Substituting healthy plant proteins for red meat lowers risk for heart disease - <AUTHOR> https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/substituting-healthy-plant-proteins-for-red-meat-lowers-risk-for-heart-disease/ <comment><USER2> Over the last 5 years I have transitioned to an entirely plant-based diet and can't imagine ever going back. My entire life experience has changed dramatically in the form of mental clarity, sustained energy, and absence of cravings.

Sugar simply disappeared from my life and I haven't looked back, although it took a while for that to happen. Likewise, I eat cooked meals twice a week at most.

Most of my meals consist of raw food like vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds. I supplement things like flaxseed oil for omega fatty acids, and rely on plants such as wheatgrass, moringa leaf and turmeric for micronutrients.

Hemp protein has been one of my recent favorites, literal jet fuel for your body!

<comment><USER3> When I last tried it, the core trouble of a diet like this (to me) was increased cost. Like the other extreme (eating basically only meat), an atypical diet means you need to dip into uncommon ingredients in order to end up with a balanced diet (for plant matter, getting the vitamins you normally get from meat can be challenging - especially to your wallet).

How did you solve this? If you did not, what would you estimate the percentage increase of your food spending to be? Can you give some insight into what part of the world you are (Africa/Asia/Europe/North America/South America or something of that granularity is fine), if you are comfortable with doing so?

<comment><USER2> I think this (cost) is the biggest "roadblock" most people see when thinking about a plant-based diet. I currently live in Asia, but travel back and forth between Europe every few months.

One of the ways I solved this is by being comfortable to have meals that consist of nothing but raw food. So, raw nuts, raw vegetables and fruit, and legumes whenever I desire. But I also try to look at it realistically. For example, a tub of Kale Powder (120g) will set me back around 20USD. But, how likely am I to consume that tub in one day? In fact, it will last me for up to 4 weeks. The same goes for 350 grams of Hemp Protein. It's 20USD but I'm going to be having that over a period of at least 2 weeks.

One difference between Asia and Europe is that in Asia I can get a much bigger variety of fruit, which is generally my go-to food besides everything else. But even then, I never leave the supermarket having spent more than 30USD for 4-5 days worth of food.

If I had to be specific, for the entirety of a whole month I'll be spending about 250-300USD on food. I'm honestly not familiar with other diets and not sure how much they can run up over a month. What I do know is that I _never_ have any leftovers. Everything gets consumed one way or another.

<comment><USER3> I think for my location (Europe, mainly) that is a fairly typical amount of spending for a month of food. However, I spend that for roughly two people and from the times I've had to buy food in Asia (admittedly some years ago) it is quite a lot cheaper than it would be here.

That would put it at maybe twice as expensive (or even slightly more) as a non-restricted diet. Is that a fair assessment?

<comment><USER2> It depends on the way you look at it. I'm living a minimalistic lifestyle where food is actually my number one expense month to month. When I'm back in Europe, I never spend more than 150USD on food, not only because my options are oftentimes limited, but also because I get to pay the "local" price.

A lot of the popular Asian hotspots have gotten clever over the years, and are no longer afraid to charge foreigners an enormous premium. In the last year alone, I have had to walk away from numerous local sellers because they've gotten extremely greedy and won't accept any bargaining. If you know the local language, it helps a little.

I think if you're serious about making the switch, you first have to look at what you're eating right now. Is it healthy? Is it environmentally friendly? Does it make you feel good? What will you eat instead of meat? Do you even need dairy in your life or are you consuming it out of habit?

When I first started out I had no idea what I was doing, and I sort of winged it. But, gradually, I have learned to appreciate the many different varieties to food that I would have otherwise replaced with a slab of steak or a chicken breast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> South Indian vegetarian diet is primarily vegan.

Major source of protein is lentils and beans. Micronutrients are provided by eating a wide variety of vegetables, leaves and roots

<comment><USER5> > South Indian vegetarian diet is primarily vegan.

Please don't spread misinformation.

I'm a South Indian (Tamilian specifically) and we consume a lot of milk, curd, eggs on daily basis with meat and seafood (goat, chicken, vanjaram, crab, prawn, etc.) on at least weekly basis.

It is only a subset of Indian population categorically known to belong to the "Brahmin caste" that tend to be vegetarians. Otherwise we South Indians generally enjoy eating meat; it is being limited only due to economic reasons (for Brahmins the reasons are religious taste--they consider meat "repugnant"\--yet they consume dairy).

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

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- india-43581122](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43581122)

<comment><USER4> Read the sentence I wrote "the south Indian vegetarian diet" is "primarily vegan".

It naturally follows if you eat meat your diet isn't vegetarian. Compres?

If you're Tamil as you claim to be then you'd know the Tamil word for vegetarianism is "saivam" referring to saiva pillai community

Hope this helps.

In North india banias, jains, several kayastha communities are vegetarian and several brahmin communities are non vegetarian.

So when you say that the subset of Indian population that is vegetarian is only brahmin you are factually incorrect.

Please go easy on the hate. Bigotry isn't cool.

Peace!

<comment><USER5> > Read the sentence I wrote "the south Indian vegetarian diet" is "primarily > vegan".

The subset of South Indians on a vegetarian diet are not "primarily vegan" as they consume a lot of milk and curd on daily basis (and eggs and fish if any of them are wont to).

> If you're Tamil as you claim to be then you'd know the Tamil word for > vegetarianism is "saivam" referring to saiva pillai community

The existence of a Tamil word for vegetarianism referring to some community does not automatically prove that the subset of South Indians on a vegetarian diet are "primarily vegan" any more than the existence of a Tamil word for non-vegetarianism ("asaivam") indicates anything of that nature.

> Please go easy on the hate. Bigotry isn't cool.

Since when did pointing out the facts of the matter, so as to prevent the spread of ignorance, come to mean bigotry?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure in the vast majority of these "red meat" studies they don't differentiate between a steak bought raw at the butchers and a hot dog. I would bet that if there was a study on the difference between good quality steak vs processed garbage like hot dogs and spam, the results would be different.

Sadly most people will uncritically gulp up these "studies" in order to justify their being influenced to going vegetarian or vegan. One could argue that the authors themselves are working under such confirmation bias.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLk5AAKRem8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLk5AAKRem8)

</comment><comment><USER5> Actual Paper:

        Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials of Red
        Meat Consumption in Comparison With Various
        Comparison Diets on Cardiovascular Risk Factors

They did not actually measure heart disease; they just measured risk factors believed to correlate with it. The meaning of these findings depends on how you interpret the risk factors, which is much weaker than the title of this thread.</comment>


Twitter clients distribution in real-time - <AUTHOR> http://twitter-clients.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> Neat, but the frequent updates make it hard to read anything other than the major apps.

<comment><USER3> I think a pause button would be in order.

<comment><USER4> Other things that could help:

1) Group anything with less than 1 or 2ish percent into an "other" category

2) Show an alphabetized table below the pie chart.

3) Preserve label position when possible, only move the lines most of the time.

4) Animate between samples

But really, better than all this, would be a scrolling, stacked line graph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice work! I've created a very simple table presentation of it here: <http://cheeaun.github.com/twitter-clients-chart/>

Repo: <https://github.com/cheeaun/twitter-clients-chart>

</comment><comment><USER6> How did you get access to this data in real time?

<comment><USER7> It looks like your browser connects to the Twitter API.

<comment><USER8> Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't Same origin policy block that?

Edit: looking through the javascript, it seems that it pretty much just refreshes the page on a interval and the server gets the data from twitter

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using a library I made in node.js (<https://github.com/danzajdband/Tuiter>) to retrieve the tweets server-side via the Twitter Streaming API (<https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis>). Then I send the "Twitter client" to the client using Socket.IO. I'm refreshing the chart, not the entire site, every 500 ms = 1/2 seconds to update the chart.

I'm updating every 500ms and not every time I receive a tweet because of performance issues.

Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER6> Very cool, I was unaware of the streaming API. Nice work!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Surprised to see Ask.FM there. Didn't know it was so huge (and that their Twitter integration was so huge).

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm amazed that twitter for blackberry has as many users as twitter for android and iphone!

<comment><USER11> HN fads seldom match reality.</comment></comment>


I just do theory (Winner of the 2007 Aaronson/Gasarch Complexity Theme Song Contest) - <AUTHOR> http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=398

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.scottaaronson.com/jdtheory.mp3></comment>


How to Automate Database Migrations in MongoDB Using Nodejs - <AUTHOR> https://101node.io/blog/how-to-automate-database-migrations-mongodb-using-nodejs/ <comment><USER2> This is why I can't take mongodb or nodejs seriously.

First off: you need two separate third party packages to achieve `mkdir -p` and `rm -rf`? How is that not a giant red flag for anyone reading this?

Secondly: this is exactly why I don't buy the "having to define a schema slows down dev, so we can't use sql".

You clearly _do_ have a schema, it's just that it exists almost solely in your application code (i _hope_ you at least have indexes in the db?). But now because your schema is changing rapidly you need a way to update the schemaless documents to meet... the new schema.

So now you're back writing more fucking javascript to update the schema of your documents that are "schemaless" because your schema changes so often.

Did I miss anything?

<comment><USER3> You have good points. But as a person who felt like heaven when switched from Go back to Node.j to write a migration tool for migrating data from two different data sources which was frustrating in Go, I don't know what to say.. Node.js is good, it's very fast and with Typescript, it reduces a lot of unwanted bugs as well. May be it's me, but Javascript flows for me, but not other languages. I have reasonable knowledge in Java, very minimal experience in Go, PHP and Python. For me Node.js is the sweet spot. It's almost as fast as Go (way faster than Python and Ruby) and almost as productive as Python plus you don't need the context switch when you move from Frontend to Backend.. It's natively async which other languages are playing catchup. It's single thread model, though can feel limited, is god send and simple to reason especially when you get to debug thread introduced bugs in a million line Java stack which only occur in production. IMO with some multi process hack it's almost as capable as Java or Go.

Regarding MongoDB, it also serves a similar purpose (faster development). There are tradeoffs and if you are experienced in SQL you may feel irritated when reading it's shortcomings, it's understandable.

<comment><USER2> My issue with both is basically that the things people claim to be 'better' about both are really not, as evidenced by the work required to compensate for those 'features'.

No schema? Great I can just keep changing my app's code. Oh wait but now I need to either handle migrations in my app or run a separate script to migrate everything. So there is a schema, it just isn't enforced by the database layer, and thus can't be migrated by the database layer.

Single threaded-async? Great, now I can just run a single process and handle heaps of requests. Oh, but also, can someone work on a way to not have a million nested callbacks? Yes, that's right, we basically want to be able to write code that will run sequentially, regardless of the 'event loop'.

I'm not against alternatives to SQL databases. I think LDAP is a _great_ example of a non-SQL data store, that still has a schema, and it's proven to work in huge environments.

I'm not fixed to a single specific language either, and I even write Javascript sometimes, but I feel like a lot of the time, it's used in spite of it's characteristics, not because of them.</comment></comment></comment>


The Google Stack [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://malteschwarzkopf.de/research/assets/google-stack.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> It's interesting to compare this with the Facebook stack, drawn by the same author:

[http://malteschwarzkopf.de/research/assets/facebook- stack.pd...](http://malteschwarzkopf.de/research/assets/facebook-stack.pdf)

…and it would be doubly interesting to see the "related work" arrows between the different companies' infrastructure platforms. We'd need a 3D visualization for that though.

<comment><USER2> I'd take this chart with a grain of salt, given the FB paper. Peregrine is no longer in service, IIRC. It was a friendly rival to Scuba, and was eventually replaced by Presto, which is not even mentioned. Also not mentioned are several important things like the pub/sub ecosystem built on Scribe. Haystack is long dead, except for maybe some archived stuff. Lastly, PHP-to-C++ has not been a thing since early 2012.

<comment><USER3> Original author here.

This is interesting -- I tried to do my best to find out what's still in use and what is deprecated based on public information; happy to amend if anything is incorrect. (If you have publicly accessible written sources saying so, that'd be ideal!)

Note that owing to its origin (as part of my PhD thesis), this chart only mentions systems about which scientific, peer-reviewed papers have been published. That's why Scribe and Presto are missing; I couldn't find any papers about them. For Scribe, the Github repo I found explicitly says that it is no longer being maintained, although maybe it's still used internally.

Re Haystack: I'm surprised it's deprecated -- the f4 paper (2014) heavily implies that it is still used for "hot" blobs.

Re HipHop: ok, I wasn't sure if it was still current, since I had heard somewhere that it's been superseded. Couldn't find anything definite saying so, though. If you have a pointer, that'd be great.

BTW, one reason I posted these on Twitter was the hope to get exactly this kind of fact-checking going, so I'm pleased that feedback is coming :-)

<comment><USER2> HipHop's replacement was pretty widely reported: [http://www.wired.com/2013/06/facebook-hhvm- saga/](http://www.wired.com/2013/06/facebook-hhvm-saga/)

This link has papers on pub/sub, HHVM, and so on: [https://research.facebook.com/publications/](https://research.facebook.com/publications/)

Re Haystack: possible I am misremembering, or the project to completely replace Haystack stalled since I left.

If you want to gather a more complete picture of infrastructure at these companies I suggest, well, not imposing the strange limitation of only reading peer-reviewed papers. Almost none of the stuff I worked on ended up in conference proceedings.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, I've added HHVM and marked HipHop as superseded.

I also added Wormhole, which I think is the pub/sub system you're referring to (published in NSDI 2015: [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/nsdi15/nsdi15...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/nsdi15/nsdi15-paper- sharma.pdf)).

Updated version at original URL: [http://malteschwarzkopf.de/research/assets/facebook- stack.pd...](http://malteschwarzkopf.de/research/assets/facebook-stack.pdf)

Regarding the focus on academic papers: I agree that this does not reflect the entirety of what goes on inside companies (or indeed how open they are; FB and Google also release lots of open-source software). Certainly, only reading the papers would be a bad idea. However, a peer-reviewed paper (unlike, say, a blog post) is a permanent, citable reference and is part of the scientific literature. This sets a quality bar (enforced through peer review, which deemed the description to be plausible and accurate), and allows the amount of information to remain manageable. The number of other sources of information makes them impractical to write up concisely, and it is hard to say what ought to be included and what should not when going beyond published papers.

I don't think anyone should base their perception of how Google's or Facebook's stack works on these charts and bibliographies -- not least because they will quickly be out of date. However, I personally find them useful as a quick reference to comprehensive, high-quality descriptions of systems that are regularly mentioned in discussions :-)

<comment><USER4> Other ways to get information:

1\. Ask the developers per email.

2\. Fly out to SF, visit the campus, have lunch.

Will work for FB (I do it all the time), Google people won't tell you anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I'm looking at this diagram I'm struck by how much it diverges from the typical entities invoked when we generally describe a tech stack.

There's almost no discussion of language or framework or "patterns" in the software idiom sense. Instead it's largely a wide variety of data stores and access layers.

Bad programmers worry about code, good programmers worry about data structures?

<comment><USER6> I think it's a matter of scale, rather than quality - we obviously use languages and frameworks and patterns at Google.

<comment><USER5> Scale of operations at Google, or conceptual scale of the diagram?

And if you feel like language and framework choice plays a significant enough role at Google that "stack" in the more traditional sense is something that's carefully considered by engineering, I'd love to hear about the details.

<comment><USER6> The scale of the diagram, though obviously a diagram of that scale can only be drawn for an organization with operations at that scale - so kind of both.

I've mostly done backend/data stuff at Google, so I can't speak to traditional web dev decisions, but I've written design docs which discuss the tradeoffs between using Bigtable and Spanner, or Flume vs. Mapreduce, or one serving strategy vs. another, for some specific thing. Maybe those choices are vaguely analogous to choosing between Postgres or Mongo, nginx or Apache, etc. I imagine the guys who write webapps (not Search, obviously, but internal apps or things like our help pages) consider whether to use App Engine, Angular, Django, etc. on a per-app basis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting is that much of this is externalized through Google Cloud in one way or another:

\- GFS/Colossus = GCS

\- Borg = Kubernetes

\- Dremel = BigQuery

\- BigTable = BigTable (naturally)

\- FlumeJava,MapReduce,MillWheel = Dataflow

<comment><USER8> GFS/Colossues are distributed file systems, which GCS doesn't really address (I think GCS is akin to AWS' S3?)

<comment><USER9> Yep, but GCS is probably powered by GFS

<comment><USER10> GFS is so dead few people even remember using it. But to say that something is "based on GFS" or "based on Colossus" is to say very little. If it stores data it is eventually "based on Colossus". You could say just as much if you said it was "based on ext4".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google has many services. This diagram means little if it does not specify what services use what parts of the stack.

<comment><USER12> All services need to process and store large amounts of data. For that they need the building blocks firming the core stack which most projects (YouTube seems to be the big exception from what I hear) share. That is shown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> An interesting exercise in blind men describing the elephant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Malte Schwarzkopf is the first author of the Omega paper:

[http://eurosys2013.tudos.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/paper/S...](http://eurosys2013.tudos.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/paper/Schwarzkopf.pdf)

...so not entirely blind.

<comment><USER10> One of the reasons Omega failed was because its authors went up in an ivory tower and ignored everything about what was actually happening in Google datacenters for years. That a diagram this full of WTF could be produced by one of the Omega authors does not surprise me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It looks like there might be some missing parts to this. I was under the impression Google has a layer of MariaDB databases somewhere.

<comment><USER14> Are you thinking of this? [https://github.com/youtube/vitess](https://github.com/youtube/vitess)

<comment><USER13> That is definitely it, it looks like Youtube uses MySQL/MariaDB. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How about Mesa?</comment>


Tolkien's annotated map of Middle-earth discovered in copy of Lord of the Rings - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/23/jrr-tolkien-middle-earth-annotated-map-blackwells-lord-of-the-rings <comment><USER2> "It shows what Blackwell's called "the exacting nature" of Tolkien's creative vision: he corrects place names, provides extra ones, and gives Baynes a host of suggestions about the map's various flora and fauna."

You've got to respect the man for his attention to detail. To the outsider it might seem as if it were near insanity levels (fully creating multiple language families for instance [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_constructed_by_J._R....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_constructed_by_J._R._R._Tolkien)). But you feel the histories and mythology behind the languages in the works. There's just an amazing vitality and realism in his universe that I've personally never felt in another work of fantasy as good as those other books might be.

I read a biography about him many years ago, and if I remember correctly he wrote the stories for the languages not the other way around, since he discovered that his languages needed a mythology and history in order to be realistic.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, Tolkien had no clue about geology. If you think about how rivers flow from mountains to oceans, the map of Middleearth is unrealistic. Anduin heads straight towards hills and mountains (Emyn Muil and Osgiliath)? In the north west, Luhn/Lune flows south to the Grey Havens instead of the short way to the northern ocean? The sea of Rhun and Nurnen are both dead (no outflow)?

(disclaimer: I still love and respect Tolkiens work! Especially the Silmarillion.)

<comment><USER4> The map doesn't show elevations. Medieval maps work that way, they only show notable hills and cliffs, but no slow descents.

Here's similar from Norway

[http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/old-map- norway-11431502.jpg](http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/old-map- norway-11431502.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A high resolution stitched map: [http://i.imgur.com/lWAFuHe.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/lWAFuHe.jpg)

Made with pictures from here: [http://www.citylab.com/design/2015/10/a-map-of- middle-earth-...](http://www.citylab.com/design/2015/10/a-map-of-middle-earth- annotated-by-jrr-tolkien/412105/)

</comment><comment><USER6> "The novelist also uses Belgrade, Cyprus, and Jerusalem as other reference points, and according to Blackwell's suggests that "the city of Ravenna is the inspiration behind Minas Tirith - a key location in the third book of the Lord of The Rings trilogy"."

Fun fact: Belgrade (Београд), capital of Serbia, literary means "the white city" in Serbian.

</comment><comment><USER7> Minis Tirith ... Ravenna?! It's flat there:

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ravenna+RA,+firstname.lastname@example.com...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ravenna+RA,+email@example.com,12.1204286,11z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x477df9505a24da17:0x2a74a33c9c54a776!5m1!1e4)

Maybe he was thinking of [http://www.incomingpartners.it/wp- content/uploads/2011/05/sa...](http://www.incomingpartners.it/wp- content/uploads/2011/05/sanmarino_panorama.jpg) San Marino.

<comment><USER8> Probably referencing this fortified town there: [http://media.royalcaribbean.com/content/shared_assets/images...](http://media.royalcaribbean.com/content/shared_assets/images/ports/hero/RAN_01.jpg)

Which TOTALLY makes sense.

<comment><USER7> That's what I just wrote: San Marino. That's what that picture is of, not Ravenna.

Of course, it's not your fault that Google returns the wrong pictures, but definitely a different place.</comment></comment></comment>


A Collection of Imaginary Software - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/09/a-collection-of-imaginary-software/ <comment><USER2> Thought it would go the way of fictitious book reviews by Lem, Borges, et al. e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem%27s_fictiti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem%27s_fictitious_criticism_of_nonexistent_books)

May be too hard to get right about software. Anyone tried?

<comment><AUTHOR> You should write that post. It sounds like a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Man, this brings back memories of having all sorts of weird floppies cross my path... and scanning them to make sure they didn't contain Michelangelo or another scary virus! The labels look just amateurish enough to raise the Eyebrow of Doubt, but just professional enough to make you think "whatever it is, it could be interesting!"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's exactly the aesthetic I was going for :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love this idea. In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, there was a software called "Reason". It was only mentioned a few times, but I always keep thinking back to it whenever we're in a planning meeting.

>Reason allows users to specify in advance the decision they want it to reach, and only then to input all the facts. The program's task was to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion. The only copy was sold to the US Government for an undisclosed fee.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/dirkgently/gordon_way.shtml](https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/dirkgently/gordon_way.shtml)

There was another software I forget the name of, but the guy had modeled his sofa and staircase on it to try and figure out how the sofa got impossibly stuck halfway up stairs, and it kept trying different angles in order to come up with a way to get it unstuck.

</comment><comment><USER5> Isn't there supposed to be Tic Tac Toe included on the bottom white one? Could have dire consequences if it's left out...

<comment><USER6> — _It's not on the list!_

— _What's not on the list?_

— _Go ahead. It's got to be in there somewhere._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That Aperture Laboratories disk got me captivated. I'd imagine getting sucked into a Portal dungeon without escape if I ever dared to insert it.

</comment><comment><USER8> They look nice :)

Did you remember to flip the plastic switch on the GLaDOS floppy into the write-protect position before framing it? :^)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh shit...!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Notably missing OS from Her.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Polybius

"I spent so much money on this arcade game back when I was a kid."

 _Oh no_

<comment><AUTHOR> It was a fun game. Really helped me open my mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wouldn't bandersnatch be on a tape and not a floppy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. But no one sent me any cassette cases. If you have a stock of them, I could certainly knock something up.

<comment><USER12> I have some new old stock blank cassettes I could send you. DM me a mailing address, if you'd like.</comment></comment></comment>


Disable Windows 10 Tracking - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking <comment><USER2> I wrote a PowerShell script that enables or disables various Windows 10 tracking components.

[https://github.com/nathan- alden/windows-10-tracking](https://github.com/nathan- alden/windows-10-tracking)

I based the script on the [https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking](https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking) repository, but the code in that repository is Python and compiles to a Windows executable. I much prefer PowerShell so that the code can be more easily changed and deployed in automated environments. Additionally, that Python code doesn't undo changes, whereas my PowerShell script does.

I'd appreciate any feedback (probably as a GitHub issue).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really crudely put together, completely disregards recent findings from news articles proving you cannot completely disable W10 telemetrics, and the author acknowledges he doesn't want to support reversing destructive processes with it.

You shouldn't bother using this.

<comment><USER2> See my top-level comment. I was unhappy with the author's reply in the GitHub issue about undoing changes. I decided to write a PowerShell script to fix those problems.

<comment><USER3> This is much cleaner and preferable for deployment to enterprise environments. That all being said, I highly doubt anyone is fully aware of the information passed through the list of hostnames in any of these projects.

It's been claimed OS and app functionality breaks by blocking access to some of these domains, and I'm curious as to why.

Blasting a wall of hosts out of access is not a very refined way of going about this purging of telemetrics, but your project is a great example of OSS being improved upon. Good script!

<comment><USER2> Before I read your comment, I added more information in the README that says I have not personally tested the HOSTS entries. Since PowerShell is so accessible, it's my hope that those with more time than me can create an exhaustive, accurate list, and perhaps submit a pull request. My only intent with this project was to convert the original author's work into a more accessible, Windows-friendly tool.

Thank you for the kind words. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _Set the AllowTelemetry string in > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection to 0_

AFAIK, setting this to 0 only has meaning in the Enterprise edition. In the consumer edition, 0 has the same meaning as 1.

Here's a screenshot from the group policy editor of my Windows 10 VM:

[http://i.imgur.com/3s3AT9p.png](http://i.imgur.com/3s3AT9p.png)

as you can see, 0 only does something in Enterprise builds.

<comment><USER5> Only in enterprise builds x.X not in Pro.. I should definitly start using Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB again..

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Be careful with this!_ From the README under the "HOSTS" section:

 _" Append known tracking domains to the HOSTS file located in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc"_

However there are other articles which suggest changing the hosts file can cause instability[1]:

 _" Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is disabling communication with these servers (by introducing the server into the hosts file and settings to 127.0.0.1 localhost), but as I tried, after disabling the Windows 10 start acting suspiciously otherwise. Error messages pop up, sometimes the message of "service failure", there are problems with Skype, it is not possible to maintain a stable connection. The problem is with VPN connections that fall. But it is possible that this is just some incompatibilities and nevyladěnost new OS. Apparently, it is necessary not to prohibit certain sites and have available to make things work, but I had no time to analyze them one by one, what causes them off in the long run in Windows 10"_

Of course, there are a whole bunch of other potentially dangerous things the tool does like change services and edit the registry. Take care!

[1] [https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=cs&tl=en&u=h...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=cs&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Faeronet.cz%2Fnews%2Fanalyza- windows-10-ve-svem-principu-jde-o-pouhy-terminal-na-sber-informaci-o- uzivateli-jeho-prstech-ocich-a-hlasu%2F)

<comment><USER7> I'm not surprised that MS is making it harder to disable these things. It should be possible to patch them out completely, but then you also have to deal with signing, system file protection, and updates which could re-enable them again... MS is putting up a much stronger fight now than they did with the previous versions of Windows.

<comment><USER8> if something is free, you are not the customer, you are the product

<comment><USER9> Windows 10 is not free, it's a free upgrade for customers that already payed for a previous version.

<comment><USER9> paid

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Far better is to not use Windows 10 and tell Microsoft why.

<comment><USER7> I wonder if Windows 7 support might last even longer than XP... no doubt there will be plenty of anger when MS decides to end support for 7/8 like they did with XP, but the best way to delay that is to vehemently refuse to "upgrade".

...and I am writing this on a machine running (a much customised version of) XP, which remains _completely silent_ on the network and never produces any traffic unaccounted for.

<comment><USER11> _> when MS decides to end support for 7/8_

Microsoft doesn't suddenly decide to end support for something: it has a well- established, pre-published software life-cycle where operating systems are supported for 10 years. [http://windows.microsoft.com/en- GB/windows/lifecycle](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/lifecycle)

There's always a chance that a date will be extended, but it wouldn't be a good plan to bet on it.

Otherwise, I feel deeply sorry for you. Nobody should have to use inferior systems like Windows XP in this day and age. Presumably some badly-programmed bit of corporate junkware prevented you from upgraded to Windows 7 in 2009 .. ;-)

<comment><USER12> XP is a solid enough system for limited use cases. Keep it behind a firewall and don't ever touch a browser, it will run forever without a glitch. I wouldn't call it "inferior". There may be things it can't do but if you're not going to use those features, so what? Upgrading a system just for the sake of upgrading is a waste of money.

It's not just software tying a machine to XP but the hardware. A particular card may not have a 7 compatible driver. A penny-pinching executive will look at the very long number that is the cost of upgrading and decide to stay on XP and just replace parts (hard drive, monitor, etc.) as they break. Which may not be the smartest thing in the long run.

I can see 7 lasting longer than XP as it's the last OS built primarily for traditional Win32 (Desktop) applications. 8 and 10 are transitioning to an OS for managed code and virtualization. If you have a legacy application you'll get the best experience on 7 (or XP, or Server 200X). All of the improvements to Windows are meant to make C# based programs work better. There isn't much to gain by upgrading an older codebase to the new OS.

Of course people whose primary business is creating software think nothing of upgrading. To everyone else, writing new software is an expense. If the software you have does everything you need it to do, you're not going to rewrite it unless there is something to gain.

<comment><USER11> _> stay on XP and just replace parts (hard drive, monitor, etc.) as they break. Which may not be the smartest thing in the long run._

Aye, there's the rub.

Based on enterprise-class calculations (staff time etc), the cost of keeping an old XP PC running is dramatically higher than replacing it. You can get a tiny desktop with 4GB and a 1TB drive for less than $300, and cut your electricity bill as well.

In accounting terms, you may also save money by reducing reboots and fast start-up times, esp with UEFI. Whether Gartner averages apply in a specific case is, of course, an entirely different matter.

And, of course, if you've got a hardware lock-in that's no help at all ;-)

I agree with your final paras. We can see where Microsoft is heading. Where the world will actually be in 2020-25 is another matter....

<comment><USER12> > Based on enterprise-class calculations (staff time etc), the cost of keeping > an old XP PC running is dramatically higher than replacing it. You can get a > tiny desktop with 4GB and a 1TB drive for less than $300, and cut your > electricity bill as well.

Have you seen how extremely short-sighted and quarterly report oriented some executives can be. You say "only" $300 but I regularly replace $30 hard drives (that I charge $80 for) and they thank me for it because I'm "saving" them $200.

<comment><USER11> Sad but true ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yeah, so I've been using that since a few days ago along with DoNotSpy10, and disabled almost everything. Then I installed a traffic monitoring tool and I still found Cortana to be calling home, even though I checked and both web searches (search box) and Cortana were disabled.

I think this article is right - you _can 't_ fully stop Windows 10 from calling home, no matter what you do or how many thing you disable.

[http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2015/08/even-w...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2015/08/even-when-told-not-to-windows-10-just-cant-stop-talking-to- microsoft/)

And according to this article, Microsoft has an OS-level keylogger that catches all of your typed characters (all passwords, all "secure" communications) even from the virtual keyboard, for "no good reason".

[http://localghost.org/posts/a-traffic-analysis-of- windows-10](http://localghost.org/posts/a-traffic-analysis-of-windows-10)

<comment><USER14> That OS-level keylogger would be extremely worrying, as would various other monitoring mentioned in your second link.

However, it's worth pointing out that the same link now starts with this warning:

 _Note: Some readers have commented that the original source for the article is of questionably validity. If anyone can confirm or refute the original author 's finding with actual data, please let me know in the comments, and I'll update this post accordingly._

As I write this, no-one has in fact provided any additional sources for confirmation.

<comment><USER15> Don't mind that a few comments down on the HN thread there's a clear quote of the W10 privacy policy where MS says it sends your text and voice back home.

<comment><USER14> I'm well aware of what the privacy policy says, and personally I don't like it and don't use Windows 10. On the other hand, clearly other people do find some of these convenience features useful, and to provide those features some data is going to get sent from their computers to Microsoft that I personally wouldn't be happy to share in that way. Reasonable people can differ on what they are willing to accept in this respect.

However, I think the issue we're talking about here is what Windows 10 is _actually_ doing right now. If Windows 10 is in fact hoovering up huge amounts of potentially sensitive data and sending it home _without_ the user being aware of and agreeing to it, that is of concern whatever the privacy policy says and deserves to be publicised.

<comment><USER15> Well, so let's talk about what W10 is doing right now.

You are dismissing what somebody claimed to see W10 doing, because you don't think the source is trustworthy. Fair enough, but the privacy policy claims the exact same thing.

Now you are claiming that the privacy policy is just some fictitious document where MS writes every kind of stuff their client won't like to read, but they also won't bother practicing? Despite evidence (weak that it may be) that they are practicing it right now?

<comment><USER14> I'm not dismissing anything. I just pointed out that _the exact source_ someone was citing _itself_ leads with a warning that the original source is currently unverified and has been repeatedly challenged, which I thought was worthwhile since the HN poster citing it didn't mention that significant detail.

I'm also making no claims about the privacy policy being fictional or any of the other stuff you just made up.

Please stop putting words into my fingers that weren't even remotely there. It makes intelligent discussion impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Best way to disable Windows 10 tracking: Switch to GNU/Linux.

<comment><USER17> Unfortunately, that's also the best way to not get any work done because:

1) None of the software most people need is available for Linux, and

2) "GNU/Linux" sucks at providing a rich and stable API/ABI on which proprietary software can be built and supported, and

3) Usability of what does exist generally sucks, because unsurprisingly, not charging for your work makes it very hard to hire artists and designers.

Also unfortunately, that means the majority of people are stuck choosing between relinquishing privacy to either Apple, MS, or Google.

<comment><USER18> > 2) "GNU/Linux" sucks at providing a rich and stable API/ABI on which > proprietary software can be built and supported, and

Care to elaborate on this one? I don't see what sucks about it. You can build proprietary software and run it on Linux. See also: Steam games.

> 3) Usability of what does exist generally sucks, because unsurprisingly, not > charging for your work makes it very hard to hire artists and designers.

I've personally found the latest editions of Debian-based OSes (such as Linux Mint) to be very intuitive and beautiful.

<comment><USER7> _Care to elaborate on this one? I don 't see what sucks about it. You can build proprietary software and run it on Linux. See also: Steam games._

I've run into this before many times. Binaries for proprietary apps, from 20 years ago, will probably still work today on Windows 10 if they didn't do anything too crazy or need low-level system functions (e.g. disk defragmenters). I don't think the same can be said of proprietary apps on Linux; there, the vast amount of diversity is also its greatest weakness and apps tend to have these massive (version-locked) dependency chains attached to them.

<comment><USER18> > Binaries for proprietary apps, from 20 years ago, will probably still work > today on Windows 10

Do you really want to run 20 year-old software?

> I don't think the same can be said of proprietary apps on Linux

So, you don't know then.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

In my experience, getting something to run on Linux is easier than getting it to run on Windows. The only reason that more software isn't built on Linux is the network effect.

"All of our paying customers use Windows, why would we want to build on Linux? Only free software hippies use that!" \- Caricature of the average IT manager

Steam for Linux is going to gradually be a... game-changer. B)

<comment><USER19> _Do you really want to run 20 year-old software?_

Games? Line of business applications? Other applications that still work for me and I have no reason to upgrade?

Yes. Yes I do.

        <post type="rant" intensity="105%">

Windows is literally the only OS out there right now that gives a toss about backwards compatibility.

Try compiling old code on a new linux - prepare to be stuck in dependency hell for hours as you try to find libraries that the distro maintainers ever-so- helpfully deleted outright or renamed with no pointer.

Apple _shamelessly_ breaks things every time there's a point release to iOS or OSX. Killing this API, turning on that "security" feature which breaks your addons, etc etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Keep in mind that Windows filters the contents of etc/hosts and basically ignores (some) entries for its own domains. For example, you cannot null-route Windows Update servers this way.

<comment><USER21> And so for those sites you break out the firewall settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> One KB or sfc run later and that'll all be turned back on again...

</comment><comment><USER23> Checked my parents PC on a visit this morning to find the latest Patch Tuesday set of updates hadn't installed automatically because Windows Update was too busy advertising Windows 10. I was also greeted with a balloon popup rather than just the subtle GWX icon in the tray nagging me to install it.

Microsoft are pushing this OS fervently and, given their aggressive service integration, I've recently been musing about whether the Microsoft of today are really 'better' just because they've become more open with their software, or whether they're actually just a different, possibly nastier, kind monopolistic threat.

We could look back in 5 years and see the majority using Bing (via the Start Menu), Cortana, IE, OneDrive, and syncing all their devices through MS servers and cringe. Microsoft can't win on the strength of their brand when it comes to consumer facing services (except for Xbox), so maybe integration will see them break through and muscle out the likes of Chrome, Google, Gmail, Android, and Dropbox.... _if_ W10 on mobile takes off that is.

Oddly, despite not owning and having never owned any Apple product, I find myself comforted these days that they are there with an almost bottomless pile of money.

<comment><USER24> > just because they've become more open with their software

Visual Studio Community Edition is unsuitable for any medium sized company.

dotNET's openness does not extend to the actually interesting parts (WPF, WinForms).

The new openness is purely a communication effort; they take care to communicate their openness without changing anything.

It's disconcerting to see that they need developers more than developers need them.

<comment><USER25> VS community is _unlicensed_ for any medium sized company. You can't complain about something that you are stealing.

<comment><USER15> What? It's free software, but one does not have a license to use it?

What kind of free software is that?

(And no, I didn't read the license, I don't know either way.)

<comment><USER25> It is freely licensed for personal, OSS and small teams. You do not get the free license grant for other uses. It's like using GPL code in closed source software. GPL is free but has conditions about that free license that gets granted to you.

> I didn't read the license

Oh boy... Keep that up and you're going to have interesting times ahead of you. Always read licenses, or at the very least (if you can't be asked to deal with legalese) find a summary somewhere.

<comment><USER15> I don't use this software. I have no reason to read the license.

<comment><USER25> With such a snide retort, why ask for the facts in the first place?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Apparently you can't fully disable it so it looks like it's Windows 7 for me for another 5 years or so.

</comment><comment><USER27> You have to know that your privacy defaults are batshit crazy when people start developing tools to automate correcting them.

</comment><comment><USER28> With such "open" system don't even think about large or government companies, especially non-US.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is the tracking limited to Home edition, or does this also apply to Pro and Enterprise? Nothing I've read definitively confirms which versions are affected to what extent. Knowing this is useful in that I'd happily pay to not have the spying. Paying is also preferable to downloading an .exe that disables tracking that has dependencies I haven't installed (Python, for example). I'm more likely to trust a PowerShell script, but(for now) haven't the time to invest to create my own.

<comment><USER2> See my top-level comment. I did just that--created a PowerShell script.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can anyone please share the list of GPO's to block in enterprise environment

</comment><comment><USER31> Kudos for stating on the README what it does.

</comment><comment><USER32> Personally, I'd rather fuzz their servers with terabyte after terabyte of garbage, but to each his own.

<comment><USER33> Can you also fake/spoof the appropriate signatures/headers? Otherwise separating that data is going to be very easy. Unless you do it on a higher level like emulating input, but then you won't have a very useful machine.

<comment><USER15> He probably can. His computer is able to create those signatures, and he didn't lose low level access to it once he installed Windows 10.

It's probably not easy, but might be a very interesting thing to do. Will the US start to criminally persecute everybody that does that?

And also, the most important question. Will people still be able to do that on newer computers that ship with Windows 10?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I run Windows as a guest with vga passthrough and completely disable networking (though a very strict firewall could also work, e.g. For online games).</comment>


Thriving in the coming game mechanics hype cycle - <AUTHOR> http://cykod.com/blog/post/2010-05-thriving-in-the-coming-game-mechanics-hype-cycle

<comment><USER2> I recently held a workshop on applying game mechanics, in this case to a calendaring system.

Details are here: <http://vi.to/workshop/20100426/>

My notes are here: <http://vi.to/gmnotes>

Between going through the exercise (especially with others doing it and then collaborating on additional iterations) and all of the reference material, coming up with compelling game mechanics and metagame mechanics should be doable for anyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty interesting to read over other people's designs. It's interesting to see what they want to do and then think about how, as a developer, you would actually accomplish that feature.</comment></comment>


Facebook fails to understand relationship dynamics - <AUTHOR> http://marcustwilliamson.com/2012/01/facebook-still-has-a-ways-to-go/

<comment><USER2> Why would you even expose yourself to this? It just makes no sense.</comment>


Kenya May Be Primed For Wide-Scale Bitcoin Adoption - <AUTHOR> http://www.thegenesisblock.com/guest-post-kenya-primed-for-wide-scale-bitcoin-adoption/

<comment><USER2> Isn't bitcoin too slow to be used for many transactions?

Right now, you can walk into a convenience store, buy a pack of gum, pay with your credit card, and the transaction clears within ten seconds or so.

From what I understand, a bitcoin transaction isn't set in stone (that is, the money could be double-spent) until it's placed in a block that someone mines - and to prevent problems with people mining the same block twice, multiple blocks. Since one block is mined every ten minutes, we're talking significant time to process a transaction.

There are ways around this - but IIRC they involve an intermediary that both sides trust. That intermediary is unlikely to work for free, so it looks like there would still be a problem.

It's possible that I'm misunderstanding something, or that someone has come up with a clever solution to this problem since I last checked - in which case, I'd like to know what the answer is.

<comment><USER3> I think this may be a case of comparing apples to oranges. You're holding each method to different standards. Let's apply the same standards to each protocol:

The credit card transaction can't be double spent after 180 days (or however long the chargeback period lasts).

Bitcoin can't be double spent after your transaction is seen by the majority of mining nodes (ca. 10 seconds). Then, after a few blocks are mined (~30minutes) bitcoin offers unparalleled security.

TL;DR: When comparing credit card transactions' vs bitcoin transactions' hardness, use similar metrics for confirmation.

<comment><USER4> While correct, it doesn't really address the issue: Bitcoin isn't useful for such scenarios.

Chargebacks are not quite the same. There's an investigation and so on. I can't repeatedly take my credit card out, buy $2000 cameras, and claim I didn't. Bitcoin doesn't have that safety measure.

<comment><USER5> Bitcoin nodes will reject transactions that conflict with ones they have already seen. Once the transaction is broadcasted, the only way to replace it would be to mine the next block and include it yourself.

The only other feasible way to double spend a merchant would be to scour the topology and find a client that has low latency to the merchant you are trying to defraud, but much higher latency to any significant hashing power. Unless they have their node configured to accept incoming connections, which is not recommended for merchant nodes, the attack is very difficult to pull off and requires a significant element of luck to work.

There are also companies like BitPay that will absorb the risk of a double spend in addition to handling your payment logistics, for a fee less than the typical credit card fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title, though reflective of the article, is misleading. It should be "Some speculation about what might happen in the unlikely event that many Kenyans started using Bitcoin".

<comment><USER7> It's also speculation which doesn't exactly fill me with confidence the author knows what he's talking about: the unsupported suggestion that Bitcoin will stop people asking for bribes is frankly laughable and then he suggests the "relative consistency" of Bitcoin could be a welcome change above a chart which appears to show that over the last year the Kenyan shilling has fallen in value _less than BTC fell in the last week_ (I'm comparing 7 day MtGox USD exchange rates with a presumably YoY Kenyan inflation rate of <5%)

I really wish Western speculators whose position in BTC vastly exceeds their financial knowledge wouldn't shill their position by recommending people in developing countries risk their money

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone explain how Bitcoin "removes vulnerability to human corruption"? Is it because you can see all transactions in the blockchain? Because I fail to see how does that prevent corruption.

<comment><USER9> As long as a human controls access to something, that something will be vulnerable to corruption.

Bitcoin removes the vulnerability if it takes the corruptible human out of the process.

<comment><USER8> Yea ok but it doesn't do that. That is my point. So what do you mean?

<comment><USER10> Humans (banks, PayPal, other third parties) are not required to verify transactions. It means you and only you have access to your bitcoins, and you don't need a trusted third party in order to use your money. You don't need a trusted third party to create bitcoins, either (like when governments print fiat currency).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The OP has made some huge assumptions here but MPESA, even with all its social and economic benefits, only got to where it is today because of Vodafone's deep pockets.Don't really see a similar Bitcoin champion emerging in these parts.

<comment><USER12> I'd say MPESA met a great need, and maintained it's lead ahead of competitors because of network externalities. Speaking from first-hand experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems like Kenya has very little to lose in adopting Bitcoin. I welcome adding new users, even if they just act to stabilize the currency against speculators.

<comment><USER13> I, too, would love to see wider adoption. However, Bitcoin's value is still extremely volatile. A person could convert their life's savings to Bitcoin and see its value halved overnight... As the article mentioned, the Kenyan shilling has gone through some bad inflation cycles but nothing close to Bitcoin's volatility. Why do you think they have very little to lose? Seems quite risky to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When Bitcoin becomes more stable it will be used on every corner on earth. Right now its too risky, unless you can immediately sell/cash the coins you take on too much risk. You could sell products online in Kenya 24hrs for a set price and find out when you wake up bitcoin plunged and you lost money to the point of giving away your products. So long as there is only 1 major exchange we are at the whims of speculators and bots.

</comment><comment><USER15> why switch from mpesa which works well and has dominance? Better article maybe "why mpesa will soon dominate payments in western countries".

</comment><comment><USER16> Theoretically, one can see all the transactions of Kenya right?

<comment><USER10> Indeed, Bitcoin offers just pseudo-anonymity. However, if you are very disciplined, you can severely limit or even totally remove the possibility of someone linking you to your Bitcoins. No one even needs to know a transaction happened in Kenya.

<comment><USER17> >However, if you are very disciplined, you can severely limit or even totally remove the possibility of someone linking you to your Bitcoins.

I'm curious how you might do this? Basically you must be able to hide the fact that you own an address, correct? Does that mean using different addresses for handling transactions while updating the block chain from different IPs (in different physical locations, just so your phone or simple general geographic pattern doesn't reveal you)? Is there something I might be missing?

<comment><USER18> IMO the best and only way to do this is to focus on the entry and exit of funds from the bitcoin cloud. As soon as one address can be tied to you, all your other accounts can be tied to you, no matter how many games you play with multiple addresses and shuffling coins around.

If you want to know how to achieve this, look to modern money laundering practices.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps the word I should have used is "private key" rather than "address". There's no reason I couldn't have a dozen private keys and wallets that I use in different locations for different reasons. As long as that private key can't be tied to me personally (i.e. by protecting my identity during transactions, transacting in varying locations from varying IPs, etc.) it should be anonymous.

That would make the protocol useless for day to day transactions like buying groceries, but at least as anonymous as cash for more sensitive transactions.

<comment><USER18> But see, the private key has to be funded! Unless people start exchanging private keys instead of bitcoins, and _never_ transfer money in and out of the wallet, there will still be a trail.

Exchanging private keys is fraught with peril- the originator doesn't lose knowledge of what the key was when they give it to you. The only way to make it work safely is to _immediately_ transfer funds out of the key you just received (to ensure the originator doesn't pull the funds before you can use them), and then we are back to having a trail. As far as someone following that trail is concerned, it is just an extra "hop"\- the money still flowed from IllegalVendorA to <unknown> to You.

You can _certainly_ try to obfuscate things, but the point is _all the data is there and always will be_ , and even if it seems like a human wouldn't be able to figure it out, computers are very good at working through graphs!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anybody want to be a cofounder on a developed word association website? - <AUTHOR>

I've spent the last 5 years and 1500+ hours developing this word association website in my spare time:  http://www.thlinx.com
I want to apply for the winter funding cycle at YCombinator (due Oct. 30th), and I want to find a passionate cofounder with a complimentary skill set to apply with me.
Anybody interested? <comment><USER2> So you are looking for someone that will manage the website while you go try out ycombinator on a different idea? i might want to do that</comment>


US homes have gotten huge – offsetting the gains from energy efficiency - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/11/10/9705824/home-size-efficiency <comment><USER2> Errr, the numbers on the graph don't match the headline, at all.

This is partially because they compare two very different percentages, and expect them to cancel each other out, but they don't ;)

Let's take [https://cdn3.vox- cdn.com/thumbor/Nal5V8NG4BaEYnFL2lbcskLtaUE...](https://cdn3.vox- cdn.com/thumbor/Nal5V8NG4BaEYnFL2lbcskLtaUE=/1600x0/filters:no_upscale\(\)/cdn0.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4251055/FT_15.11.04_residentialEnergyIntensity_310px2.png)

In 1970, we have 150 btu/sq ft and let's be generous and say 1500 sq ft.

So we have a home using 225000 BTU.

Now, we have 101.8 btu/sq ft, and 1864 sq ft. That's 188264 BTU.

17% is not nothing, nor is it "offsetting the gains".

Note, you can't use the 101.8 number for the new housing graph, since it's an average over all homes.

(In fact, you can't really just multiply any of these numbers and have sensible results, but hey, it's a news story!)

You'd have to find an average new housing btu/sq ft, which they don't provide.

Also note: Greater energy efficiency is entirely possible. You can easily halve the heating energy requirement, for example, by using ground source heat pumps in most places (my GSHP was a 46 SEER , 5.3 COP unit).

But this has high monetary cost to retrofit (When done during construction, and factored into the price of a house, it basically costs "not a lot more").

Or you could use per-room mini-splits, or whatever.

It's just that people don't care, and so the only thing that forces higher energy efficiency in most cases is building code changes, not consumer demand.

<comment><USER3> Also no mention of the fact that larger homes tend to be multiple stories, and thus they have less surface area per square foot. So insulation efficiency tends to go up as home size increases.

<comment><USER4> It's a fun example of Jevon's paradox though. The more efficient the insulation ... the more heat is needed to warm houses (because people don't consider the cost of heating anymore is the reason usually given).

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fetishization of "energy efficiency" in this context is weird, like the old joke about a machine whose only specification is that it should run noiselessly. Houses don't exist to be energy efficient; they exist so that people can live in them. If those people want big houses and can pay for them -- as well as the additional energy they require to operate, of course -- why shouldn't they have them?

If there's an argument here at all it's for having energy prices take into account whatever externality Vox is specifically concerned about, not for forcing people to live in smaller homes.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Energy efficiency is a big scam -- I had the bad fortune of buying Maytag appliances in 2006. The company was going bankrupt, and their strategy to meet energy quotas was to undersize motors... Leading to dead appliances. Ditto with things like boilers who routine service requirements eat up most of the efficiency savings.

Light bulbs are worse. Shopping for a bulb is like buying a car.

And the focus on stupid efficiency gimmicks that save minimal resources (an efficient washing machine saves $30/year) distracts from more useful retrofits like insulation, windows, solar hot water, etc.

<comment><USER7> My favorite efficiency gimmick is the low flow faucet. The flows are cut in half, yes, so you have to run the faucet four times longer to clean the same amount of stuff, and because the flows are not strong enough to move debris out of the sink, you also have to run the faucet to clean the sink after you finish cleaning other stuff.

<comment><USER8> Most low-flow faucets are just awful. Twenty years ago, I was lucky enough to find my favorite showerhead ever, for $5, and it's an extremely low-water-use showerhead.

It's just a simple hunk of metal, but it forces a very small amount of water out at a high velocity, mixed with enough air to give it a really vigorous- feeling cleaning action.

I've been hauling that from apartment to apartment for two decades. Love it, and it uses so little water!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This can be read effectively in tandem with "The Efficiency Dilemma: If our machines use less energy, will we just use them more?" at [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/the- efficiency-...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/the-efficiency- dilemma), which is about the Jevons Paradox.

<comment><USER9> Interesting. The same applies to CPU and memory resources too.

<comment><USER10> And low flush toilets.

<comment><USER11> I am generally for efficiency and conservation, but goodness, how I hate those things.

I understand some models these days may have two flush modes of differing volumes -- I guess, for #1 and #2 respectively. Or for waif vs. lumberjack. Maybe those work better.

But otherwise, those damned "low flow (volume)" toilets just end up too often taking extra flushes, none of which work very well, and keep one standing around as well as a plunger at the ready next to the unit. OR, you're the next person, after someone who doesn't take such care, and you find you have to hold it a bit longer while you deal with their lingering... "surprise".

<comment><USER12> The outflow in other countries is much bigger and you very infrequently end up with a clog. I knew a guy a ways back who moved from the UK and complained about the pipe sizes. Now I live in NZ and I can tell you, they are too small in the US!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anecdotally, I have a hard time buying the stat that homes today are only 31% more efficient than they were in 1970.

I lived in a fairly large, brand new home for a couple years, and my energy bills were _way_ lower than my friends who lived in smaller, older homes. Some of this was a much better insulated and tighter sealed house, some of it was more efficient HVAC units. IIRC, the air conditioner installed with the house had roughly twice the SEER rating of my parents and parent-in-laws units from the late 90s. And this was in a fairly mild northern climate - you can get units with even higher ratings, and if you're in a locale such as Arizona, Nevada, Texas, etc, I think you'd be more or less priced into doing so.

<comment><USER14> I completely agree and have a solid anecdote.

Summer electricity bill in Texas for my previous 1600 sqft house, about $100-$150 month for cooling from Texas ambient to 74 F.

For our new 3200 sq ft house, we cool to 73 F, for the same cost!!!!

That is the difference between a late 70's house, and modern construction, which is foam-filled up the wazoo.

<comment><USER15> So, then, your anecdote completely exemplifies OP's thesis: a house double the size and much more efficient uses the same energy. Vive la différence?

You also mention foam filling, and by proxy, sealing. Many high efficiency homes achieve their efficiency by becoming effectively Tupperware® containers. Which isn't good for the occupants (unless living in Mordor is a goal). Air exchangers are required, muting the gains on efficiency.

<comment><USER16> " Air exchangers are required, muting the gains on efficiency"

God not this again. Active ventilation in 2015 (actually, in 2005) has heat exchangers that recoup most of the heat and do not nearly negate the efficiency advantages and improved comfort of a sufficiently air-tight house. Please review all the literature from the last 20 years which will tell you exactly this.

<comment><USER17> The post is even a reply to a situation where the gain in efficiency is obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In comparison to other first world countries the housing square footage is very high but peanuts compared to residential energy consumption. For example USA has 77 residential m2/capita and Germany has 55 m2/capita (50% more), but USA electricty consumption is 4.5 MWh/a/capita vs Germany's 1.7 MWh/a/capita (165% more).

[http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household- electricity...](http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household-electricity- consumption) vs [http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a- house](http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house)

</comment><comment><USER19> The relationship between energy use and size of a home is hardly linear.

The area goes up by the power of two compared to circumference (which is what matters for heating/cooling).

> US homes have gotten huge — offsetting the gains from energy efficiency

Quite the opposite, I actually see the data in reverse - energy usage per square foot goes down BECAUSE houses are larger! Since energy usage is pretty much constant (per family), if you increase the size of the home your ratio looks much better.

They should actually measure energy per person to see if energy usage went down.

I suppose a second refrigerator would consume more energy but I don't agree that a larger home and a second refrigerator necessarily go hand in hand.

<comment><USER20> Lighting would generally increase in a larger home fairly close to 1:1 per square foot. Water heating would more or less ignore home size, so it's fairly complex change.

<comment><USER21> I can't speak for others, but I can tell you as someone with a larger home, who can afford a larger home, I've also replaced almost all of my lights with LEDs because I can also afford it and see the long-term benefits both from a power savings perspective, as well as a longevity perspective. I'd imagine my lights use less power than the average household.

<comment><USER22> Ditto, and replaced a tank water heater with a tankless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here is my idea for a radical way to reverse that trend: [https://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage/](https://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage/)

</comment><comment><USER24> A great example of why looking at the data alone leads to false conclusions

</comment><comment><USER25> That's a good thing (the size not the energy thing) people need space, Europe could use a wakeup and start making bigger living spaces a 2 bedroom flat in London is the size (or smaller than) of some studios in the us and most 1 bed apartments.

<comment><USER16> How mich bigger is an nyc apartment compared to its Londen equivalent?

<comment><USER25> Some people I know that live in NYC, Seattle, Valley complaining that their 1 bed/studio is "small" even tho it's larger or the same size as my 2bed in London. The average British household size has shrunk now to 76 sq/m which is 800 sq feet[0], the average US home is over 2600 square feet.

People don't understand that this isn't apples to apples when people from Europe and the UK specifically (which has 30-50% smaller housing than many other European countries) and the US complain or talk about small housing, but literally apples to watermelons.

[0][http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/10012254/Average...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/10012254/Average- one-bedroom-new-build-no-bigger-than-an-underground-train-carriage.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable? A Perspective - <AUTHOR> http://www.breck-mckye.com/blog/2018/05/why-is-front-end-development-so-unstable/ <comment><USER2> At the end of the day the front-end is heavily tied to the visual design of the site. When the visual design changes drastically it makes sense to throw out the tightly coupled logic with it, and so front-end work is more ephemeral.

In this environment there is no incentive to make things last long term. Frameworks can make breaking changes version to version, and websites may change their technology completely in each iteration. It doesn't matter because you will just throw it out in relatively short periods of time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm very interested as to why this phenomenon - not having an authoritative way to vet third party libraries - seems to be a uniquely frontend concern. What have the dozens of other, battle-tested languages done to solve this? How do I know that a Maven package or Rust crate is legitimate, useful, and sans- malware?

It seems like this is a question fundamental to any programming ecosystem, that _must_ have a reasonable solution which balances developer time assessing a potential library with the utility of that library. I'm very interested in some strategies the JS ecosystem could take to foster a culture or platform with well-known, well-supported standard libraries.

</comment><comment><USER4> The one thing I would add is the JavaScript standard library is deserving of some blame for the micro-library problem. Being bundled with the browser or server side in node doubling the size of the standard library to avoid situations like the left pad library being pulled from npm seems like a no brainer type of decision. ES2017 adds the padEnd and padStart functions is a step in the right direction. There is movement in the right direction but I would like to see the JS standard library at a minimum match the ruby standard library and eliminate a bunch of the micro dependencies that creep into libraries.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Backbone all day."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13944631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13944631)

Choose a stable foundation. Think about the tradeoffs, and accept them.

There is much beauty and satisfaction in using a framework that is straightforward to understand, and does its designed job very well.

</comment><comment><USER6> Self-promotion is a plague in this industry. First page of Google results regarding any JS framework topic is some marketing folks aiming to be hired/contractors, promoting outsourcing/nearshoring location, without any meaningful content created. Then this laughable community celebrities and "authorities". Crockford, Zakas, Souders, Resig - ever heard of them? In three years nobody will even remember or care about that Angular-Google guy, or React-Facebook guy, or ngrx-whatever guy... except those who end up maintaining some legacy codebase and cursing the universe.</comment>


Windows XP: Today's Legacy System - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2097906,00.html

<comment><USER2> The author seems to miss the obvious point of why people don't "upgrade" to Windows 7 -- vastly increased hardware requirements. Many of the XP installations running today are on hardware that is either barely sufficient to run Windows 7, providing a degraded experience, or completely incapable of running it. Therefore, a Windows 7 upgrade in most of these cases means a hardware upgrade that it appears those folks have determined isn't worth the cost.</comment>


The True Story of Good Coffee – The Awl - <AUTHOR> http://www.theawl.com/2015/10/its-bad <comment><USER2> Did you ever consider hiring a proofreader? e.g. "A couple of decades later, in 1995, there was another a man but also a woman, and their names were Doug Zell and Emily Mange, and they decided that they would buy coffee directly from coffee farmers and not blend it with coffee from other farmers and that also they wouldn't roast it all that dark, so you could taste the flavors of the actual farm where this "single-origin" coffee came from, sort of like wine, which costs a lot of money, and maybe coffee could cost that much too, and they called their coffee Intelligentsia. "

That sentence should be euthanized.</comment>


Working Too Much is Hurting Your Productivity - <AUTHOR> http://thewebivore.com/go-the-fuck-home-my-ignite-talk Video from the "Go The Fuck Home" Ignite Philly presentation. <comment><USER2> Personally, I find it more annoying to see so many "my business I hacked up over the weekend" and "look at my startup that I created in 20 hours" posts. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure I see way more of these kinds of posts than I do ones that contain expletives.

In fact, I would prefer a page full of posts with titles that contain 'fuck' rather than an entire page of posts about copycat blogging platforms or 'my weekend project, now app, now "business," made with rails and coffebonemongodb.js'.

Well, that came out of no where.

Time to read the OPs post.

/rant (which was supposed to be in reply to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3771670>)

Edit: I definitely agree with the video and wish everyone worked like that. The part about the managers leading the team by going home on time is true too.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's amazing how few people get this.

I just started a new job and everyone is telling me how much everyone here works. I look at the products we make and the deadlines that are set and they aren't any bigger or more agressive than anywhere else that I worked.

It has just always been a part of this companies culture I guess, but I don't see the need to sit in my office for 8 extra hours a week when all I'll end up doing is bullshitting on the Internet.

<comment><USER4> At my job, I used to stay late. I'd stay until 10 PM some nights and be super productive. Except I realized that I was dicking around until 5 PM and then being super productive for five hours after most (non-tech) people had gone home. I was staying up late, waking up late, being useless for most of the morning, taking long lunches, and not getting much done.

Now I get up every morning, I get to work around 8:30. I spend about an hour in the morning getting my work sorted out, getting my head together, figuring out my tasks for the day, and then being productive until 5 PM, then leaving. I've been more productive, I've been more accessible to coworkers with different schedules, I'm enjoying my job more, and more importantly, I'm enjoying life more. I'm not tired all day, I'm not useless when I get home, I'm not up late for no good reason.

Working a fixed, reasonable schedule (with occasional exceptions) has been such a huge boost to my productivity that even people I don't work directly with have commented to my manager on how much of a difference it's made.

The hardest part, as she mentions in her talk, is leaving even though my manager is still here, and still working on things, but when I realized that I stopped being very productive at about 4:30 anyway, I figured that was a good reason to tap out and go home.

Try it. It works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stress is probably the worst thing that can happen to you when trying to start. Crushes your immune system and get you sick. Prevents creativity, hell keeps you from doing even mundane and simple tasks well. Makes you hell to interact with your peers, friends and family.

People are always preaching at us to work until our faces fall off, but that's just not sustainable nor productive.

</comment><comment><USER6> To me, the most interesting part of this video was the graph of worker efficiency as a function of hours worked per week, which can be found here as part of a fascinating study: <http://cmdept.unl.edu/drb/Reading/overtime1.htm>

</comment><comment><USER7> what's up with all the swearing? this trend of swearing as linkbait is getting pretty lame.

<comment><USER8> The trend of swearing needlessly is getting a bit old period. Regardless of personal opinions it's not particularly professional…

<comment><USER9> I love swearing. I also actually agree with the OP. It's getting a little old. Some of the presentations I'm seeing really feel a little patronizing linkbait. But you know what I _really_ can't stand? The word _professional_ , used in this context. What does that even mean? I find it such an obnoxious term when used to suggest that the privilege of working comes at the cost of subscribing to some universal etiquette.

<comment><USER8> Professional = something you'd say in front of your clients / customers / potential employers etc.

<comment><USER10> Why should that have anything to do with anything we do when not in front of them?

<comment><USER11> What gives you the impression that the things you do and say in public are not in front of them?

<comment><USER10> If we're taking that definition, fair enough, but I don't think most of us would accept self-censorship in _any_ public forum on the off chance that a client or customer might see it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Open-source coding platform for developers to learn and practice coding - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/the-domecode/domecode-opensource <comment><AUTHOR> I'm in highschool right now and over the past few weeks ( 8 to be precise ) I made a platform that allows people to learn and practice coding, discuss stuff on the forum, meet other developers, list their own products and even listen to music without ever having the need to leave the platform to navigate to other paid platforms for every small thing. DomeCode brings the unified experience to you. Well, today I made it open-source.</comment>


High Speed Rail from Sacramento to San Francisco - <AUTHOR> Why hasn't this happened yet? I've heard stories of people paying to fly into the Bay Area from Sacramento by helicopter daily. If housing is so ridiculous in the Bay Area, why not expand the metro area? <comment> valiant-comma Can't speak to the planned high-speed rail project, however Amtrak's Capitol Corridor is a decent solution in the meantime, especially for commuters that don't go in every day. Sac to SF (via Richmond/BART) takes just over 2 hours, and the trains have desks, WiFi, etc. If you live near Suisun/Fairfield, it's about 90 minutes.</comment>


How to Run a Startup Board Meeting - <AUTHOR> http://www.payne.org/index.php/How_to_Run_a_Startup_Board_Meeting <comment><USER2> Under the British / Canada / South African / Australian model the whole article is bulldust. It may be the practise in America to yield to an all powerful CEO / Chairman but CEOs are mere 'hirelings' and it is the board legally runs the company. The board set the strategy. The board is the company. In the spirit of Louis XXIV of France, "Nous sommes la compagnie"

<comment><USER3> I think this article overstates the responsibility of the CEO, even in America.

 _"The board does not set the plans, objectives, goals, or strategy; instead, the CEO develops these, and presents them to the board for discussion, feedback and (possibly) approval."_

Typically, the board DOES set the strategy and goals, and management's job (led by the CEO) is to execute the strategy and achieve the goals.

<comment><USER4> If the CEO is not driving strategy and goals, then the company probably doesn't have the right CEO.</comment></comment></comment>


Come support the Practical Flask book on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://robert.io/blog/2013/06/13/come-support-the-practical-flask-kickstarter/

<comment><USER2> > In the end, you spend hours upon hours researching the best way to handle > registration, authentication, email confirmation, and a million other little > things.

I've found SAAS-like applications (user registrations, emails, forms) aren't where Flask is most useful. Where it really shines is small API's and services. Easy to test, designed to be "little", handle JSON really well. There are also lots of extensions for things like making Redis easier to deal with, as noted in the Kickstarter.

I'd love to see the book incorporate some of those strengths — small, compartmentalized applications — instead of building an app similar to what you'd see in a Rails tutorial.

<comment><AUTHOR> The book actually isn't going to have a single example app. Each of the chapters will stand on it's own as a reference for a particular topic. It's similar to how Two Scoops of Django is organized.

I'm definitely going to have a chapter on building a REST API. You can see a more complete (not comprehensive or set in stone) list of topics at the bottom of the Kickstarter page: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1223051718/practical- fla...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1223051718/practical-flask-book- project)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would be delighted to see a book on Flask.

While most of my work is in Django, there are times I use Flask. And... while Flask is simple enough there are times it would be nice to have a go-to reference for common tasks.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a great idea. You have my $10.

(FWIW, advanced Flask-SQLAlchemy topics (relationsips, queries, association tables, alembic etc) and also security issues (what to watch out for with Flask, jinja and WTForms if anything) would be my picks for useful chapters.)

</comment><comment><USER5> How much will the final product cost? Or will you give it away for free?

<comment><AUTHOR> It'll probably be around $15.

<comment><USER6> Will you consider giving it away to free to students, in the way that the 'Two Scoops of Django' folks do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. I'm sure I'll have some of, "If you can't afford it right now, just email me for a copy" link. I actually got my copy of Two Scoops to use as a reference that way. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The mystery behind Hemingway's suicide (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/being-ernest-john-walsh-unravels-the-mystery-behind-hemingways-suicide-2294619.html <comment><USER2> The author doesn't understand Hemingway. He doesn't even understand Bull Fighting. Looks like scholarly nonsense to me.</comment>


Earth's poles expected to flip soon - <AUTHOR> http://www.iflscience.com/environment/earth-s-magnetic-field-about-flip

<comment><USER2> Interesting situation. Do we redefine the current magnetic south-pole phenomena to maintain the present compass and mapping infrastructure (in other words, the current south-seeking needle becomes the new north-seeking needle) or do we redefine our maps and naming to follow the current compass infrastructure. (The compass will now point south instead of north, so therefore the current South Pole becomes the new North Pole.)

Almost certainly, we will choose the first option, as it permits the least number of changes. We wouldn't be stupid enough the maintain the compass so that the North Magnetic Pole is located close to the Earth's South Pole in Antarctica. Or would we??

</comment><comment><USER3> iflscience is sometimes interesting, but often (as here) ludicrously sensationalistic clickbait.

There's a couple major misrepresentations here; while 450,000 is an often- stated average, its important to note that there is no evidence of periodicity, so the idea that the planet would be "overdue" for a reversal is misguided.

The other cited evidence for an imminent shift is drop in the strength of the Earth's magnetic fields, but major variations in field strength appear without pole reversals.

The actual BBC Earth article [0] that IFLS gives a "hat tip" to as its source is _not_ about an imminent pole reversal, but about research that suggests the average frequency of pole shifts has increased over time, and discussion of the possible mechanisms for that, mentioning it in passing in one sentence near the end of the article as something that some people _speculate_ based on the recent weakening of the magnetic field.

[0] [http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141110-earths-magnetic- fiel...](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141110-earths-magnetic-field-flips- more?ocid=fbert)</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best tech sites that pay guest bloggers? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I've written for Sitepoint [0] in the past. They previously paid $100–200 for an article, and $300 for tutorials, IIRC.

[0]: [https://www.sitepoint.com/write-for- us/](https://www.sitepoint.com/write-for-us/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably not the strict definition of tech blog, but check out priceonomics. Last I checked they were paying $1000 (!) for an article - at that rate, I assume it is probably not easy getting published there, but worth a try.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> bump

<comment><USER4> HN doesn't work like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted</comment></comment></comment>


No, ACTA Secrecy Is Not 'Normal' -- Nor Is It A 'Distraction' - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20091119/1904177017.shtml

<comment><USER2> The web industry needs a positive political platform. A platform we can explain to legislators. A platform that delivers clear benefits to the economy.

The content industry has done a good job of packaging their platform. Legislators, who deal only in big-picture abstractions, understand that they're protecting intellectual property, and thus enhancing the US economy.

The opposition to DMCA, ACTA, etc. has been fragmented, reactive, and based on an implicit set of values. These values are not easily explained to our legislators.

Open roads were key to the growth of the physical economy. Open networks will be key to the growth of the info economy.

Can we explain, package, and simplify this concept? Work it into a congressional resolution? A focal point for political fund-raising?

<comment><USER3> I nominate you.</comment></comment>


Buy cots for the JS interns - programmer care - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=579522

<comment><USER2> The best are the retorts to comment 25 (<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=579522#c25>)

<comment><USER3> _Rest assured: we have no girlfriends._

:(

<comment><USER4> <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=579522#c27>

"One issue per bug, please -- file a followup for this if you wish."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love seeing exchanges like this: People having fun while working in the tech world. They warm the heart :P

</comment><comment><USER6> So... no _Components Off The Shelf_ for them.

Does anyone use COTS anymore, or are the a Failed Dream? Fred Brooks favoured them...

Although, I have seen Service Components [Architecture] (SCA) - where you assemble an app by integrating web-services in the cloud. eg. IBM acquired Cast Iron Systems 4 months ago. And with everything having an API, mashups, and tools like Yahoo pipes, maybe the 10's version of COTS is already here?

<comment><USER7> You're OT, but yes, nearly all software today is components, but not in that rigid, anthropomorphized, Actor-model fashion. Instead, we have stuff we can use/import/require at compile time, or bundle with our own software.

I would say that the Apache Foundation's work is all about offering Free "off the shelf" components; see Apache Commons, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey, I want to be a JS intern! Where do I apply?

<comment><USER9> Mozilla Corporation, obviously.

<comment><USER8> Yeah... I guess that was hyperbole. Will they really give me a cot?

<comment><USER10> Yep, just file a bug report</comment></comment></comment></comment>