A comparison between IOTA and Streamr - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@giotto_3438/a-comparison-between-iota-and-streamr-343b3d9cd2ec <comment><AUTHOR> He makes a loaded assumption that I don't agree with, "One of the key points of IoT is that it produces extremely large quantities of data which have very little value outside of the real-time element."

Still Streamer integrates the analytics processing part and that makes the system more complete as a platform. You most certainly need the real time part for IoT, but streamer can also be used for processing data-at-rest, e.g. forensic data.</comment>


Mathematica v12.1 - <AUTHOR> https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/03/in-less-than-a-year-so-much-new-launching-version-12-1-of-wolfram-language-mathematica/ <comment><USER2> Ongoing related thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22625682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22625682)

Probably too different to merge the submissions.

</comment><comment> veer-chah I have tried Mathematica for small duration and in general was wowed by it.

For free CAS I would recommend to give Axiom or FriCAS(more actively developed) a run.

[http://fricas.sourceforge.net/](http://fricas.sourceforge.net/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_(computer_algebra_system...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_\(computer_algebra_system\))

<comment><USER3> Now days, it's not often that I need to do heavy mathematical work, but I turn to Sage [https://www.sagemath.org/](https://www.sagemath.org/) when I do.

Sage has a notebook interface, is built on Python, and incorporates many free software math packages, like Maxima, into one system.

<comment><USER4> I used Sage heavily when working in string theory a long time ago. It's very powerful. But for symbolic math, if possible, I would still use mathematica.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a physicist and I've used mathematica sparingly off and on for several years, mostly manipulating symbolic formulas.

I still do not understand what I'm doing half the time. Mostly just googling and stackoverflow answers get me by. For example, I don't understand why I can't use subscripts as symbols?

Any recommendations on trying to 'get' mathematica?

<comment><USER6> As someone who started using Mathematica only very recently, I found _The Wolfram Language: Fast Introduction for Programmers_ [1] very helpful. It's the quickest way to get started with the Wolfram language if you've seen a bit of functional programming before, e.g., Python's map(F, x) is equivalent to Wolfram's Map[F, x], reduce(F, x) equivalent to Fold[F, x], etc. There's also _An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language_ by Stephen Wolfram [2,3] which is available freely as Mathematica Notebooks, although I'm yet to read it fully.

[1]: [https://www.wolfram.com/language/fast-introduction-for- progr...](https://www.wolfram.com/language/fast-introduction-for- programmers/en/)

[2]: [https://www.wolfram.com/language/elementary- introduction/2nd...](https://www.wolfram.com/language/elementary- introduction/2nd-ed/)

[3]: [https://www.wolfram.com/language/elementary- introduction/nbs...](https://www.wolfram.com/language/elementary- introduction/nbs/EIWL2-Notebook-Archive.zip)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mathematica is worth learning and using since it's so far ahead of the open source alternatives (e.g. Python/Jupyter and associated libraries ) in usability/interactivity/rapid development that it comes across like future- tech.

Unfortunately it's also the single tool most hampered by its licensing and silo-like ecosystem.

<comment><USER8> When I had the chance to try it, I didn't find it that easy to use due to the interface which felt clunky: the way the command line works: no feature to repeat previous comnand with up arrow, have to edit previous existing one, requiring more mouse usage, weird forms of cursor placement, weird default enter key behavior.

In ipython, matlab and octave it's much easier to repeat and modify last commands, which is something you seem to need all the time when experimenting with math.

What was I missing, usability/interactivity/rapid development wise?

<comment><USER9> You are just not used to it.

> the way the command line works: no feature to repeat previous comnand with > up arrow, have to edit previous existing one, requiring more mouse usage, > weird forms of cursor placement, weird default enter key behavior.

It's not a command line. It's an interactive notebook. It's an entirely different experience. Repeating and modifying last commands can still be done with arrow keys, then Shift-Enter. Also, when you are doing math, you spend way more time thinking than typing and manipulating; the time needed to move your hands to the mouse is minuscule by comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
      ds = CreateDataStructure["LinkedList"]

String keys to access types is kind of yucky, to be honest :( Couldn't there be a better way to represent this than having to look up the documentation ([https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/$DataStructures.h...](https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/$DataStructures.html)) to see what would work?

<comment><USER11> In these cases the notebook interface will normally show you all of the choices via autocomplete.

<comment><USER12> Even for string?

Why not define a LinkedList constant?

<comment><USER11> Yes, in WL strings are commonly used in a matter similar to enums in other languages.

The thing to keep in mind is that WL is based on symbolic replacement. You normally wouldn't define that kind of function as taking in a parameter (i.e., CreateDataStructure[x_] := ...), rather you'd define it for each case separately (i.e., CreateDataStructure["LinkedList"] := ...).

<comment><USER13> Well.. if constants were a thing you could probably also pattern match them.

<comment><USER14> It's a constant string :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know of a good, strongly-typed computer algebra system similar to Mathematica?

By strongly typed, I mean that Mathematica is weakly typed in the sense that it simply assumes that all expressions are Complex numbers. At most, it can restrict itself to some subset such as the Reals or Integers, but that's it.

It can't, for example, perform general simplifications over non-associative types such as most Matrix algebras, the quaternions, or any geometric algebra. Most built-in functions operate only on Complex numbers, or expressions over the Complex numbers, etc...

I'm looking for something I can use to do symbolic expression manipulation for physics equations in terms of geometric algebra, but as far as I know there's nothing out there with the capability.

<comment><USER16> FriCAS and Axiom

<comment> 0-_-0 Does that mean I can solve a system of equations in vector form, e.g. solve this for X:

A·X=d1

B·X=d2

(A⨯B)·X=(A⨯B)·C

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ur-whale Mathematica is an amazing tool, but it has one huge downside: reproducibility.

It is a closed monolith, and - especially when you start to use advanced features - you derive results from it that can't be independently verified because of the closed source nature of the monolith.

<comment><USER17> Has this ever happened to you? There can't be many areas of mathematics in which it could.

<comment><USER12> What do you mean? There are many areas of math where providing a proof matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If a software is used to create data that is okay like editing text files in microsoft windows. But computational software such as Wolfram being closed source bothers me a lot. There is no way to verify the science you do is correct.

<comment><USER19> Quite often it gives you a result that you can then prove directly, or check with other tools. The benefit of MMA is that it has a lot of tools and a good interface, good documentation, and a large community.

In practice, pretty much no one doing science has the expertise or time to completely verify the science they are doing - they are building on centuries of knowledge across many disciplines, and for the most part the community verifies each part as they build knowledge.

And certainly opensource does not allow the vast majority of people "to verify the science you do is correct." They'd have to check the code, the compiler, the hardware, ensure no cosmic rays flipped bits during computation, and so on.

So I'd not worry too much about the closed source vs open source nature of it. It's a solid tool that enables lots of research.

<comment><USER20> The "cosmic rays" argument, to me, is inane. It simply doesn't practically apply and is certainly not an argument against the benefits of open source code. You're castigating the whole practice of code review, computer-aided proofs, automated theorem proving, etc.

<comment><USER21> And how many people doing "science" do code review, computer-aided proofs, or automated theorem proving to verify their code is correct? Very, very, very few.

<comment><USER22> This. In theory it's open, but in reality, people just want to get this work done mostly.

Also, if something is that important, people can and do perform the same calculations using different packages or different algorithms.

Write two algorithms in MMA, or one in MMA and one in something else, and every so often spot check a few cases by hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Kudos to the team for the great release.

Two things I miss when working with Mathematica: refactor-rename variables and a usable object-oriented programming support.

Refactor-rename is available via Eclipse-based IDE; however math typesetting is not available there (it makes a difference for large equations/expressions).

There are a lot of community-developed approaches to OOP. I tried a number of these, sticking with a particular approach, but it also leave a lot to be desired. OOP is useful in that it ties together data and functions which act on the data. Inheritance/composition are useful if you compute properties of similar objects.

<comment><USER13> Mathematica is mostly used for relatively small, notebook-style, applications. Both features, while probably useful for some people, don't seem to be necessary for the more popular use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is one of the few pieces of non-free software I'm happy to pay for.

I've been doing some PenPlotter for fun, I wonder if I can use Mathematica with HatchFilling for some of my plotting now.

</comment><comment><USER11> It also appears to be faster than v12.0; my WolframBench score with 12.1 was significantly higher than 12.0 (25-50% higher).

The new IPFS integration is exciting; might see if I could write a static site generator that automatically publishes to IPFS.

</comment><comment><USER25> they put the biggest improvement upfront lol: things now scale properly if you have a 4K monitor. people (myself included) have been squinting at very tiny font for years, and now they don't have to anymore!

</comment><comment><USER26> Anyone here uses Mathematica besides Physics or pure mathematics?

I mean is it worth using the machine learning from Mathematica or Tensorflow is better?

Is it better to use integer optimization solvers or then Mathematica?

In which ways you are using Mathematica and _Really_ leveraging it?

Sorry for my question but I think and suspect I am missing something bigger.

Will be glad if someone Illuminate me. And please be free to PM if your project is discreet.

<comment><USER6> > _Anyone here uses Mathematica besides Physics or pure mathematics?_

My adviser (a physicist) uses Mathematica for all non-physics computations as well. It's a clunky language for general purpose computation and doesn't play well with external programs and libraries. The user experience on Linux can also be quite haphazard with frequent crashes and lack of good HiDPI support (I haven't used version 12.1). It's also hard to run headless programs written in Wolfram language. But if you're okay doing everything inside the Mathematica GUI and don't care about the fact that it's a walled ecosystem, don't have a preferred text editor, and don't particularly care for Unix's one-thing-well philosophy, Mathematica might work for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The language began as something of a gem and each release seems to be muddying it up. Another commenter already mentioned the string argument to make a data structure. It also looks like built-in methods on these objects are also strings.

The metadata and annotation facilities seem unclear. Sometimes they change the appearance and behavior of the object, sometimes they don't.

Some functions now are curried by default. The choice probably makes symbolic programming and pattern matching trickier since it breeds a variety of representations of the same concept. (Pattern matching and rewriting _strongly_ favor canonicalization.)

All and all, it's beginning to look like the core Wolfram Language is beginning to tremble under its own complexity. I can't imagine coping with buggy code at all in this framework.

</comment><comment><USER27> Now if only it wasn't $350 for home use. Like any non-privileged student can afford that.

<comment><USER28> It is free on the Raspberry Pi computer.

<comment><USER27> It is, and that's how I use it, but we also find that computer in the category "horribly underpowered" category of devices that can run Mathematica.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems to support 4k HiDPI on windows finally.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is there any reason not to call Mathematica AI at this point? I swear some of the things it does look more like black magic than what we call AI nowadays...

<comment><USER31> I'd call it more of an "expert system" \- it has a HUGE amount of rules and methods built-in, but at the end of the day it's all deterministic.

<comment><USER32> > but at the end of the day it's all deterministic.

That's not what's preventing it from being AI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Many people on this and similar threads rightly question whether results received with the help of a closed source software are reproducible. I think it's a fair question, but these discussions often miss a couple of important points.

First, there is a question of theoretical vs. practical reproducibility: true, in _theory_, an open-source codebase with many millions of lines of code of highly complex transformation can be checked for accuracy by anyone. In _practice_, only very few insiders will have both technical understanding _and_ time to verify the correctness of this or that algorithm, and everyone else would need to rely on their expertise. That situation is no different from using a proprietary system if we trust their authors.

Second, while it might be shocking for someone, most of the science, outside of maybe math, it's not _practically_ reproducible. Most of the articles are behind paywalls, don't have enough data to replicate their results (even economists much more often than not won't include their raw data or algorithms or both). Also, no one who is trying to build a scientific career would try to replicate someone else's results, especially if it requires some costly equipment, reagents, etc. - the rewards in the scientific community are for novel results. Replication crisis[1] describes this pretty well.

Most of the software that runs LHC at CERN is probably not inspectable by a regular Joe the physicist, yet somehow the physicist community somehow trusts their results, etc.

In summary, while an open-source software of Mathematica quality would be awesome in theory, I highly doubt it would be practical for a long time.

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

<comment><USER20> Reproducible has a much simpler meaning than that you describe: it's feasible for any scientist to recreate the result perpetually. While inspection of the methods might help one understand the result—and I think itself holds a great deal of value to especially mathematicians—just the simple ability to compute the answers yourself without binding yourself to a contract or paying $1000's of dollars in license fees is a valuable aspect to science. Especially so when the calculations are at the level of pure algebraic manipulation.

Your (and Wolfram's!) argument about "not needing to see the insides because really only 10 people in the world understand it anyway" should _really_ be an argument _for_ opening it up. If 10 people could understand it, and we must intersect that group with folks who can access the source, we are left in quite a dismal state of affairs.

<comment><USER33> While I don't disagree with your definition of reproducibility, I want to point out that very few papers would satisfy that criteria, regardless of their use of a closed- vs open-source software.

Here is a recent example: Imperial College COVID-19 response team published an article[1] where they modeled different effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as suppression and mitigation on the number of infected, deaths, etc. This is a very interesting result, but it's impossible to replicate their results in practice without contacting the authors, as their methodology is not enough to reproduce it.

While someone else[2] posted their own model that is very well documented and fully reproducible by anyone with a $230/year personal license.

While theoretically [1] is high science and [2] is not, in my own opinion [2] is better than [1]. I would love more science to be done and discussed that way. Ideally, using open-source software, but in practice, using Wolfram Language, in that case, is already good enough in my opinion.

PS. I'm not affiliated with Wolfram Research in any way.

[1] [https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial- college/medicine/s...](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial- college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI- modelling-16-03-2020.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3RwGVLlRhBGLT2_KdL1RXk6_XF04RFSYgz5MjhN6LLysKbGonXGnRiZOY)

[2] [https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/1901002](https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/1901002)

<comment><USER12> Making an exact copy of an experiment is the lwest level of reproducibility. In science , reproducibility means reproducing the _results_ with different components (people, tools, methodology), showing robust Independence form potential confounders.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bug Fix/Feature Request- Remove trailing ")" in url - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Often, if i click on an url enclosed in parens (<http://www.cnn.com)> the url includes the trailing paren, and leads to a 404 error.

<comment><USER2> thx for the heads up. Does the same thing happen leaving a space after the end of the url ie: ( <http://www.cnn.com> ) ... no but there is a trailing '/'.

So if you do something like this ( <http://www.cnn.com/> ) does this cause a problem? (no)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I submitted this to the feature request thread a couple weeks ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=10889>

</comment><comment><USER4> use the feature request link at the bottom of the main page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh, I didn't see that link. Consequently, this posting should be deleted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> (<http://www.seehere.com)></comment>


12 year old issue tracker entry returns from the dead - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/hyperubik/status/1220541471150891008 <comment><USER2> I was one of the few thousands who starred that issue and had some 36 emails over the last 20 hours. It's been a curious nugget of the social internet.

</comment><comment> java-man What is the issue (for those of us who don't have a google account)?

<comment><USER3> It was a request to add USB host functionality to Android... in 2008.

<comment><USER4> Functionality that was added in 2011!

[https://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-3.1-hig...](https://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-3.1-highlights#host)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google issue tracker requires login just to view issues? Strange choice.</comment>


You've Got Mail is Ripe for a Sequel - <AUTHOR> http://seeinginteractive.com/newspaper-support-group/youve-got-mail-is-ripe-for-a-sequel/ <comment><USER2> The news media keeps saying that Borders is going out of business in large part due to e-books. But I have a hard time buying that.

I got a kindle six weeks ago and I love it. I think I've made one purchase and it as $2.50 for scrabble from EA games. I have yet to buy a book, but I've been reading a lot of the free books on it. I have a hard time spending a lot of money on ebooks though. The local library is too good. I realize that due to my cheap-skatedness I'm probably an anomaly...

Interestingly, a close family member works for a local used and new bookseller with a nearly 100 year history. They have struggled mightily in the last 5 years or so, and now are unable to get a loan from any major bank because the bankers say e-books are going to put all bookstores out of business.

Has anybody _exclusively_ begun using ebooks? I think amazon's real-world bookselling are a much bigger threat to the likes of borders and the local bookstore than it's e-books are, but maybe I'm just smoking crack.

<comment><USER3> I think it's ridiculous to assume that all physical books are worthless. There are reasons to prefer physical books, after all; they're easy to carry around, they don't run out of battery or need any maintenance like charging, and they're generally much cheaper than an e-Reader. If you're not a heavy reader, and not many are these days, why would you spend $150 on a book-reading device? You still have buy the books you would buy anyway, and you have much more freedom buying individual books. e-Books may take a cut out of printed books, but I sincerely doubt they'll obliterate them entirely.

On top of all that, used book stores provide much more value than big commercial vendors like B&N because their selection is so broad and so cheap. Used books are in general perfectly fine to be re-read, so people seeking bargains on new books go there frequently; e-Books will generally not be discounted very quickly, there is no such thing as a "used e-Book".

The _real_ reason used bookstores are going to be around for a long time, though, is that there are A LOT of books out there. Even if someone was able to digitize millions of books, there'd be millions and millions more that would only be able to be found in used bookstores, especially with older books. Just go into your local used book store and ask yourself how much of that catalog is available on the Kindle, or will be made available any time in the foreseeable future. It's a pretty small percentage.

<comment><USER4> Maybe not worthless, but worth a lot less.

The biggest problem as anyone who owns (buys) a lot of books knows is what to do with them once you've read them. E-readers will continue to get better, more convenient and cheaper. My desire to try to sell used books on Amazon, bookstores or donating them to Goodwill or the library (even though libraries don't actually want your donations) will continue to remain low.

<comment><USER3> I think there's probably a group that _likes_ having physical copies for the enhanced accessibility and the ability to do whatever you want with the book afterward. I know I would prefer to purchase a physical copy, because I know that the physical copy is completely under my control, and I can resell it, give it away, borrow it to a friend, etc. without a vendor's permission. I expect many publishers are trying to promote eBooks because they can charge the same without any shipping or manufacturing costs and because they can track and control users much more tightly, preventing used sales and compiling profiles about users' tastes, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Borders is trading at 86 cents a share and has a market cap of 62 million dollars. It has around 700 locations valuing them at less than $100,000 per store"

That's a pretty shocking figure if you ask me. It's hard to believe when you hear about some startups raising a few millions over an idea without any business model... (e.g. come to mind the young though very popular Path and Flipboard: $2.5M for the former, $10M for the latter, and I imagine valued in the same range as Borders for these rounds)

I know that comparing web-startups to a brick-and-mortar business is not as simple as that, but it does put things in perspective.

<comment><USER6> I assume the real estate under the stores is worth more than $100,000 per store, so Borders must have a lot of debt, or the figure is irrationally low. Or possibly, Borders only rents its land, but I find that a little surprising.

<comment><USER5> On Google Finance, some links (that I haven't studied in details) seemed to say that indeed Borders had a lot of debt.

"As Borders Group Inc. asks publishers for leniency on paying bills, the bookstore chain has been in discussions with restructuring advisers about ways to rework its debt-heavy balance sheet"

[http://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2011/01/07/the-daily- docket-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2011/01/07/the-daily-docket- borders-talks-with-restructuring-pros/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe the problem with Borders isn't books — it's value.

Borders is Walmart with inky paper. It offers little more than what you could get online at a fraction of the cost.

Shopping at locally owned book stores in Boston & Cambridge adds value to my life because they have unique cultures & offer unique experiences. (Has anyone here been to the basement of Brookline Booksmith or the tiny room in Rodney's Books on Mass Ave?)

Bookstores are as important to Boston as jogging along the Esplanade, chilling in the Common, coffee shops and bars.

<comment><USER8> Yes, only those kind of bookstores are in the same, and even bigger mess than Borders is in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe I'm in an even further minority - I read math books for fun. The books that I read are almost always either Springer books if they are recent, or Dover books if they are older reprints. With math books, there is significant value in being able to write in the margins - Fermat comes to mind. The amount of infrastructure support required to get that working properly in electronic form (either free-form writing, or LaTeX support) is more than what a mainstream publisher would be willing to invest in. So, for me, it's still paper.

</comment><comment><USER10> About those big-box bookstores... Barnes and Noble is doing just fine.

[http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/barnes- nobl...](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/barnes-noble-up- borders-down/)

<comment><USER11> Barnes & Noble is doing better than Borders, but I don't think it is doing "just fine." B&N has been losing money in recent quarters and, while its Nook is a more successful e-reader than the Borders Kobo, it is still far behind the Kindle. If Borders dies, B&N will benefit in the short-term, but I am not sure how well it will do over the long-term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This went a slightly different way than I was expecting. I expected it to be more of an "AOL is dead, it's about Twitter/Facebook hookups now", a direction which the author alluded to briefly at the end.

That said, the way it _did_ go with respect to Amazon and Borders is quite fascinating, especially with the market cap and per-store statistic.

</comment><comment><USER13> Too bad, and somewhat hard to understand. I used to love the Borders stores in the UK (while I still lived there).

Browsing Amazon isn't actually much fun. And the Borders stores always seemed packed. What gives.

<comment><USER2> Honestly, I think a lot of borders' problems are mismanagement, not related to Amazon as much as to other things. For a long time their online presence _was_ amazon, just branded with a borders logo, which means that they weren't competing with Amazon online, which means that they didn't have the distribution chains optimized the way that Amazon does, among other things. So there's certainly a lot of pieces to the puzzle of their demise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Borders is trading at 86 cents a share_

I will never understanding stock markets and valuation of publicly traded companies.

<comment><USER15> Read "Security Analysis" if you are interested in valuations; and can stand a heavy tome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> oh, it be ripe

</comment><comment><USER17> "You've Got a Friend Request"?

"You've Got a Twitter DM"?

<comment><USER18> Poke</comment></comment>


Mystery Science Theater 3000: Oral History (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2014/04/mst3k-oral-history/ <comment><USER2> i wonder how many here know/like MST3K. It was big two decades ago, went dark, and now seems it's coming back.

i would think that the HN crowd is as close to the perfect audience segment for MST3K as one can find.

the idea is simple: an MST3K episode is a replay of some horrible D-grade science-fuction movie, usually 25 or so years old. The perspective of the viewer is someone sitting in the back of a movie theatre watching this movie. Sitting a few rows in front of you, the viewer, are three guys (technically one guy and two robots, "Crow" and "Tom Servo" in case you're curious) who frequently interject hilarious riffs while the movie is in progress.

an example:

in one episode, the trio are watching "Radar Men From the Moon", in the film, the hero says to the evil leader of the Moon people "why are you carrying out this campaign of destruction of planet Earth?" Before the evil leader can answer, one of the trio jumps in with "It's an election year"

the OP sums it up nicely: > Watching MST3K was like hanging out with a trio of underachieving-genius best friends

<comment><USER3> Honestly, having seen maybe three or four episodes, I've never liked it. The jokes just aren't good enough to make a bad movie worth two hours of my life. There are so many other things I'd rather be doing. I try an episode every few years, because everyone talks so highly of it, but I always regret the decision or just quit halfway through.

<comment><USER4> I certainly can appreciate that their brand of humor isn't for everyone, but if you do get a chance (and care to give it a second chance), here's a small list of the episodes that are, in my opinion, worth the time to watch:

1) Space Mutiny 2) Time Travelers 3) I Was a Teenage Werewolf 4) The Mole People 5) Prince of Space 6) The Skydivers 7) Angels Revenge

I think most of these are on YouTube in some form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apparently we have Elton John (and/or his art team) to thank for the show's signature look.

> On Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, there are illustrations in > the liner notes. And for the song "I've Seen That Movie Too," it's got > little silhouettes watching a movie. I remember going, "Someone should do a > show like that. Run a movie and have these people in silhouettes say stuff."

</comment><comment><USER6> I think I've spent more money on Rifftrax and MST3K than anything else in the last 9 years.

<comment><USER7> Just saw my first Rifftrax last week: Samurai Cop! I can't recommend it enough - I was crying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's great that MST3k can find new life in the next century. But it's certainly a disappointing reminder that so much funding these days goes towards nostalgia/reboots/sequels and not new, original content.

</comment><comment><USER8> The new season is now on Netflix, yay!

<comment><USER9> Disappointing that it's a typical NF dump. This is one of those shows that will do better with a weekly release.

<comment><USER10> You know you don't have to binge it, right?

<comment><USER9> But you can't discuss these shows with people because they're all at different points. The real nuts binge it the day it comes out and very few people have seen through to the end. I hate most things about the traditional TV experience, but controlled releases are not one of those things.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Choosing an English name? Why I decided to use my Chinese name - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/908929/after-being-james-peter-and-william-i-decided-to-stick-with-my-chinese-name/ <comment><USER2> (2017)</comment>


Popular and Free, SoundCloud Is Now Ready for Ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/business/media/popular-and-free-soundcloud-is-now-ready-for-ads.html <comment><USER2> From the official blog:

> At the Premier partner level, creators will have the opportunity to make > money from their tracks through advertising.[...] Every time you see or hear > an ad, an artist gets paid.

[http://blog.soundcloud.com/2014/08/21/introducing-on- soundcl...](http://blog.soundcloud.com/2014/08/21/introducing-on-soundcloud/)

This is huge: Soundcloud has a way better connection to artists/labels than Spotify or Rdio -- which means that the best content will be on Soundlcoud first.

Given that users follow the content, I think it is safe to suggest that Soundcloud will be bigger than Spotify in a few years.

<comment><USER3> There is also MixCloud: http//mixcloud.com/ with a very similar service. I've read that a lot of DJ types migrated to MixCloud when SoundCloud started to block content because of IP issues.

MixCloud doesn't let you download (which SoundCloud does sometimes) although it's not difficult to find out the streaming URL.

I use both services, but I'm not really happy with the playlist systems of neither. Recommendations, contrary to what other commenter said, are very good.

I don't really use them with the phone: too much traffic, also train tunnels are bad. I wish it could cache, downloading while on wi-fi and listen later.

<comment><USER4> It does cache songs you have listened to on your phone. When I get the tube in London I can still listen to tracks I've played already. Not sure how long it's cached for or how many tracks it caches all together though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've just spent £35 to renew my pro subscription. If this means people are less likely to come and listen to my music, being bombarded with adverts on a page that I have paid for, I will be most displeased. I'll have to stop wearing my soundcloud tshirt to raves for a start, or everyone will be looking at me like like I'm about to sell them something.

Bandcamp, anyone?

<comment><USER6> Hey there, I work at SoundCloud. One thing that might not be totally clear in our messaging about this right now is that ads will only play against tracks premier members have chosen to monetise. If you aren't monetising your tracks, your listeners won't be affected.

<comment><USER7> If so this should really have been made clearer in the press coverage because it is very different from the way I and probably other people understood it. I understand that soundclound would need a way to make money, and what you describe seems like a very reasonable way to proceed. However, a youtube-like or spotify-like ads system would likely be much harder to sell to users.

<comment><USER8> I guess they haven't made it clear because while this is how it works _now_ , but they don't want to set any expectations of that not changing for the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've slowly been shifting my music listening from Spotify to Soundcloud.

Music discovery on Soundcloud is much easier, thanks to its news feed. With Spotify, I usually end up digging through "related artists" for artists I already like--which can be effective, but is also time consuming. With Soundcloud, I can follow a few record labels, and discover lots of new music, easily.

Because of this, Soundcloud serves as a great platform for trending music. A song can be posted there and spread solely within the site, without much outside help, thanks both to the liking/reposting of songs and Soundcloud's "trending" section. With Spotify, you either have to already follow the artist or hope one of your Facebook friends is listening.

Which is another advantage of Soundcloud--it's nearly impossible to find other users with the same tastes. In essence, you're limited to Facebook friends.

<comment><USER10> I find that for me, Spotify is really only good if I already know exactly what I want to listen to. Also, it's ads are incredibly loud compared to the music sometimes. Hopefully Soundcloud doesn't follow that aspect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure this model will work like it did with Youtube. You don't put Youtube on in the background/at a party while friends are over. You sit down and watch a video (hence you're willing to sit through an advertisement). Music streaming that is broken up by advertisements is why people dislike radio and are moving to online services.

The reason artists like Soundcloud is it gives a way to distribute music directly to the fans for free. Anything that gets in the way of that (e.g. ads) is a step in the wrong direction. Instead of attempting to monetize ears/eyes, I'd instead suggest for a premium subscription for artists that gives them enhanced tools to monitor/distribute/track/etc. their music on the platform.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure I agree with the first part of your comment. Spotify already does this, and in my experience plenty of people leave spotify on as background music and/or at a party.

My old roommates did this pretty frequently, and while it was annoying at first to hear ads between songs, as long as they're short enough, you eventually just tune them out.

If anything I'd say that the youtube style ads that play before your content are more aggravating, since you are delayed from actually seeing the content you are trying to watch, much like a loading page is generally a worse experience than a loading content area.

<comment><USER8> If I was over at my friends' and they'd play ads at me, I'd complain and ask them to put on some real music. They'd ask the same of me.

(though I wouldn't _insist_ , if someone doesn't know how, or just really wants to hear radio with ads, I'm a guest after all)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Their website and apps are really bad....but what keeps me coming back is the incredible incredible content. I've found so many great remixes as well as obscure but extremely talented musicians on Soundcloud. It's amazing.

The site/apps and just general design really are embarrassing though. I hope they're doing something about it.

I guess this is one case where content really does make up for a shoddy product. I'd be interested to know the story behind their growth and how they managed to create the community of content creators. I'm sure at least a part of it is lack of a better alternative but I'm sure there's some secret sauce in there somewhere.

<comment><USER14> I find the site/app/api amazing.

You can navigate while playing a song without interruption, keyboard shortcuts make sense, I can even play from Emacs!

The only thing I regret is the buggy login via facebook (the logo doesn't show, or clicking it doesn't do anything).

<comment><USER15> Here's a post about the technology behind SoundCloud from a couple of months ago [1]. I agree that this is a great example of a cloud service. While it might not be completely optimized for one particular platform, I am able to hop between IOS, Android, and PC browsers with all my data being updated flawlessly and in realtime.

My biggest peeve with SoundCloud, though, is keeping track of what I have listened to and trying to remember a song that I thought was amazing. I didn't have an account for the first several months I was using it, but I would just remember the Artists I like and listen to their profiles/likes. Not being able to remember songs and artist names motivated me to make an account and start following them, and liking the songs I wanted to hear again, reblogging the ones I want to share with others... In the end, even though it was frustrating for me, I suppose this is good for SoundCloud and getting people to provide feedback.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7878433](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7878433)

<comment><USER16> the getting back to old music that you like is a problem even when you do have an account. Your likes are only stored in the order in which you favorite them, with no real search functionality. I've been trying forever to find an old song that I liked, but searching for it only yields similarly named songs. I wish there was a search within only favorites..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is really interesting:

[http://thisisadynasty.tumblr.com/post/87945465547/brb- deleti...](http://thisisadynasty.tumblr.com/post/87945465547/brb-deleting- soundcloud)

 _But it's more than advertising. It's sharing. If a person likes one song, then you know what's likely to happen? They'll press the download arrow and own it for free. You won't believe what happens next! They become familiar with the artist, and seek out other material. Maybe they buy that. Maybe they talk about it online. Maybe they go to a show. Maybe they simply become a fan and tell a friend.

I'm cool with that. The labels should be too. It's exactly what they're trying to accomplish by funneling endless money for Facebook Likes, Twitter trending hashtags, and totally ridiculous impotent advertising campaigns. Let the people have the music. Or, to put it in language that makes more sense for the ones who can only speak dollar bill - Free the music, and your cash will follow._

[https://twitter.com/kaskade/statuses/474230686778290177](https://twitter.com/kaskade/statuses/474230686778290177)

 _Yes, so I will move forward with constructing my own portal where I can share what I like when I like._

I wonder if there is a play here to make an artist standalone site that looks and acts like SoundCloud, make it easy to deploy using SandStorm and voila!

</comment><comment><USER18> Soundcloud already has a pro plan which I see a lot of artists using. Why do they need ads? Do you they not already make enough money?

It's not the specifics of what is being proposed here that bothers me. But something about this makes me feel that this will be soundclouds downfall. I don't want to be soundclouds product. I want soundcloud to be the product. I would happily pay for their service (providing they don't go down this route).

(I'm a bedroom producer that uploads to soundcloud, considering a pro plan)

<comment><USER19> _> Why do they need ads? Do you they not already make enough money?_

last I checked, they were a for-profit business. If they believe they can make more money (and thus: profits) by playing ads, that's what they do.

As a for-profit business, it's totally within their rights to gain as much money as they can and they have zero obligations to only have the best of the end-users in mind.

Of course, as ads become more and more intrusive, people might switch to a competitor with fewer/no ads, or they might convert to paid accounts, but assessing that risk, too, is Soundcloud's problem.

My guess is that they feel they are popular enough now to be able to add ads and still be able to keep their user base because Soundcloud is where the artists are (which happened because they had a huge audience, mostly because they had no ads up to now)

It's the natural progression of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The problem I see is that since Soundcloud continues playing after each track, those with ads are going to get some kind of preference in the queue.

This may not be the case, but I am guessing that I am going to start hearing ads even tho I don't typically follow anyone who would put ads on their music.

<comment><USER20> There's already a song from Red Bull at the TOP of my feed. Bye SoundCloud as you were :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > There are so many D.J. mixes, mash-ups and other hybrid works, shared and > remixed so frequently, that appropriate licensing terms have not yet been > fully worked out

Hopefully these terms are published _while_ being worked out.

</comment><comment><USER22> I would happily pay for soundcloud, however I will stop using the service entirely if I start hearing ads.

I don't care how good the music is. If I'm grooving and hear an ad for redbull, the mood is lost.

<comment><USER23> How do you fix this? If you are "grooving" then there is a high percentage chance that you aren't looking at the sound cloud page but rather doing something else somewhere else. Advertisers pay for your attention so how do you go around doing just that without being 'obtrusive'.

<comment><USER24> > I would happily pay for soundcloud

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hooray!

</comment><comment><USER26> Same link, no paywall: [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/business/media/popular- and...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/business/media/popular-and-free- soundcloud-is-now-ready-for-ads.html?partner=rss&emc=rss)</comment>


RFC: My Facebook app, PhotoFlow - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6257423014

<comment><AUTHOR> Thomas,

It took me about a week to get a prototype, two weeks for the first version which was deployed on facebook and about 3 weeks for the version that you see now. Bare in mind that this was a part-time/evening project. Had I done it full-time my guess is that it wouldn't have taken more than 1,5 weeks to complete.

As for your suggestions you are spot on. Many people have asked for mouse interaction. And the reflection thing would be cool but I am not sure if it is feasible... I'll have to check.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

I was hoping to pick the brains of the people on this forum and get some feedback on my Facebook application. For those familiar with iTunes coverflow my app allows you to flick through your photos in a similar manner. The rest of you, unfamiliar with coverflow, will hopefully be curious enough to check it out:)

Thanks a lot! G

</comment><comment><USER2> I think it's pretty cool, I am just getting into building some facebook apps and you just need some reflection and some mouseclick dragging going on and you got the full coverflow thing going on.

How long did it take you to create this, if you don't mind me asking?</comment>


Widespread Hijacking of Search Traffic in the United States - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/widespread-search-hijacking-in-the-us

<comment><USER2> This says a lot about the ISP's ethics if they are shown to be consenting to this. One thing I didn't see in the EFF article is something a user could do about it: use SSL! This may eventually force these companies into more nefarulious and active techniques of hijacking, but it should alleviate the basic technique they are employing now, if i am not mistaken.

<comment><USER3> From the EFF article:

"And the best protection against the privacy and security risks created by this type of hijacking is to visit sites using HTTPS rather than HTTP, which can easily be achieved using EFF's HTTPS Everywhere Firefox extension"

<comment><USER4> My understanding is HTTPS only encrypts the content of the page, not the actual URL request.

(And it's worth noting that proxies can unwrap HTTPS).

<comment><USER5> This is something I keep circling around. The host doesn't seem like a thing you could encrypt, because the intermediaries need to know where to send your packets. It seems like https encrypts the headers: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/187655/are-https- headers-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/187655/are-https-headers- encrypted) but does this include the Location header?

<comment><USER6> The HTTP request itself is encrypted, but the IP packet (including the source and destination IP addresses) is not. SSL/TLS is application level encryption, and if you wanted to encrypt the actual packet, you need to switch to something like IPsec, but even then you need some sort of routing method (which I can't remember).

<comment><USER7> IPSec can work in many different ways. One of those is to encapsulate the entire packet as the encrypted payload of a new packet, with the new packet having headers in plain text leading to the other end of the IPSec tunnel. That other end will then decrypt and forward as appropriate (this is called a 'tunnel').

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Encrypted Search for Google: <https://encrypted.google.com/>

If you use Chrome a quick way to add it as a search engine: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lcncmkcnkcdbbanbja...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lcncmkcnkcdbbanbjakcencbaoegdjlp)</comment>


A radical idea for reducing inequality deserves more attention - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/09/22/a-radical-idea-for-reducing-inequality-deserves-more-attention <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.st/archive/2018/9/www.economist.com/e4g0/](https://archive.st/archive/2018/9/www.economist.com/e4g0/)</comment>


Virtio-fs: shared file system for virtual machines - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/ <comment><USER2> Some background reading that may make this help makes sense to folks from outside the domain: [https://www.ozlabs.org/~rusty/virtio-spec/virtio- paper.pdf](https://www.ozlabs.org/~rusty/virtio-spec/virtio-paper.pdf)

Block storage (virtio-block) is way simpler than file systems, both in the virtio implementation and in the host filesystem implementation. Simple is good, both for security reasons and because it makes it easier to reason about performance isolation between guests. The cost is obviously in features, and in making it hard to share data (and very hard to multi-master data) between multiple VMs. To see how simple virtio-block is, take a look at Firecracker's implementation ([https://github.com/firecracker- microvm/firecracker/blob/mast...](https://github.com/firecracker- microvm/firecracker/blob/master/devices/src/virtio/block.rs)).

The existing alternative, as the post talks about, is 9p which has a lot of shortcomings, so this is interesting. I suspect it's use is mostly going to be in development environments and client-side uses of containers, and server- side users of virtualization will likely stick with block (or filesystem implemented in guest userland).

<comment><USER3> > _I suspect it 's use is mostly going to be in development environments and > client-side uses of containers_

Containers don't need this. It's only useful for virtual machines.

<comment><USER4> The envisioned use case is Kata Containers [https://katacontainers.io](https://katacontainers.io) (formerly "Clear Containers"), which behaves like a container runtime but is actually a virtual machine with its own kernel to enhance isolation from the host. Since it runs its own kernel, it needs something like this to access files on the host.

The advantage compared to running normal VMs is that it's interoperable with things that expect a container runtime like Docker or rkt - e.g., Kubernetes can run Kata Containers - and the overhead / density / startup speed is much closer to that of actual containers (in the sense of namespaces+cgroups) than traditional VMs.

<comment><USER3> And the advantage compared to running containers is...?

<comment><USER5> > a virtual machine with its own kernel to enhance isolation from the host

Whether that's something you care about or think is necessary is left as an exercise to the reader (i.e. it depends).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The email mostly talks about performance, but could this technique finally give us VM shared folders with proper inotify support (at least on Linux hosts)? That has always been my number one gripe with using Vagrant for local development.

<comment><USER7> Mine as well, I have this horrible NFS setup that kinda/sorta works but this (if what you query is the case) would be awesome.

I even looked at writing my own 'vagrant' (to fit exactly my use case of Linux on Linux via KVM and deployed via ansible) because the NFS thing and VirtualBox issues mar what is otherwise a great idea.

<comment><USER8> Vagrant is quite extensible; you can plug in KVM via QEMU and Libvirt as a VM "provider", and use Ansible to provision the guest out of the box.

vagrant-libvirt (3rd party): [https://github.com/vagrant-libvirt/vagrant- libvirt](https://github.com/vagrant-libvirt/vagrant-libvirt)

ansible provisioning (built in): [https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/provisioning/ansible.html](https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/provisioning/ansible.html)

This isn't to say these will make the guest filesystem more performant than NFS; you'll probably hit the same bottlenecks with mounting host filesystems into the guest. The solution many users arrived at with Vagrant is to use a user-space synchronization program like Unison that watches for filesystem events (eg, inotify) on both the guest and the host. This is its own can of worms: O(size of files monitored) resource use on both hosts, file ignore lists, async races, etc. There's even a Unison plugin for vagrant, but I found it quite finicky and thus unsuitable for large-scale deployment

unison: [https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/](https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/)

unison-vagrant2: [https://github.com/dcosson/vagrant- unison2](https://github.com/dcosson/vagrant-unison2)

At Airbnb, we eventually wrote our own wrapper around Unison to make it easier to use, and saw 90x better perf for filesystem-heavy loads like Webpack once we switched off of NFS in our local VMs.

<comment><USER6> > At Airbnb, we eventually wrote our own wrapper around Unison to make it > easier to use

Is there any chance you guys open sourced this wrapper, or have any plans to? :)

<comment><USER8> Unlikely.

1\. I no longer work at Airbnb, so I can't help you there.

2\. The wrapper is somewhat deeply embedded in the dev tools swiss army knife, and is written in Ruby, so (a) it's difficult to extract since its tied with other Airbnb specific concerns and support libraries, and (b) distributing perf-sensitive Ruby code to end-users is challenging so you might not want it anyways.

You might want to take a look at Mutagen, a unison replacement written in Go which seems to avoid most of what makes Unison annoying to work with. I haven't tested it, though, so I can't vouch for it.

[https://github.com/havoc-io/mutagen](https://github.com/havoc-io/mutagen)

<comment><USER6> That makes sense. I hadn't heard of Mutagen before, but it seems like it would solve a lot of the issues that drove me away from Unison. Thanks for mentioning it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I understand that the Kata folks want this and why. Given what Google is doing with Crostini and the overlap between Kata/Firecracker/crosvm, I'm curious what ChromeOS engineers have to say about virtio-fs.

(And while I'm being curious of those folks, what their expectations are around virtio-wl going forward, upstream, etc?)

</comment><comment><USER10> I often have the problem that I am in a VirtualBox VM and want to get a file to the host.

I never found a solution other then to upload it somewhere on the internet and then download it on the host.

Yes, I know you can probably configure something _before_ starting the VM to make VM and host share files.

But I usually want to have them completely sepereated. Only when the need arises to transfer a file, I would like to do so ad hoc.

Is there a solution?

<comment><USER11> You can add shared folders at the host side at runtime and then mount them in the guest. Or you can expose network filesystems (CIFS, NFS) on either side and mount on the other.

<comment><USER10> As I understand it, host and guest can not see each other on the lan. So I think neither is possible.

<comment><USER12> Change the networking config from NAT to bridged. The VM will now appear as a truly independent device on your LAN, as if it were plugged into a switch.

<comment><USER10> But then it can talk to the lan. I don't want that. The whole reason I have some apps running in a VM is to be shielded from them.

<comment><USER13> Then you need to add a port forward to get through the NAT. However, NAT isn't security and you might be better off using a bridge and a firewall to shield your VM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any chance of getting a kext for this filesystem on MacOS, if it's the host? I'm still searching for the holy grail for using containers in development, and the 9p implementation used by most docker-on-mac setups is extremely slow.

<comment><USER15> In theory file system drivers for this can be implemented for any operating system that allows third-party file systems. virtio-fs is based on FUSE, so a starting point would be existing macOS FUSE implementations (I haven't checked the status) and then adding the virtio device plumbing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is very exciting. Once it lands, I'll change virtme [0] to use this when available.

[0] [https://github.com/amluto/virtme](https://github.com/amluto/virtme)

</comment><comment><USER17> How does this compare to Gluster?

<comment><USER4> Isn't the big difference that all your clients have to be on the same physical hardware as your server?

<comment><USER18> And that makes virtio-fs a lot simpler than gluster. It doesn't have to deal with split brain, replication, etc..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder why they don't use syncthing.

Can't we modify syncthing so that it becomes like a low latency shared filesystem and uses bitttorent as an underlying protocol.

Or is the bitorrent not fit for making a shared/distributed file system?

<comment><USER20> > Can't we modify syncthing so that it becomes like a low latency shared > filesystem and uses bitttorent as an underlying protocol.

Well... at that point you're writing new software, so you might as well start from the ground up with something actually designed for this use case, which provides support for things like live coherency, writeback and caching.

It's not easy to just make a program "become" low-latency. Syncthing is extremely high-latency to begin with, and is specifically not meant to be used as a real-time sync application which multiple applications can depend on for live coherency. This is the design of Syncthing. Same for bittorent. Tons of overhead due to the design of the system. For something like this which requires true low latency, there are just too many design decisions which would get in the way.

One major pain point about Syncthing in particular is that there isn't a very good way to maintain complete consistency between different OS environments. Syncing files from Linux which are not valid in Windows (name, metadata, etc) either causes filesystem corruption, reduces coherency between guests and host, or straight just drops incompatible files.

Try copying a file from Linux to Windows which has a trailing space. Windows will go bonkers and cannot delete or modify this file. You have to move it to a partition which you then delete.

I was so frustrated with using Syncthing that I gave up trying to make it useful.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin Exchange Prices Plummet as Investors Brace for Bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/02/mtgox-2/

<comment><USER2> Really, plumet? The only thing that's plummeted is MtMickeyMouse goxtokens/goxbucks exchange rate (that's down +80%), and that's got not much to do with the real world. All other exchanges took a bit of a hit (15% or thereabouts) but are so far holding on to that.

<comment><USER3> The title makes sense if you interpret "Bitcoin Exchange" as singular, although my initial instinct was also to not do that.

<comment><USER4> it's misleading regardless because prices is plural in "Bitcoin Exchange Prices"</comment></comment></comment>


Lavabit — The Government's Response - <AUTHOR> http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/11/lavabit-the-governments-response/ <comment><USER2> Please do note the authors background and current occupation when evaluating his conclusion regarding the government's STATEMENT OF THE CASE AND "FACTS".</comment>


The world IS Not equal, use it for everyone's benefit. - <AUTHOR> http://www.stepanp.com/?p=308

<comment><USER2> I have a dream.

That one day all the good fellows who have their clue about what being a "kicking-ass entrepreneurial leader who's a real alpha male with big balls and strong heart" will start wanking in silence.</comment>


Gartner: AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform Remain the Big Three in Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/06/15/gartner-cloud-rankings/ <comment><USER2> Quite true. In 2014, we started ActOnMagic ([http://www.actonmagic.com](http://www.actonmagic.com)) to empower every IaaS provider to differentiate their offerings in the market, and improve their ability to execute with automation, analytics and intelligent services like Trusted Fixer and Embrace multi-cloud. But late 2015, we realised that not many small players are ready to make this big bet. This was witnessed by HP closing their public cloud, Rackspace embracing managed cloud services and etc., We pivoted to focus on enterprises instead :-)</comment>


How to avoid problems with single line if statements - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jonathanabrams/single-line-if-statements-2565c62ff492

<comment><USER2> Explicit is better than Implicit.

In Clojure:

        (if (is-of-age?)
          (give-beer))

or

        (if (is-of-age?)
          (do (give-beer)
              (allow gambling)))

which is the same as:

        (when (is-of-age?)
          (give-beer)
          (allow gambling))

</comment><comment><USER3> In VB:

       if age>ageLowLimit then
         givebeer
       end if

is equivalent to:

      if age>ageLowLimit then givebeer

and you can even mix both styles:

      if age>ageLowLimit then
        givebeer
        allowGambling
      else: giveSoda
      endif

Altough I use it when it improves readability (for instance, with short tests and instructions), I don't like that you seem to open the code block with the "then", but you don't close it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a big fan of single line if statements. They seem to cause bugs more often than necessary.

<comment><USER4> Too each his own. Personally, I keep hearing about these bugs, but I can count maybe three times I've witnessed one first hand in two decades of coding. I have however frequently witnessed cases of five single-line ifs in a row stretched out into 30 lines of code. What could have been 5 lines of dense and vertically symmetric code was instead a sea of noise and whitespace.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like an exaggerated straw man. I don't see how anyone could reasonably stretch a one-liner into 6.

But yeah - "dense" is an adjective that I try to avoid when coding. Code should be clean, simple, and easy to read.

<comment><USER4>
        if (test)
        {
            body;
        }

        if (...

So, 5 lines each. Not 6. I miscounted.

        if (test1) body1;
        if (test2) body2;
        if (test3) body3;
        if (test4) body4;
        if (test5) body2;

Between the two formats, I greatly prefer the second. It is understandable at a glance and makes the possible error in the last line stand out much more. In practice, I usually encounter the first style -even in cases as trivial as single-function-call-per-if.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jan Paul van Waveren passes away - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/826531007381794817 <comment><USER2> You might know him from his incredible work on Quake (he wrote the Q3A bots as his master's thesis) or graphics programming. [http://mrelusive.com/](http://mrelusive.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: Information overload - <AUTHOR>

I try to keep up-to-date with as much tech news as possible. I follow a fair share of blogs and news sites on google reader but there's just too many. Between google reader, twitter and HN, there's simply too much to go through in one day.<p>I'm open to any suggestions on how to handle this information overload. <comment><USER2> Heres a tip : "things don't actually move that fast"

It may seem like the industry is screaming along but its mainly media hype. The important things will take a few years to get where they need to be, I dare you to pick any ground breaking technology and I'd bet if you missed 6 months it wouldn't hurt you one bit. You'd see a few flash in the pan success stories, but mainly things just chug along.

And thats the key to information overload, understanding you can just stop for a few days, a week, what ever, it won't matter. Remove the addictive nature of it. Make sure its a pleasure and not a chore.

For myself I've moved from blogs to aggregators now to get the best articles. I don't need all the articles, just the best. I could go several places for that (reddit, digg, slashdot). But I come to hacker news most, primarily because the conversation threads are of a higher standard. I can learn x10 more from a thread than I can an article.

I've also found curated aggregators on my iPad extremely useful, I'm talking to Zite, Flip Board, Feedly etc... theres something casual and relaxing about them. I recommend getting a tablet, I've never used an android one but I assume its just as good as my iPad.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to feel the same way a few months back. However, due to some personal reasons, I had to be more or less completely offline for two weeks. When I came back, guess what, I realized I hadn't really missed anything major.

There is an insane amount of news getting generated - but most of it is just noise. The trick that I follow is to pick a few areas that I am really interested in and find good sources/websites where the signal to noise ratio is low. Even good blogs don't produce useful articles all the time.

Another thing that I do is - every morning I quickly scan and stash off articles I want to read, and then I read them up properly later in the day. Trying to read everything will just not allow you to get any productive work done!

</comment><comment><USER4> Let me take an example, the recent fund money dry-up talks ignited by WSJ.

Even if you spend a week at Tahoe lake. You can follow up here(check RSS feeds). <http://cuotcher.com/topic/Venture_capital>

Information source is an aggregation of our private alpha testers' twitter streams, and only filtered interesting articles are notified. Let me know if you are interested.

</comment><comment><USER5> I try and take an information break a few times a week where I'll let a day or 2 go by in which I don't check any tech news. Information is dripped fed to people nowadays anyway. So its always great to see that every new post in my reader is something completely new.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just don't read for a few days. It's a really nice feeling to come back and find that actually it's not _all that_ interesting. And thanks for the reminder, my fast is overdue.</comment>


Show HN: Feeds Pub – a social RSS feed reader - <AUTHOR> https://feeds.pub <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, HN, I am the author of Feeds Pub

The major difference between Feeds Pub and other RSS reader is

\- You can see what feeds are people following. e.g. Here you can find the feeds I followed: [https://feeds.pub/timqian](https://feeds.pub/timqian)

\- You are able to see who is following and reading your blog. e.g. [https://feeds.pub/feed/https%3A%2F%2Fblog.feeds.pub%2Frss.xm...](https://feeds.pub/feed/https%3A%2F%2Fblog.feeds.pub%2Frss.xml)

\- A HN like ranking system helps user find trending contents: [https://feeds.pub/explore](https://feeds.pub/explore)

Feeds Pub is in its early stage, any feedback is very welcomed, thanks</comment>


ISP Spying - <AUTHOR> https://harrisonsand.com/your-isp-is-spying-on-you/ <comment><USER2> I've pulled apart router firmware plenty of times, and am never surprised to see nbtscan, nmap, and all sorts of other tools on there.

A lot of ISPs will perform remote diagnosis by connecting into your router and scanning your internal hosts to see if there are any problems.

Between that capability and general appalling security of routers, you're basically on Starbucks WiFi from a security perspective even at home.

important note: buying an off the shelf netgear/tplink/linksys/whatever might stop your ISP remoting in, but is still wildly full of vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER3> This is very informative! What router would you suggest purchasing?

<comment><USER4> Usually, anything you can install a third party firmware on like openwrt, dd- wrt or tomato (shibby's version of tomato is the one I used the most).

However, I gave up on consumer hardware and went with Ubiquiti for wifi AP and Mikrotik as my router. It was a bit of a pain to set up all my NAT rules in the Mikrotik router because unfortunately consumer devices do a lot of extra work behind that scenes (like setting up NAT reflection) to facilitate having NAT work painlessly. I'm perfectly content with the end result now though.

<comment><USER5> Opposite on me, I'm having a Mikrotik hAp ac and considering to use it as AP only then buy a Ubiquiti ER-X in front of it.

<comment><USER4> I did consider going with a pure Ubiquti solution but after borrowing a friends ER-Lite and comparing it to running RouterOS in a VM I decided that Mikrotik was a better overall fit for me from a technical standpoint. The RB3011 having a powerful cpu + the integrated 10 port (actually two different switches) switch helped push me that direction.

There was something almost zen-like watching 300Mbps of traffic transiting my RB3011 and seeing it utilize 6% cpu.

Ultimately, either is a fine solution and an ER-X is going to be a lot less fiddly to setup.

<comment><USER6> I would stay away from Ubnt routing. Which features that requires disabling packet processing off-loads and the performance impact is not well documented and varies between models and software versions.

There appears to be many bugs related to off-loading as well. The below example is what finally made me decide not to consider Ubnt routers. It may be fixed now, maybe, but even if it was broken for way too long and shrouded in too much mystery, not even making it obvious which models are effected (the thread title was not always that specific either). I can't take Ubnt seriously, even for a home environment, after seeing how basic forwarding is that poor and it's not even their highest priority.

The only good thing that this proves is that at least they don't censor their forums, trying to hide issues.

[https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMAX/UDP-packet-loss-on- Cav...](https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMAX/UDP-packet-loss-on-Cavium-based- routers/td-p/1343012)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is varying levels of difficulty when you want to BYO router. The situation for AT&T U-Verse isn't too fun. If you want to use your own hardware, you only have a few options:

1\. They offer "IP Passthrough" which is fake Bridge Mode. They still do routing and you'll still hit NAT table limits of 4096. Connection falls apart for anything over 3000.

2\. You can dump and reverse the router-gateway firmware and 802.1X/EAP authentication. Oh goodie.

3\. There's a history of exploits for the NVG510, NVG589 and NVG599. Try your luck. [1] [2]

4\. Create some "magic" to split the 802.1X and untag VLAN0. Works in Linux at least. [3]

5\. But good luck if you want to do this in pfSense or FreeBSD. There's an open BTC bounty if you've got any netgraph / networking chops. [4]

[1]: [http://earlz.net/view/2012/06/07/0026/rooting-the- nvg510-fro...](http://earlz.net/view/2012/06/07/0026/rooting-the-nvg510-from- the-webui)

[2]: [https://www.nomotion.net/blog/sharknatto/](https://www.nomotion.net/blog/sharknatto/)

[3]: [http://blog.0xpebbles.org/Bypassing-At-t-U-verse-hardware- NA...](http://blog.0xpebbles.org/Bypassing-At-t-U-verse-hardware-NAT-table- limits)

[4]: [https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=111043.0](https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=111043.0)

</comment><comment><USER8> In the UK, they're legally required to spy on you (but not through your router).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016)

<comment><USER9> That is why I've been running all my devices exclusively through a VPN while I'm in the UK. And yes, I'd much rather trust a commercial company with my data than the British government and the ISPs.

<comment><USER8> I do the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I plugged French Orange's GPON FTTH ONT into my Debian router's RJ-45 port, added a VLAN interface, added a couple of lines to my DHCP client configuration to pretend my router is some Sagem device and pass authentication to the server... And that's all - sweet 500/200 Mb/s throughput, no ISP CPE in sight (well, technically the ONT...) and Orange even waived the 3€/month CPE rental fee !

Former provider offered FTTB and I used the coaxial cable CPE as a bridge - and even when I do not have that option, I insist on having a router of my own as my network's demarcation: it is basic hygiene.

Other option for GPON would have been to plug a GPON SFP module into one of my switches - the friendly guy who laid the fiber to my apartment even left me one in case I changed my mind... But going through the switch to the router and back to the switch on a different VLAN is unnecessarily complicated in my case. Anyone wants a free GPON SFP module ?

<comment><USER11> I thought about bridging an Ubiquit EdgeRouter and putting in front of the AT&T gateway. You must pass authentication back to the gateway. Users were also reporting around 100megs max speed which wasn't acceptable for me since I pay for gigabit.

There is a new line of EdgeRouters out and maybe it has some acceleration for bridging. I would like this setup.

<comment><USER7> You might try this: [https://github.com/jaysoffian/eap_proxy](https://github.com/jaysoffian/eap_proxy)

You have to enable `set system offload ipv4 vlan enable` else your routing performance will suffer.

<comment><USER12> Hey that's me! I'm glad it's working for you. All credit to the folks who figured out this bypass. I just coded it up in Python when I couldn't get some of the other solutions to work for me.

<comment><USER7> Ha! Small world on HN. I haven't personally tried the Edgerouter solution. I've been trying to replicate on pfSense/BSD, but it isn't as simple as you might think. :/

[https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=111043.0](https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=111043.0)

<comment><USER12> Yeah that seems like a bit of a headache. I appreciate your dedication to sticking with pfSense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there a portal like-place to share our findings of ISPs generally in the world so that others can work together with better transparency?

I do data analytics and data engineering and a couple of months ago indirectly I have been contacted by an ISP in Spain and they literally were collecting every bit of data that their customers were seeing on internet (websites, timestamps, how much data were transferred and etcetera with the user's id and basically in another table name and address). I was shocked how easy they were talking about it. I didn't accept but for sure someone has done it! I never heard the name of the ISP, I wish I didn't bark at them so fast and I could collect more information about them.

</comment><comment><USER14> When I bought my fist house a few years ago here in the Bay. Comcast tried to give me one of their new routers wifi and everything built in. I let them but I wasn't happy. I hooked up my own router and ended up double natting it. After a few hours of frustration I went out bought my own cable modem. Installed that and returned the one comcast had provided. When asked why I sighted security and privacy concerns. Working for a fortune 500 means they could easily do some sneaking and see a lot of stuff that I worked on. Either way I use Ubiquity hardware throughout my house. Its a bit expensive but god is it good.

<comment><USER15> Does not using their own routers make ISP traffic sniffing that much harder?

I'd assume if you're using their pipes, they can see what goes through it, regardless.

Genuinely intrigued in this.

<comment><USER16> End-to-end encryption like SSL (https) is meant to limit the middle man's ability to 'see everything'. Instead of seeing the details of your Google search, all they see is that you accessed Google at [x] time, and exchanged [y] amount of data.

This is why there is such a push for end to end encryption on web traffic, chat apps, etc.

<comment><USER17> ISP can very easily see what you searched for even with SSL. SSL encrypts the TRAFFIC so they can't see the content of the webpages, But your search terms are right there naked in the URL even though it is https secured. This is unfortunately the case for Google, Bing and even DuckDuckGo. Try it and you can see for yourself.

At least DDG offers in their options to scramble the URL but one has to know about that feature AND enable it. It is in their settings under Privacy and you have to turn OFF GET (2nd option). [https://duckduckgo.com/settings#](https://duckduckgo.com/settings#)

<comment><USER18> > But your search terms are right there naked in the URL even though it is > https secured

You are correct that the terms are in the URL, however only the browser and endpoint can see them. All your ISP sees is that you accessed example.com, and not example.com/search-terms-here. The TLS handshake is for the domain only, then encryption kicks in, then everything after is encrypted.

Your ISP cannot see what you are searching for, they can only see which sites you use for search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been forwarding all outgoing connections on port 80 (and a selection of other commonly-unencrypted ports) through a VPN (in the router) for a while now - but leaving all other ports (including most importantly 443) connecting directly.

It feels like a good compromise between privacy and speed.

(I realise this is not the subject of the article exactly but I figured it's a related issue.)

<comment><USER20> Why do you feel that way? VPNs are vastly more likely to actually read your traffic than any ISP.

<comment><USER21> Not an issue when you run your own VPN with a cheap VPS - meaning the data is exiting in a datacenter in a location of your choice. While they or their upstream providers will certainly have some 'lawful interception' capability they are usually not interested in analyzing / selling the data on their wires as the consumer-facing ISPs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Another cool thing about WiFi routers is that you can use them as radars to monitor people in a home. The 2.4ghz frequency is perfect for reflecting off water bodies while having great penetration through walls.

<comment><USER23> I wonder what kind of resolution you can achieve.

Would it be ghostly figures or more like black and white photos?

<comment><USER24> The URLs [1] [2] describe the content. I thought [1] was interesting but not answering your question. [2] Answers your question, and shows black and white and thermal pictures.

[1] [https://www.medgadget.com/2014/06/mits-wifi-system- detects-p...](https://www.medgadget.com/2014/06/mits-wifi-system-detects- peoples-breathing-heart-rate-even-through-walls.html) (June 2014)

[2] [https://hackaday.io/project/5452-wifi-thermal- camera](https://hackaday.io/project/5452-wifi-thermal-camera) (2015)

[EDIT] I stand corrected, [2] is unrelated. My bad! Here's some good sources as alternative.

"MIT turns Wi-Fi Into Indoor GPS New tech from CSAIL lab lets one Wi-Fi device locate another to within centimeters" [3]

"RF-Capture: Capturing the Human Figure Through a Wall

It can know who the person behind a wall is. It can trace a person's handwriting in air from behind a wall. It can determine how a person behind a wall is moving." [4]

They also contain further resources.

[3] [https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/mit- tur...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/mit-turns-wifi- into-indoor-gps)

[4] [http://rfcapture.csail.mit.edu/](http://rfcapture.csail.mit.edu/)

<comment><USER25> [2] is a thermal camera with WiFi connectivity, it's completely unrelated.

<comment><USER24> Thank you for the correction, I updated the post with new information whilst keeping the discussion intact w/your post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> That router looks like its control panel is hosted on an external server. Router control panels usually show what devices are connected. So for router control panel functionality, they need to have the router report all connected devices to the server. Obviously they should be doing this encrypted, not unecrypted.

But ignoring encryption, this is the price you pay for cloud management: the could knows your data.

<comment><USER27> Remember, the TR-069 traffic starts at your device, and terminates at their end, it's not making it out onto the public internet, it's entirely within the ISP network.

That's not to say it still shouldn't be encrypted, but with a FTTH connection using a PON network there's already physical layer encryption going on typically, otherwise a custom configured ONT could snoop on other peoples traffic on the same segment.

<comment><USER28> > otherwise a custom configured ONT could snoop on other peoples traffic on > the same segment.

Why would an ISP care about that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is it just me or does this look like a huge opportunity? Last I checked we still have control over our devices, and if they are stupid enough to trust the data they collect, then we should feel free to poison the well. I'm talking about opening random connections to endpoints (either random or those we want to protect), to inject noise into the system. I call the idea "data flak". It could be something as simple as a daemon running in the background, or a browser plugin. You want to spy on my traffic? Fine, good luck picking out my real behavior from the gigabytes of utter crap I'm shoving into your sensors. This works not just at the ISP level, but at every intermediate host, too.

The only counter is for an adversary to own your box, which is far more expensive.

<comment><USER30> >The only counter is for an adversary to own your box, which is far more expensive.

or require your clients to run your software, like in AOL days

<comment><USER29> Well, in general, you'd want to draw a casual link between real physical measurement and network traffic; so yeah, if you own the client (and can accurately determine whether or not it's running in a VM, and/or manipulated by a robot, which is tricky) you can filter out the data flak. If I worked for a data-collection org I'd probably ignore (or blacklist, if I could get away with it) a known source of noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In Germany you are able to use any router you want, regardless of which ISP you use.

[https://www.cr-online.de/bgbl116s0106.pdf](https://www.cr- online.de/bgbl116s0106.pdf)

<comment><USER30> Do ISPs actually prevent you from doing that? At the very leas you can hook your router to the ISP's router and set up DMZ?

<comment><USER21> No. DSL-providers are legally obliged to let the customers use their own equipment (which includes the account details / passwords to establish the connection). Most of them even provide the details for the SIP connection that is included most of the times. If I remember correctly cable providers were fighting this - not sure about the final outcome...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I always assume that they might be. So I always use my own perimeter router/firewall running pfSense. Plus I use VPN services. And so my ISps don't end up seeing anything except encrypted streams. And have no visibility into my vLANs.

<comment><USER33> You're just paying some extra third-party that handles all your traffic now. What's to prevent _them_ from doing the same? You're moving trust to another actor.

<comment><USER8> It's easy to move your VPN to an arbitrary VPS anywhere in the world, but there's only a handful of residential ISPs available in any given area, and they are almost univerally scummy.

<comment><USER34> > and they are almost univerally scummy

Source? I do not think most of the ISPs in my area are particularly scummy. They provide reliable plain internet service with no data caps (and also TV/phone service if you so desire) for a reasonable monthly fee, and in my experience, most of them hire enough customer service workers on their support phone. All of them also resisted internet filtering until the legal system forced them to do so. What more is there to ask of an ISP?

<comment><USER8> Good for you.

In my area none of them provide reliable internet service, most of them enforce some censorship and have poor customer service, and all of them perform the legally-mandated surveillance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Somewhere someone could be selling your data for money. I can imagine the below happening. After all, all corporates are hand-in-glove with each other when it comes to public's privacy.

This is probably what your ISP is doing. Take your MAC Addresses, try to find the phones in your house which is connected to the wifi, take those MAC addresses to all the telecoms, get the SIM card number and the phone number associated with those MAC numberss, send those phone numbers to the banks to find matching bank accounts and the associated credit card number, along with your registered email address, get the purchase history from the bank on the credit card number, compare it with your browsing history and sell all of this to another company and make money.

<comment><USER36> That is very soon illegal in the EU thanks to the GDPR, and it is _already_ in some countries like Germany.

<comment><USER37> absolutely not.

gdpr is a nightmare for websites, because of the consent rule.

but guess what is the first thing you with a ISP. You sign a contract. done. it's all legal with gdpr or not.

<comment><USER36> In Recital 43, the GDPR adds a presumption that consent is not freely given if there is "a clear imbalance between the data subject and the controller, in particular where the controller is a public authority." Importantly, a controller may not make a service conditional upon consent, unless the processing is necessary for the service. Also, data subjects have the right to withdraw given consent.

<comment><USER37> they had similar wording to the cookie things. you had to say for what feature the cookie would be used, at the time the user was actually starting use of the feature. advertising? logging in? ....in the end everyone just says "to use this website" and use for whatever (but mostly ads)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This isn't an issue if you're not using the ISP equipment, or put the ISP equipment into a bridge modem mode.

For instance, BT in the UK do the same reporting over TR-069 if you use their home hub - however - if you connect a different VDSL modem/router you can disable TR-069, and if you use a dedicated VDSL modem in bridged mode and a wireless router behind that there's no TR-069 to worry about in the first place.

<comment><USER38> Or if you just use the provided router, either in bridge mode or in regular mode, the only device it will ever see and report on is your own router, which is hardly a critical leak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I recently learned about this when I reported Internet speed issues to my home ISP (upload was basically impossible, while download was at 100 MBit/s).

They said they'd look into it, but they couldn't process my claim unless they could prove something was connected via Ethernet to their router. (They apparently never trust customer WiFi speed test results, probably because WiFi on their crappy routers can be notoriously unreliable.)

I ultimately had to connect something to the router's Ethernet port, so I grabbed another WiFi router, configured it as an access point, plugged it in, and voilà, they could verify that a device was connected and processed my complaint.

Obviously customer service reps can easily get access to a list of what is connected to the router.

<comment><USER40> One time the next-tier tech shut off my WiFi while I was troubleshooting with the entry-level phone support; I hadn't been warned this was an option or would happen so it really rubbed me the wrong way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Two huge cases from previous years:

[https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/10/01/hacked- routers-b...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/10/01/hacked-routers- brazil-vb2012/)

[https://www.welivesecurity.com/2016/10/21/cybercriminals- tar...](https://www.welivesecurity.com/2016/10/21/cybercriminals-target- brazilian-routers-default-credentials/)

Your router is critical, and choosing them wisely is one of the most important things if you care about some security.

</comment><comment><USER42> Every now and then, we are reminded that our router remains the prominent data collector for our online presence. And ISP, the prominent data aggregator. And neither are really too keen to protect our data online.

</comment><comment><USER43> well, who isn't? Even at the most basic level, my local ISP is injecting ads into browsers.

<comment><USER44> The original title before the admins changed it was "Your ISP is Probably Spying On You", and you wrote:

> well, who isn't?

I can understand that we all get weary from the constant news of yet another privacy intrusion, surveillance method being discovered, or new government law eroding privacy. But why be dismissive? When Snowden revealed what he knew, it confirmed what I had already suspected. But I didn't go and say, "well of course, we all knew that we were being illegally spied on us". I thought that getting the specific information was very important.

<comment><USER45> As far as I can tell we should just be safety first. This does indeed mean getting as much information about how to browse privately.

If we all use tor, it will help the tor project because then it's harder to spot individuals using it.

Tor is slightly slower, but it's pretty much a perfect browser replacement. The only reason I don't use it all the time is that I like my browser history. Plus I've got a self built VPN which is about as good as I can hope for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> My ISP provides an online user interface where I can remotely change my Wi-Fi password even if I haven't explicitly enabled port forwarding. If they have access to that, I don't see why they can't easily see my network shares and its contents (I don't password protect the directories for convenience reasons).

I've long ago lost the PPPoE password and this same router gets it automatically somehow. When I install another router, it won't do that.

</comment><comment><USER47> My ISP never gave me a router. Just an Ethernet cable coming into my apartment :)

<comment><USER48> I got a fiber cable coming in through a hole in the doorframe to the balcony, and an ONU box to convert the fiber media to Ethernet. Everything else is my own responsibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Who didn't think they were being spied on?

This is why you used https to hide the full URL, VPN to push the problem to a 3rd party who might care a bit more about privacy and then Tor on top of it all.

Here's the good old EFF explanation [0]

[0]: [https://www.eff.org/pages/tor-and-https](https://www.eff.org/pages/tor- and-https)

<comment><USER49> No, dont run Tor over VPN. Its VPN over Tor.

Tor provides anonymity, VPN provides privacy. You want anonymity between you and the VPN, and privacy between you and internet hosts.

From the OpSec for xyz series: [https://grugq.github.io/presentations/Keynote_The_Grugq_- _OP...](https://grugq.github.io/presentations/Keynote_The_Grugq_- _OPSEC_for_Russians.pdf) • TOR connection to a VPN => OK • VPN connection to TOR => GOTO JAIL

<comment><USER45> This site [0] explicitly says that VPN over Tor is a bad idea. It's quite possible it's wrong. But I don't understand why?

[0]: [https://www.expressvpn.com/how-to-use-vpn/tor- vpn](https://www.expressvpn.com/how-to-use-vpn/tor-vpn)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I don't know if it's true, but I've heard that some ISPs route your entire traffic through their machines. They even have access to your IP packets. Very shady!

<comment><USER51> ISP's intercepting HTTP traffic to modify it is far from unheard of. In the best case, this is to notify customers of required changes. This is actually used by comcast [1]. In the worst case, this is a service sold to advertisers, or a service that includes arbitrary java-script injection. For something close to the worst case, see [2] (previously discussed on HN [3]).

[1] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6108](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6108)

[2] [https://defplex.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/how-a-south- african...](https://defplex.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/how-a-south-african-isp- hacks-it-subscribers-each-month/)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15423393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15423393)

<comment><USER50> Why on Earth would you visit plain HTTP sites with JavaScript enabled?

<comment><USER52> Because you have to be in the know-how and do work to achieve that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Problem is in the US ISP they can sell your data without telling you. So I prefer to keep my data away from them. I trust Google more to not sell my data and fine with them renting it out. Others might not. So use them for DNS for example so it does not go to my ISP.

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/04/04/isps- can...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/04/04/isps-can-now- collect-and-sell-your-data-what-know-internet-privacy/100015356/) ISPs can now collect and sell your data: What to know about Internet ...

</comment><comment><USER54> Please use the original title.

<comment><USER55> The HN guidelines ask: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." This one was linkbait—it used the linkbait "you" twice. We took that out.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER54> I could figure out that "you" doesn't refer to me personally, and so can the rest of HN. There's nothing "linkbait" about it.

You can express your opinion about the original title in a comment. There's no need it impose this (twisted, IMO) view on everyone.

<comment><USER55> As the people who read the most headlines here, probably by an order of magnitude, I'm afraid we have to pull rank on that. Gratuitous "you" in titles is one of the biggest linkbait tropes. Presumably we're all wired to direct our attention to someone saying "hey you!"; headline writers figured this out and have been milking it ever since.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> ISP Spy: Hey boss, looks this guy in Oslo has a friend called Dave who owns an Android device. ISP CEO: This is it! We're gonna be rich boys! Arrange a meeting with GlobalAdvertCorp immediately.</comment>


School Choice Is the Enemy of Justice - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/opinion/charter-schools-desegregation-los-angeles.html <comment><USER2> We recently were forced to buy an expensive small house in "good" school area and several people I know have done same. I really don't think I can agree with author here. Charter school or not, it is difficult for a poor family to put their kids in good schools simply because they are priced out. Segregation occurs because minorities doesn't have a choice which schools they can send their kids in current system. Government already assigns you a school when you buy a house in many states. The "good" public schools don't have many minority students today precisely because of this reason.

Public school system in US is essentially a government monopoly and comes with all evils that a typical monopoly would demonstrate. Many schools can't fire bad teachers, many mismanage their finances, many have incompetent administrators and NONE of them have to make their customers happy or be efficient in order to survive. Customers are handed over to them on silver plater regardless of their performance or improvements. It's not a surprise that US school system spends top dollars and get placed almost at the bottom in the developed world. But it is a surprise that Americans have accepted this government monopoly, decided to pay through nose mortgages for good school areas and think of this as good deal for their taxes.

Schools must compete for customers if we want them to see improve. We pay taxes and government averages out dollars per student. That's all good but I should be able to take those dollars and go anywhere I wish to educate my kids. Government should not have a say over exactly which school my kids may or may not attend. It is a common sense and only way to eliminate segregation. Schools that no one wants to go can die out or be bought by different management. When schools get over subscribed, new entrepreneurs can move in to area and start new schools. They can observe areas for improvements in existing schools and implement them in their new schools to attract new customers. A continuous cycle of improvements ensues and that's how things gets better over time instead of getting stagnated under government monopoly.</comment>


ClojureWerkz: Collection of open source Clojure libraries - <AUTHOR> http://clojurewerkz.org/ <comment><USER2> This is great work. My only request would be slightly more detailed descriptions. Some of these descriptions are terse.</comment>