Bitcoin: Update network descriptions to be more accurate - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/pull/2010 <comment><USER2> The problem is Bitcoin Core, at least some part of it's developers, pushing their own agenda to implement SegWit and Lightning network. Both solutions have a lot of technical debt and possible security problems, they were controversial from the beginning, that's why miners were refusing to implement SegWit for over a year. Now we have Bitcoin Cash which has solved those problems in a simple way, at least for now. Bitcoin Cash is more like a desperate effort to fix the damage done by Bitcoin Core and make Bitcoin usable again.

<comment><USER3> Stop spreading false information. Segwit is implemented, it's working. 90% of the miners are working on the Bitcoin chain which has Segwit. One large miner did not support it because the Segwit change also removed a bug in Bitcoin that enabled them to "cheat" with the mining using something they patented called ASICBOOST. They could use it but nobody else could. So they had a perverse incentive to block and delay Segwit and Now to promote BCH.

<comment><USER4> And Segwit did not move the needle at all.

The BTC chain is SCREAMING for more transaction capacity and the Blockstream team is popping champaign (sic) that they've introduced a fee system 100 years ahead of schedule.

Bitcoin Cash is simply the manifestation of the original vision surviving a hostile takeover attempt.

How anybody can defend a crypto scaling plan introduced by a Bilderberg Group/AXA funded team is beyond me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm actually surprised at how much bitcoin cash pushing there is. I started thinking it was trolling and spam accounts, but im getting convinced of otherwise by now.

Its like a storm brewing.

<comment><USER3> It's disturbing because there's really nothing good technically to support it and it's highly centralized. If you believe in the ideas behind Bitcoin and decentralized crypto currencies in general you would in theory be very opposed to Bitcoin Cash. And if you're not so concerned about tenants of decentralization then you'd be assessing currencies more like businesses or startups: look at the development team, the management, etc. and in that case there are much better alternatives to BCH. It's very bizarre and sad for the damage it's doing, really seemingly just to enrich a few.

<comment><USER6> Surely from a decentralization point of view almost nothing would beat iota.

<comment><USER7> Surely, IOTA is a pile of insanity, right?

It is still centralized right? [1] The whole thing is still implemented in ternary [2] for some reason right? Implemented by the people who rolled their own crypto, then when they - days later - were told it was obviously and trivially broken (collisions discovered via differential cryptanalysis) claimed they left it broken as some sort of copy protection mechanism? [3] And then pretended Microsoft was involved? [4]

The one of which Schneier wrote: "In 2017, leaving your crypto algorithm vulnerable to differential cryptanalysis is a rookie mistake. It says that no one of any calibre analyzed their system, and that the odds that their fix makes the system secure is low."

That IOTA?

[1] [https://medium.com/@ercwl/iota-is- centralized-6289246e7b4d](https://medium.com/@ercwl/iota-is- centralized-6289246e7b4d)

[2] [https://hackernoon.com/why-i-find-iota-deeply- alarming-934f1...](https://hackernoon.com/why-i-find-iota-deeply- alarming-934f1908194b)

[3] [https://gist.github.com/Come-from- Beyond/a84ab8615aac13a4543...](https://gist.github.com/Come-from- Beyond/a84ab8615aac13a4543c786f9e35b84a)

[4] [https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2017/12/12/iota- partnership-...](https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2017/12/12/iota-partnership- microsoft-marketplace/)

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately they all are. There were 5-6 years when bitcoin actually wasn't totally insance, but unfortunately the way the "powers that be" (exchanges + hash pool managers) are treating the rest of us, that ended definitively in September (actually more like Februari, but ...).

You can't transact in bitcoin, and nothing else has any acceptance ... That breaks cryptocurrency, so all one looks at is finding interesting toys.

So I guess I'm doing the same thing as all your posts you linked to, I'm saying "I'm excited, if 'the tangle' demonstrates that it can scale, I'd love to see that happen".

I would suggest nobody invest in any cryptocurrency. That said, having 50$ of play money in iota (and others) is both fun and interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah the PR tells it as it is

Ignoring btc's problems and calling forks"scams" won't fly for long

<comment><USER9> btc has put in some fixes for the problems though, everyone is now waiting for them to be adopted. Coinbase could cut their fees if they implemented Segwit. There are more improvements coming like schnorr signatures, and then obviously side chains. The philosophy has been to try the solutions they think will work before they increase block sizes. There are good reasons why some forks are called scams, especially if they are ran not as an open source community but as a company with a CEO.

The nature of bitcoin makes it one that the developers should be very cautiously improving and very skeptical of proposals. The linux kernel is the same way. The high stakes requires everyone to scrutinize changes, especially corporate backed ones. There are real concerns about raising block sizes as one of the key ideas of bitcoin is preventing scenarios that can lead to centeralization. "Core" is a large open source community, not a single leader who rejected raising block sizes for political reasons.

<comment><USER10> Bitcoin Core developers still didn't implement a SegWit wallet. I guess Coinbase can't be sure that their SegWit implementation is going to be used correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "It's no one's fault in particular that Bitcoin's user experience has changed" \- jlopp . Apparently blocking all proposed changes relating to scaling Bitcoin and lowering fees is the fault of "no one".

<comment><USER3> Segwit was implemented and lightning is being tested as we speak. If everyone used Segwit and certain miners weren't playing games spamming the network to promote BCH there'd be no problem. There is solid development going on to improve Bitcoin. All the naysayers who don't understand the technology and it's true long term scaling limits are welcome to go to Bitcoin Cash. But BCH won't scale in the long term to be usable as a currency for the 5 billion unbanked without cutting and pasting the enhancements that Bitcoin is building right now.

<comment><USER4> Much of BCH's value has been in removing Core's 'improvements' Preventing Segwit preserves a full chain of signatures on chain. Removing RBF (replace by fee) has preserved practical 0 confirmation times of a few seconds for small purchases.

Segwit is not implemented on Core's main client.

Lightning has been 18 months away since 2015. (It is still 18 months away)

Lightning will not work with the current block size that Blockstream is so fiercely protective of.

Please admit that if a credit card company wanted to maximally destroy the threat of Bitcoin, the last few years would serve as a pretty good blueprint...

*Edit: removed word that mangled sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can someone suggest a _stable_ priced crypto that is actually useful for transactions? I have zero interest in speculating on the values of these things, but I would really like to start using crypto currency obtained from cash ATM's for all of my online purchases and avoid ever entering a credit card number anywhere again. Why hasn't that been solved?

<comment><USER13> If the crypto doesn't have a central bank to institute monetary policy and manage supply, it's unsolvable.

I feel like a broken record saying this: Demand for the currency will fluctuate. If the supply is fixed, the price will be demand-driven. Which means volatile. Fiat currency has a central bank with active control over the supply, so it is capable of keeping a stable price if the central bank does its job.

[http://www.bzarg.com/p/what-bitcoin-shows-us-about-how- money...](http://www.bzarg.com/p/what-bitcoin-shows-us-about-how-money-works/)

<comment><USER14> I have stopped looking at bitcoin as a currency and have started looking at it as a stock or bond without any backing collateral or assets. The only particular properties are that it trades in a special way (in fractional quantities and round the clock) and that the number of shares is known in advance.

Otherwise it has the same volatility as a stock. It can gain or lose half its value in a few hours. Just like a stock the way to take volatility out of it is to diversify.

The volatility has nothing to do in my opinion with the lack of a central authority distributing it. It has to do with heavy speculation of this particular stock. Central banks can only correct for long term price evolutions, not for short term fluctuations.

<comment><USER13> > The volatility has nothing to do with the lack of a central authority > distributing it

If you know/believe that supply will generally adjust to cancel demand, then you have much less incentive to speculate.

<comment><USER14> Not if you make short term plays. Stock shares are also distributed by a central authority incentivized to make the price go up and therefore constrain supply, yet stocks are volatile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't see what the excitement is about blockchain. Can't you do the same stuff with SQL?

Blockchain:

* Separates your transactions into blocks and hashes the blocks together.

* Uses proof-of-work to add new blocks.

* Is slow (a block has to be filled).

* Is unreliable (your transaction may be rejected).

* Locks transactions at the block level.

* Easy for user to lose unique tokens (coins).

My SQL design for blockchain replacement:

* Take a database table.

* Allow INSERT permission only.

* Hash each record and insert the hash into next record, which chains them together like blockchain.

* Replicate the database.

This is like blockchain, because it hashes the records together, can't be modified, and has backups to ensure it can't be modified.

Unlike blockchain, it:

* Is centralized but still has backups.

* Is cheap (does not require proof of work).

* Is fast (one transaction at a time).

* Is reliable (ACID transactions).

* Locks transactions at the record level.

* User not required to keep track of coins.

So what's so great about blockchain compared to this design? The only thing blockchain does better is that there is no central server, so it's hard to shut down. But for industry use, no one is going to shut down their intranet servers. Only criminals need to worry about being shut down.

<comment><USER16> Under your design, it sounds like it would very much be possible to produce a modified history that remains valid, by repeating the hash chaining process from the point of the edit. You couldn't do it un-noticed because the hashes would change, but you would still end up with a valid database entry at the end.

More to the wider philosophical point, having a single centralised server means putting trust in a single authority - I'm not talking so much about the possibility of being shut down (although that ought to be a worry for more than just criminals) but about the power, implicitly granted to whoever maintains the central database, to act as gatekeeper.

Essentially, if you're happy having a single central authority (if you're willing to trust that they'll always play fair, never try to interfere with transactions, never exploit their position for profit, never deny service to particular customers) then all the hashing and chaining is a meaningless veneer and you might as well just use Paypal. If you're _not_ happy with a single central authority then "Just use a database" misses the point entirely.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin More Speculative Than Real Currency, Study Finds - T-A http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-23/bitcoin-more-speculative-than-real-currency-study-finds.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, duh.</comment>


Ask HN: Which successful startups were rejected by YC? - <AUTHOR> And if the founders or anyone in the YC jury read this: what was the reason? <comment><USER4> Companies which have publicly disclosed that were rejected by YC and have since raised >$20m:

* Chartboost

* Sendgrid

* LightSail

I've seen it claimed that Couchbase should be on this list, but I've never seen a primary source which verifies that they were rejected from YC.

<comment><USER5> Is there some kind of rule that every startup name has to be of the form NounNoun or VerbNoun?

<comment><USER6> Well, ChartBoost is NounVerb, if that makes you feel better.

<comment><USER7> It could be either way

NounVerb - Boost your charts (increase your metrics) VerbNoun - Chart your boosts (monitor your improvements)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> BlockCypher[1] has written about this. I think SnapCard did something similar, though the closest I can find is an article about the laundry service they started[2].

[1] - [https://blog.blockcypher.com/what-adam-saw-that-sam- didnt-a0...](https://blog.blockcypher.com/what-adam-saw-that-sam- didnt-a0c500dda70#.iwao2hq2x)

[2] - [https://pando.com/2013/10/11/superhero-laundry-founders- laun...](https://pando.com/2013/10/11/superhero-laundry-founders-launch- startup-to-prove-a-point-then-shut-it-down-once-they-succeed/)

EDIT - <USER2>

<comment><USER9> > We didn't get into YC: Sam Altman told us they did not think we could ever > inspire Bitcoin developers to build on top of us.

Don't ever let anyone tell you what you can and can't do. Which is to say, make your own way in this world.

<comment><USER10> What's the use of mentoring then?

<comment><USER11> To provide another perspective to integrate into your decisions.

Listening to people doesn't mean doing what they say.

<comment><USER10> Sure, then what's wrong in Sam warning them about something?

<comment><USER11> Nothing wrong with him warning them, but then there's also nothing wrong with them disregarding his warning. It sounds like they did pretty well regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> PG offered a good proxy for this a while back. He said if you look at the top companies from other accelerators, most of them probably applied to YC also.

<comment><USER13> I wonder if investors consider it a negative to be a top company in another accelerator then.

"Did you apply to and get rejected by YC?" must be a common question many investors now ask of companies that aren't YC alumni.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> ""Did you apply to and get rejected by YC?" must be a common question many investors now ask of companies that aren't YC alumni."

Is this a guess or do you have anything to back it up? It seems really strange to me. An investor shouldn't be judging you based on the judgement of another investor.

<comment><USER14> >> An investor shouldn't be judging you based on the judgement of another investor.

Hah!

You're right of course, but this happens all. the. time.

Investors and VCs are far from immune to herd mentality.

<comment><USER15> There is the chance the other investor knows something you don't know, etc. which means it isn't necessarily zero-information.

<comment><USER16> Rarely. It's mostly a game of "i'm too chicken to make decisions on my own."

VCs _love love love_ the joke of "We're supposed to be all about new unproven dynamic ventures and insight into the future, but we're so risk averse! lol!!!!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Similar questions 1 year ago. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9413204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9413204)

</comment><comment><USER18> Buffer is very popular. [https://open.buffer.com/buffers-y-combinator- application/](https://open.buffer.com/buffers-y-combinator-application/)

<comment><USER19> Here's what I see when I go to that Buffer page:

[http://thumbsnap.com/i/nlgq33uo.png?0305](http://thumbsnap.com/i/nlgq33uo.png?0305)

3 signup forms (1 in a modal) for their newsletter (and an additional link to signup for the newsletter at the end of the post).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> CleverTap - integrates app analytics and marketing. We were known as WizRocket back then. We now have 1500+ customers, and raised $9.6 M from Accel and Sequoia.

<comment><USER10> > 1500+ customers

How many of them are paying?

<comment><USER20> we don't disclose that publicly, but here a link to our pricing page - [https://clevertap.com/pricing/](https://clevertap.com/pricing/)

<comment><USER10> In general what ratio of free/paying customers should be considered good?

<comment><USER20> Typically for a Saas offering, there's always a free trial, an entry level low-price point plan, or a forever free plan - so the percentage of paying customers could be any where from 10% to 25%. The hope/try is to get the free customers convert to the paid tier as they derive more value from the product over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Branch Metrics

They were prepivot (Kindrid Prints) and YC didn't like their idea

</comment><comment><USER22> Previously discussed: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9413204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9413204)

</comment><comment><USER23> My understanding is that a meaningful fraction of YC companies and founders were rejected by YC before acceptance in a later batch.

</comment><comment><USER24> Friends with a handful of founders that have been rejected by YC - <USER3> companies are all doing incredibly well today.

</comment><comment><USER25> How do you define successful ?.

<comment><USER10> Success is a journey that starts with a "?" (question mark) and end with "." (fullstop)

<comment><USER26> So in Python, success is a regular expression that matches zero or one occurrences any character except newline? I've been doing it wrong!

<comment><USER27> I'm fairly sure Python would throw an error if you treated that as a regular expression.

<comment><USER26> That's why to succeed you have to try!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I remember AirBnB's founder said they got rejected by 7 VCs when they started.

</comment><comment><USER29> Munchery</comment>


How the packaging copy for Panasonic's Eneloops affects sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.conversionsurge.com/this-sales-copy-from-panasonic-fails-to-convert/

<comment><USER2> I never cared about the recharge time because I always keep set of 2 or 4 spare AAs and AAAs in a charged state. Then I just swap in the spares for the discharged batteries and recharge the discharged ones for the next device that will need them.</comment>


Cuisine and empire - <AUTHOR> http://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2015/8/18/cuisine-and-empire <comment><USER2> I like the idea of McDonald's hamburger as a symbol of mass produced luxury. Reminds me of when John Gruber quotes Warhol on Coca Cola. Whether or not the product is to your liking, you have to be impressed at the level of consistent quality that they can apply to an industrial food production process.

Chipotle may be the ascendant totem of aspirational ethnic food diners, but more tribute should be paid to the original cultural assimilation cuisine.

Recently on my first trip to New York, I was blown away by the Manhattan pizza shops. There is a huge number of independent proprietors, and each has their own, slightly differing process for making pizza. It's tasty food with lavish ingredients - meats, cheeses, fresh vegetables. Watching the queues at lunch, it was interesting to see such variety in customers - white, black, business suits, working class, etc. There didn't see to be any dominant demographic.

That level of uniqueness made me wonder why pizza is not a more celebrated food. It certainly has the same characteristics that enable Tokyo ramen otaku to write blogs painstakingly deconstructing their meals. Perhaps once the current anti carb movement dies down, it will come back into fashion.</comment>


Random Walk of the Penguins – Predicting Populations with Data Science - <AUTHOR> https://www.drivendata.org/competitions/47/penguins/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also, check out our benchmark blog post which gives an overview of working with penguin data!

[http://blog.drivendata.org/2017/04/28/penguins- benchmark/](http://blog.drivendata.org/2017/04/28/penguins-benchmark/)</comment>


Gigshare: Freelance job sharing. Is this a good idea or not? - <AUTHOR> http://gigshare.co/pages/about

<comment><USER2> I don't think it is. If I refer a job to a friend, I do so knowing that particular friend can handle the job. Different jobs I'd refer to different people. Whenever I refer a job, I'm putting my name on the line in recommending that person. If they fail, the customer loses confidence in me as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if you were only referring the job to your private network, of say 5-10 other freelancers who you trusted? Not the public network.

<comment><USER3> I just hire said freelancers as subcontractors, pay them, and deliver the work directly to my client. Simpler for the client, subcontractor gets easy work without worrying about client negotiation.</comment></comment></comment>


GitHub Starless A curated list of repositories - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/xiaoluoboding/awesome-starless <comment><AUTHOR> A curated list of awesome repositories which stargazers less but has a huge used by.</comment>


What Happens When You Take 550 Doses of LSD at Once - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pkeqd8/what-happens-lsd-overdose <comment><USER2> There are reports of ingestion of incredible amounts of LSD known as "thumbprints," wherein a brave person sticks their thumb in raw crystal LSD and presses it into their palm (or tongue).

[https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/1427364](https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/1427364)</comment>


China steps closer to precrime using AI - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-ai-crimes-before-happen-artificial-intelligence-security-plans-beijing-meng-jianzhu-a7962496.html <comment><USER2> This is nothing new in China - they've been arresting people before they could commit a crime for decades.</comment>


[Ask YC] - Licensing opinion - <AUTHOR>

What am I trying to achieve.
I am trying to sell licenses for code which solves a common pain point in web-application development. I want to
1. Allow open source applications to use it in the webapp without paying me.
2. Charge a license fee for non OS applications.
How can I license to achieve this? Would QPL be a good license for use here? <comment><USER3> Simple straightforward dual licensing should cover it. License the code under the GPL and then also offer a commercial license for user who want to add it to commercial products or use the code within a commercial environment - <USER2> can offer a paid for support agreement as well to the latter group.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't everyone just choose to use it under GPL then?</comment></comment>


Visit http://ai/ with your web browser. What happens? Why does it happen? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/susam/status/1228668017858318336 <comment><USER2> Was answered in this post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17637114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17637114)</comment>


Google, Not the Government, Is Building the Future - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/technology/personaltech/google-not-the-government-is-building-the-future.html <comment><USER2> FTA:

> Collectively, the five are among the biggest investors in research and > development on the planet. According to their earnings reports, they are on > track to spend more than $60 billion this year on research and development. > By comparison, in 2015, the United States federal government spent about $67 > billion on all nondefense-related scientific research.

That's depressing. On the other hand, DARPA has been the force behind a lot of advancements: the Internet, self-driving cars, etc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand, if I submitted the same exact link, why did not give a direct point to the oldest thread? It simply created a dupe.

Sometimes a direct link is made, sometimes not. Apologies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14362696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14362696)</comment>


Curl says bye bye to pipelining - <AUTHOR> https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2019/04/06/curl-says-bye-bye-to-pipelining/ <comment><USER2> Maybe the headline should be edited to "Curl says bye bye to HTTP/1.1 Pipelining" to prevent giving people scanning the HN headlines a heart attack. :-)

<comment><USER3> I had to read a many comments to see how this could be interpreted as alarming. I guess I assume more context of HM readers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note, this is about HTTP/1.1 Pipelining being removed not *nix Pipeline.

       HTTP/1.1 Pipelining was badly supported by curl for a long time in the sense that we had a series of known bugs and it was a fragile feature without enough tests.

<comment><USER5> *nix pipes are part of POSIX and the OS/Shell implements them, if the app takes input and produces output it can be a component of a pipeline.

In short, the Curl developers couldn't remove pipes without crippling the app.

<comment><USER6> Everything you say is correct, and may even be a word to the wise, as it were -- but there are always _new_ command line apps made by people who haven't been thoroughly exposed to the true Unix/Linux/Posix way, and need to have that kind of thing explained. [1] [2] [3]

Which is to say that your comments are not self-evident to everyone, by any means.

Example: less(1) was eventually fitted with the -R flag to allow highlighting to be passed by pipe, to make it friendly to piping from highlight-producing apps rather than its default highlight-unfriendly stripping of input controls/escapes.

Benign intentions with regard to files sometimes require a little more thought to be simultaneously friendly to pipes, except for the simplest of plain text apps.

(I'm not trying to make a big point, but I just rediscovered 'less -R' out of necessity today. So, I was pondering some of these issues)

Worth a re-read for everyone (and I worry that these things may be in the process of being forgotten):

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Eric_Raymond's...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Eric_Raymond's_17_Unix_Rules) and the book:

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

[4] Raymond didn't invent any of this, but he explained it very nicely, IMHO.

Edit: P.S. the above is somewhat meandering, and is sure to be criticized because simple equivalence of piped and file input is the most important thing, which I agree with -- but I was mixing that with a secondary point because of what I was doing today. Sorry. "I did not have time to make this letter shorter" etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good call, given that it's not enabled in modern browsers, and is unreliably supported in proxies and servers.

It's for the best that it becomes widely treated as a non-feature of HTTP/1.1.

<comment><USER8> Still somewhat baffling that it's apparently so buggy across servers and proxies that it was for the best to disable it across browsers. In comparison to http2 multiplexing it seems trivial to get right, yet posts like this one suggest that http2 works fine everywhere and in every regard, and http1.x doesn't.

<comment><USER9> It's because real life http2 makes encryption mandatory, so that middle boxes can't fiddle with the stream. Thanks to that everything arrives as it was intended on the server

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why isn't pipelining part of TCP/IP, so the OS can handle it instead of the application?

<comment><USER11> Because TCP was designed as a single-stream protocol. There's SCTP which operates with messages rather than streams and can send those messages simultaneously.

<comment><USER10> Sounds interesting. Is that implemented in kernels? And why wasn't HTTP1.1+ built on top of that?

<comment><USER12> Pretty much any modern OS supports SCTP. HTTP wasn't built off it because HTTP came long before SCTP, but you won't find many protocols built off SCTP anyway, because it's poorly supported by middle-boxes and firewalls. Just look at any cloud firewall for example, you can open TCP or UDP, but not SCP or any of the "lesser known" protocols. It's currently in an unfortunate chicken and egg problem, where crappy firewalls don't support it because it's rarely used, and it's rarely used because crappy firewalls don't support it, but are everywhere on the public internet.

HTTP3 actually does propose changing the transport protocol, but to QUIC, which is a transport over UDP.

<comment><USER13> SCTP can be tunneled over UDP - which WebRTC does.

It didn't get the right traction. It isn't built into windows, it was even a second class citizen on Linux not that long ago requiring lksctp to be installed (maybe it still does).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin Trends in the First Half of 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.coinbase.com/2015/07/15/bitcoin-trends-in-1h-2015/ <comment><USER3> The main trend for Bitcoin in 2015 is that not much happened. The price is within 10% of where it was at the beginning of the year. Transaction volume in dollars is flat, or down a little. Many of the companies which were accepting Bitcoin no longer are; those that are report low transaction volumes. (There are lots of merchants which "accept Bitcoin" because it's an option in some shopping cart programs, but those just send the Bitcoins to Coinbase, which converts them to dollars and sends the funds to the merchant.)

The big trends in Bitcoin seem to be:

\- Amateur hour is over. The remaining exchanges are bigger and seemingly more stable, although none of them are up to bank-level yet. New York's Bitcoin regulation seems to have been accepted.

\- Mining is more centralized than ever. Most of the big Bitcoin miners are in cold areas of China with cheap power. China has well over 50% of the hash rate now. This may just be a way to convert yuan to dollars. (China has currency controls, but encourages exports. For a few months, it was legal in China to buy Bitcoins with yuan through regular payment channels, then sell the Bitcoins outside China for dollars. That drove the $1000 Bitcoin bubble, and was shut down by the People's Bank of China last year, causing the Bitcoin crash. _Mining_ Bitcoin in China, and selling it outside China, is considered "exporting" and is a legal way to convert yuan to dollars.)

\- Since the shutdown of Silk Road I and Silk Road II and the related arrests, Bitcoin is no longer considered a safe way to buy drugs. This doesn't seem to have affected the price much one way or the other.

\- Bitcoin ATMs are disappearing. In the SF bay area, Hacker Dojo and Workshop Cafe got rid of theirs, and Nakamoto's doesn't have theirs working. Hero City (a co-working space) may still have one.

History of Bitcoin:

        2013: Wow!
        2014: Aargh!
        2015: Meh.

<comment><USER4> 2013: "Decentralized money is amazing- Let me build a business around it!"

2014: "Hmmm... I just built a centralized business around Bitcoin, so now my customers have the same counterparty risks as before... why was I excited about Bitcoin again?"

2015: ???

2016: Profit

(If someone figures out the entry for 2015, please let me know what it is...)

<comment><USER5> 2016: Reward-Drop

<comment><USER6> This could be very sigificant. Down to 12.5 BTC per block. Fees are currently not close to making that up that split. It would be really interesting to see if some of the larger mining pools can sustain their current hash rate if the reward drops but the fees don't particularaly increase.

As long as there isn't sigificantly more transactions than are reasonable to be included in a block there simply won't be too much pressure on the senders side to increase the amount of fees paid.

<comment><USER7> Some people argue that the reduced creation of new coins will take pressure off the price which could lead to a rally. Then again, that would only be true if miners were actually selling off their newly created coins immediately instead of holding them while waiting for higher prices.

The other aspect is the miner's inevitable margin compression. From the numbers we have seen (e.g. KnC in 2014), it seems that these companies are already operating on razor thin margins. Whatever money they have made, they needed to re-invest into upgraded hardware in order to stay competitive. Unless there is a meaningful increase in price before the reward halving, a lot of miners will likely run into trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> No mention of the 'stress test' that's brought the network to its knees the past few days, or of the soft fork that resulted in suggestions to wait for 30+ confirmations? Puff piece.

C'mon Coinbase, at least spin them into a '<X> is actually good for Bitcoin, because <Y>' format.

<comment><USER9> For those who don't know, the stress test was where a company tested what would happen if someone filled the network with transactions.

The results were not favorable for bitcoin and highlights key design problems -> some transactions cost $280/transaction to put through, and other transactions that had <$20 fees were not processed and stuck in limbo.

<comment><USER10> > The results were not favorable for bitcoin and highlights key design > problems

Some would disagree, considering the system kept functioning exactly as intended under the circumstances imposed on it.

Personally I agree that the whole thing is troubling, but was anything really discovered here?

Considering that the price has been rising, if you believe in prediction markets, these design problems could likely be overcome. After all, people have been working on it since long before any of these stress tests were performed.

<comment><USER11> _Some would disagree, considering the system kept functioning exactly as intended under the circumstances imposed on it._

Yes, hence the GP stating, very clearly, that the results "[highlighted] key design problems".

The results of the stress test were not surprising to anyone who's been paying close attention, but it was a valuable demonstration that Bitcoin is it currently operates is misarchitected and will require some fundamental redesigns in order to operate at scale. These problems have been under discussion since at least 2011 and have been constantly disregarded, so perhaps this will help. It seems unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Trends as I see them: decreased media interest, loss of trust in the Bitcoin Foundation and by extension the core development team, lots more government surveillance of related businesses (helped by a stabilization of centralized exchanges), still virtually no banks globally willing to work with Bitcoin- related companies, failure to achieve any real 'killer app' at scale: beyond tax or forex-restriction evasion or international drug distribution.

On the plus side, scope creep seems to have slowed, more people are aware of the overall concept, and Merkle trees have begun to be applied experimentally to additional problem domains.

PS. Reading between the lines, new user growth has slowed dramatically at Coinbase. IIRC they sent an email this week begging for referrals, offering $25/signup. And like all startups, it probably defines users as people who once gave them their email address, rather than actual regular users of some nontrivial part of the service. "A trillion wallets!" indeed.

PPS. What percentage of increased Bitcoin transactions are due to the use of automated gambling sites for Bitcoin-trail erasure type money laundering through numerous microtransactions?

<comment><USER13> While what you say is true, there are also increasing good vibes because of news like this one...

[http://www.businessinsider.com/bnp-paribas-bitcoin- blockchai...](http://www.businessinsider.com/bnp-paribas-bitcoin-blockchain- securities-firms-redundant-2015-7)

These are the kind of "news" and media attention that matter. The big guys are starting to bet heavily on the technology.

<comment><USER14> That report is literally "one analyst mentioned it in passing in some report".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm calling statistical shenanigans. While the data presented is likely correct, the narrative is completely misleading.

> _While the price is down 9% YTD (as of July 13), it 's up over 213% over a > two year time frame._

So they are ignoring the price drop from $1,000?

> _This has attracted more institutional investors to the market and > volatility has decreased as a result._

Chart indicates a gradual decrease, it's hard to establish causality. Also, it ignores the fact that 50% volatility for a currency is absurd.

> _As of June 30, there were 6,109 Github repositories referencing Bitcoin. By > comparison, there were 2,352 Github repositories referencing Stripe and > 2,318 repositories referencing Paypal._

Comparing a currency with a currency processor is blatantly comparing Apples and Oranges. How many GitHub repositories are there mentioning Coinbase?

<comment><USER16> makes sense from a Coinbase's perspective to present facts like this, I guess...

<comment><USER17> The alternative is to admit the ship is slowly sinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, the first graph in this article looks exactly like the graph of the bubble phenomenon ([http://i.imgur.com/Amon5PR.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Amon5PR.jpg)). I guess stability will increase, which is a good thing.

<comment><USER19> Great graph, haven't seen this before. Although according to that graph, bitcoin hasn't reached 'despair' yet :(.

<comment><USER20> I believe that in all of bitcoin's major bubbles, it has never crashed below the previous bubble's high.

<comment><USER4> That was only true until January 2015, when the price dropped to 152.4, well below the previous bubble's high.

<comment><USER21> That was just a flash crash. It has stayed well about 200 the past 6 months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I notice they are still pushing out the number of wallets and accounts they have as a sign of anything. Coinbase you are now a few years old and have raised over $100m. It's time to leave behind local social networks, and underused sites everywhere and start reporting MAU. No one but fanatics care how many people have signed up. How many people regularly use your service.

</comment><comment><USER23> >As global events that highlight the restrictions of closed banking systems and insecure data security practices (e.g. the Greece debt crisis and recent United States Office of Personnel Management data breach) continue to occur, we believe that bitcoin is likely to be adopted by more people looking for digital money that is global, secure, and inclusive.

How would Bitcoin have prevented or mitigated the OPM hack?

<comment><USER24> It's possible that one could use the data leaked in the OPM hack to hijack someone's bank account. I imagine a lot, maybe all, of the verification info a bank would ask for in order to do a password reset would be in those files for many people.

The link is a bit of a stretch, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I believe this is what's referred to as the "pump"

</comment><comment><USER26> > 47% of Coinbase users are now from countries outside the US

I wonder what the country breakdown estimation is for all Bitcoin transactions. I would guess more international use than Coinbase numbers

</comment><comment><USER27> I really doubt that most people see Bitcoin's features as pluses rather than minuses.

I have always thought that the financial institutions we have in mainstream currencies are institutions that societies want. If ever Bitcoin goes mainstream, the Bitcoin economy would end up a lot like the world economy when it was gold-backed, albeit one where the transaction costs were not physical but hidden in the work done in blockchains.

It seems to me like people are mistakenly thinking that Bitcoin's lack of financial institutions are a property inherent to the currency rather than the simple fact that Bitcoin is a currency that is not mature enough to have actors sufficiently invested in it to want to create regulatory institutions on top of the currency.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me easier to regulate Bitcoins than say, gold. It is far easier to trace and verify the provenance of Bitcoins than that of gold, and hence far easier to classify Bitcoins into "clean Bitcoins" and "dirty Bitcoins". A cabal of influential institutions can simply refuse to deal with wallets and businesses that deal in "dirty Bitcoins", and that can serve as a basis of institutional regulation of Bitcoin as a currency.

</comment><comment><USER28> 91 year old billionaire Charlie Munger has referred to Bitcoin as "rat poison". His friend, 84 year old Warren Buffett has said Bitcoin is "not a currency" and advised people to "stay away from it".

Now you can ascribe this to them being old fuddy duddies who "just don't get it". You can also ascribe this to the wisdom of people who lived through the Great Depression, World War II etc. and have seen every scam and snake oil pitch under the sun.

Which is exactly what Bitcoins are. They are worthless, they have no value. They're not only a scam, they're a scam that should be obvious on the face of it, like subprime real estate, or a Pets.com IPO. People talk about a Silicon Valley bubble - nothing is more indicative of a bubble than Bitcoins. These guys may not know the specifics of blockchain algorithms, but from decades of hard experience they can distinguish value from non-value, and Bitcoins have no value.

I can't think of a commodity it makes less sense to hold onto than a Bitcoin. Gold has value, as do other precious metals, oil has value - Bitcoins have no value. The only comparison I've seen made to Bitcoins is fiat money, but it would take too long to fully explain why Bitcoins don't have the value of a US dollar in a post here.

I was warning people of this scam here when Bitcoin was over $460 ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6753545](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6753545) ). It has since fallen to $290. It will be falling to $0.

For some laughs, read [http://bitcoin.org/en/faq#why-do-bitcoins-have- value](http://bitcoin.org/en/faq#why-do-bitcoins-have-value) \- "Bitcoins have value because they are useful as a form of money. Bitcoin has the characteristics of money (durability, portability, fungibility, scarcity, divisibility, and recognizability) based on the properties of mathematics rather than relying on physical properties (like gold and silver) or trust in central authorities (like fiat currencies)."

What? Commodities which _already have value(!)_ become currencies because they have "durability, portability, fungibility, scarcity, divisibility, and recognizability". Gold has all of those properties so it has made a good currency through history - but even if it had none of those properties, it derives its value from it being a commodity with useful physical traits - <USER2> the ability to fill a tooth, or conduct electricity, and so forth. Bitcoins have no such traits - they have the traits which would make a commodity with value a good currency, but it has no inherit value as a commodity!

Witness all the angels and VC's who sing the high holy praises of this scam. Are they just complete fools who have no understanding of the economics they claim to have expertise in, or are they just scammers trying to fleece suckers out there? I don't know the answer to this, but at the end of the day, all the VC's and seeders and angels on Twitter etc. who support this Bitcoin scam are either fools or thieves. Keynes said markets can remain irrational longer than he could remain solvent, but it's inevitable that Bitcoins price will go to $0. Since my first statement of this here, Bitcoin has gone from $460 to its present $290. It will inevitably go to $0, no matter how many of the scammers downvote this post so people won't see it. Because no matter what anyone says, the market cap of the $5 trillion worth of gold mined will never change more than an order of magnitude (barring some amazing chemical technological advance). Whereas lack of doubt is all that is keeping Bitcoin's $4 billion market cap from going to $0. From it's scammy beginnings (the anonymous "Satoshi"), to all the legal problems and scams of Mt. Gox, Butterfly Labs etc., it's only a matter of time before this Ponzi scheme comes to an end. More instructive than that is all the existing VC's, seeders, angels etc. who are vocal in their support of this scam - that's what you should really remember.

<comment><USER19> Sorry you got downvoted. I don't agree with you, but I agree it's a valid point of view to have. But in the end, only the future knows if bitcoins price will rise or fall. Everyone is guessing here.

Let me leave you with this: If I told you 10 years ago, a website where everyone can edit the pages, and were nobody gets paid, will create an encyclopedia that has more content and is more accurate than professional encyclopedia publishers, would be believe me? I definitely wouldn't, that concept is completely absurd to me, but yet, it worked. Bitcoins seems like a way more viable idea to me.

Bitcoin is not competing with gold, it's basically competing with "I owe you" notes, managed by some central entity. You could argue that those "I owe you" notes have value, but maybe so does distributed transactions.

Bitcoin might just keep itself alive: because it has value, you can do transactions with it, and because you can do transactions with it, it has value.

<comment><USER28> > Bitcoin is not competing with gold, it's basically competing with "I owe > you" notes, managed by some central entity. You could argue that those "I > owe you" notes have value, but maybe so does distributed transactions.

As I said, it would take too long to fully explain why Bitcoins have less value than dollars and euros (of course last year, EUR/USD was 1.35, today it's 1.09, but the problems of Greece etc. are a little tangential...) Dollars had no inherent value in 1970 - you could trade dollars for gold, but it was still just a promissory note - I'd rather have an ounce of gold in my hand than a note promising me an ounce of gold.

What does the phrase "gold reserve" mean ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve) )? The USA golds 8000 tons of gold in Fort Knox (and in NYC's Federal Reserve building). Why? Why does it do this? It must cost a lot to hold all that gold. The reason it does is because that gold implicitly (but not explicitly) backs the US dollar. If the dollar began crashing tomorrow, Obama could go on TV and say he was opening the vaults of Fort Knox and would exchange dollars for gold. Gold doesn't have any special properties, it's just convenient to use a currency, any commodity trade would do.

Even with economic dips, people don't think about the things underlying economic confidence in the face of potential collapse - but governments do think about these long term things, and major changes in policy always indicate changes in thinking ( [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/business/global/german- cen...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/business/global/german-central-bank- to-repatriate-gold-reserves.html) ).

<comment><USER29> Gold price has been falling for the last few years. Even with all this economic uncertainty and recession it has not had the usual uptick you would expect to see if people considered it a safe haven. In addition it seems likely that there is far less gold in Fort knox than there should be. They could not actually open the doors to Fort knox to exchange for dollars because at that stage the game it up. They just keep them closed and tell everyone their gold is safe and secure.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Somebody is trying to profit off of something that I released for free - <AUTHOR>

I wrote a little app called Kwerty Gmail Notifier and put it on my site and on Github for anybody to use free of charge. Lately it has been getting a bit of attention on some popular download sites.
http://kwerty.com/Gmail-Notifier-for-Windows-7/
Yesterday I noticed somebody has posted it on Facebook and is claiming it as an exclusive, and offering a "pro full version". They link to a website where you must register to download. Once registered they ask you to pay.
http://facebook.com/note.php?note_id=123271001142680
They are trying to profit off of something I released for free.
I looked at filing a copyright infringement claim through Facebook, but they want my full contact details and they say that such information may be revealed to the infringer. I don't particularly want some guy in Timbuctoo having my phone number and address.
What is the best course of action for me to take to have it removed from Facebook? <comment><USER2> What kind of license has your application ? I've found a single Kwerty repo on Github with no license mentioned or copyright.

You should always use a license for your software and state clearly who owns the copyright for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't even consider it, as I created the app for fun and just wanted to put it out there.

I looked at some of the various types of licenses but I have no idea which one I should be using.

My main concern is to prevent people from trying to profit from the software. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER3> BSD/MIT (and maybe Apache?): People can take your stuff and resell it.

GPL/LGPL: People can't take your stuff and use it in any way whatsoever without making what they make with it open source as well.

That may be a broad generalization, but it's mostly true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Find a pro-bono copyright lawyer to do a DMCA takedown for you; it might be possible for the notification details to be his not yours.

<comment><USER5> where would you find one of these?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> just email fb, tell them this guy is infringing your copyright, point them to its real home on the web and ask them to take it down. i runinto this w/ ebay and youtube and that approach always works for me. they may even have an official form or email for these complaints.</comment>


Disqus redesigned - <AUTHOR> http://smotko.si/disqus-redesigned/

<comment><USER2> Actually ... all I really want from Disqus is to see the comments that fly in through social media.

After posting I will often get tweets on the line of "Hey @Swizec, your last blog really sucks because of <X>" ... I'd like those to appear on the appropriate post as comments.

Wonder if that's possible. Maybe if Disqus knew when I post on twitter and get replies to that tweet.</comment>


The Many Battlefronts of Grab versus Gojek in Southeast Asia - <AUTHOR> https://kr-asia.com/the-many-battlefronts-of-grab-versus-gojek-in-southeast-asia <comment><AUTHOR> The term 'super app' became a popular buzzword in Southeast Asia after Grab and Gojek, the region's two biggest tech startups, began using the term to describe themselves.

It's meant to signal their ambition to become the one-stop app to offer services and solutions that help people address their daily needs–from transportation to food, to entertainment, similar to the role WeChat plays in China.</comment>


Is Twitch login insecure? It doesn't use https. - <AUTHOR> http://www.twitch.tv/login

<comment><AUTHOR> I was able to sniff out my session id, however it can't be set by javascript since it's httponly. But what about the password? I haven't found it in plain text, so I guess it could be hashed? I'm a developer, but this is my first time dabbling with this kind of stuff...

</comment><comment><USER2> The form is submitted to [https://secure.twitch.tv](https://secure.twitch.tv) so it should be secure in transit, but they should just make the form use https as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahhhh that makes sense. I was incorrect in assuming the entire page had to be https. I'm sure google will change this quick, with google+ and all.</comment></comment>


Apple said to be building $1 billion server farm - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/05/23/apple_said_building_1_billion_server_farm.html

<comment><USER2> With the RAM prices Apple charges, that could be a pretty small server farm... On a more serious note, that should be a _massive_ facility. On the order of 500,000 square feet.

</comment><comment><USER3> The real question is what is Apple going to use the server farm for?

<comment><USER4> Aside from getting them into the cloud or CDN business, it might also be useful to have a tangible deployment of Apple's enterprise technology, to keep AAPL in the minds of the executive crowd, now that traditional server vendors are dying out (SGI, Sun, etc.)

Beating a few benchmarks on performance, price or power-consumption is usually a good way to break into, or return to, a market.

Apple also has a rabid user base who will gobble up anything they put out.

<comment><USER5> Spending a billion just 'to keep AAPL in minds of the executive crowd' would be pretty dumb decision making and would put Apple right on the path of Sun.

<comment><USER4> This is not a bil in cash; they're most likely adding up the retail price of their own hardware sitting in warehouses and other stuff they can "license" to themselves for free.

If we say the cash cost to them is about half of that, I think 500 mil can be recouped selling their services to about 50 or so large corporations and governments.

Apple has cash to burn and it needs another business leg to hedge against its consumer offerings. 500 mil in R&D and insurance sounds about right. We will have to wait to hear what they tell their shareholders, in any event.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everyone who has money _should_ be building those. The economics of abundant bandwidth one one hand and software mangement costs on the other dictate massive centralization of computing. Like Amazon't VP of technology said: Amazon pioneered it's massive IT infrastructure because it was the first to need it. Torrow, everyone will need it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone know how many people will be employed by a $1B data center?

<comment><USER8> At least 100 people: [http://www.tuaw.com/2009/05/25/apple-building-server- farm-se...](http://www.tuaw.com/2009/05/25/apple-building-server-farm-secret- lair-in-north-carolina/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't get it. Are the servers Apple Macs?

<comment><USER6> They are mac minis. Ultra-small servers are the latest hot(or cold, as it were) trend, for example Dell just shipped this 30 watt server: [http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/05/22/ServerUnder30W.a...](http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/05/22/ServerUnder30W.aspx)

Apple has been at it for a while now: <http://www.macminicolo.net/>

<comment><USER10> I'd think that the servers would be primarily Xserves: <http://www.apple.com/xserve/>

<comment><USER2> While they're spending a billion dollars, I wouldn't be surprised if they developed some custom hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> an excellent demonstration of the sort of regulation competition that should be commonplace. if states were allowed to more freely compete for business corporate taxes would be driven down to a reasonable market rate.

<comment><USER6> Well, the states _are_ allowed to compete on taxation policies. For example Boeing was strong-arming several states for the tax breaks around their 7e7 plane-building factory.

Can you point out something to the contrary?

<comment><USER11> um...the fact that the _vast_ majority of taxes are federal taxes that the states can't do anything about?

<comment><USER12> That is actually an interesting thing to ponder (what would happen if there were no direct federal taxes). Instead, taxes would be funneled through local or state governments, which would be responsible for contributing some amount of that to the federal government. Local governments could then tweak who, what and how much they tax in order to attract business. Policy might also become less homogeneous across cities and states because the federal government would have less money to hold over the heads of local policy makers. But maybe not...just thinking out loud here...

<comment><USER11> agreed. on the face of it it seems stupid that if you have to have taxes, the taxer should care where the money comes from or how it was collected from the taxee. But then you realize that it was never about the money. the government can print more money any time it wants. it is about control.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cloudflare Bans Sex Worker Platform, Switter. First Notable Ban Since Neo Nazis - <AUTHOR> A platform called Switter took off 3 weeks ago in response to the FOSTA/SESTA bill which lead to the shutdown of sites/accounts and silencing of accounts on like Craigslist, Twitter, Reddit, Skype and Gmail. With 47,000 members Cloudflare banned the site from their services Wednesday evening without notice.
The last documented time Cloudflare terminated services was when they terminated the account of a white supremacist website last year.
The network, Switter, was started by a company in Australia and runs on the open-source social platform Mastodon at an Austrian domain.
"Cloudflare has now effectively kicked two groups offline: Neo-Nazis and Sex Workers. There is no comparison. One used their site to call for death, the other used theirs to stay alive"
https://twitter.com/AZMos/status/986819643661791233
Cloudflare are still yet to comment on the matter. <comment><USER2> I hate this. SESTA is a poorly drafted law. While it's responding to a real, serious problem — sex trafficking of minors online — it's lack of specificity means it will be interpreted extremely broadly and lead to dangerous precedents. We lobbied against it. I personally spent a lot of time in congressional offices warning about exactly this outcome. And, just yesterday, I spent much of my day with our General Counsel pleading about the dangers of a slippery slope. But, the law is the law, and we need to follow the law.

Regulating content online is a terrible role for deep infrastructure companies like Cloudflare to play. And it's far from the end. The same thing is coming for ISPs, registrars, and DNS providers over the days ahead. Ideally, Congress needs to clarify which services are "interactive computer services" under SESTA and which are not. Until then, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Craigslist, Cloudflare, GoDaddy, AWS, Microsoft, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Level(3), and many others will err on the side of caution — and silently sites will disappear from the Internet.

If you're concerned, and live in the United States, please call your congress person and let them know that deep infrastructure companies aren't the right places to regulate what content can and cannot be online.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cloudflare operates under US law and most likely is concerned about action by the US Department of Justice against them in the event they continued to provide services to Switter.

<comment><USER4> But they are in international markets and this particular customer was in Australia where sex work is legal.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't matter. Cloudflare is a US corporation operating under US law (as well as the laws of other countries they have offices in).

<comment><USER5> I guess the technocracy promotes free speech when it suits them & shuts it down when they fear it.

<comment><USER6> FFS. Please, please actually think about what you're saying and about the implications it carries if you game theory it out a bit, that's absolutely critical when dealing with proposed solutions for wider issues of society. "The technocracy" _is not_ in fact responsible for creating law, at least not yet. They are _subjects_ to the law, and while of course they have an input both in the way any other group does and extra in the way more resources and education can enhance that, they're not even a dominant player amongst political powers. They cannot overrule law, nor should they be expected to, and really is that what you, amorphid, would actually want to see? Responsibility is tied to power, if you want them to be responsible then you're necessarily suggesting they have the power too. And that takes us straight to a world where corporations really are governing powers also, as in they can legitimately wield physical force against opponents.

If this is due to FOSTA/SESTA, then regardless of Cloudflare's personal views they need to follow it. The fault lies somewhat in Congress but ultimately in the American People for repeatedly failing to appropriately carry out our duties in maintaining our democracy. If you argue that the people simply aren't up for that at all, then you're arguing democracy should be dumped or at least toned down in a further hybridization, and that gets into very, very deep waters. There is no contradiction whatsoever between Cloudflare and other tech companies promoting/lobbying heavily for Free Speech protections, which again are protections against _government_ action, while still acceding to the supremacy of government if it passes laws to the contrary and those laws are still in force (during a legal challenge with no injunction for example, or following a failed legal challenge).

There's nothing wrong in parallel with all this either in all of us working to try to eliminate centralized pressure points and decentralized malicious actor capabilities so on as well, far from it. But that doesn't mean you are justified in your accusations against some specific actor under the control of a jurisdiction that acts contrary to our preferences.

<comment><USER7> >"The technocracy" is not in fact responsible for creating law, at least not yet.

They lobbied specifically for this compromise, because they don't give a shit. These companies are begging for Congress to come in and give them some sweet regulatory capture: you didn't see Zuckerberg overly concerned, for example, he practically asked for regulation. They have the resources to not sweat much of the overly broad chilling effect, especially the ex post facto aspect of this legislation. Small companies and startups that have the potential to topple these players don't have such leisure.

Personally, beyond Rob Portman and the GOP, I blame the people who are getting hysterical over fake news and "nazis", who claim that Facebook et al are "destroying democracy". They have set the tone and made it much easier for this to happen, and they don't give a shit either because there's a fundamental disconnect due to their partisan bickering.

No one wants to put their money where their mouth is and challenge these terrible statutes, despite the fact that Justice did not need them to take down Backpage. The entire legislative package, and the justification behind it (child trafficking), is a sham. The real purpose was to force companies to do exactly what Cloudflare has done today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They also suspended service to a BitTorrent website without notice:

[https://twitter.com/NyaaV2/status/986562408033521664](https://twitter.com/NyaaV2/status/986562408033521664)

<comment><USER9> entirely unrelated, and the website owner was provided an explanation.

<comment><USER8> Of course it's related.

Where did you see that the website owner was provided an explanation?

<comment><USER9> Again -- entirely unrelated. In the reply that was sent to the website owner. They received an explanation.

<comment><USER8> I'm not going to push this unrelated thing any further than to point out we're talking about two websites who had service suspended on the same day by the same company.

Do you have a source for the explanation?

<comment><USER9> Check out my profile. I work at the company on the team in question. They are utterly unrelated.

<comment><USER10> I see what you mean. You may have suspended the account for entirely unrelated reasons and may be tracking the issues separately internally. But under the broader banner of Cloudflare censorship being discussed here, the two are related.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interestingly, the site is based on Mastadon mean that it is, or at least has the potential to be, federated. If one server hosting the data is blocked or goes down, another federated server will still hold the data. So, in a way, they're avoiding a need for something like Cloudflare.

<comment><USER12> Mastodon is federated in the sense that users can be on different servers and interact, and yes, the data from one server ends up incidentally being cached on others, but those users still only exist on the server they are on.

If switter.at is shutdown, switter.at users cannot login or post, and people most likely cannot see switter.at posts or follow switter.at accounts.

And there's still massive benefit to a Mastodon instance of being able to serve it's content over a CDN for bandwidth cost concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wrote about their previous ban last year and what it meant in terms of censorship:

[https://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of- corporate-...](https://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate- censorship/)

A lot of people will simply say, "Well go use another provider. It's their business and they can run it as they want," but in the case with the Daily Stormer, they were banned from many providers/platforms and even all the major domain registratars.

When so few companies hold such a large market share, they can and do censor content. In the US, we don't allow businesses to discriminate on the bases of race or sex, as far as which customers they're willing to accept. Speech isn't covered, but should it be? Can a Staples refuse to copy a flyer if it has content they don't agree with (so long as the content isn't illegal?)

<comment><USER13> Self host, direct towards an IP Address.

<comment><USER14> An IP address issued by whom, exactly? Your ISP? A cloud provider? ICANN?

There are ways to evade this law, like the .bit TLD, but even that would require constantly hopping between IPs and providers. There is no way that I can see to deploy and maintain a stable service in this legal environment.</comment></comment></comment>


How Command Line Parameters Are Parsed (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://daviddeley.com/autohotkey/parameters/parameters.htm <comment><USER2> Windows command line parsing is _crazy_. I've recently stumbled onto this post, explaining various pitfalls in parsing command line arguments in windows:

[http://www.windowsinspired.com/how-a-windows-programs- splits...](http://www.windowsinspired.com/how-a-windows-programs-splits-its- command-line-into-individual-arguments/)

<comment><USER3> The first example

      "She said "you cant do this", didnt she?"

Parses the same way in Bash:

      $ for A in "She said "you can\'t do this\!", didn't she?"; do echo -$A-; done
      -She said you-
      -can't-
      -do-
      -this!, didn't she?-

So I'd have thought this would be a given. It doesn't look so unintuitive – though I'm not sure if the results are the same for the same reasons.

So I went to take a look at the Bash source code. Which is (expectedly) pretty hairy. Top-of-stack quoting characters are referenced through-out, to enable a `pass_next_character` which seems to me similar conceptually to `ignore_special_chars`.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The unix section is missing a case: when invoked from login, arg[0] has a '-' prepended.

I understand not many people write a program suitable as a top level shell (for use in /etc/passwd) but for completeness...

<comment><USER5> Is this an actual separate case? How are top level shells invoked? Isn't this just a specific call to execve?

<comment><USER6> It is good example that argv[0] is just another normal argument that is passed by the caller of execve() and does not necessarily have to be related to the actual filename of program executed in any way.

<comment><USER7> Not sure if it still works that way, but years ago I used to overwrite the argv[0] param with my own data to change how the process appears on lists such as one shown by the 'w' utility.

<comment><USER8> Yep. There's a tool in djb's daemontools that uses this behavior - [https://cr.yp.to/daemontools/readproctitle.html](https://cr.yp.to/daemontools/readproctitle.html) . It's kinda a pathological case, but it's a kinda cool way to assure that you can get _some_ data from your processes, even on a totally horked system, as well as being fairly convenient from an old-school administration perspective (giving the ability to see what errors a program has encountered with just ps or top; Already likely to be the first commands run when something's wrong.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It'd be interesting to know why Microsoft implemented parameter parsing that way. Maybe they decided to let the executable parses its own parameters as an optimisation - it means if the executable doesn't care about its arguments (or doesn't have any, like most GUI programs), an extra step is saved.

Except now it's clear it was a premature optimisation, if it takes 10 pages to document the parsing behaviour, which probably also cost millions of wasted developer hours fixing weird corner cases.

Maybe at that time they thought, "well programmers can just call GetCommandLine() to get the args in a consistent way".

<comment><USER10> I suspect it is a remnant of the DOS days.

<comment><USER11> The "command line as a single string" dates to CP/M if not earlier:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_page_(CP/M)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_page_\(CP/M\))

I don't think it's an optimisation, but a design choice of simplicity; in fact, CP/M (and DOS) would parse the first two arguments if present, and put the results into the filename fields of the two default FCBs, allowing programs which take two filename arguments (traditionally, an input and an output) to be implemented easily without having any commandline parsing logic of their own. More info on that here:

[http://www.gaby.de/cpm/manuals/archive/cpm22htm/ch5.htm](http://www.gaby.de/cpm/manuals/archive/cpm22htm/ch5.htm)

It would be interesting to trace the origins of command-line parameter passing design even further, to the mainframe OSes that came before UNIX, but I'm not so familiar with them.

Edit: OpenVMS appears to also pass a plain string to the process, which is then parsed within: [http://hoffmanlabs.org/vmsfaq/vmsfaq_015.html](http://hoffmanlabs.org/vmsfaq/vmsfaq_015.html) (section 10.3)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > (Note: Avoid using printf when printing parameters, as the parameter may > contain a % which would be interpreted by printf as a conversion specifier. > The program may crash with a bizarre error, such as "runtime error R6002 - > Floating point not loaded".)

It would be safe to use

        printf("arg[%d] = %s", i, argv[i]);

<comment><USER13> It should say: Avoid using user input as your format string. Never pass command line parameters as the format argument to the printf family of functions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> An error which I still think is ridiculous: argument list too long.

<comment><USER15> In the times past the command line was pushed onto the user stack of the new process, this was before the process was of course started. This means you were limited to the default available stack plus or minus whatever else needed to be pushed onto the stack for a starting process. In older kernels sbrk() (to grow the user stack of a process) could only be called on a process that already exists, not one that is being crated. This means your argument list could indeed be too long.

<comment><USER14> I vaguely was aware of this, but whatever the reason, it's ridiculous that in this day and age of gigabytes of memory, I still can't use shell wildcards in directories with a decently large number of files.

<comment><USER15> The limit on Linux is usually a bit under 2MB (ARG_MAX), other Unicies will vary no doubt and Windows is 32KB, and I'm sure you are aware that xargs is your friend.

<comment><USER16> Yes, xargs works on Unixen. I wonder if there is any equivalent on Windows (other than using Unix xargs via Cygwin etc.), or writing your own? This point didn't occur to me before, but it could be useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish Unix and co did it the Windows way - leave it to the invoked process to parse. I have an app that takes an SQL query on the command line and I have to remember I can't just type SELECT * because the shell thinks it knows what I mean by *.

<comment><USER18> Note that even on Windows, you still have to deal with the shell interpreting what you type.

The biggest downside of the Windows way, though, is that there stops being one answer to "how do I pass arbitrary strings on the command line to another process"?

Sure, most programs use CommandLineToArgvW but it's also hard to find information on how a particular program parses its command line.

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/twistylittlepassagesallalik...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/twistylittlepassagesallalike/2011/04/23/everyone- quotes-command-line-arguments-the-wrong-way/) is an overview of the fun that is command line handling on Windows.

<comment><USER19> > Note that even on Windows, you still have to deal with the shell > interpreting what you type.

Hypothetically that is not strictly true. You could create a shell that would be a very thin wrapper around CreateProcess and not do any interpretation or parsing of the childs arguments. In unixy shell _must_ do at minimum some degree of parsing to split the arguments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A more interesting comparison would be glibc vs other libc.

What are the significant differences?

Is "flexibility", for lack of a better word, really a desirable property for entering command line arguments?

Should parsing, cf. entering, arguments be simple or complex?

Are there better ways to pass arguments/parameters than on the commandline?

Besides config files, which themselves may introduce parsing complexities.

Consider passing "arguments" as environmental variables, e.g., as in daemontools, envdir. Variables can be read from "files" in a chroot directory.

<comment><USER21> > Variables can be read from "files" in a chroot directory.

Reading environment variables from process memory is less expensive (requiring only memory access) than reading files, which requires at least three syscalls (open, read, close) and thus multiple context switches, and, worst of all, disk access (unless you're putting the files in a tmpfs).

> Are there better ways to pass arguments/parameters than on the commandline?

If such a system were designed today, data would probably be strongly typed (passed as structured objects) rather than stringly typed (passed as text). In fact, to my understanding, this is what Powershell does. I think that the conceptual simplicity of using free-form text is a virtue for Unix more than a burden, but that's also an argument of taste.

<comment><USER20> "... which requires at least three syscalls..."

As does every program that reads from a config file.

One does not have to use files to set the variables of course. This just works well for long-running-programs, e.g. daemons.

"... unless you're putting files in a tmpfs)"

Always files are in mfs.

As for strongly typed data and passing data instead of text, I prefer k to Powershell. There is also a uniformity to APL built-in functions. The number of arguments is limited. PS is quite slow on startup and too verbose.

As for "free-form" sometimes rearranging arguments (as glibc is capable of) can cause more complexity than is warranted.

Consider a program like signify. Then consider gpg.

The best command line program "interfaces" IMO are the ones the fewest options and least possible variability in arguments. Best interface is no interface, etc.

One of the obvious benefits for UNIX programs of this nature is portability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Another perspective (as a rhetorical question): Why does "command line argument(s)" have to be an array of strings, rather than a single string? Like, consider an alternative universe where C had `int main(const char* arg)`.

<comment><USER23> You mean, like this alternative universe? [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/ms6...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/ms633559\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

Flipping this around, why does the 'command line' have to be a string (or a list of strings) that my program has to parse, rather than a ready-to-be-used data structure? Consider instead an alternative universe where the command- line arguments to your program are represented with something like a JSON object. Or better, a struct that the command-line interpreter can type-check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just the TOC on this made me laugh, haven't even read the rest yet

</comment><comment><USER25> Mh. Is this a fair comparison? The unix part is massively simplified, and the windows parts goes into great and great details about the implementation of that entry point.

Bash command line splitting alone is nasty, let alone the 6 other shells. Every language under the sun has a dozen and twelve libraries to parse argv[] into something useful.

If you document every nook, cranny and special case of those libraries, the list for unix will dwarf the special cases of windows. In fact, I think bash command line parsing alone can dwarf the windows section, according to the man page.

<comment><USER26> The reason the Windows section is longer is because in Windows it's the application that splits the argv[]. An application receives the parameters as one long string and the application itself splits it into argv[] which means that there isn't a whole lot of consistency in how argv[] gets populated.

Where as on Linux / UNIX, parameters arrive at the application already split. Your point about the shells is a good one because at least on Linux you only need to learn the nuances of your preferred shell (though in my experience all the main ones seem to follow the same rules reliably) knowing that you wont have any weird issues for example with quotes being included or not included in argv[] in some applications but not others despite formatting the parameters in exactly the same way.

From a personal point of view, I do find working with parameters in Windows a highly frustrating affair when compared with Linux. However I appreciate the issue is down to inheritance rather than design and Microsoft cannot easily change something like this without breaking a thousand things in subtle and often unexpected ways.</comment></comment>


How Gödel Saved Mark Changizi from Physics - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5928674/how-godel-saved-mark-changizi-from-physics <comment><USER2> When I finally understood Gödel, in as much as I do (which is probably not very), I found it tremendously relieving: God has laced the world with just enough paradox and unprovability to keep it interesting, and maybe there is something to that gut feeling that we don't live in a grinding, meaninglessly mechanistic pin-ball game.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm afraid that I found this interview very unenlightening. What in particular did he find from Godel that made him change his view?

<comment><USER4> I share your feeling, but I also have a question. Does anyone choose neuroscience as a career path without dreaming one day to write a successfully-selling (not that there is anything inherently wrong with that) pop-science book?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Some of the most awe-inspiring discoveries in the 20th century are about the limits of thought, and about rigorous ways to think about thinking. Gödel was central to these results [...]"

I am not aware of any "awe-inspiring discoveries" about "the limits of thought" made by Gödel. Personally, I (and maybe other mathematicians) find his incompleteness theorems awe-inspiring, but they are in no way about the limits of "thought". Those theorems are precise statements concerning some formal axiomatic systems. They have great significance in mathematical logic, a little bit less so for other branches of mathematics, and virtually no philosophical meaning at all.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is probably just my own bias as a physicist coming in, but I found the opposite conclusion from what he saw. He spoke of how Godel took him to computation and computer science, where function and purpose are essential. However, I'd say that the uselessness of purpose is most evident in computer science. To take a trivial example:

        double square(double x) {
            return x * x * x;
        }

If you look at the purpose of that function, it's to return the square of a number. However, if you treat it as just a big pile of code, you'll see that it's going to return the cube.

Looking at purpose focuses your mind on a model of how the world should be and distracts you from what it really is. The purpose of the eye is to collect as much light as possible, but the layout of the retina isn't setup for that. The purpose of a business is to make money, but the actual accounts can still be in the red. Looking at the purpose can be a useful crutch when the system matches its purpose, but looking at the big pile of goop is best in the real world where things don't always go as planned.

<comment><USER7> I think we shouldn't automatically conflate labeling with purpose. If you labeled it "slepx" instead of "square" would you say that its purpose is "slepx"?

We can imbue labeling with purpose, and use it to point to the purpose of the thing we are labeling. Which is not the case with your example.

The purpose of the function you posted above is definitely to return the cube of a number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sounds like Robert Rosen's work.</comment>


Raspberry Pi httpd micro benchmark - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/msoap/7060974#file-raspberry-pi-httpd-benchmark-md <comment><USER2> Consider adding "filed" ( [http://filed.rkeene.org/](http://filed.rkeene.org/) ). It is a small static-only HTTP server that is as fast as I can make it. Faster than any other web server I've been able to find. I wrote it to solve a problem where I/O was holding up requests from being processed efficiently systems with extremely latentcy bound disks.</comment>


Show HN: Open Source business models - <AUTHOR> http://zubairov.posterous.com/open-source-in-cloud-age

<comment><USER2> Looking forward to your next post Renat. Cloud changes everything for open source for sure. The concept of "freedom" changes completely.</comment>


Have you heard the Audio Spotlight? - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2010/05/have_you_heard_the_audio_spotl.html <comment><USER2> I've heard the Audio Spotlight at a demo that Pompei gave at a meeting of Boston-area acoustical consultants (of which I am one, hence the username).

It's a great device, (as Joe Pompei told us) there are some misconceptions people have when they read about the device:

1\. The audio spotlight does direct most of the audio sound at a point, but sound does spill over to off-axis listeners, so even if it's not pointed directly at you, you'll hear the audio (but at a greatly reduced level). You couldn't really use this to direct a beam sound to one person in a crown and expect no one else to hear it. But in a kiosk setting (for example) the spillover would be acceptable.

2\. The video isn't quite right, but the technology doesn't work by using constructive interference or beat frequencies. It takes advantage of the non- linearities of ultrasound propagating through air to convert the ultrasound into audible sound. One side effect of this process is that the sound has to propagate through enough distance for the non-linearilities to have an effect (I think the minimum distance for it to work is around 6-10 ft, but it actually works best at large distances of 20ft or more). This isn't something you could put on your desktop and have it work. You can read Pompei's thesis about the technology here: <http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7987>

3\. By no means does it produce high-fidelity audio, it's maybe FM quality at best. Similarly because of the wavelengths involved, the Audio Spotlight can only produce upper mid-range and treble, no bass, so it won't be replacing normal loudspeaker in applications where audio quality it key. But again, it works perfectly fine for any number of other applications.

Overall, it's a nifty product and actually quite affordable. It's worth taking a look at if if you have an application that can benefit from having directed audio.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating, but the explanation they gave in the video seems bogus. Mathematically predicting how air currents will convert ultrasound into human range? Bullshit.

If it's really beaming ultrasound then I suspect it relies on constructive interference to produce audible sound.

</comment><comment><USER4> You're right, the video's explanation is totally wrong.

The proper information is here:

<http://holosonics.com/technology.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> Woody Norris did this 10 years ago using the same technology. I actually have one sitting beside me at my desk that I got back in 2001.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Technology_Corporation>

It's fun for practical jokes or making the neighbors think their house is haunted. I'm not sure how this guy is getting credit for this.

<comment><USER2> The Audio Spotlight was introduced around the same time as HSS (~2000-2001 IIRC). The LRAD was introduced earlier, but that uses a different tech (it's just a large two-dimensional array).</comment></comment>


John McAfee unveils plans for 'the world's first truly private smartphone' - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4452720/John-McAfee-unveils-plans-hack-proof-smartphone.html <comment><USER2> Step 1. Don't have a baseband processor</comment>


Ask HN: Did you ever consider dropping out? - <AUTHOR> Did anyone consider dropping out after finishing their most important classes? I am a junior studying engineering. I'm at a point were I have 11 credits left to graduate, but I only really need 3 of them. I will probably stay in school, but I'm curious if anyone has relevant experiences.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Also consider this in your decision making: Not having a BS makes it harder to get some visas. You never know when you may feel like changing countries.

<comment><USER3> Will vouch for this. Sure, you can make your way in tech based on your skills without a degree but there will be limits you face if you really want to be adventurous.

I'm currently enjoying an opportunity that involved foreign relocation which was really only possible because of the degree. Literally, I had to fly the original diploma certificate out here with me and present it to immigration officials.

I felt my degree was worth it when it enabled me to get this job about 7 years ago. I feel it's worth has only increased since taking this particular position last spring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You'd have to be crazy to leave at this point. You're only young once. Enjoy your senior year, smooch some ladies and / or dudes, read some books, join a club. You have a lifetime of toil ahead of you.

<comment><USER5> "lifetime of toil ahead of you" does not make me feel better about the now (semi-joking).

<comment><USER4> Unless you're independently wealthy you're going to have that regardless, and software is pretty high up on the easy end of the scale.

<comment><USER5> Not necessarily - some people find it worth it to take 20-40% of their work hours off (unpaid or not), I would define that as not "toiling". You can live on 60-80% of a 100k+ salary _very_ comfortably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was in the same spot. I got a job doing consulting and let my degree lapse for a semester or more for a single history paper. The professor accepted my paper and I was able to graduate, but I regret having done it. I was offered a teaching position on the assumption I had graduated. It was embarrassing to explain that I hadn't graduated over something as small as that.

One other thing to consider: Are you a finisher in general? Do you complete the things you say you will? Is dropping out another example of a sequence of things you didn't complete? Don't let it be that latest evidence that you don't finish things.

</comment><comment><USER7> I do all the time. I work a nice place, doing nice brand new development, with mostly friends from college.

I have had to try to finish school now for a year and half while working full time at this place. It can be hell sometimes. I've wanted to drop out a lot.

But if you think about it there is no reason for me to truly drop out. They're ok with me taking those courses and finishing (since I do what I need to do for them).

In your case, Finish the degree so you have it. The only con that ___MIGHT___ happen (emp. the unlikelihood) is that jobs and opportunities you could have gotten by dropping out will go to someone else. Reality is that those things only come in to your life via social connections which almost always come from knowing someone in college (as in my life, as in the lives of many a famous start up founder, etc.). Realize you should be using college to build those friendships and connections while you finish those courses.

As someone who works full-time while going to school, I'm painfully aware of what I'm missing out when I don't have the option of staying around and talking to someone for a bit and catching up.

</comment><comment><USER8> My sister considered dropping out at almost the exact same point you are at. She stuck it through and was really happy that she did. You may not end up in engineering forever, but you'll likely want a college degree for whatever you want to accomplish, since you are this far along, finish up getting it and then think about if you want to put it to use or try something else in life.

</comment><comment><USER9> I dropped out, then took whatever classes interested me from a variety of different community colleges & online schools.

This felt and feels like I am doing it my way, and I am happy for that.

I also have almost no student debt, and work solid jobs at tech companies. However, I have also had lots of side projects keeping me busy and allowing me to show my skills.

If you don't have side projects, skills or a solid resume to make up for the lack of the degree, then I'd say don't quit on the degree.

</comment><comment><USER10> I dropped out of my senior year of college. Currently a software engineer at a nice company.

I've only been away from school for about a 1.3 years, so it's too early to see if I'll regret the decision. Perhaps I'll return to school in the future, or end up lying dead on the street because of my lack of a bachelor's degree.

If you stay in school, you don't have to worry about regretting the decision to drop out, nor do you have the difficulties involved in potentially returning later on.

</comment><comment><USER11> At the end of my junior year I was placed on academic probation, and later kicked out of college. At that point I considered quitting school for good, but ultimately begged my way back into school and completed that degree. Now I work at a reputable company making sweet money. Getting a degree was so worth it. Don't quit, just hang in there.

</comment><comment><USER12> I personally regret not dropping out when I had the chance. The extra debt really wasn't worth it.

It might be harder to get a job without a degree though. HR departments for big companies are pretty keen on college degrees.

<comment><USER13> Speaking of debt, why don't you Americans spend money studying your degrees in other countries with cheaper education.

I can understand that you want to be in America if you end up accepted in an top university, but what about the rest of the students?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> People that I've seen drop out do it in the first year or even more so in the first quarter/semester. Sounds more like you're burnt out. I say dig deep and push through it.

<comment><USER15> I'd advise people in that position to do the opposite: go to work for a year or a few years, after which you're in a much better position to decide whether you have the drive and/or discipline to finish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What are your most important classes? My point is that until I finished my degree I didn't know the importance of each subject.

</comment><comment><USER16> I stopped classes to continue working on a successful business.

Worst case scenario is I go back and finish my last 2 years if I need to

</comment><comment><USER17> You should get the college degree. Recruiters and HR people care about it and it facilitates the job search process.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd put it to the Leary test.

What turned you on?

What tune is worth dropping out?

Good luck.</comment>


Ask HN: What book or media resource would you recommend on team management? - <AUTHOR>

Hi.
I'm currently like a "team lead" (not officially yet) and I am very young. Part of my daily duty is work closely with my supervisor, manage our JIRA queue, and handle requests coming from business and developers (I work as a DevOps). I am now considered "escalation" in my team so I can spend more time on management and other major engineering efforts underway. I absolutely love what I do: the kind of opportunity I am given (judging by my title and experience) blows people's mind.
I don't think I am terrible at being the person doing management work. That being said, I am beginning to feel the pain to
1) having a good oversight with what people are working on, and keeping track of their progress (we use Jira, but still doesn't yield the best result I hope)
2) prevent my team from being overloaded (i.e. prioritize tickets)
3) maintain a good level of autonomy in my team
I just proposed to have a daily stand-up, and we will start that next week (it worked quite well with my previous team).
What lessons did you learn when you first start to manage a team? Are there any book or media resource that have helped you become a better manager? The rest of my small team are distributed, remote workers.
Thank you! <comment><USER2> I personally don't even apply to jobs if I know they're going to have a daily standup. This because I prefer to work at night; by the time the standup occurs, I want to be home in bed.

I don't have a problem making a weekly meeting, no matter what time it is.

Keep an eye on code checkins, how many bugs are marked resolved and by who, as well as how many really end up closed by QA. Some managers don't do this with the result that when coders are running into trouble, and either are unwilling or don't know to ask for help, it's way too late by the time management finds out.

Have a look at the Portland Patter Repository at [http://c2.com/](http://c2.com/)

I recommend the Team Software Project book, I think it's by Watts Humphreys of the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very high on my reading list is "Leading Snowflakes"... but since I didn't read it yet, take it with a grain of salt.

Since you mention that you're working in a distributed team, I've read Remote by 37 signals. It was mostly advertising on why one should work remote, but it has some bits on how they manage their remote workers which you may find useful. However, I overall felt the book was rather light on content/substance as someone who has read about and tried remote working before.

Good Luck! :-)</comment>


what of WiMax? - <AUTHOR> Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Of the major carriers in the U.S. only Sprint was really behind Wi-Max. It actually had a decent rollout in the D.C. area but it fizzled out once LTE became more established.

</comment><comment><USER3> UC Berkeley has (had?) a WiMAX base station that staff or enterprising students could connect to with full campus bandwidth. When Comcast started some shit, my flatmate managed to secure some kind of uplink to the WiMAX network. On a clear day we got fantastic speeds, but during stormy or even foggy weather we didn't have any connection.

WiMax is like the Betamax of 4G network technologies.

</comment><comment><USER4> It was superceded by LTE/4G mobile broadband to which it is very similar, but seemingly slightly inferior.

</comment><comment><USER5> What of it? Irrelevant in the practical sense at the current time, as far as I'm aware. LTE ate its lunch.</comment>