not applicable to the person the author was at that time.

I will add that a person _actually_ in the industry would be wise to "stick around" their first job or two for at least a year. Failing to do so is a red flag for many companies as bouncing around early in the CV is often interpreted as leaving before being fired.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, I have little idea what your point is. She's was/is a recent graduate, she's new to any industry. If you "stick around" long without increase in salary, equity or experience (preferable all fo them) you're doing it wrong. How it can be interpreted only matter for people who hasn't manged to get the right experience to be in demand. In my opinion of course.

<comment><USER7>
      Sorry, I have little idea what your point is.

At the time this blog entry was written, she was working in a sales/marketing capacity and not as a coder (her words, not mine). IMHO, this means she was exposed to tech start-ups. She then goes on to say that she had "non-existent technical skills."

My point was that anyone entering into the dev/tech world would be wise to spend a year at their first job in order to:

* Learn about what is involved

* Have time to refine their skills

* Be able to show to other companies that they can survive

<comment><USER6> "My point was that anyone entering into the dev/tech world would be wise to spend a year"

Yes, but that was what she was looking for when she said "find one start-up I wanted to devote the next year or so to building" and what I agreed with as "some sort of minimum commitment as an employee"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Apply for jobs you're a bit under qualified for. Most job descriptions describe the perfect candidate. Those features are a wish list not a must have. This applies even more in start-ups where genuine passion for the company gets you a long way."

This sound like very good advice.

<comment><USER9> Yeah exactly, hiring managers have this list in their head, and what they're basically doing is crossing off items that dont apply for each candidate. essentially the ones with the least things crossed out will likely be top of the pile...

<comment><USER10> In my experience it's a weighted list though, and things like having a compatible personality and a personal drive for wanting "this" job, often counts a great deal more than the technical skills on the job description.

Unless we're talking contracts of course, then you'll simply want the best technical candidate because you need someone who can deliver good quality on time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Chutzpah goes very far. Ask for what you want, and explain why you deserve to get it -- then offer to demonstrate your fitness. It's an excellent approach!

<comment><USER12> I need to work on my chutzpah. I overspecialized in moxie and spunk (the personality trait, that is).

Chutzpah's critical though- you're usually not going to get what you want if you never ask for it. You can wait a really long time for people to just give you what you want, especially if you never express an interest by asking for it.

It sounds like common sense, but it feels like it took about 20 years too long for that to really sink in with me. I always assumed people understood me a lot more than they actually did.

<comment><USER13> Moxie and Spunk sounds like a great hipster brandname.

<comment><USER14> "Moxie and Spunk" sounds like a great garage band name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What cracks me up is this proclamation made by said author[0]:

      Over the 200 waking hours, I managed to
      hit the standard needed. It felt like
      multiple lucky answers and lots of Googling
      that got me there, but that's how learning
      works. I learnt enough Javascript to
      get accepted onto the course and I spent
      another 3 months, with 15 others,
      Googling things together and creating
      a new app each week.

      Now I'm being paid to build early
      MVP's (minimum viable products) for
      start-ups. So I can code.

I mean, really? This certainly cannot be modus operandi for start-ups can it? Three months of "Javascript Googling" allows someone to brag about:

      being paid to build early
      MVP's (minimum viable products) for
      start-ups.

And leveraging that incredibly weak argument into a summary of:

      So I can code.

Wow. If that's all it takes for someone to be hired into a start-up, then the whole "funding is drying up" meme prevalent recently is _really_ making sense.

0 - [http://www.gadgette.com/2016/02/19/how-i-learnt-to-code- in-a...](http://www.gadgette.com/2016/02/19/how-i-learnt-to-code-in-a-scarily- short-space-of-time/)

<comment><USER15> 200 hours self-taught followed by 3 months at, say, 80 hours a week is 1160 hours in total. I imagine there are people who spend less time learning to code during a 3 year university course. Plus her learning would be very specifically focused on startup-oriented JavaScript instead of trying to cover everything. I see no reason why the statement "So I can code." should be wrong.

<comment><USER16> Man that kind of makes me sad that I've wasted so much of my life over the past decade learning one useless 'skill' after another.

Its a sad realization that someone who only started coding 3 months ago is kicking my ass finding jobs at startups meanwhile I am being rejected( when they respond) constantly .

<comment><USER15> Coding knowledge is a long way down the list of things that a startup needs from a developer, especially a junior level one. Enthusiasm, willing to do boring stuff, personality, culture fit[1], a low salary, etc are all far more important. Maybe you don't have one or more of those attributes.

[1] I hate 'culture fit' as a reason to employ someone. Employing people who fit in with the existing culture is a fast track to creating a business _completely_ lacking in diversity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Few things grind my gears like the idea that a person who cares about products being usable and well designed is inherently a "hipster".

<comment><USER18> few things grind my gears like hipsters telling me how much THEY care about products being usable LIKE IT'S SOME SORT OF NEW IDEA, like they are the ONLY ONES WHO CARE.

beards and winter hats in summer seem, counter intuitively, to incubate a lot of unique little snowflakes.

<comment><USER19> If you want to preserve snow through the summer, heavy insulation is key.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how to apply this as an engineer. I'm looking around but finding very little that excites me.

<comment><USER21> Where are you looking? OP's idea of talking to people in coffee shops obviously only works in certain cities. If you're not in such a location, you need to look online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great article. It seems that she has an outgoing, friendly personality. Companies need those types of employees just as much as they need good technologists.

</comment><comment><USER16> >After some more standard interview prep and a short interview at Crowdcube a few days later accompanied by my newly filled little black book I got taken on for the job.

Meanwhile, I am being humiliated by stupid whiteboard interviews .

I really need to work on my (non existent ) people skills.

<comment><USER23> > Meanwhile, I am being humiliated by stupid whiteboard interviews .

I just went through my most humiliating whiteboard interview last week. Never knew how bad it could get until that...

<comment><USER16> I've come to a realization that no matter how much we complain about it, there is no way around it.

No matter how experienced you are you have to face this everytime you change jobs.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Is Working on Its Own Blockchain-Related Technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/google-is-said-to-work-on-its-own-blockchain-related-technology <comment><USER2> "Several people in Google's infrastructure group, which reports to cloud chief Diane Greene, have been tinkering with blockchain protocols in recent months, according to another person familiar with the company. Other Google insiders said recently that the cloud business is a natural place for blockchain- related services. The people asked not to be identified talking about the subject because the company isn't ready to make an announcement yet."

So, in other words, a few engineers are allegedly messing around on the side with blockchain code. There is no announcement or official plan to use it. And two or more Google employees have stated (at some point) that blockchain nodes work well on cloud servers.

Bloomberg does a lousy job at news, but a great job at making crypto look bad to its readers. This article is a great exhibit for people to point to and say that blockchain is a hype bubble. Don't be fooled by the fake news.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google has been experimenting with and deploying blockchain technology since before 2013. Certificate Transparency[0], designed at Google, stores certificates in a distributed merkle tree. Any certificate that Chrome accepts as valid is stored in the certificate transparency merkle tree.

[0][https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6962](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6962)

<comment><USER4> Well it may be splitting hair but there is no proof or work and the number of nodes is certainly smaller.

There is also CONIKS and Google's Key Transparency.

This comes to my mind: [https://medium.com/@bbc4468/centralized-vs- decentralized-vs-...](https://medium.com/@bbc4468/centralized-vs- decentralized-vs-distributed-41d92d463868)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like I'm the only one that is super tired of all this blockchain junk. Just like any other tech, you can't solve everything with it.

<comment><USER2> Bloomberg is notorious for publishing (In my opinion) low-quality blockchain articles. This one, for example, failed to clearly explain why blockchains would take the company to the next level. It also wasn't clear if this was one team's aspirations or a serious strategic direction for the company.

Bloomberg never fails to deliver garbage on this subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone please explain why a PAXOS[1] solution isn't sufficient and a blockchain is required when all the infrastructure and software is owned and controlled by a single company?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_(computer_science)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_\(computer_science\))

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder which of the current projects are acquisition targets.</comment>


Steve Jurvetson is out at his own VC firm after allegations of sexual harassment - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2017/11/13/16645274/steve-jurvetson-out-draper-fisher-jurvetson-sexual-harassment <comment><USER2> Following these very visible and high profile falls from grace, in politics, media and entertainment, and high tech, there must be some legitimate concerns that in the near future the Billy Graham rule [1] (or lately called the Graham-Pence rule) will find more followers than before.

Many men in power will instinctually and subconsciously cut out women from their professional lives more than before, to the detriment of women's career advancement. Polls [2] suggest that this isn't a rare position even today. Mitigating this next challenge should be part of the current successful campaign that women and allies of women have been waging today, since even though to some it will be clear that basic attitudes of respect and professional distance will suffice, many others will make a fear-driven overreaction.

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

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/upshot/members-of-the- opp...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/upshot/members-of-the-opposite-sex- at-work-gender-study.html)

<comment><USER3> I know this might not be a popular opinion. But I've basically instituted a modified version of this rule for myself.

Billy Graham and Mike Pence are definitely not a fountain a good ideas, but that doesn't mean this rule is that bad, despite the nonsense place it comes from.

Whenever I need to have after work dinner/social communication with a female associate after 5:00pm, I just go out of my way to invite another woman so she won't be alone. If that is not an option I will try to make it a bigger group with men and women. I never shut the door to my office when I am with a woman. If we need to have a private conversation, we do walking meetings around the block in public areas.

This may be shutting some women out of the intense bonding that some male colleges have, but I'm not interested in friendships with men from work either, so I don't think I'm being unfair to anyone.

I also don't stand too close to women. I don't ever comment on their physical appearance even if they got a great hair cut. And I don't need to hug anyone I work with ever.

Maybe this makes me a jerk. But I feel like it keeps the relationships I care about most (those with my family) safe.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand why you think it makes you a jerk, most of what you said I'd simply include simply under "being professional."

<comment><USER5> I don't understand why people hug their co workers. That sounds weird. But some of the things on the list are ridiculous.

I'm socially awkward and I still don't have problems having a closed door conversation with a member of the opposite sex. Are you just going to pass on interviewing women because that puts the two of you in a room?

<comment><USER3> In my position if I have to interview a woman (or any candidate), I can talk to her with my team present.

Maybe it would be different if I was the CEO hiring for an executive position, and then I would make an exception. But for white boarding? Even if it were 1 on 1, I don't understand the need to have the door shut.

Privacy makes me uncomfortable anytime in a work environment. I like my home life private, but I'm fine having my work place conversations overheard by others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reply from Steve Jurvetson:

"I am leaving DFJ to focus on personal matters, including taking legal action against those whose false statements have defamed me."

[https://twitter.com/dfjsteve/status/930170825625370624](https://twitter.com/dfjsteve/status/930170825625370624)

<comment><USER7> Has anyone kept track of how often someone says something along those lines, and how often the suit is actually filed?

<comment><USER8> Lol, the "defaming" has caused them to quite their own business. Let me write a quick Prolog program to figure this one out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is nice to see comeuppance for those who used their position to hurt others. I'm hopeful that the past few weeks lead to a new culture where victims do not fear retribution for speaking out or going to authorities, but I fear that without a concerted effort to make that happen things will go back to normal and this will just be a blip.

<comment><USER10> Its unlikely that people who are inclined to abuse their power this way will not notice. Its been a media blitz, and its astonishing how prevalent this kind of behavior has been so far. Hopefully it will at least make the abusers think twice, but more importantly, I hope it will empower the victims to speak out and not feel like its been their fault.

<comment><USER11> > Its been a media blitz, and its astonishing how prevalent this kind of > behavior has been so far.

Given how many people have spoken up at #meetoo, it's really not astonishing. What's astonishing is that this has been ignored for so long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is what I love about America: we have periodic, bloodless revolutions that can be initiated and carried out by anyone. The social order keeps changing without the chaos, destruction, and waste of violent upheavals or coups. Isn't this what both Marx and Mao have always wanted? What they both didn't realize was that you need a functioning democracy with freedom of speech (and the Internet) to achieve it.

<comment><USER13> Agreed until you got to the Marx and Mao part, which is a bit "WUT?"

<comment><USER12> Why? Am I wrong?

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

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

To be clear, you do realize that I'm criticizing both Marx and Mao right?

<comment><USER14> You're taking them out of context. Marx didn't want revolution for revolution's sake. He had a specific change to the social order in mind, namely the cause of socialism. He wouldn't approve of the US.

<comment><USER12> So you're saying that the Women's Suffrage movement changed nothing? The Civil Rights movement didn't have any effect? The Sexual Revolution did little? What about the unions? I can go on. Are you saying that none of our bloodless revolutions made any changes to the social order?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 23 years ago, Steve Jurvetson was the only VC to respond to the 150 letters I sent out while seeking capital for my first startup. At the time he had not yet made partner at DFJ (it was just Draper Fisher back then). I was really impressed by his intelligence. At the time I was delivering pizza while working my way through a physics degree, designing a fusion reactor in my spare time. He cared about real advances in technology, and he and Tim Draper gave me a chance. Without him making the decision to speak to me, my whole life and career would have been different.

I don't know anything about whether Steve was inappropriate towards women or not. I've never worked closely enough with him to know, and I haven't spoken to him in many years. But I can't help but hope that he's doing ok. I hope he either gets vindication if he's innocent, or comes to peace with his actions if he is not. The rest of you may see him now as a powerful middle-aged man, but I still remember him as the young hotshot with something to prove.

</comment><comment><USER16> Based on what I've read, and I'm fully willing to admit it's all hearsay, Steve, while having achieved great things, has a history of abusing his power and treating founders poorly. This does not feel like bad news.

<comment><USER17> Unless the founder is of Theranos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This may get downvotes, but the speed with which careers are being destroyed based on mere allegations of sexual misconduct these days is frightening. While the allegations in this case may or may not be true, it is actually possible for a woman to make a false allegation of sexual misconduct. There are myriad reasons that someone would make make such a false allegation against a powerful VC. Yet in today's environment, even if he ultimately proves himself to be innocent through the lawsuit he claims he is going to file against his accuser, a career death sentence has already been carried out by a virtual lynch mob. That is wrong.

<comment><USER19> I was thinking this too. I do believe there are a lot of victims of sexual abuse and sexual harassment. However, what concerns me is that their truths are being overshadowed by those who seek to use these accusations as a way to screw over somebody they didn't like or for attention or even for money. It is quite frightening and it could happen to anyone.

<comment><USER20> > their truths are being overshadowed by those who seek to use these > accusations as a way to screw over somebody they didn't like or for > attention or even for money.

Wow. Given the well-supported allegations of sexual misconduct, published in reputable newspapers recently, yours is quite the claim. Who is doing this for attention? Do you have any evidence?

<comment><USER21> Jackie from the UVA story?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Long time reader, tentative poster, upvote or downvote as necessary…

Back in the days of orkut.com, I do remember Jurvetson making what seemed to me like a huge effort to interact with pretty young women, especially from Estonia. I remember him having a few hundred friends on that service — more than most people there had — a list which included a very large population of pretty, young, single Estonian women.

Keep in mind that I never saw any behavior of his on orkut.com that I would deem harassment, but his social activity there did seem curious to me, considering his married, busy professional status. It was kind of similar to what I saw Marc Canter (of Macromedia fame I guess?) doing there, but again, for neither guy did I witness, or hear, of any harassment going on. it just seemed that what they were doing was merely using their professional status to flirt.

At the time, I figured that their flirting, and their collecting of young female friends, was harmless, and didn't indicate anything untoward going on. Especially since none of my female friends and acquaintances in these guys' sights intimated to me that anything weird or unwelcome was happening. But now, I'm not so sure, considering how allegations, like the one in the featured article, are bubbling up.

<comment><USER23> I'm torn on how useful this kind of comment (or gossip?) is. On the one hand: it's context. On the other: the witch hunt Has Begun™.

God forbid I ever end up in a situation, and find people telling similar, about me. Even if completely true, this could still be irrelevant. How would I feel about my past self indulging in their consumption, as I am tempted to, right now?

How do others feel about this?

Edit: And: does it matter whether it turns out to be a false accusation, like he claims, or a real one? Because if it does (which I think it does), shouldn't we withhold these stories until the verdict is definite? But if it doesn't, then... surely, that can only mean that this comment is irrelevant?

<comment><USER24> Eh... if you're this indiscrete about your vices, you're indulging in them wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The framing here is priceless.

> Jurvetson is the highest-profile venture capitalist to be forced from his > job amid an industrywide evaluation of how Silicon Valley treats women.

And then later.

> The departure comes as Jurvetson was being investigated by his own firm for > harassment. An entrepreneur had alleged predatory behavior was "rampant" at > DFJ. The woman, Keri Kukral, did not name Jurvetson in her Facebook post.

So the "industrywide evaluation" is individual victims coming forward and reporting past abuse. That's a very charitable take that implies the industry is taking some sort of proactive action.

<comment><USER2> The firm itself is leading the investigation, rather than an outside individual bringing a lawsuit.

This is a much more proactive scenario than the KPCB-Pao situation several years ago.

<comment><USER25> Even so, that's not an "industrywide evaluation" but a single firm acting responsibly. If there is a concerted push in tech to deal with sexual harassment and/or sexism I'd love to know about it.

<comment><USER26> Is every company having a HR department not enough?

<comment><USER27> I had this conversation the other day. HR exists to protect the firm, if that involves sweeping things under the rug, disparaging victims, or enabling illegal behavior by high performers, they will, and historically have, done it.

<comment><USER26> HR departments are intended to protect the company from liability. Generally speaking, they do that by taking standardized actions regarding harassment claims because otherwise they open the company up to lawsuits and negative PR.

Basically, it's irrational to try to cover up or ignore harassment in the vast majority of cases. Which is why HR is a perfectly decent solution for most of these issues, and we only hear about a few outliers in the media / law suits.

<comment><USER11> HR does what their bosses tell them to. If the company culture is more conductive to sweeping the transgressions of a director under the rug, then to firing them, then HR will do just that. After all, the director/c-level/partner is making them millions of dollars, and well, most people won't file a lawsuit over a few dozen inappropriate comments or invitations to a hotel room. (Good luck getting a reference after you do.)

Engineers are also supposed to build bug-free software, but when your boss tells you to ship the product, you're going to ship it. If the company gets sued because your product has bugs, you're not going to be personally liable.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


So, how's that retirement thing going, anyway? - <AUTHOR> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2019/12/05/so-hows-that-retirement-thing-going-anyway/ <comment><USER2> Rich guy gets to hang around in Manhattan condo without a full time job. Sounds fun, where can I sign up?

I would suggest that this blog entry was posted out of idolatry rather than being posted for its insightful content. I don't know what anyone's supposed to get out of this.

<comment><USER3> I got out of it a bit of elder-slang -- "NORC". Apparently an acronym pronounced just as one might guess:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturally_occurring_retireme...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturally_occurring_retirement_community)

<comment><USER4> NORC = place where young people can't afford to live?

<comment><USER5> Self segregation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Upvote for the solderless breadboard.

Was a time when people actually had boards for bread, and kids swiped them to pound nails into, the which to solder wires from tube sockets and coils onto. No tubes, no coils, no bread, but still the same thing.

The holes to poke wires into are weirdly reminiscent of the tube sockets.

<comment><USER7> As many times as I've used breadboards, I wondered where the name came from. Thanks for sharing this! Wikipedia seems to agree and has a few example images.

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

<comment><USER8> Yup. That's why they're really called "solderless breadboards" although most people drop the "solderless" part.

When I was about 12 or so I had an electrical kit that used screws with caps to connect the wires and components. I don't remember what the substrate was, but it could very well have been wood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Man what I wouldn't give to read a blog post on what Prashanth is doing differently.

<comment><USER10> You mean besides overseeing the removal of a popular moderator, which caused other moderators to publicly quit in protest?

<comment><USER11> Exactly what I was thinking.

> For the last couple of months, Prashanth Chandrasekar has been getting > settled in as the new CEO of Stack Overflow.

Not just Monica, this coincides pretty perfectly with multiple bad decisions made by the company. I don't understand how Spolsky can think he's going a good job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does that mean FogBugz is dead? I remember reading a lot about it on Joel's blog back in the day but here its not mentioned at all.

<comment><USER13> We sold off FogBugz around the time that we renamed Fog Creek to Glitch. Glitch is now our sole focus.

<comment><USER5> Hey Anil, I've been playing around with Glitch and following the company and think you and team are doing a great job.</comment></comment></comment>


Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52912881 <comment><USER2> I hate how the internet makes everyone think they're smarter than everyone else. Scheming malicious losers write fake news and propaganda to incite anger in stupid and naive people, then skeptics come across it and become paranoid and angry, and then _they_ make fake news and propaganda to incite anger in stupid and naive people. But in the end, everyone involved is a stupid naive scheming malicious paranoid loser.

Regardless of who is behind these cyber attacks, whether its white supremacists, BLM protestors, anarchists, foreign state actors, or edgy 15 years olds in a Discord server with waifu profile pics, the end goal is the same: to make people angry, and possibly incite more riots. And it's going to succeed. And if you think about it too much, you'll just turn yourself into an angry paranoid wreck.

Maybe the internet (or social media) wasn't such a good idea after all? The technology moved faster than our monkey brains could keep up.

<comment><USER3> > The technology moved faster than our monkey brains could keep up.

I think it's important to remember the ways in which the internet has evolved that got us here. It's not just a question of speed, but of incentives.

The internet has long been a tool for huge tech companies to build businesses that can only exist as long as they remain largely unchecked and unregulated, and the stock market has cheered these efforts on.

Now, we're seeing the cost of giving everyone the ability to post whatever they want without having sustainable solutions to combat weaponized speech without compromising legitimate dissenting speech. This mistake largely falls on the market for rewarding this shortsightedness for so long.

Social media companies have also known for years now that controversy drives incredible amounts of traffic to their platforms, which in turn drives revenue.

<comment><USER4> "Weaponized" speech is an Orwellian phrase. You can weaponize weapons, but legitimate speech (outside of clear and present danger, like inciting lawless action or shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater) should always be responded to with speech.

<comment><USER3> The problem nowadays is that it's getting harder to separate legitimate speech from automated amplified speech.

Those who are able to build networks of bot accounts are able to deeply undermine discourse in dangerous ways, and social media platforms aren't financially incentivized to deal with it.

Twitter could tell us right now how many bots are on the platform, but they never will because it could tank their stock.

As long as platforms can be manipulated by automation, this intentionally destructive speech will continue to proliferate.

<comment><USER5> This point reveals an angle that is rarely recognized: what needs responding to is not the mass amount of speech that comes from automated bots, for automated bots won't listen to the response. What needs responding to is the people who listen to automated bots.

The concept of responding to speech with speech is focused on reason and debate between the speakers themselves. But with automated amplified speech, no debate can exist because, at the surface, there are not multiple human actors. And at a separate layer, those who listen to amplified automated speech can not be reasoned with or debated with, the opinions are not their own and if they were reasonable they wouldn't be listening to the automated speech to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Original publication by Cloudflare: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/cyberattacks- since-the-murder-of...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/cyberattacks-since-the- murder-of-george-floyd/)

<comment><USER7> _> Nearly six years ago, Cloudflare founded Project Galileo because we noticed a disturbing trend of disproportionate attacks against at-risk organizations and individuals that were advocating for marginalized groups. Project Galileo was set up to provide protection from cyberattacks for vulnerable targets, like artistic groups, humanitarian organizations, and the voices of political dissent._

I had no idea that existed. But I'm pleased it does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anti-racism sites are being knocked offline... and some people still think that white nationalists and nazi's are completely uninvolved in the street violence we've been seeing. Yeah right. This is Anonymous/4chan M.O., and it and "Antifa" are fake labels which white nationalists are using to cloak their violent plans.

<comment><USER8> Not _just_ them, but also more recent stuff like the boogaloo movement[1].

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

Edit: RE: Antifa as a "fake label". This might be true in specific cases, but there's an actual anti-fascist movement happening as well.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like this group is developing it self along the line of /r/thedonald.

Starts as a satire and slowly it shift to attracting more and more people with extremist views that replace the sarcastic group members.

<comment><USER8> I wonder if this phenomenon has more specific name than just "radicalization". "Rule of goats"[1] comes close.

[1] [https://twitter.com/popehat/status/858722120620265473?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/popehat/status/858722120620265473?lang=en)

<comment><USER10> Other labels which may be useful are "ha ha only serious" (ironic racism is in and of itself still racism), and "stochastic terrorism", the circulation and planting of propaganda, ideology, and conspiracy theories that leads to mass shootings.

The NZ mass shooter and Anders Breivik manifestoes are examples of this. There's an entire nutcase ecosystem out there who cite each other in their murders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would be curious to see how they differentiate between a DDoS and a sudden influx of traffic from new sources, possibly including sources hiding behind tor/vpns/whatever.

To be clear, I'm sure Cloudflare is pretty good at determining what is an attack and what is not, I'm just interested in the technical details.

<comment><USER12> I'm sure they could differentiate the hug of death due to sudden popularity vs the continued onslaught of scripted bots just by frequency of requests, right? As in, single IP frequency of pings measured out across a batch of addresses. Those malicious would be more regimented with short recycle times, while those unmalicious would be browsing making their repeated calls erratic. (Honest question, I'm genuinely curious.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How much do foreign actors help? There are, of course, US groups that want to attack these sites.

But bigger pocketed foreign actors will want, it's suggested, to spread division and mayhem to keep the US occupied.

That is, the Aleksandr Dugin's 'foundations of geopolitics' strategy regarding the US: support both sides to divide the country thereby keeping the state too occupied to command itself elsewhere.

Now our media, societies and communities are online this becomes possible, much more so than before, to those outside the geographical borders of a country.

The democratisation of the media, virtual communities and targeted-advertising attacks the weakness of democracy: mass emotional manipulation to turn democratic choices into unmanagementable tribal warfare that ends in a totalitarian state.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is the assumption here that racist groups are the source of the DDoS attacks? Might be interesting to know where the majority of the attacks originate. I wonder if the attacks are nation sponsored. Adversaries of the U.S. like to see it on its knees these days, and injecting more FUD is certainly a way to increase anger & hate.

</comment><comment><USER15> I would like to see an estimate in how much a person paid in the black market to buy access to the botnets that did this. $5? $50? $100? What is the going rate for 110k requests per seconds?

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure, but it doesn't sound like much shared among all of them (assuming a good number have popped up). I think many people here regularly deal with those sorts of numbers in legitimate traffic.

> One single website belonging to an unnamed advocacy group

> dealt with 20,000 requests a second.

20k requests per second doesn't sound crazy to re-produce. Assuming you only need a 100 byte TCP packet to make a request [1], that's 800 bits. Bump up to 2000 bits assuming some overheads from somewhere, a 100Mb/s internet connection could send 50k requests a second.

Seems like a single person with a decent internet connection could flood them with 20k request per second. If the attacker picks a page that requests database access or a large payload return, you could easily sink a small web server.

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14526139/what-is-the- min...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14526139/what-is-the-minimum- packet-size-for-tcp-over-ipv4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As usual with this sort of "people doing things online" thing; a completely vacuous conspiracy theory. Here is the actual source article:

[https://blog.cloudflare.com/cyberattacks-since-the-murder- of...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/cyberattacks-since-the-murder-of-george- floyd/)

Here is the plot showing something allegedly different happening this month:

[https://blog-cloudflare-com- assets.storage.googleapis.com/20...](https://blog-cloudflare-com- assets.storage.googleapis.com/2020/06/1.png)

What's the p-value on a t-test of difference there, cloudflare spooks? By eyeball there is no difference.

Then a completely unsubstantiated assertion: "The category with the biggest increase in cyberattacks was Advocacy Groups with a staggering increase of 1,120x."

What are these Advocacy Groups of which you speak? The BBC implies it's the NAACP or something; Cloudflare spooks don't say at all -for all we know these "activist" websites are terrorists, racists, anarchist revolutionaries, video game fans: nobody but Cloudflare knows, assuming they're not just making it up, or making a mistake in their group-by query.

Rather than reading this BBC report critically as the piece of nonsense propaganda it is, people on HN seem determined to fit it into whatever fantasies about Russians or Evil 4chan Racist Infiltrators or Weapons of Mass Destruction or whatever (mostly imaginary) bugaboos they're troubled by this week. Disgusting. Fools.

<comment><USER18> It's always an incredibly sad display when HN types talk about politics. The only thing they're less qualified to talk about is religion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I feel bad for Cloudflare saying this, but I really think this shows we need to democratize DDoS protection. It's become essentially mandatory if you're running a site which might face controversy, and in the long term I'm not sure we can rely on the continued goodwill of a handful of companies to make sure it's widely available.

<comment><USER20> What does that actually mean in practice? Government subsidized compute doesn't seem like something I'd trust all that much in practice (seems like it'd be ripe for censorship). So it'd have to be decentralized. If only IPFS was ready for prime time....

<comment><USER19> I really don't know what it means in practice. I don't have a silver bullet in mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> On the one hand, I guess you expect something more sophisticated when someone mentions a "cyber-attack" but on the other hand, knowing the context (the article is in the general media, and sophisticated/intelligent/motivated actors don't really have a vested interest in attacking one-off activist groups), you really come to suspect it's nothing more than a DDOS attack.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why is this flagged?

</comment><comment><USER22> I was under the impression that these kinds of kids and hackers DDoS-ing sites for fun or activism were virtually all socially liberal, so attacks on government and military websites make sense to me.

But I'm truly surprised to see anti-racism sites suffering from these attacks.

Is there really a racist contingent of hackers out there? I just never thought of the two going together.

Or is this more likely to be more Russian hacking efforts continuing to do their best to sow division, according to Putin's well-known playbook?

<comment><USER23> I think they don't care as long as lulz. Don't think too much about what kids like to do in free time.

<comment><USER24> I've never understood this train of thought that kids have no meaningful thoughts or points of view.

It's not like adulthood has some magic turning point where ignorance turns to enlightenment.

I'd wager that far more adults are manipulative, pathological liars than kids tend to be.

<comment><USER23> I think you misunderstood me. I didn't mean to generalize this over everything they do but lulz is a good enough reason for the online fake propaganda and trolling in 99% cases. Just go on discord and find 16 year old haxors with waifu pics.

There's no profound political or sociological reason behind this like you mentioned yourself, adults are manipulative while kids tend not to be as much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why did this get flagged????

</comment><comment><USER26> How do you tolerate people who are against tolerance in a tolerable way without becoming intolerant ?

<comment><USER27> Easy: You just redefine "tolerance" to include intolerance of some people. Done!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> We are really seing the chickens comming home to roost with regards to globalisation politics of the last few decades. When the wealth growth only happens in the top few percent this is inevitable.

<comment><USER8> This comment is wholly unclear. What's inevitable? Cyberattacks? Racism? Protests? Police violence?

<comment><USER28> Yes

<comment><USER29> Globalisation has many problems but _causes_ racism?

I would argue it's demagogues who take advantage of societal breakdown to inflame inherent racism.

More generally we also have a choice regardless of circumstances to not be racist. I can see how as a species we're not there yet though.

<comment> 0-O-0 I believe that argument here is that globalisation causes a bunch of interactions that wouldn't have happened otherwise, that leads to strife ("they took our jobs" is one of the plethora of scenarios) and that leads to racism.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Arguments in the Bitcoin Block Size Debate - <AUTHOR> http://davidsterry.com/blog/2015/06/arguments-in-the-bitcoin-block-size-debate/ <comment><USER2> The only people who have a vote on this are the big miners. Unless > 50% of the miners, by hash capacity, make a change that affects the blockchain, it doesn't happen. The top 4 mining operations control more than 50% of the hash rate. Nobody else matters.[1]

If the blockchain runs out of capacity, the transactions with the biggest fee attached get processed first. So the free market will solve any overload problem.

Bitcoin volume in dollars isn't increasing.[2] The peak was over a year ago. The number of transactions is up, but not the total dollar value. Some of the transactions are just "mixing" transactions, to assist in money laundering. The companies that offer such services are quite open about this.[3]

[1] [https://blockchain.info/pools](https://blockchain.info/pools) [2] [https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction- volume-...](https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd) [3] [https://bitlaunder.com/](https://bitlaunder.com/)

<comment><USER3> > So the free market will solve any overload problem.

What do you mean by this? If 2mb of transaction data is generated every 10 minutes, but only 1mb of it is mined, what is the free market solution?

 _If_ the goal is to have bitcoin be an actual working currency for the people (and it may not be that to you), then it would seem the goal should be to be able to process the vast majority of transactions, instead of just those for the richest half.

A "solution" that is economic and solved by free markets tends to be about how to distrubute limited resources. I.e. here's a nice piece of property for sale - who gets it? The highest bidder. problem solved.

But I don't think the challenge for bitcoin is how to auction off space in the blockchain, it's how to make that space wide enough to be reliable as a potential currency for common people. If, every time you bought a candy bar at walgreens, you had to pay for the candy bar and take a guess at an extra fee for your payment and hope it goes through 10 minutes later... it just would not work.

So the market would be solving something, but it wouldn't be towards the goal of bitcoin being a currency. And honestly I think that's what the opponents of the block size increase want. As cryptocurrency tech evolves, we're seeing that various parties have new self interests to promote. Competing technologies, etc. And they benefit by bitcoin becoming artificially limited. I know there are other reasons, but it's a big part of why this is even a debate.

<comment><USER2> _" What do you mean by this? If 2mb of transaction data is generated every 10 minutes, but only 1mb of it is mined, what is the free market solution?"_

When you submit a transaction, you're entering an auction. The winners of the auction get their transactions processed quickly. The losers don't. The market thus sets a price on getting a transaction processed. This discourages free- riders who expect their transactions to be processed free or for a nominal fee. Miners are facing the dreaded "halving" next year, when the block reward drops by half. They need higher fees to compensate.[1]

[1] [http://www.coindesk.com/new-study-low-bitcoin-transaction- fe...](http://www.coindesk.com/new-study-low-bitcoin-transaction-fees- unsustainable/)

<comment><USER3> This isn't an actual solution though, because space is still limited. Bitcoin cannot be a currency if it can only fit 2,000 transactions per block. Even if everyone is willing to pay $100 in fees for their $1 transactions, they won't all fit, and that's broken.

The challenge is to find a way for miners to be incentivized and for them also to process all reasonable transactions. There's no reason miner's couldn't increase their fees independently of the block size increase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my view, it's a great and simple short term fix, waiting for more volumes and bigger bucks to get involved. I like it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a fairly reductionist view on this, one I think is helpful, so here goes.

First, I think of almost all large-scale Bitcoin arguments as religious. Especially if you're an outsider to Bitcoin, it will probably help you to think of them that way, too.

People come to a belief, and then back-fill plausible arguments all the time. When there are vigorous debates like this in Bitcoin land, we usually have some strongly held underlying beliefs coming to conflict.

I would say the holy war here revolves around a single axiom on each side: the "Small Block" camp fundamentally believes that there is a sort of inflation that happens when block sizes grow. Just like they believed that increased adoption would increase Bitcoin prices, they believe at some level that increased scarcity for block slots will increase transaction fees, and that the system relies on this promise to maintain its integrity.

The "Large Block" camp fundamentally believes that the value in the protocol comes from cheap, large-scale transaction support, and that artificially limiting right now is harmful.

You can reduce most of the arguments to comments on this. In particular, I think the comments about centralized mining concerns are almost totally specious. Bitcoin has long ago left behind small hobbyist miners with tiny data connections. Block size changes would not have helped them keep up -- there are fundamental aggregation economics in mining that have pushed them out. Any small miner that wants to mine now will do exactly the same thing they would do with 1 Gigabyte blocks: get their work from a pool, and spot verify they haven't been cheated.

Embedded in the world view of most "Large Block" miners if you follow out the logic is the belief that probably transaction fees won't pay for the entire security of the network. Ed Felten put out some calculations to this effect while he was at Princeton. They're reasonably compelling arguments, or at least worth thinking hard about. If you give up on the idea that tx fees have to pay for the entire security of the network, I think large blocks become a super obvious choice to enhance the current utility of the network.

If you do not want to give up on that idea, then any block size increase decreases the chance that the tx fee scheme will work. Since it is currently not working (the last two blocks as I write this had .09 and .02 BTC in transaction fees respectively), all such changes must be vigorously fought.

At any rate, this is why the "small block" folks have a 'purity' vibe when they argue; I think they feel they are protecting the original scheme, one they bought into and care about.

As you might be able to tell, I don't think the tx fee scheme is working right now and hence am a "large block" kind of guy. Forcing it to work, (e.g. shrinking block sizes dramatically, and perhaps refusing to mine on blocks with insufficient fees) would dramatically lower the usefulness of Bitcoin to many people. As it is, it's super annoying to have to wonder if a transaction will get included in the next block.

Finally, there are some possible tx fee solutions orthogonal to block size miners could implement easily. I have thought for a number of years that miners should just have 'express, regular, bulk' time/fee cutoffs for txs they would include. They should publish these rates. Of course, this could only be done by larger pools, or a consortium of smaller ones. Even 20% would make an impact on the fee schedule.

When I think about the economics though, I ask myself 'who would it help?' Miners are already dealing with very difficult economics at a macro and micro level, especially if they have chip projects. Getting a little more juice out of their mining would be nice, but is absolutely not what the large-scale mining game is about. On the flip side, it adds cognitive load and frustration to people transacting. It doesn't make a ton of sense to me.

If we're in a world where Bitcoin is still struggling to be useful to a billion people daily, then cognitive load and frustration should be ruthlessly excised from the technology until we get to critical mass.

<comment><USER6> > the last two blocks as I write this had .09 and .02 BTC in transaction fees > respectively

What's that in real money?

Less trollishly, how does it compare to the mining reward? To the mining reward 10 years from now?

<comment><USER7> >Less trollishly, how does it compare to the mining reward?

Mining reward is 25BTC, so on average 1/500.

>To the mining reward 10 years from now?

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply)

3.125 BTC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does the author have any evidence for his claim "The limit was temporary"? It was certainly commonly claimed even a couple of years ago that the coming scarcity of blockchain space would lead to an increase in fees.

<comment><USER7> [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=287.msg8810#msg8810](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=287.msg8810#msg8810)

>The eventual solution will be to not care how big it gets.

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg153...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg15366)

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=946236.msg10388435#m...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=946236.msg10388435#msg10388435)

>I'm the guy who went over the blockchain stuff in Satoshi's first cut of the bitcoin code. Satoshi didn't have a 1MB limit in it. The limit was originally Hal Finney's idea. Both Satoshi and I objected that it wouldn't scale at 1MB. Hal was concerned about a potential DoS attack though, and after discussion, Satoshi agreed. The 1MB limit was there by the time Bitcoin launched. But all 3 of us agreed that 1MB had to be temporary because it would never scale.

<comment><USER8> Ah, that's really significant, thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Relevant: coverage of various perspectives and positions by Ethan Heilman along with counterarguments to each:

[https://github.com/EthanHeilman/BlockSizeDebate/blob/master/...](https://github.com/EthanHeilman/BlockSizeDebate/blob/master/README.md)

I like that it also includes discussion of the Lightning Network's role, and the idea of making the block size dynamic. These are less heard of perspectives that nevertheless seem significant.</comment>


Comcast thinks my husband is an a**hole – and they put it in writing - <AUTHOR> http://elliott.org/is-this-enough-compensation/comcast-thinks-husband-ahole-put-writing/

<comment><USER2> This happened in 2008 in Spain[0] with Gas Natural featuring "Antonio Gilipollas Caraculo" (Anthony Asshole Butthead). The rogue employee was found via access logs, fired and sued. No money was refunded as far as I can tell.

[0] [http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2008/01/24/actualidad/12...](http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2008/01/24/actualidad/1201163585_850215.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> They certainly shouldn't refund additional money now. A refund would be a way of getting back on their good side, to stop them spreading the fact they've been rude. They didn't provide one, so the story got out.

This is the problem with monopolies, companies can do what they like without fear of losing business.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think there is an interesting identity problem here, where an employee of comcast changed this guys name to "asshole", but we say "Comcast" did it.

While this may have been entirely unprovoked, it may just as plausibly been in response to the customer abusing an employee who had no hand in the problem, it could have been an employee venting due to the pressure applied from an overbearing boss, etc.

There is a deeply dehumanized and dehumanizing aspect to large institutional interactions like this, both public and private. As I get older, I am coming to think that many of the leaders at large institutions understand this fact, and, in fact, are self-selected to be people who take advantage of it.

<comment><USER5> There's plenty enough corporations pawning off egregious malfeasance with "oh, it was some rouge employee...we can't be held accountable". One could even argue the other side of the coin of the limitation of liability incorporation confers is collective guilt when an individual employee does wrong.</comment></comment>


Iranian government using crowd-sourcing to identify protesters - <AUTHOR> http://iran.whyweprotest.net/off-topic/2029-we-need-bring-down-http-gerdab-ir-fa-pages-cid-407-a.html

<comment><USER2> If you're going to participate please bring sites down by exploiting bugs, straight up DDoS is bad for internet access for everyone in Iran.

<comment><USER3> Slowloris DoSes sites using low bandwidth.

<http://ha.ckers.org/slowloris/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> why not just enter randomly guessed Iranian names into the site... to overwhelm it with incorrect data.

<comment><USER5> Don't identify more than a few people from the same IP. It's easy to do QA and spot someone who's putting in fake names if you get carried away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That article has a flair of "kids playing the internet warz" to it.</comment>


A Simple Tweak for Making 'git rebase' Safe on OS X - <AUTHOR> http://www.git-tower.com/blog/make-git-rebase-safe-on-osx/

<comment><USER2> What are the consequences of the two options aside from fixing the original issue with git rebase? Should I be worried about some critical OS feature being disabled with option A or very slow git performance with option B?

<comment><AUTHOR> I consider disabling the revisiond process a "hack" and not really an option, as users may rely on this OS X feature. The daemon might also get re-enabled by an OS X update anytime.

This leaves you with the option to disable the core.trustctime setting, which I believe has no noticeable performance drawback for most or maybe all Git users.

If you are sensitive about the performance, perhaps a third option would be to make an alias for affected commands, especially for rebase:

_rebase = "-c core.trustctime=false rebase"

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This seems like it should be considered a bug in git. If a changed ctime would otherwise cause a failure, checking at that point whether the content actually changed shouldn't be an expensive operation, and since git does not track extended attributes or file flags (I'm guessing the problem is related to one of the two), a change in which updates ctime, such a change should not cause spurious failure.

I don't know enough about git to say whether my suggested fix is equivalent to turning trustctime off by default.

<comment><USER4> > checking at that point whether the content actually changed shouldn't be an > expensive operation

This is only true if you have very little "content".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nice post. Just this week I had issues using 'git rebase' and eventually I gave up using this future, instead copying my old repo to a new folder and initialising the new folder as a git repo. I just assumed I did something wrong :)

Hopefully one of the solutions pointed in the article will prevent any future issues with 'git rebase'.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think I have run into this with Keynote (esp. the latest version). I had some notes on dealing with rebase/merges conflicts here [http://www.win- vector.com/blog/2013/10/resolving-git-pseudo-...](http://www.win- vector.com/blog/2013/10/resolving-git-pseudo-conflicts/) , but this is another wrinkle.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if this is the same thing that causes Bitcoin-Qt to fail on modern OS X.

</comment><comment><USER8> Both have unfortunate consequences. Surely the best thing would be to ask Apple to add an API to allow disabling revisiond for some directory, which the OSX port could use?</comment>


Can books substitute an MBA? - <AUTHOR> http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/

<comment><AUTHOR> Further to the post on "10 books to substitute a CS degree", have any of you come across the personal MBA programme? Of course, practical experience is required, but do you think such a scheme (experience + books) can ever be as good as academia + experience?

<comment><USER2> It can probably be as good as academe, but never as good as experience. Most of the benefit from business school is the network anyway, not the book learning.</comment></comment>


Slaying the Cable Monster: Why HDMI Brands Don't Matter - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385272,00.asp

<comment><USER2> Is it just me, or does this at the beginning of the article:

"For digital signals like HDMI, as long as there is enough data for the receiver to put together a picture, it will form. If there isn't, it will just drop off. While processing artifacts can occur and gaps in the signal can cause blocky effects or screen blanking, generally an HDMI signal will display whenever the signal successfully reaches the receiver. Claims that more expensive cables put forth greater video or audio fidelity are nonsense;"

directly contradict this at the end?

"No one saw any appreciable difference between the $3 cables and the $120 cable, or any of the cables in between. However, we did notice a curious phenomenon: the screen appeared slightly darker and a bit more saturated when connected to the Blu-ray player with the Monster Cable 1200 High Definition Experience Pack cable. The HDTV showed that it was receiving the same 12-bit color depth information through each cable, so the more-expensive Monster cable wasn't pushing through more color detail. Again, the difference was minimal, and could be corrected by calibrating your HDTV."

The contradiction there immediately makes me assume all of their testing methodology is bogus and any other "facts" they introduce in support of whatever argument they're trying to make are probably suspect...

I know they're right, and multi hundred dollar Monster Cables are snake-oil, but I'm also left with the distinct impression that anybody who finds the Monster Cable's transmission of a digital video signal "curiously darker and more saturated" has shown themselves to be incapable of convincing anyone that they know enough about what they're doing to change anybodies opinion. (In fact I _strongly_ suspect Monster's notoriously evil marketing department have had a hand n this "review"... How long till we see articles linking to this saying "Look, even the skeptics who know all the digital domain science can see the improved picture from our Monster Cable 1200 High Definition Experience Pack cable!" Notice how strongly brand and product specific that statement is, it's almost as though it's specifically written for SEO juice...)

</comment><comment><USER3> The one that really surprised me was USB cables. I needed a USB cable on Friday night. I checked Best Buy and the best they could do was something like $36 for the length I wanted.

I then found that I could buy THE SAME cable from MacMall for $6. Not a generic brand--the exact brand name cable. Same manufacturer's part number and everything. And I could get overnight FedEx with Saturday delivery by 10 AM for $10. So, from MacMall the net result would be half Best Buy's price for exactly the same thing, provided I could wait about 14 hours for delivery.

(I ended up not buying from either of them, as a more thorough search of my cable drawer turned up the cable I needed).

For USB cables, here's what I now recommend to people. I think this advice applies to other cables, too, such as DVI and HDMI and network cables:

Someday, you are going to find that you need a cable and don't have the one you want on hand. And you'll find you don't want to wait for overnight delivery, so you are going to end up going to Best Buy and spending way too much for your cable.

So why not take a measure now to make sure that does not happen? Go to some place like monoprice.com, and give yourself a budget of, say, 75% of what one long cable would cost you at best buy. Use that budget to order a variety of cables. For example, for USB, for the cost of one 10 or 12 foot Best Buy cable, you could get 2 or 3 long USB cables from monoprice, 2 or 3 six footers, and a handful of 2 or 3 footers. Do that now. No rush, so use the cheapest shipping.

Now you've got a stock of cables, and as you use them you can replenish your stock at your leisure. Even if you end up never using many of the cables you will be ahead as long as this saves you from a single Best Buy cable purchase.

<comment><USER4> Best Buy's business model is to overcharge people for peripherals like cables and warranties. Their thinking is that when you are buying a big ticket item like a TV, you compare the prices of the item and not the total costs of all peripherals and additional warranties. So Best Buy says "let's have the big ticket item be the cheap thing that brings people in, but then we will get them on the price of cables." And of course their salesmen are trained not to let anyone exit the store with a TV or a computer without buying a bucketful of cables and extra warranties.

So yeah, that's why their cables are expensive, they are their profit center.

It used to be that Radio Shack was a good cheap place to buy cables, but they also raised their cable prices. Radio Shack could have made a fortune just selling cheaper cables to Best Buy customers, but instead they decided that they could compete with Best Buy and raised their cable prices accordingly. Of course Radio Shack stores are way too small to sell big ticket items, so they failed and Radio Shack filed for bankruptcy.

So now the internet is the only place you can get cheap cables.

<comment><USER5> The general phenomena of which they are taking advantage is called anchoring - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring>

<comment><USER6> In the case of HDMI cables, I think the term you are looking for is: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Claims that more expensive cables put forth greater video or audio fidelity > are nonsense; it's like saying you can get better-looking YouTube videos on > your laptop by buying more expensive Ethernet cables._

Fantastic comparison. I'll have to remember that one...

</comment><comment><USER8> The B&M markup on cables and adapters bothers me enough that I'll eat the downtime and buy from Monoprice or Newegg. For the price of one HDMI at Walmart, I was able to get HDMI, optical, and a display port->HDMI adapter from Monoprice.

<comment><USER6> There is no reason to buy cables from anywhere but Monoprice.

<comment><USER9> Monoprice's cables are very utilitarian, and they are extremely awesome at doing what they're supposed to do. However, if you want a thinner cable, smaller connectors, or different jacket for environmental or aesthetic reasons, they're probably not going to have what you want. They do have a wide selection of colors for HDMI and Ethernet cables, though, so even when buying a cable that needs to look good, I always check Monoprice first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> OT, but wow, that site is sure using CPU. I'm seeing my CPU usage go to a consistent 70-99% just sitting on that page (Mac Pro with one quad core Xeon). It looks like it is their Javascript, as it drops to nearly nothing when I disable Javascript and refresh. (I've got Flash disabled, so it isn't their Flash ads). Anyone else have the Javascript go crazy there?

<comment><USER10> What browser are you using? That's a critical piece of information.

<comment><USER3> Safari

<comment><USER10> The site uses a lot of CPU when loading, then settles down for me. Safari's CPU usage spikes up to 30% or so with Flash enabled, but I notice when I have Flash disabled, it spikes up to 105%. That's pretty backwards, hmm? But no, I see no sustained CPU usage with Safari on my Mac.

<comment><USER3> I did some profiling, and it looks like it is some Javascript that is trying to check to see if one of the Flash ads has loaded. It's being called thousands of times in a few seconds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When you are talking about longer distances it matters a bit, but not much. We bought a long (50 or 100ft, can't remember) pricy cable for my friends parents, and the signal loss was so great that the TV only recognized the signal half the time, but it was all or nothing.

but yeah, 3/6/10 ft isn't gonna make any difference.

</comment><comment><USER12> Less than a year ago HDMI cables were listed on Amazon for a penny. I ordered 4 for 4cents and then 2.98 shipping for the whole order. I think after California changed laws about lead in cables for energy efficiency, places were shipping those cables all over for real cheap. Now the $1.50 seems standard.

</comment><comment><USER13> Myth: Digital signals can't degrade except in an all or nothing way.

Simple experiment you can do at home: Take your favorite audio source, convert to uncompressed 16-bit samples (just like you'd find on a CD), and clip the high bit to always be 0. Congratulations, you just degraded a digital signal.

Oh, the article then says "While processing artifacts can occur and gaps in the signal can cause blocky effects". If that isn't gradually degrading, what is?

"it's like saying you can get better-looking YouTube videos on your laptop by buying more expensive Ethernet cables." Anyone who's ever used a damaged ethernet cable before knows how wrong the author is on this point. It doesn't take many dropped packets before you can't stream HD video.

I 100% agree with conclusion, but there's something about the words "digital signal" that somehow makes people think they aren't signals.

<comment><USER11> But relative analog SNR doesn't change, that's the point. A glitch is no signal or infinite noise, depending on how you look at it. Blacks don't get blacker, highs don't get clearer.

<comment><USER13> It's only infinite noise very briefly, the next sample may be ok, and more than one bit are transmitted at a time. Consider that as you add bits to a digital sample, it gets closer to resembling an analog sample.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What an obvious and boring subject.

<comment><USER15> I agree; this really hasn't been news for 5 years, if not more.</comment></comment>


Creating a Doom-style 3D engine in C - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQYsFshbkYw

<comment><USER2> Bisqwit is an absolutely amazing coder and he explains what he does so well. Most of his videos are a delight to watch.</comment>