Ask HN: Recruiters wont stop emailing me, what can I do? - <AUTHOR> I have been trying to get myself unsubscribed from all recruiter emails. I've had success with most of them with a simple "please don't email me again" response.
A few of them ignore these requests and keep sending me emails, sometimes calling. Others say that have removed me, only to email me again a few months later.
I don't delete any of my emails, so I can search back to 2005 and find dozens of emails and requests to be removed.
Can I do anything about this other than blocking the domain from emailing me? I don't think can-spam covers this, but maybe there is some other law that is on my side that I can at least threaten with? <comment><USER2> (Warning; recruiter talking here.) It's probably hard to stop my spammy 'colleagues'. If I'm correct they are sending you messages to your private email address, so we're not talking about LinkedIn here?

Perhaps you can create rules in your inbox that automatically put messages with the subject containing "job opportunity" directly in your spambox. The spammy recruiters aren't very creative in the mail titles, so look for the common patterns and direct-to-spam those.

If we are talking about Linkedin, I know a guy that uploaded an avatar with him wearing a clowns wig, that stopped a lot of recruiters approaching him :-).

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh no! The horror of unwanted employment possibilities! If they're such a problem you can forward them to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is spam that happens to be about jobs, many of which I am not interested in or qualified for. I would be happy to forward them all to you but I suspect you will find yourself in the same boat.

You do love Java and XML, don't you?

<comment><USER4> Heh, nobody loves Java and XML. Unfortunately, a lot of APIs use WSDL and thus force engineers to deal with XML. Old legacy systems are hard to change...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're using a popular web-mail solution (e.g. Gmail), I would just report them as spam so they end up in other peoples' blacklist.

Otherwise, ask them if they're willing to represent convicted federal felons, sex offenders, and/or rehabilitated serial killers to their clients? You'll get black-listed real fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> not a bad idea, though it wouldn't be fun if I somehow ended up starting a rumor about myself. I did resort to something similar once. I noticed that some recruiting tool had something in their terms about not contacting minors:

[http://i.imgur.com/mINDBH2.png](http://i.imgur.com/mINDBH2.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm in the same boat. I have nothing helpful to add, but I can tell you what __DOESN 'T __work, maybe this will save you some time:

1\. Replying and telling them what kind of opportunities you're actually interested in. That doesn't matter to them. Those who use the "spray and pray" approach don't seem to care if there's little chance of a good match.

2\. Replying and telling recruiters to kill themselves. Although this is quite fun, they seem immune to the insult.

3\. Clicking the unsubscribe links in their emails. In fact I think this may make things worse (because you've just confirmed that your address is active).

4\. Flagging them as spam. Most of them are advanced enough to circumvent most spam filters.

5\. Setting up filter rules in your inbox based on the "from" address or subject. Many recruiters never re-use those kinds of things.

6\. Converting your resume to image format before posting it on the job boards (so the text isn't searchable). Not sure why this doesn't work, but it doesn't.

7\. Adding a disclaimer to your resume begging/pleading with recruiters not to contact you. They ignore it, or think that it doesn't apply to them.

Sigh....

I guess the only option we have left is to deliberately try and crash the tech economy. If we succeed, that should get rid of the recruiters pretty quick. Let's split up the tasks: I'll start raising a Billion dollar seed round for my sandwich cart, you start working on a social network for dolphins. Okay team, let's do this.

</comment><comment><USER7> From a previous thread: "On a whim, I recently updated my LinkedIn picture to a photo of myself in a multi-coloured clown wig. This put an immediate end to all messages from recruiters."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9104947](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9104947)

<comment><USER2> Ah cool you actually had the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I mostly solved this problem by taking 2 minutes and writing a thoughtful response to remind them that I am an actual human.

"Thanks, COMPANY_NAME sounds interesting, but I'm not looking to make a move. I really enjoy working with my fantastic team solving challenging problems in my current position. It would take an unbelievable improvement in [salary, schedule, problem space] to make me consider a move. Let's stay in touch on LinkedIn and feel free to reach out in N months or if any amazing opportunities that meet those criteria come across your desk. Thanks!"

Personally, I have found that not all, but many recruiters will reply with a LinkedIn request and an "I'd love to get to know more about what you are looking for, or will follow up in N months."

</comment><comment><USER9> Create a new email account that you're never going to use. Tell the spammy recruiters that you're shutting down your (real) address, and please to contact you at the dummy one instead. Aside from that, put the bad senders in an email filter rule.

</comment><comment><USER10> You could try to fight fire with fire setting up an automatic repply with "... that sounds interesting, give me a call at [false phone number here], my salary requirement is $500k at this moment..."

</comment><comment><USER11> Why not just set up an e-mail filter?</comment>


Firefox Pirates Take Over Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/firefox-pirates-take-over-amazon-081203/

<comment><USER2> "The timing of the 'Pirates of the Amazon' launch could not have been more (un)fortunate. At the busiest time of the year for on- and offline retailers, this Firefox browser add-on offers users a download link to pirated copies of products that can normally be found in the Amazon online store."

I don't think that this is really such a tragedy. People who are going to try and download an illegal copy for free aren't going to be deterred by a lack of convenient link, as they would have had to install this in the first place. Equally, people who wouldn't normally do so won't install the plugin in the first place.

<comment><USER3> \+ the holiday season is there for gift giving...most people won't gift a music album on a blank cd

<comment><USER4> My sister sends me one or two custom CDs every year with my Christmas goodies ;). I find these hand made CDs very special as it takes more of her time and thought.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like these are custom selections rather than a straight track for track copy of an album.

I could be reading your comment incorrectly though.

<comment><USER4> my comment wasn't meant to be too insightful. Just pointing out that "buying" isn't always better than "crafting". Sometimes its a straight rip of an album. Sometimes its a live show she attended during the year (some bands do allow legal live recordings). Sometimes its a mix.

Either way, I doubt this firefox tool hurts amazon sales. and if it does... ehhh... Bezos and Sony will live ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't costing Amazon a cent other than maybe some small bandwidth costs. Nobody who knows enough to install a Firefox plugin for a bittorrent site never found themselves buying a CD unaware that they could have gotten it for free.

<comment><USER7> It's always a matter of incentives and transaction costs. Now whoever uses this extension has a little bit more incentive and a little bit less cost to pirate. A locked door isn't enough deterrent to thieves that really want to steal from you, but they work well enough against the lazy ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Site's already down. The site has "The Ship was hit. We're offline." in <blink> tags.

</comment><comment><USER9> A clever idea but the implementation is far from perfect.

On the product page for V, a novel by Thomas Pynchon, I got a torrent link for the fifth installment of the Saw horror movie series.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hey brilliant plan. Now any time someone makes the claim that P2P isn't about not paying for copyrighted content they can point to this utility as counter- evidence.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, is under attack by online pirates. An add-on for the Firefox browser called 'Pirates of the Amazon' makes it possible to shop at the Amazon store but leave without paying a dime. Instead, on Amazon product pages the add-on integrates links to 'free' copies on The Pirate Bay."</comment>


Get Smarter - The Atlantic - mentions Modafinil - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/07/get-smarter/7548 <comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this thanks to the discussion about Provigil: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1524757> .</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for Moving into a Remote Position? - <AUTHOR> A bit of info about me: Developer for about 10 - 12 years professionally, C# and JS mostly, self-taught
Recently I have been looking to take back some of the time I spend on my commute. It's about two hours a day and my company doesn't support remote work unless you are an off-shore developer (for obvious reasons, the flights add up quickly from a daily commute).
I've been keeping an eye on WWR but I feel like I am getting analysis paralysis on what tech to learn or what to do to make myself stand out to employers.
For the people that have moved from on-site to a remote position recently, how did you stand out? Did you learning new languages / frameworks? What made you more appealing than others candidates from your view point? <comment><USER2> I find that it helps to look for something that is close to you but still remote, and also a smaller company. Being a 2 hour flight away and living in the same general geographic area makes people feel like they're a lot more connected to you than someone who lives on the opposite side of the country or overseas.

Smaller companies are also generally going to receive fewer applications, have less of a formal hiring process, and are more likely to choose you just because they like you and you're closer than the guy in China.

Other than that, apply for stuff that very closely matches your experience. This makes you much less of a risk to hire.

The downside to this is that unless you're lucky or very much in demand, you're likely to not be compensated as well compared to working in a regular office.</comment>


Map of the Internet from 1973 - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/workergnome/status/807704855276122114/ <comment><AUTHOR> earlier: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13157090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13157090)</comment>


Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-21/internet-service-disrupted-in-large-parts-of-eastern-u-s <comment><USER2> For a long time, I've wondered what would finally be the Securitypocalypse, the thing that finally caused our industry as a whole to take security seriously. These IoT DDoS attacks are as good a candidate as any I've seen in a long time. They are fundamentally very difficult to fix in light of the non- updateability of many of these devices, and this is only the beginning, because the IoT has hardly begun to develop. And in the short-term, I'm not sure I see any hope, because the forces that make people throw out cheap devices with broken firmwares with no update capability aren't going away.

If we could somehow mandate that these devices were supported with firmware updates for the indefinite future, that would simply destroy the entire market. And you can't do that, because even the devices created by an entity that no longer exists and didn't sell its IP to anybody else will eventually be enough to do these DDoSes, if they aren't already.

<comment><USER3> It's easy to fix; back in the day when a machine was infected; an ISP would just block outgoing traffic, contact line owner and re-enable when the issue is resolved.

<comment><USER4> "Fix" is a relative term, especially if IoT devices are in play – yes, turning off the internet to customers stops the attack, but then (at least?) thousands of people lose internet connectivity because of a vulnerability that they could very well be powerless to fix. I'm not saying it's ok with me that an army of smart refrigerators could be taking out big chunks of the web, but it's a lot easier to tell someone, "Hey, either get the infection off your computer or re-format" than it is to make someone buy new lightbulbs and appliances.

<comment><USER5> Not powerless, just unplug their toaster and they get their internet back.

What is powerless is that many people _today_ couldn't get twitter, github, reddit, spotify, box, etc. because many people don't care about securing their webcam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am a non-programmer who reads HN and keeps up with tech news in general.

And every time I read about the IoT botnet, my immediate response is to look around my apartment at my Internet-connected lights, and wonder if they're part of it.

How can I find this out?

Is anyone making a tool that a non-technical user can run to squint at their network and look for evidence of Mirai, or anything else trying to take advantage of this niche?

There are plenty of tools with a reasonably simple interface that will tell me if my laptop/desktop computer is infected with something. But what can I use to diagnose the health of all of the _other_ computers proliferating around my house?

How can a non-technical user easily monitor the overall health of their connected household? Is this a project anyone is building? Because I think it's definitely something that needs to exist now.

<comment><USER6> Looking over all the replies this comment received, I think my plan for seeing if my apartment's Internet Things are on any botnet is going to be "bribe that security researcher I flirt with sometimes to visit my place and run some tests". Which is not really a solution that scales, either for that friend, or for people who don't happen to run in the kinds of circles where that's someone they could conceivably trade favors with.

And it's probably not gonna get any better any time soon, either. Because I'm not sure there's a money stream in making this something a non-programmer can do. And maybe there _shouldn 't_ even be a money stream in this - maybe there should just be huge-ass fines to motivate as many people as possible along the chain from "my Internet Thing" to "the Internet" to include a white/grey hat or three on their team very early in the design process of making their camera/light bulb/pacemaker/router/modem/whatever. Although if someone reading this can figure out a way to get a money stream out of making it a lot easier to see the health of your home's devices, and keep them safe, that might be a decent YC app for you.

How do we add an immune system to the Internet Of Things? Because we sure as hell need one.

<comment><USER7> > bribe that security researcher I flirt with sometimes to visit my place and > run some tests...[w]hich is not really a solution that scales...

Assuming the flirting displayed is sincere, that security researcher may prove much more scalable than you'd imagine.

<comment><USER6> There's not really enough of a size difference between us to make "scaling" come into play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a better article from Mr. Krebs:

[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/ddos-on-dyn-impacts- twit...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/ddos-on-dyn-impacts-twitter- spotify-reddit/)

Personally I think his case is pretty convincing.

<comment><USER9> From the article:

"Last month, a hacker by the name of Anna_Senpai released the source code for Mirai, a crime machine that enslaves IoT devices for use in large DDoS attacks. The 620 Gbps attack that hit my site last month was launched by a botnet built on Mirai, for example."

I repeatedly hear people refer to IoT devices that are notoriously difficult to update...yet this Mirai code is technically able to access millions of devices and bend them to its will.

So what I'm wondering is just, what prevents the good guys from using Mirai to slurp down every available device to patch the vulnerability that allowed Mirai to work in the first place?

It seems like if vulnerabilities in these devices can destabilize the entire internet that it should be perfectly viable as a response to actively look for those vulnerabilities, patch/minimize them and notify their creators of the issue.

<comment><USER10> The problem is you're reading the situation wrong. Mirai isn't about an exploit, it's IoT devices that haven't had the default username/password changed.

Now, you might say "why doesn't a good samritan just login to all of those devices and change the password to something random?"

OK - ignoring the fact that THEY would be committing felonies in several countries... what happens when the device manufacturer wakes up and decides to patch these devices via that remote access? Suddenly the password doesn't work, and the end-user can't change it because... what's the procedure for changing the default ssh password on a light bulb?

Technically you could make the situation better by writing a worm that changes the passwords, but at this point even that is a lost cause since mirai has a command that will change the pw on all infected hosts.

<comment><USER9> I guess that's what I'm getting at though. If we were to scan for the affected devices, change the passwords and notify the manufacturer of the change and that it was made because their carelessness essentially endangered the internet it would make it possible for them to fix it.

You're plugging a leak and letting the owner know, hey this was leaking and I stopped it but you're going to need to address that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I know the TTL is set really low for a lot of DNS entries but this recent outage got me wondering if it makes sense for servers further down the chain to hold onto it for longer than the TTL, honor it when they are able to get a new DNS entry within a reasonable amount of time, but fall back to the "expired" version if the authoritative server is not reachable.

I'm wondering what would be the negative consequences of this and if they outweigh the benefit of being more resilient to these types of attacks.

<comment><USER12> There was a good discussion on this in a sibling thread earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12762110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12762110)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> No luck with Google DNS for me, but Yandex seems to work:

        22.214.171.124
        126.96.36.199

[https://dns.yandex.ru](https://dns.yandex.ru)

<comment><USER14> Probably, but I would definitely avoid giving all my DNS resolutions to a *.ru domain.

The reputation of the government - shutting down access to websites that hurt them is kind-a no-go for me.

<comment><USER15> US government is not much better... or have you forgotten all those hundreds of FBI/ICE domain seizures. How many have Russians taken down? If your'e gonna use DNS servers and you don't want someone to track you, use the DNS server based somewhere where your government cannot access them. If you're in the US, it's easy to assume that US DoJ/FBI will not be able to subpoena Yandex or some Chinese internet provider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> bloomberg was down for me.

I had disabled adblock at their insistence...

i re-enabled adblock and I could get the article. hmmmm. maybe something about the 50 unrelated js calls?? perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER17> More specifics about Mirai bots and their numbers:

[https://threatpost.com/mirai-bots-more-than-double-since- sou...](https://threatpost.com/mirai-bots-more-than-double-since-source-code- release/121368/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Unfortunately, forced firmware updating is an area our governments should not be mandating. That puts unnecessary strain on small companies and creates a larger gap that companies must cross to become commercially viable

<comment><USER19> Liability should be on the people who connect these things to the public internet. The owners of the devices. Like with cars, you have certain responsibilities and liabilities when you operate a potential dangerous machine on the public roads.

In the case of ISPs providing cable modems and routers and DVRs and other boxes to their customers, they should be responsible for keeping those secure.

If people start getting fines or sued over what their internet-connected devices are doing, they might stop connecting them to the internet, or shop more carefully for devices or providers that are secure.

<comment><USER20> So grandpa goes to Home Depot, buys a fancy new thermostat and installs it at his home, the device gets hijacked by the archetypal 400 lb hacker, and is used to take down a major commercial site, and then grandpa is liable for the whole thing?

I don't think so.

You make a little gizmo with shitty security, you are liable. Full stop.

<comment><USER19> So grampa doesn't take care of his car, the brakes fail and he kills a family with four kids. Is he liable? Yes. He may not know the first thing about brakes or car repair but owns the car, and he took it out on the road without being sure it was in safe operating condition.

But to steal an idea from another comment, make the ISPs liable also for routing the malicious traffic onto the internet. They will then have incentive to monitor their networks and they can take homes offline until their customers fix or disconnect their hacked devices.

<comment><USER21> I'm the "head fred" networking/infrastructure guy at an ISP. I want to _avoid_ , as much as possible, peeking at my customer's traffic.

In my personal opinion, an ISP should be a dumb pipe. I'm providing you with the ability to send/receive "n" bits per second; I don't care whether you use it to participate in e-mail discussions with your church group or stream pornography and play online poker.

Are you _certain_ you want ISPs to be responsible for monitoring all of your traffic and what you're doing online? Do you really want somebody else deciding -- at their own discretion -- what is "acceptable" for you to do online?

I'm very pro-privacy, pro-encryption, "pro-Internet freedom", etc., but the next guy may not be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Any evidence this is using the IoT botnet that was reported on earlier this year?

<comment><USER23> Mirai? With the source of that being public, there are probably quite a few Mirai botnets now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> These attacks are possible because the US Congress hasn't extended tort liability to manufacturers of software and network hardware. The full weight of the US products liability bar will quickly and rapidly motivate manufacturers to ship secure devices. The lack of accountability is enabling vulnerability.

<comment><USER25> Who is the "manufacturer" in the case of FOSS?

<comment><USER26> Whoever puts the FOSS on the device

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The failing here as in many cases such as a number of security breaches was a lack of investment. As someone with an engineering degree that worked as a VLSI design engineer, good engineering requires __* backup systems __*. This costs money that people don 't want to spend. In some cases such as a startup they might be cash short, but many firms have the money but don't want to spend it ensuring that they have well engineered software that includes backups, up-to-date software and security upgrades, hiring (expensive) highly competent software engineers and consulting firms.

The mistake in this case was relying on one vendor for DNS. Amazon Route 53 would be a good alternate vendor for DNS, for example.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think even basic home routers these days, have enough cpu power to handle egress filtering.

If you have an iot device, by its nature it only needs to connect to a few services and hosts.

The manufacturer can provide this in their docs, and give an automatic config url that the router uses to load its egress rules.

The rules to load are displayed and the user checks they are legit by comparing to the printed version in the manual, then clicks ok. Or something like that.

Rate limits in terms of packets per second, total bandwidth both instantaneous and over time, are set also.

</comment><comment><USER29> Not only East Coast, Twitter can't be resolved in Ireland/UK right now (I assume the mobile app uses some kind of 'dns pinning' as that is working)

<comment><USER30> > (I assume the mobile app uses some kind of 'dns pinning' as that is working)

The app was down for me until I switched my WiFi network to use OpenDNS. It's possible your phone has the DNS record cached, or it's using a different DNS server. (Is it on cellular?)

Hardcoding IPs into a mobile app typically isn't done because it makes changing your infrastructure extremely painful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I love those comments about IoT and who should be responsible for error-proof products, or ISP monitoring traffic, or ...

Internet, in the beginning, was even more insecure. Including the computers and OSes. There were less abuse because few had resources and knowledge. Read some old software and you'll find all bad designs in it. Software didn't become worst, it's just targeted with more knowledge and intensity.

</comment><comment><USER32> DNS is actually fairly centralized the way it is actually used.

We need protocols and systems that are designed to be distributed from the outset.

</comment><comment><USER33> I always thought DNS had enough redundancy built-in that this sort of thing wouldn't really have much effect. But here I am unable to access websites, simply because name resolution isn't working. If my local DNS server were caching things longer there would largely be no issue.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, DNS entries are usually (or at least used to be) cached for what would seem like long enough, but I guess it doesn't really work the way it sounds. "a hierarchical decentralized naming system [that] provides distributed and fault tolerant service and was designed to avoid a single large central database" doesn't sound like it should be so fragile. Having single 'authoritative' servers for the sort of thing that should be inherently distributed sounds more like an Achilles heel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Perhaps a naive question, but Why can't a DNS provider identify such participants in a DDOS and ban their IPs forever?

<comment><USER36> Because IP addresses are often shared resources. Your ISP gives each customer an IP address (often a temporary one), and then that customer's router system handles assigning private, local-network-only IP addresses to any devices connecting through the network.

So if a DNS provider starts banning public IPs (which are the only IPs it sees), you could end up with an entire college getting banned because of one hacked webcam in one student's dorm room.

Or someone in an apartment somewhere with (unknowingly) a hacked thermostat finds their internet no longer works (DNS provider has banned them), so they reboot their modem, which causes their ISP to provide them with a new IP address. Guess what happens to their old IP address? It goes back into the pool of available IPs that that ISP can assign to other customers, and more and more banned-from-DNS addresses keep getting passed along to innocent, un- hacked customers.

<comment><USER35> Ah, (inter)networking 101. Thanks! Then, is there a way for the DNS providers to know the ultimate recepient at all? MAC address? (or does it get truncated at the lower levels and not passed over IP protocol?)

<comment><USER21> Nope. Assuming you have a router connecting your home network to your ISP, for example, the MAC addresses of your "internal" devices are not visible to the ISP. The only MAC address they see is the MAC address of your router's "WAN" interface.

The source/destination MAC addresses in an Ethernet frame (layer 2) are rewritten at every router (layer 3) hop. The original IP source/destination addresses in the IP packet, however, do not change (exception: NAT, which does exactly that).

Another problem -- in many (most?) DDoS attacks where UDP traffic is involved -- is that the source IP addresses are "spoofed". That is, IP packet that the victim receives _says_ that it's coming from Alice but it really came from Bob. There are also "amplification" attacks, where an "innocent third-party" is used, unknowingly, to "help" perform the attack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Did any one else find the style of writing in this article really annoying? Things like using prefacing statements with "so-called" or putting terms in quotes to make them seem suspect.

e.g.s:

a so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack

York said Dyn was "actively" dealing with a "third wave" of the attack.

<comment><USER38> I tend to assume that the larger publications use it in the underlying sense of "..as it is so called".

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Not working, is bloomberg down too?

</comment><comment><USER40> If you are unable to connect because of DNS problems, switch your DNS server to 18.104.22.168 (Google).

Edit: sorry there, this worked for me but apparently it's not guaranteed.

<comment><USER41> I switched temporarily from those to Open DNS's 126.96.36.199 and things are working for now.

But, just to be clear, it's not Google's fault: 184.108.40.206 are not the authoritative name servers for the sites that are down. Rather, Dyn, the provider of the NS is down, and I presume Google (22.214.171.124) is _correctly_ not returning any IP address because the underlying authoritative name server is not.

Presumably Open DNS is working because it's not abiding by the TTL it's supposed to? It's caching the underlying authoritative name server longer than it was told?

<comment><USER42> Yes, the call it "SmartCache": [https://www.opendns.com/about/press- releases/opendns-introdu...](https://www.opendns.com/about/press- releases/opendns-introduces-smartcache-new-feature-enables-web-sites-to-load- successfully-with-opendns-while-offline-for-the-rest-of-the-internet/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm suggesting this just so someone more knowledgeable can debunk it. Suppose FBI or someone up there had a meeting and said "in three weeks, there could be millions of armed Americans who believe that democracy was just stolen from them by some evil dictator in a massive globalist conspiracy. These people love twitter. Is there a way to make twitter go down without making it look like we're suddenly pulling the plug?" The answer was yes, we'll do a test run Friday.

<comment><USER44> I'll bite.

It would take a lot longer than a couple of hours of twitter being down for that to have a useful effect. For something as major as the presidential election result, it would probably take minimum a week before people got bored and moved on to a different topic.

So this kind of attack that only takes something out for a few hours would have no useful effect for an actor that wants to prevent people from discussing a recent event.

IMHO, it would be hard in general to take out a service run by a serious IT organization (of which there are admittedly few, by my definition of serious) for more than a few days unless the attacker carried out non-trivial physical damage (eg, bombing multiple datacenters, murdering multiple system administrators, etc) or managed to somehow destroy enough backups (which in a serious IT shop, should be hard, as there should be some offline cold backups that require physical human activity to destroy)

<comment><USER43> Sure it wouldnt work for an extended time. I'm just thinking that in an unpredictable situation, a few hours might be all you need to diffuse it. For example suppose someone claims they have evidence of some crazy shit happening at the polling places, and the only thing that can be done is to for Patriots to seize the equipment at the polling places before the globalists can cover their tracks.</comment></comment></comment>


Ethylene Production via Sunlight Opens Door to Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.nrel.gov/news/features/feature_detail.cfm/feature_id=19532 <comment><USER2> Sounds good, but how much CO2 production do those precursors imply? I've seen too many over-enthusiastic write-ups for bio-solar technologies that don't include the carbon cost of the inputs.

Of course if the answer is "not much" then this could be big.

<comment><USER3> >Sounds good, but how much CO2 production do those precursors imply? I've seen too many over-enthusiastic write-ups for bio-solar technologies that don't include the carbon cost of the inputs.

from the article:

"Normally, algae convert carbon dioxide during photosynthesis into biomass or sugars."

The issue with these technologies isn't CO2 balance (that balance is great - CO2 is input, hydrocarbons is output), the issue is productization, i.e. reaching the technological stage which would be able to attract massive investment. With cheap oil [i.e. with major costs of oil externalized in today's society and economy] these technologies face uphill battle. (compare - if Big Oil wants pipeline or drill somewhere, the government uses all its ultimate power, like eminent domain domestically or aircraft carriers internationally, to make it happen and push it through public interests here or there, if you want a pond for algae ...)

<comment><USER4> Productisation inherently has to overcome the fundamental energy density problem: with photosynthesis, you've got an upper limit of about 300W/m2 that you can ever capture. To get energetically useful amounts of fuel out, that means you need acres of the stuff. Not impossible, but a right pain to keep your chosen strain dominant in the sort of volumes that area implies.

<comment><USER3> >that means you need acres of the stuff.

in a hot desert unused for anything else.

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

"The United States Department of Energy estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require 15,000 square miles (39,000 km2), which is only 0.42% of the U.S. map,[10] or about half of the land area of Maine. This is less than 1/7 the area of corn harvested in the United States in 2000.[11]"

A federal scale project with political, social and economical effects comparable with atomic bomb development. 15000 sq. miles sucking in CO2 and producing fuel. Saudi princes and Putin may go enjoy themselves. Well, with a lot of rich and politically connected Texas oilmen as well ... and this is the main issue, not the energy density :) And with another oily Texan about to be elected, we can forget about any serious advancements for the next 8 years (he'll get us into another war and thus will stay for the full show)

<comment><USER5> The hardest thing about algal fuels is keeping your bioreactor working at peak efficiency. This is quite difficult, consider the following:

Problem: Outside organisms keep contaminating your pools of algae.

Solution: cover them up.

Problem: your reactor surface keeps fouling

Solution: open it up and wash it

Problem: Now you gotta clean the whole thing to make sure you don't have contamination

Problem: some parts of the pool are far denser in algae than others leading to inefficiency

Solution: pump/stir it!

Problem: now you have to move huge volumes of water. Plus your equipment could foul/breakdown

Partial solution: solar powered pumps. Fouling still an issue though

Problem: Organisms raised in water take a lot of water with them for the ride even when you spin/filter them out for harvesting

Partial solution: Dry it out with energy, maybe more sun? Now you need more space.

After all this you have to wonder whether the cost and additional energy invested leaves you with enough left over to make sense. It's not impossible, and I believe it's the only real way to a sustainable future, but it's really, really, really hard to scale these things up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The key benefit to making bio-ethylene would be in reducing the amount of > carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by the traditional ethylene > manufacturing process

This ignores the political, economic, and military implications of moving away from petrochemicals. There are potentially many benefits aside from the cost of raw materials and the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.

</comment><comment><USER7> These are the news that makes me believe there can be a better world:)</comment>


IDEO's new website - <AUTHOR> IDEO has a new website. new.ideo.com. What do you think? <comment><USER2> Huge imagery, and serif fonts. Inspired!</comment>


WeWork Seeks $4bn Lifeline - <AUTHOR> https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/wework-seeks-4-billion-lifeline-softbank-jpmorgan-ipo-flop-2019-10-1028582505 <comment><USER2> It boggles the mind how a company asks for a $4bn investment and describes it as a lifeline.

The defence budget of some NATO countries is less than that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I certainly hope the lifeline comes with a hell of a lot more penalties for WeWork than just a lower valuation. At this point they need to be forced into an actually sustainable business model and Neumann needs to be completely kicked out this time.

</comment><comment><USER4> > "They also intend to sell ancillary businesses that provide marketing, > networking, and office-cleaning services"

Those ancillary businesses' main (only?) client is WeWork. I don't expect them to get top dollar.</comment>


Ask HN: If I use Vscode is there any reason to use TypeScript? - <AUTHOR> Vscode tsengine is able to understand js code sufficiently if you have jsconfig.json defined. It can suggest props from classes in other files, help rename symbols, it can show function params and even sometimes types. ANd if you are using external library with the ts interfaces defined it's even better.
This raises the question for my day to day work I can't think of anything MORE that I'm missing. Sure it's not as strong as IntelliJ with Java But I don't remember having fun time in intelliJ/java world either. My problems existed with a) logic b) lack of understanding of the API usage
Not having to type types actually saves me time as I iterate quickly. <comment><USER2> Strong type reveals and documents intent. Your code is not written for the compiler, it is written for other people to read and understand(even if that other person is future you).</comment>


D3 in 3D: Combining D3.js and three.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.billdwhite.com/wordpress/2015/01/12/d3-in-3d-combining-d3-js-and-three-js/

<comment><USER2> Very cool. Has anyone seen a step by step tutorial for a result along these lines?</comment>


How Instagram closed my account and gave it to a football celebrity - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ainiesta/how-instagram-closed-my-account-and-gave-it-to-a-football-celebrity-625a6a770eb3 <comment><USER3> GitHub did the same thing to me. Changed my SSH keys and renamed my account. I used to have "rbishop", now some other developer has it.

No notice, no communication, nothing.

When I contacted the person at GitHub who did it he refused to answer any questions or explain anything.

So watch out... If you have the same name as an employee's drinking buddy, prepare to have your account removed without notice or explanation.

<comment><USER4> Was your account inactive by chance?

They have rules that after an account is inactive for a significant amount of time it is subject to removal.

I know this because I reclaimed a VERY inactive account. It had one repo that was forked years previously and never had any updates. And the user never contributed to any repos or anything. No activity of any type in years. So, I contacted GH support asking about the account and they removed the account and told me I could register it if I was fast.

<comment><USER5> > _I know this because I reclaimed a VERY inactive account._

IIRC, activity on private repos isn't exposed on the user's page. Is it possible for a non-employee to tell the difference between a truly inactive account and one that has activity on only private repos?

<comment><USER4> And this is why I asked if the account was inactive and deletable. A staff member checked the account and confirmed that the account was inactive and deleted it so it could be reclaimed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the Instagram TOS[1]: "5\. We reserve the right to force forfeiture of any username for any reason."

Not saying that this isn't terrible customer service by Instagram, and they definitely should have given better notice, but when you agree to these terms of service you accept that THEY OWN your username... You signed up for this; it shouldn't be a surprise that they actually have these terms for a reason.

[1] [https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511](https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511)

<comment><USER7> TIL Github can terminate your account, for any reason, at any time ..

        GitHub, in its sole discretion, has the right to
        suspend or terminate your account and refuse any
        and all current or future use of the Service, or
        any other GitHub service, for any reason at any time.
        Such termination of the Service will result in the
        deactivation or deletion of your Account or your
        access to your Account, and the forfeiture and
        relinquishment of all Content in your Account.
        GitHub reserves the right to refuse service to
        anyone for any reason at any time.

[https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of- service/#d-...](https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of- service/#d-cancellation-and-termination)

<comment><USER8> All companies have a termination clause to protect themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am not the author of the post but I thought it was interesting because it's related to something I've been thinking for a while: the "namespace" for humans is quite limited.

World's population grow fast and practically no new first or last names have been introduced in the last years, therefore the chances of having another person with your exact same first and last names and more exposure than you is growing exponentially. Plus, thanks to the Internet, if someone with name X does something "remarkable" that name X will be associated to that individual forever, creating a "digital shadow" over those future individuals with the same name.

I remember someone who had my exact same first and last name, and he had bought the domain [fist_name][last_name].com ... The annoying problem was that person was also a developer and his website was awful. I was always worried that someone could google me, find his site and, as he was a developer too, think that poor site was mine.

<comment><USER9> >World's population grow fast and practically no new first or last names have been introduced in the last years, therefore the chances of having another person with your exact same first and last names and more exposure than you is growing exponentially.

I plan to give my child a new last name for this reason so he/she could have unique google hit. But I am not sure what the legal implications of this are.

<comment><USER10> Are you sure you (or your kid, for that matter) would want them to be that accessible on a Google search? Seems that could come back to bite them.

I say that because my name is pretty unique -- most hits on my name are relevant to me -- and I have to be very careful about anything I make public. Even more so than most probably have to be.

Fortunately, I'm a pretty boring person and it's not been much a problem.

<comment><USER11> I have somewhat mixed feelings about having a unique [1] first/last name pair.

The bad case IMO is sharing an unusual but not unique pairing with someone who you really don't want to be confused with. Back pre-web, a friend of mine in NYC shared a name with someone who was involved in a fairly serious local baseball scandal. My friend received everything up to and including death threats on his voicemail.

[1] According to "deep web" searches, not entirely but the one or two other cases have no web presence and may well be deceased.

<comment><USER12> The uniqueness of my name has yet to bite me in the ass. I'm sure there are other Pavel Lishins (Pavels Lishin?) in Russia and Eastern Europe, but I appear to be the only one on this half of the globe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The modern policy of no customer support by these services is a little worrying.

I'm in a similar situation with google suspending my gmail account because I tried to make play store purchases while traveling (apparently this is a "suspicious access pattern").

Now I'm out 5 years worth of emails and have no way of contacting google (Despite being a paying google apps customer and registered on their payroll system). Frankly, I'd rather like to be able to pay to receive some support from these companies.

Oh well, at least they made my emails bounce.

tl;dr why don't web companies offer paid support to their users?

<comment><USER14> See, you're confused - you actually think you're a customer of these companies.

I'd venture to guess that they do have customer service, but you do t fall in to the customer category. Now if you started a $100,000 'branding campaign' with them- the you'd be a customer.

<comment><USER13> I pay for gmail, I pay for drive, I pay for adwords, I pay for google apps, I pay for GCE and play store. (and undoubtedly a plethora of other services I couldn't remember)

I think I fit at least some definition of "customer".

And I'm still not asking for free support, I'd gladly pay Google 2k an hour to get someone to assist me.

<comment><USER15> You're paying to be a power user, and you're still not a customer in Google's eyes. As the parent said, the only true customers are the advertisers who buy your information and eyeballs from Google.

<comment><USER16> I'm beginning to think that Google is too large to have actual customers, per se, since _any_ group of paying users is still too small for Google to need to pay attention to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Terrible stuff by Instagram. Iniesta the footballer already has a very successful (5.4 million followers) account on Twitter using the handle andresiniesta8. It looks like versions 1-7 have been deleted. However the guy who wrote the article already has a Twitter account using ainiesta, which clearly isn't one of these imitation or mock accounts. The footballer hasn't moved Instagram handles, but it does look like Instagram are directing the author's alias to the footballer's existing account. Awful.

<comment><USER18> fyi, it's "8" cause that's the number on his jersey.

<comment><USER19> And using a combination of their name and jersey number as a username is very common among athletes, it doesn't mean they couldn't get just the name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This happened to my friend's wife a few years ago - an Instagram employee hijacked her username: [https://medium.com/@behoff/they-say-nothing-will- change-5c54...](https://medium.com/@behoff/they-say-nothing-will- change-5c546662abc0)

After being picked up by some of the bigger tech sites, they returned the username to her.

</comment><comment><USER21> The Instagram FAQs on their site say that account names are first come, first serve.

They say that if the name you want is on an account that seems inactive you should consider periods, numbers, underscores, or abbreviations to come up with an available name.

They say he violated their terms of service. I took a quick look at the TOS, and don't see anything that having the same name as a celebrity and using your name for your Instagram account would violate. I suppose it is possible that he violated some other term completely unrelated to this whole name thing, and that's why he got kicked off, and then they gave it to the football player even though the football player already had an established, verified, active Instagram account using the same name he uses for his verified Twitter account.

There is one TOS term that his name could be construed as violating, if one were take a ridiculous reading of the term. That's Basic Term 12: "You must not use domain names or web URLs in your username without prior written consent from Instagram". The football player has the andresiniesta.es domain. If we take "domain name" in the rule to include the domain name with the TLD portion removed, then any username with the string "andresiniesta" in it would be covered.

</comment><comment><USER22> I went to Instagram address he mentions and looks like all photos are still there. I'm not sure how designer guy looks like, but it's definitely not football players' headshot: [https://instagram.com/ainiesta/](https://instagram.com/ainiesta/)

<comment><USER23> Maybe Instagram restored it (once they were outed)?

<comment><USER24> We'll never know the whole story. I'm sure it's too damn embarrassing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I had a similar thing happening to me. Friends were traveling and shared their photos on Instagram, so I decided to log in to my old account which I hadn't accessed in a few years.

On the web page, it says "Your username or password was incorrect." Upon trying to recover my password with my email address I get " That e-mail address or username doesn't have an associated user account. Are you sure you've registered?" When trying with my username instead I get "Sorry, this user is not active."

I decided to try to login with the app, and there I got a message basically stating that my account was disabled because of not following the Terms and Conditions (same as OPs, don't remember the exact wording in English). They don't tell you what you did to break those conditions. They do tell you however, that there is no possible way to contact them or to get your account back. All your images are gone, your friends can't follow or contact you again and there is no way you can reactivate the account or get access to the user name. No email was ever sent notifying me of this happening, ever.

Worst "customer" experience ever.

<comment><USER8> > I decided to log in to my old account which I hadn't accessed in a few > years.

If you hadn't logged in for a few years why would you expect it to still be open? It's a perfectly reasonable policy to recapture unused accounts.

<comment><USER26> So, who defines "unused account"? I mean, I see your point in this instance, but who wants the chore of logging in to all their accounts every 6 months (or more often?) just to avoid losing them? What if merely logging in becomes "not using it enough" for some services?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Assuming Instagram is behind this, it is bad business to do that. Instagram by itself is nothing, it's users are what made the service, and showing a lack of respect for them it is their worse publicity.

</comment><comment><USER28> One part of Internet's success is that it's decentralized.

startup idea: Make it easy for "normal" people to have their own "Instagram" or blog.

<comment><USER29> It wouldn't be Hacker News if the one genuinely good comment wasn't downvoted :/.

A friend made the same true, idealistic, and completely impossible proposal on his blog:

[http://frabjousdei.net/post/108191939171/rfcs-not- ipos](http://frabjousdei.net/post/108191939171/rfcs-not-ipos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It seems like he should be at least notified before they seized his account, though.

<comment><USER22> What could be the grounds of taking account away from him? This guys is not a spammer, everyone who sees photos there can figure it's not a football player, but different Andreas Iniesta. Football guy could get verified account with nickname Iniesta official or smth. Very sad story, I feel for the poor guy :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> He got his account back. Instagram is sorry[0].

[0] [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33592599](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33592599)

</comment><comment><USER32> If we operate under the assumption that with free services like facebook, twitter, instagram, gmail, etc -- can and will delete our content and revoke access to the service without warning at any point in time -- doesn't that make the service somewhat useless?

Most users operate under the assumption that there is some sort of guarantee that their account will continue to exist and they will have a consistent day- to-day experience. That is a BIG part that makes the service actually "useful".

<comment><USER33> What bugs me is when a service changes, and you lose your own name... Not talking my given/family name, but the online handle I've used since before the web is "tracker1" ... that was my alias on my google profile (before the switch to google+), and it still hasn't been offered back... half the first to pages of results on google's own search refer to my profile on other sites... it's irksome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The thing I find oddest here is that the his friends are now set as following the new account of the football player. Seems like at the very least there is a bug that needs to be fixed there.

I restrict access to my instagram account to approved followers. Now I wonder if someone could take over an handle of one of my friends and then have access to my posts.

<comment><USER35> >The thing I find oddest here is that the his friends are now set as following the new account of the football player. Seems like at the very least there is a bug that needs to be fixed there.

I doubt it's a bug. Someone probably complained saying something like "Hey, this guy isn't Andres Iniesta. Someone's squatting on his name to get extra hits." If that's the case anyone following that account must have meant to follow the athlete.

They should have contacted the author first, of course, but companies offering free services don't have the money for customer support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks like he's back in business:

 _5 hours after writing this article, my account has been restored, but still no news from Instagram about what happened or an apology._

</comment><comment><USER36> Well my twitter handle is @pdp and there is a political party in Nigeria also named PDP. There is also this thing called "personal development plan". In other words, I need twitter spam filter because people don't know the difference between @ and #. Anyway, if you don't want to get in trouble just come up with a super unique username. Do the same for your personal site and your business site.

</comment><comment><USER37> Well, I'm not going to sign up for Instagram. Wankers. Smells like desperation when companies are willing to alienate their core like this.

</comment><comment><USER38> It is shameful that it was done, but at the root, it seems to come down to: what is the product, and who are the users being swapped to who is the product, and what are the users.

Free services seem easier to hit critical mass with a low barrier to entry, yet unless it is a paid-by-end-users service, end users seem to get trampled like this.

</comment><comment><USER39> Same thing happened to me. The trend of larger online services having non- existent customer support worries me.

</comment><comment><USER40> What really weirds me out is why didn't they go for his full name instead of a shortened version? If it was the PR team, they could have a better time telling people to follow him on Twitter (edit: I mean Instagram) based on his full name wouldn't they? Weird.

</comment><comment><USER41> And this while thousands or more spam bot accounts are added daily, and while Instagram could easily ask or force the user to change is handle. Anyway, good to know.

</comment><comment><USER42> The hyperbole of the talk of violated rights took my sympathy about down to zero. It's a shitty move on Instagram's part to be sure, but I don't think even the most European of Europe's governments defends the right to the Instagram account name of your choice.

<comment><USER43> But probably have the right to not get your IP destroyed. And just transfer the account once it is created.

<comment><USER44> This is assuming that instagram held the only copy of those pictures (so loss leads to IP being destroyed). I doubt anyone would keep the only copy of any serious IP on a third-party free service. (just to make things clear - I'm not defending instagram, but deleting photos on a service users don't pay for can hardly be called 'destroying IP')

<comment><USER45> Instagram's TOS probably gives it an explicit, perpetual license to your IP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Get a new Instagram account. It is a free service.

<comment><USER27> The worse advise. If anything, he should just keep away from Instagram and never go back.

<comment><USER46> I disagree. If one finds a service valuable, it continues to be valuable if you have a new username. I am not excusing Instagram's behaviour. But I am pointing out the fallacy in believing that you own your username.

<comment><USER32> For the service to be valuable, users are led to believe that when they create a username and a password for themselves, their username will not simply disappear and access revoked at any point in time. That would be quite a useless service wouldn't it?

<comment><USER15> Indeed, especially for a service like Instagram, your identity is your entire reason for using the service. By taking away the article author's username, they also took the entire account away, including any content he posted. For most users this represents months or years of interactions and activity they can never get back. Depending on how much they use the service, their entire online identity could potentially be lost.

<comment><USER46> Outsourcing your identity to a company that treats you as the product - <USER2> luck with that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spy scandal to hurt Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/internet/Spy-scandal-to-hurt-Microsoft-Oracle-Cisco/articleshow/25871537.cms?utm_content=bufferb37ed&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

<comment><USER2> I think that this is more about China specifically growing its internal development than it is a Snowden effect. Don't get me wrong, I'd be incredibly uncomfortable hosting a non-US site reliant on hardware or software for countries very complicit with the illegal data retention of the NSA for years now.

I think that freedom and liberty are very important, and that our own government has consistently compromised both for the benefit of a small few.

<comment><USER3> I am not sure; Here they say that CISCO also down in Brasil, Mexico, India and Russia

[http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/11/14/nsa-spying- cr...](http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/11/14/nsa-spying-crushes-us- tech-companies-in-emerging-markets-an.html)

I guess because of these sophisticated man in the middle attacks that the NSA is doing lately; I guess one has to fiddle a lot with BGP routing tables for these ...

What I don't understand is: why are Chinese routers supposed to be more secure? absurd!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of my managers asked me to look at Cisco 'Meraki' as a possible provisioning system for our work Macs last week. Although it does look rather nice, the interface certainly is user-friendly and fast, I'm extremely uncomfortable handing root permissions for all of our macs to a US based company (or any company, to be honest).

It really isn't long until being a USA based company is going to be a real problem for anyone wanting to offer any kind of IT services outside of the States.</comment>


Apple Sold More Macs and iDevices Than All Windows PCs Sold in Holiday Quarter - <AUTHOR> http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/2/12/apple-passes-microsoft/? <comment><USER3> To me, those are two different market segments. Call me back when Apple sells more Macs than PCs.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, but that's another statistic for another day. This isn't a story about market segments, but rather Apple platforms/strategy versus Microsoft platforms/strategy.

Where I think the analysis falls down is that Microsoft should be awarded XBox system sales on its side of the ledger -- surely they're at least as much of a computer as an iPod Touch?

<comment><USER5> They're not. I think it's more difficult to make the argument that an XBOX is used for general computing purposes (and would therefore warrant a great level of activity, activity which overlaps significantly with what you would do on a laptop/desktop) than you would for an iDevice.

Though even amongst iDevices you can make distinctions. It's pretty blurry which is why I think the OP seems to be right (though not at that extreme), but I don't think including the XBOX would be a good enough offset.

<comment><USER4> As far as I'm concerned, you can either compare market segments (computers OR phones) or you can compare product strategies.

Apple's strategy is focusing on small form factor consumer products. Microsoft's (successful) strategies are focusing on workplace and living room. Both companies appear to have successful respective strategies, though the big story is how Apple's new products have stolen share from a huge number of competitors:

      - Sony Walkman, et al
      - Nokia, et al
      - <USER2>
      - Windows computers

And probably others.

<comment><USER6> Apple is also selling into the living room. The Apple TV sells 6-7 million of them a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh yeah?! Well General Electric sold more toasters, conventional ovens, microwaves, light bulbs, refrigerators, washers, dryers, and ovens than Apple did Macs and iThingies! So take that! Hah!

<comment><USER8> Are you sure? It's been ages since I've purchased any of those things, yet I have 5 iPods, 3 iPhones, 4 iPads, 2 iMacs, and 2 MBPs, sitting within 50' of me right now. And the light bulbs I've purchased in the past 2 years have not been from GE. Just sayin'

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting how people compare Apple's sales of different categories to its competitors single category.

<comment><USER10> They're comparing it because people are starting to use mobile devices as replacements for PCs. Apple wants you to buy an iPhone or iPad over a Mac because it has higher margins, but the point is that Microsoft has a steadily decreasing share of the "computing" market which could have been potential Windows/Windows Phone licenses sold.

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BgTIjxNCUAA- Dw_.png](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BgTIjxNCUAA-Dw_.png)

<comment><USER11> In that case they need to include Android phones and tablets, Windows phones and tablets and Blackberries.

<comment><USER12> Since when did android phones or blackberries run windows?

<comment><USER13> I think he was getting at the licensing fees that Android manufacturers and Google pay to Microsoft on a per-phone basis.

<comment><USER12> That's a far-fetched reason to include android devices in the category of windows pcs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You couldn't handle being told the silliness of your analysis which is why you closed your comment thread. You are comparing a single product line from a company to Apple's whole armory and have the audacity to call it historic. Shame

<comment><USER15> Exactly. "iDevices" include iPods. What exactly is the point of comparing iPods to PCs? If you're going to do that, you should add in Xbox and Windows server sales on the Microsoft side.

<comment><USER16> If you'd read the post, you'd know that it includes iPod Touches only. And neither Xboxes nor servers are personal computing devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The comments to this post were entertaining but not very valuable, > especially since almost all of them made complaints about things that > weren't actually said. So I've closed comments.

Yeah, might want to close the article for similar reasons.

</comment><comment><USER18> I for one enjoy this trend despite being a fan of Microsoft more than Apple. I can now envision Microsoft as the scrappy underdog fighting the Apple hegemony. Ah, to become a hipster Microsoft fan.

(I'm only half kidding. I've had friends suggest that their kids see Windows Phones are more appealing than iPhones because iPhones are for adults. These are probably oddball kids, but it made me laugh. Microsoft? Hip? Surely you're mistaken.)

<comment><USER19> I had three iPhones (3G, 4, 4s) and my Windows Phone Lumia 928 is the best phone I've ever had.

As for iPhone, it really is the grandparents that are buying them now. Between Android and Windows Phone, there are a lot of great options.

Although I am currently trying to think of a way to get the Lumia Icon while I'm still under contract.

<comment><USER18> The sound isolation in the drag-racing video is quite compelling. If I were on Verizon, I would be doing the same.

I'm on AT&T, so I need to wait for a similar 5" device. No phablets allowed in my household! I'm hoping they have something fitting right in time for my 920 contract to wrap up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why would the author count iPhone but have to optionally count Windows Phone?

<comment><USER21> That would require a change to the title of the article so maybe that's why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Really, why can't somebody make a PC laptop that can compete... Required things to sell:

1\. Good battery life. (7hrs or more under light use)

2\. Good form factor - this means light weight, metal chassis + decent smallish lightweight charger, ideally with non-fatal charge connection when power cord is tripped over by animal/small child/drunk person. I don't want a 2kg laptop if I have to carry around a 1kg charger.

3\. SSD + good GFX + high res panel

4\. Good keyboard + trackpad

The only thing I've seen come close is this: [http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/08/gigabytes-aurous-dual- gpu...](http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/08/gigabytes-aurous-dual-gpu-one- inch/)

And that gets a three hour battery life, which fails on my no. 1 priority list. Looks like I just need to pay up for a Macbook Pro Retina, which according to Apple's site, is "New" and it was released in October 2013.

I will happily drop £2k+ for the above.

<comment><USER23> I'm sure there will be something that I've overlooked that disqualifies it from your requirements, but I've been using a Yoga 2 which seems to do what you want. Graphics aren't great (Intel :/), but it runs DOTA 2, so that's me covered. Decent battery life (6hr of video playback), excellent form factor (kinda the point of the machine), 3200x1800 screen, and nice leopard (though that's subjective I guess)

<comment><USER24> I do have to say that i love the leopard on the Yoga 2 also. For me the 13" screen isn't a problem for my 40+ year old eyes, but I do understand why someone wants a larger form factor. For me the portability and tablet<->laptop convertibility are way more important.

<comment><USER22> This is one of the more exciting machines on the market. It's about the only thing that tempts me...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd like to point out that Microsoft has sold more copies of Win8 than Mac has sold of OS X since it has been released. However, I do like the idea of Microsoft as being our last hope of fighting the Apple monoculture.

<comment><USER19> Actually, Vista has a higher market share than OS X 10.9:

[http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share....](http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> except you forgot xboxs and windows servers probably.

</comment><comment><USER27> Lets take a step back, fundamentally MS, Google, and Apple are all successful companies.

They all have different approaches to the market and their numbers of units shipped, profit per unit, total profit, and total revenue vary wildly.

</comment><comment><USER28> Would counting surface devices help?

<comment><USER11> Counting Android phones would.

<comment><USER12> Android phones don't run windows and are not made by Microsoft.</comment></comment></comment>


Cloud Checklist - a Task Management Tool from Skybuffer [Review] - <AUTHOR>

Tasks, tasks, tasks…We are still trying to manage them using pen and paper. It is fast, but not optimal. How many times have you forgotten your notes? How often have you thrown away your written task lists by chance? You've made it hundreds and hundreds of times…
Computers, notebooks, mobile devices are all around us and what can be better than to plan and save your scheduling online? I prefer to use web clients because I swap between notebook, devices and terminal computers during the day. There are plenty enough online task management solutions available but I have selected one for me that is HTML5, fast, intuitive and lightweight. My choice is Cloud Checklist http://apps.skybuffer.com/checklist from Skybuffer. Nothing else – just multiple task lists management, tasks grouping and scheduling.
The best feature I like in Cloud Checklist is the scheduling overview. The main three reports can show me scheduled tasks from all lists I have access to in a monthly, weekly or daily view. I can also see completed tasks from the past for up to 365 days.
If needed it is possible to have a print version that is clear and nice formatted.
I can also share my task list with friends or colleagues via email and control their authorization. So, those who should just see my list will not be able to edit it. And that is excellent!
The main technical idea that is implemented in Cloud Checklist is the push changes from server method, so no need to click refresh button any more, you can enjoy collaborative work and get changes to the opened in browser list immediately when it is done by another person.
Cloud Checklist from Skybuffer is very competitive to the market leaders solution and is the very good alternative for those who like speed, simplicity and collaborative work. <comment><AUTHOR> Here is a link to avoid Ctrl+C (+V): <http://apps.skybuffer.com/checklist>

</comment><comment><USER2> Thank you! I've tried it and it looks very good! Simple and lightweight. Can help to get things done

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice try and nice application</comment>


The Best Cities For Tech Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2012/05/17/the-best-cities-for-tech-jobs/ <comment><USER2> Good to know Boston didn't make the cut</comment>


Spooky: How NSA' Surveillance Algorithms See Into Your Life - <AUTHOR> http://techpp.com/2012/07/24/nsa-surveillance-algorithms-see-into-your-life/

<comment><USER2> What I want to know is:

1\. How to get a copy of your own dossier

2\. What's the most practical way to protect your internet traffic? TOR? Routing through a VPN tunnel outside of the US?

If this surveillance is even half as extensive as these articles portray, I just want to throw my hands up and not give a damn any more. It just seems like a lost cause.

<comment><USER3> <http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/foia/foia_handbook.shtml>

Good luck...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand why everyone assumes any and all spying the NSA does is used against US citizens. None of these articles ever mention USSID 18. Why is that?

<comment><USER4> Also Executive Order 12333 Part 2.3

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have previously joked & ridiculed people for exagerrating concerns on FB & Google's privacy policies. But what NSA doing now is creepy to the core.

<comment><AUTHOR> And they've been doing it for a while now

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The New Yorker wrote a much better (and longer) piece about this last year.

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all)

<comment><AUTHOR> So because they wrote it, nobody else shouldn't? :)

<comment><USER7> They ought to improve upon it, or give updates at least.

<comment><USER8> They did. New whistleblowers giving new information, along with updated progress on legal action.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: are my conversion ratios great...or shite? - <AUTHOR>

* For every 100 people who view my front page, 60 try my app.
* For every 100 people who try my app, 33 give it a reasonable work-out.
* For every 100 people who give it a reasonable work-out, 5 people become users.
* And we don't have a paying customer yet.
Is this great, mediocre or shite?  (my app is www.folderboy.com/index.htm?f=cv)
If you run a web app, what is your app, and what are your conversion rates?  And where do you source most of your traffic from?
EDIT: only just started promoting thru social networking sites, and an Ask HN post.  So only around 400-500 page views so far. <comment><USER2> First of all, congratulations-- looks like you've got a nice site and product.

Second, even more congratulations-- the fact that you are measuring the CR the way you are from the beginning shows some understanding of the process.

I think that trying to make judgments based on 500 page views is premature-- right now, it is good to figure out your baseline numbers, so that you can start doing A/B testing to improve the various ratios. If I were in your shoes, I'd try to spend a couple weeks trying to increase the traffic, and then go to work on the CRO.

But: getting one serious user out of every 100 pageviews sounds like an excellent start to me.

The lack of paying customers isn't a big surprise, based upon your pricing scheme: there's no incentive for people to start paying until they reach the limits you've imposed (1000 notes or 500MB), and it's going to take your early users some time to get there.

The product looks slick-- personally, I have a bunch of OneNote notebooks in my Dropbox, which gives me the same effect in a satisfactory way, so I'm not motivated to switch to Folderboy-- but it looks like a service I could easily pitch to others.

One small thing: when your resources permit, you might want to hire a voice actor to re-do the YouTube video. I think it would add a "professional touch".

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickable: <http://www.folderboy.com/index.htm?f=cv>

Shiny landing page, doesn't suit me, but I'm regularly referred to as "bizarre" by people who watch me react with computers, so that's no surprise. Are you doing A/B testing on your layout? I'd change the

 _> FolderBoy allows you to jot down your ideas and find them again with search-as-you-type._

... to say "Jot down anything - find instantly with search-as-you-type."

But as I say, don't trust my judgement on this - do the testing. Tinker, tinker, tinker, tinker, with measurements.

Anyway, for my own personal understanding, I've scaled up the ratios you've given to see what 10,000 page views would produce

      10,000 @ 60% gives 6,000 try-outs
       6,000 @ 33% gives 2,000 reasonable work-outs
       2,000 @  5% gives   100 users.

So 1% of your views turn into users. I'd've thought that was quite good, but I have no experience, so that's _a priori_ reasoning, not the voice of "Been there, done that."

And good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a small ecommerce site that has an ~1% conversion rate. If I'm reading your post correctly you have about a 1% user conversion rate, so I would say you're average based on my dataset of 1 other site ;).

You really don't know what your conversions are yet though. I'd say wait another week if you want to get an idea of your actual conversion rate, possibly much longer if you have a long sales cycle. My site tends to have a very short time-to-buy, so it's much easier to get an idea for these numbers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Depends on the traffic. The conversion rate I get for people who google for "Tarsnap" is about 10x higher than the conversion rate I get for people following links from my blog, which is about 10x higher than the conversion rate I got from Google Adwords.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers. Yeah, sorry, should have mentioned "not statistically significant". We've only just started promoting: so around 500 page views.

<comment><USER5> Statistical significance is certainly an issue, but not the issue I was referring to. I should have said "depends on the _type of_ traffic".

You'll get a much better conversion rate on clicks resulting from your users saying "hey, resdirector wrote this really cool app" than you get from you saying "Ask HN: Please review my app".

As a general rule, sites which produce more traffic tend to have much lower conversion rates, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comments, guys...I'll reply and thank individually in the morning. Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER6> Numbers look good from here.</comment>


Show HN: My roommate expense tracking app - <AUTHOR> http://www.myroommateapp.com I built this for my roommates and I, really quickly over a weekend.  Some of my friends are telling me I should take the time to promote it and try to charge for it and turn it into a revenue stream.  What do you guys think? <comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE: Some screen shots... I think the Heroku account is hanging a little bit:

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/169446/Screen%20Shot%202011-12-15%20...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/169446/Screen%20Shot%202011-12-15%20at%202.23.02%20PM.png) [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/169446/Screen%20Shot%202011-12-15%20...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/169446/Screen%20Shot%202011-12-15%20at%202.22.57%20PM.png)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I built this really quickly over a weekend for my roommate and I to keep track of who owes who money.

I've gotten a few friends to use it, and some encouragement to turn it into a pay-for app.

What does HN think?

<comment><USER2> I think you should test: * value creation hypothesis * growth hypothesis * value capture hypothesis

Value creation: what is it about this app that the users value? E.g. is it because the users don't have to deal with pen and paper, and that in a messy house sometimes the paper gets lost, or the person forgets, etc. What do they value about it? It's probably not "I like it because it is cool" <\-- unlikely someone who isn't your friend will say that.

Growth: How are you going to find other people who will need this? How can you get in front of people who have room mates, who have this problem you're solving. There's no "room mate conference", or "room mate meetup", so you have to be creative. Maybe hit up people on Craigslist posting ads for room mates; odds are they've been living with room mates before and have experienced the pain you're solving.

Value capture: How can you "monetize". Straight up charge for it? Ads? Testing willingness to pay is key. Think about it, some things in life you've come across that you think is, "wow that's cool", but when they asked you if you would pay, did you open up your wallet?

I hope this will help spur some thoughts!

Best

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea. I just signed up. As I was trying to "create a new house" the site stalled.

Maybe you could upload some screen shots so that I could know what I'm signing up for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it still stalling? It's on Heroku's free plan, so that may be an issue.</comment></comment>


Device Lets the Blind "See" with Their Tongues - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=device-lets-blind-see-with-tongues

<comment><USER2> Those kind of experiments are so crazy, in a good sense. I wonder how different it is to actually seeing, and isn't there technology today that can give eyesight to blinds? Unless this is meant to be used by people who have had injuries to their eyes

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This has been posted before but hasn't attracted much attention (not since 4 years ago anyway).</comment>


Miracles happen, but faith is a prerequisite - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@marcraygoza/miracles-are-a-girls-best-friend-b6ee158bef3f <comment><USER2> The post doesn't justify the title, unless it's a metaphor about never giving up.</comment>


Fukushima Radiation Detected Off California Coast - <AUTHOR> http://www.iflscience.com/environment/harmless-levels-fukushima-radiation-detected-california-coast

<comment><USER2> Radiation level per cube feet of water is low.

Is there any study on the Radiation level in fishes and if there are any significant concentration of radioactive materials in fish/crab that lives in the bottom of ocean like Alaska King Crab or Halibut fish.

<comment><USER3> There likely wouldn't be any significant concentration if they'd put the reactor through a grinder and dumped the whole thing in.

The Pacific Ocean has a _lot_ of water in it.</comment></comment>


Idea: git push requests - <AUTHOR> http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/idea:_git_push_requests/

<comment><USER2> Something like this what I think github needs. Github should complement developers working using the cli. (git-send-email, git-format-patch, git-am). I hope they concentrate on this soon.</comment>


Founders at Work Interview: Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder, Apple Computer - <AUTHOR> http://foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "As a matter of fact, when we went public, I was a little disturbed that 5 people who had been with us in our little office from the start and had been so important—Randy Wigginton, Chris Espinosa, a couple of young kids, and a couple of older ones just hadn't gotten any stock. I felt that they were a part of this whole energy and excitement and passion for what computers were going to be and what we were doing and how right it was. If somebody is sitting there working till 2:00am with you, helping to write a little code, and says, "Wow that is a cool one," those words mean a lot to you and they deserve something. So I gave each of those 5 a large amount of stock, probably a million dollars in that day. And that was an early day for a million dollars."

Really respect him for doing the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8712260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8712260)</comment>


Links to Free Books on Programming - <AUTHOR> Please add links to free-to-download programming books (or other just a free book you recommend). <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming- books/bl...](https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming- books/blob/master/free-programming-books.md)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Xamarin.Forms Notes Book for Professionals: [https://books.goalkicker.com/XamarinFormsBook/](https://books.goalkicker.com/XamarinFormsBook/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Free Programming Books on Android development, C, C#, CSS, HTML, iOS development, Java, JavaScript, PowerShell, PHP, Python, SQL Sever etc

Link: [https://books.goalkicker.com](https://books.goalkicker.com)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

[https://automatetheboringstuff.com/2e/chapter0/](https://automatetheboringstuff.com/2e/chapter0/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> CLOJURE for the BRAVE and TRUE

[https://www.braveclojure.com/introduction/](https://www.braveclojure.com/introduction/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Eloquent JavaScript 3rd edition

[https://eloquentjavascript.net/](https://eloquentjavascript.net/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Higher-Order Perl

[https://hop.perl.plover.com/book/](https://hop.perl.plover.com/book/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Green Tea Press

        Think Python

[https://greenteapress.com/wp/think- python-2e/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/)

        Think Java

[https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-java/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/think- java/)

        Think Raku (How to Think Like a Computer Scientist)

[https://greenteapress.com/wp/think- perl-6/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-perl-6/)

        Think Stats

[https://greenteapress.com/wp/think- stats-2e/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-stats-2e/)

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        Think DSP

[https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-dsp/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/think- dsp/)

        Think Complexity

[https://greenteapress.com/wp/think- complexity-2e/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-complexity-2e/)

        Think Data Structures

[https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-data- structures/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-data-structures/)

        Think Modeling & Simulation in Python

[https://greenteapress.com/wp/modsimpy/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/modsimpy/)

        Think Physical Modeling in MATLAB

[https://greenteapress.com/wp/physical-modeling-in- matlab/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/physical-modeling-in-matlab/)

        Think OS

[https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-os/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/think- os/)

        The Little Book of Semaphores

[https://greenteapress.com/wp/semaphores/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/semaphores/)

        Think C/C++

[https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-c/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-c/)</comment>


Radiangames' revenue chart on iPhone/iPad for 2012. - <AUTHOR> http://www.radiangames.com/2012-the-year-of-unity-holiday-sale/

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for not using the original title but I thought it was pretty non- descript.</comment>