How Zapier Reached $35M ARR - <AUTHOR> https://ryanberg.co/how-zapier-reached-35m-arr-with-this-saas-seo-strategy/ <comment><USER2> I remember about two years ago when I reported a bug in the Hubspot Form API Zap where they weren't handling one of Hubspot's documented return codes properly. Basically their zap was only handling one success code and one failure code when actually there were two different types of success.

I documented the issue, linked Hubspot's API docs confirming it, submitted a ticket through their normal support portal and had a confirmed bug from a Zapier engineer within an hour. The fix was live before I came back from lunch about an hour later.

This is why they're successful. If I submit a bug report in Blink (usually major text rendering/CSS issues), a Google employee will look at the issue a month later, maybe. If I submit a bug report in one of their APIs, if it isn't Adwords and isn't customer impacting, the response is basically a middle finger/"we will fix never".

Zapier made a lot of my contracting work way easier and often I get the client involved and they become self-sufficient. Zapier should pay me money! _kidding_

<comment><USER3> Slack is also super responsive when you file a ticket and in some cases have pushed out a change in a few hours. They accept tickets and issues from anyone (not just admins).

I wouldn't even know how to file a ticket with GDocs.

<comment><USER4> Can you explain the last sentence? Sort of blew my mind..

<comment><USER5> I believe OP meant "file a bug for GDocs", not "file a bug using GDocs".

<comment><USER4> Ah, that makes sense. I was thinking of how one could file a bug using GDocs and it was an interesting idea. Thanks!

<comment><USER6> Theoretically I think it's possible to submit bugs using GDocs especially since you can essentially use Javascript to do so. The coding engine is pretty powerful. I can imagine using forms to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Clickbaity title aside, Zapier is achieving $35M ARR because their product is _amazing_. I'm infinitely suspicious of SEO articles but I'm convinced that Zapier could have Slack'd (word-of-mouth'd) their way to where they are now. They're in a league of their own when it comes to integration/functionality/UX -- I don't even know who their bigger competitors are, if they exist.

The first time I saw Zapier, I got the tinge of developer/engineer/builder envy that I get whenever I see products that just are obvious in retrospect, and seem to be very well and flexibly implemented. I heard of it from a forward-looking product manager I respected at a famous internet security firm that I worked at in the past and it absolutely blew my mind (also he gave me a short demo) because of how easy it made things for end users despite the complexity I _know_ the must have had to deal with.

<comment><USER8> I admit I haven't looked too closely, but what makes Zapier so amazing compared to IFTTT?

<comment><USER7> The way I see it, Zapier is a subset of IFTTT, but it's not the functionality that separates them, it's the approach.

For me it starts with the name -- IFTTT means absolutely _nothing_ to the average non-technical user, it sounds like alphabet soup or maybe a standards body or something. Zapier _also_ doesn't mean anything, but it means nothing in a easy to distinguish way from other things. The audience for IFTTT (which is obvious once you know the acronym and makes sense) is for developers where Zapier is generally for smart forward-looking non-technical to fully technical people in the right domain. IFTTT might get a crazy article or two in tech- focused publications and some fanfare from nerds but Zapier is the kind of thing that silently chugs along to be _everywhere_ in ~5 years once product managers/leads, managers, business analysis people get a hold of it -- and the tech isn't even bad.

I don't work for Zapier, I don't push use or pay for their products, I have no connection to them except realizing when I first saw it that it was a excellent idea in a parched solution space with an above average to great implementation & UX.

[EDIT] - Thinking about this some more, Zapier is a subset of IFTTT the concept as in I could Zapier's functionality in the sentence "if X then Y", but that statement actually doesn't mean anything because you can maneuver X to be just about anything and Y to be just about anything. Zapier supports non-trigger based workflows from what I understand and so does IFTTT... so maybe they're more equivalent than anything with Zapier focusing on enterprise-level polished integrations.

<comment><USER9> I would put it the other way round. There's stuff I do with Zapier that I can't see how to do with IFTTT. In particular the path functionality and Python/Javascript embedding mean I can string lots of zaps together into very complex workflows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been following Zapier from the sidelines for a while, and from early on I was fascinated about the way they managed to leverage the network effect to grow.

In retrospect it seems obvious, but they probably would't be where they are today if they hadn't built it as an open platform (for partners developing their own zaps) from the beginning.

Actually met two of the founders (Wade and Bryan) in mountain view when they were based in the YC offices (5+ years ago). Sometimes it's easy to think someone's just lucky, but in this case I think it's pure focus, talent, and a great understanding of the acquisition sources that got them here.

Looking forward to see where they'll be in another 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER11> "created 25,000 search optimized landing pages"

It's garbage that this approach works for SEO. Who wakes up in the morning and decides that creating 25k versions of the same web page is a good use of time, automated or not. Apparently it pays off, but I don't want to compete on who can generate the most fluff, and it's bogus that this behavior is rewarded.

<comment><USER12> They mention that these pages were created for every combination of "connect service X to service Y", which matches twhat people are actually looking for, so I would argue this is a great use of 25K landing pages that are adding value and being rewarded by google for doing so.

<comment><USER13> It is fantastic. I pay for Zapier and sometimes I end up on these pages when searching simply because I was unaware of a new integration. The pages do a fantastic job of showing people a solution they are searching for.

<comment><USER14> It's funny. This happened to me yesterday. Not a new integration but I wanted to know if I could get data from a forum into a Google sheet once a month.

Zapier landing page: Sure, just use a webhook trigger to Google sheets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love Zapier and we use it more and more for various bits of glue, but I haven't found a robust development workflow for it. As soon as you begin editing a Zap, it turns off, which is a sort of "code it live on prod" I haven't done since early PHP days :)

We don't use it for truly production-critical things, but at some point integrations like this for CRM, support systems, etc need to be working and can't just turn off for 30 minutes as we hand-copy a new idea into it.

How to have a "test endpoint" for a given Zap, or to promote/copy a change from one Zap to another — has anyone worked out a best practice for this?

<comment><USER16> Can't you duplicate the zap, edit the dupe, then replace the original?

<comment><USER15> Sort of, but things like webhooks aren't straightforward, and if you want to (for example) receive or send events with a test area of your third party sites, there's not a clean way to toggle those.

<comment><USER17> (Note: I work at Zapier.) Thanks for the kind words, aaronharnly! You're right, we don't have a generalized way to do that sort of thing right now, but if you're triggering from a webhook, one option might be something like:

\- duplicate your prod zap

\- adjust the url to send a webhook to both your prod zap, and your (duplicate) dev zap (with just a single request): [https://zapier.com/help/webhooks/#triggering-multiple- webhoo...](https://zapier.com/help/webhooks/#triggering-multiple-webhooks-at- once)

\- once your changes are ready, "promote" it by turning the new zap on, and the old one off

There could be other workarounds for doing similar things, kinda depends on the overall structure of that particular Zap. Feel free to give us a shout anytime, and we could take a closer look at your specific setup! [https://zapier.com/app/contact-us](https://zapier.com/app/contact-us)

<comment><USER15> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's a great episode of the Indie Hackers podcast with Wade from Zapier: [https://radiopublic.com/indiehackers/ep/s1!7cb82](https://radiopublic.com/indiehackers/ep/s1!7cb82)

</comment><comment><USER19> Was tempted by their product but I had to cancel my account as their IMAP integration was quite lackluster. Their support was prompt and courteous though.

When setting up a basic script to save attachments to a Dropbox, two basic thinks it could not do:

\- Mark an e-mail as read

\- Treat attachments individually (they all got dumped in a ZIP)

Zapier told me their gMail integration is better. But IMAP is the open standard.

</comment><comment><USER20> Zapier is pretty cool, but every time I mess around with it, I end up being held back by only being able to use two-step apps. $20 a month is too much for just messing around with some personal stuff unfortunately. I's love a $5 personal plan that would allow me to do slightly more than the free plan, like conditionals and more than two steps.

</comment><comment><USER21> Any guesses as to when they will be acquired and by whom? I'm wondering to myself if the founders are interested in this... I'd like to see the product grow, so I hope not!

<comment><USER22> >Any guesses as to when they will be acquired and by whom?

Given they are entirely remote and have a pretty unique culture, I doubt they get acquired unless it's done like Amazon did with Zappos (basically bought them then said "keep doing whatever you're doing, we'll leave you alone").

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a great example of pitching your product from the "Jobs to be Done" perspective. More users (in total) will search "create Trello card from message in Gmail" or similar than generic platform integration.

</comment><comment><USER24> Zapier is a killer app for non technical marketers.

<comment><USER25> Would you mind elaborating?

<comment><USER24> It lets you connect data via clean APIs without needing to code. So new website signups can automatically go to mailchimp, and zapier can text high priority leads to your best salesperson, and the lead can feed into a bi tool, etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I read Indie Hackers, and it seems every non-technical founder on that site uses Zapier, and Stripe.

</comment><comment><USER27> For everyone talking about how great the product is, here is my challenge to you:

Zapier achieved $35M ARR because they _sell_ $35M worth of customers every year and have a product that can back that sales channel up.

1\. Their SEO is on-point (search <Insert SaaS 1> integration with <Insert SaaS 2> and you'll undoubtedly get a 1st page SERP from them

2\. Their customer service is great (from what I've read) and appears to be very international friendly.

3\. They have good freemium hooks that get you to upgrade and clearly have A/B tested this for conversion purposes.

TL;DR - Product alone doesn't get you $35M ARR.

<comment><USER28> I want to add that their attention towards developers is also amazing. I developed an integration for the product of the company I work for, and they were just great; the review process was painless and their APIs are very clean. My only complaint is that the docs can be somewhat lacking

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This might be a silly question, but what the hell is a $35M ARR? The definition of ARR (Accounting rate of return) that I'm familiar with is as a percentage

<comment><USER30> Not a silly question. ARR is the sound a pirate makes when he finds $35M in buried treasure.

<comment><USER31> This is the best answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm curious - given that they support hundreds of integrations across so many platforms, all with their own product roadmaps etc, how does Zapier actually develop and maintain these integrations?

What happens if Google or Trello or Salesforce changes their APIs? How does Zapier keep up?

<comment><USER33> We maintain the ones we built originally, but new ones are typically maintained by the app/service in question. At some point, the question of maintaining and updating "X,XXX" integrations with a comparatively small team does arise, so the idea of the partner owning and being responsible for the integration begins to make sense.

<comment><USER32> Thanks - so the integrations could also be maintained by the partners. That makes a lot of sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As a salesforce user, the price from essentials to premium is $50 a month, time a years worth, times the number of employees. My $240/year zap handles all the tasks, or as close to it, that premium offers. I'm saving THOUSANDS of dollars and my SF rep is hating me right now.

Plus Zapier support has been phenomenal, albeit slow as fuck using email, they are persistent and knowledgeable.

</comment><comment><USER35> It will become harder and harder to have organic growth (vs artificial paid for) due to these crazy SEO tactics. If you are not linking already, next time you write a blog or article, make sure to link to all your sources and other interesting content for further reading, as it will become harder and harder to find stuff via search engines.

</comment><comment><USER36> Zapier seems cool, but it doesn't seem like it's target is for "regular people" at $240 a year.

<comment><USER37> It's for business, $240 is nothing to most of them, it's small enough to get expensed.

<comment><USER38> I had a look at it in a previous workplace. For the volumes of data that we were looking at it came to a lot more than that. I Built an equivalent app to join two services in a couple of days.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, that makes sense.

Zapier makes more sense for many smaller tasks. A common example I'm familiar with is to connect the output of a Google form with a crm search and create a ticket to follow-up based on some filters. This is something that you can set up on Zapier in 10 minutes, and you wouldn't want the hassle of actually maintaining your own backend for something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to help people with software? - <AUTHOR> I'm a developer and enjoy what I do, but I often find myself wondering how I can help underprivileged people using my skills. I know I can go and physically volunteer places, which I do from time to time but I want to make a larger impact. A good example is NewStory or Kiva. I'm curious how others have done this in the past or ideas on what could be done. <comment><USER2> The problem, as I see it, is that positive impact on a large enough scale that matters requires orchestration that we aren't equipped for as just software developers.

The beauty, though, is that we are more than just software developers. We are also humans with compassion and the capacity to plan and execute.

But planning and executing a software project is different than planning and executing a system whose output is "social good".

Our strength lies in our ability to create tools, but tool creation is only part of the equation. There's also the monumental task of building the social infrastructure to support whatever good we're trying to bring into the world. That's a task we're often not equipped to complete on our own.

It seems, then, that we should look at it through a similar, but subtly different lens.

Instead of asking "what's the best way to help people with software", maybe the question should be "who is already making a difference, and how could software increase their impact?"

Reduce your scope. Don't look for new ways to help society. At least not yet. Instead, look for groups of compassionate people who are united toward a common goal, and ask how software can help them achieve it.

I hope that helps in some way.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a fantastic way to look at it. See if I can use my skills to help an existing social good. I really appreciate the insight.</comment></comment>


Saturn's rings may have come from its destruction of moons - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/12/saturn-may-have-picked-off-weaker-satellites-to-earn-its-rings.ars

<comment><USER2> Same story, different source:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2000303> \- nytimes.com - 1 comment</comment>


Nearly All Binary Searches and Mergesorts are Broken (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://googleresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2006/06/extra-extra-read-all-about-it-nearly.html <comment><USER2> I don't agree with this statement

      "It is not sufficient merely to prove a program correct;
       you have to test it too."

It _is_ sufficient to prove a program correct - as long as your proof is not faulty! The problem in this case was not that the program had a bug despite being proved correct. The problem was that the 'proof' was not a proof at all.

Machine ints are not mathematical integers. Floats are not real numbers. You can't prove things about programs that use ints/floats without taking these things into account.

Of course, the question of how one knows that a proof is correct is still left open - but that's a metatheoretical argument that it might be best to leave aside. I suspect that most faulty proofs are faulty for pedestrian reasons (incorrect type assumptions, failing to deal with null/NaN etc) rather than high-falutin' concerns about the validity of first-order logic.

<comment><USER3> Computers are now complicated enough for Computer Science to have turned to some extent into an empirical science - it is impossible for a single person to have in their head everything that goes in a typical computer, operating system, compiler and so forth, so one is often forced to resort to experiment to find things out, it's no longer a theory where you can just reason things out, maybe it never was one in fact, because many simple imperative programs are so complex to reason about.

In empirical sciences, you not only have to have a mathematically valid theory, but you also have to check if the theory fits reality by making predictions and experimentally checking them with the real world. It's the same now in Computer Science, there are so many places where theoretical assumptions might deviate from reality that having a proof is not enough. In fact, you have to have those assumptions to make things mathematically tractable. Imagine mathematicians or computer scientists re-proving real analysis theorems using floating point arithmetic...

In other words, your vision of proofs being enough as long as all the assumptions are part of the theory, seems utopian to me. In fact, even some of the most devoted advocates of correctness proofs have admitted this:

[http://www.gwern.net/docs/1996-hoare.pdf](http://www.gwern.net/docs/1996-hoare.pdf)

<comment><USER2> > _Imagine mathematicians or computer scientists re-proving real analysis > theorems using floating point arithmetic..._

Mathematicians and computer scientists _do_ prove theorems about floating point arithmetic! For example, the most widely-cited floating point reference contains no fewer than fifteen theorems about floating point:

[http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.ht...](http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html)

Or here's a presentation about representing functions with their Taylor expansions using floating point arithmetic, providing strong error bounds on the result of adding or multiplying two functions represented in this way:

[http://perso.ens-lyon.fr/nathalie.revol/talks/ICIAM07.pdf](http://perso.ens- lyon.fr/nathalie.revol/talks/ICIAM07.pdf)

I agree that many proofs in computer science are harder than proofs in mathematics, because you can't deal with idealizations - you always have to think about the machine. But unlike empirical sciences, we have access to the design of the machine. We know what many of the axioms are. Formal reasoning is valid for a far larger part of computer science than for the natural sciences.

I'm not going to argue that proofs are a panacea for every situation. But I also don't categorically reject them in the domains where they can be usefully applied.

<comment><USER3> I know there are theorems about floating point, that's missing the point, what I am saying is that the theories most useful for doing reasoning are often nearly impossible to formulate if you would like to include in them a lot of messy details of something like floating point, just as one example. What happens instead, we reason using nice idealized theories, and then we experiment to asses the gap between theory and reality.

I am completely a fan of theory and proofs, but the point of the quoted comment is that there is an empirical component to software development too, and your original comment seemed to question it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A bit off topic, but most of statistics also breaks.

If you go back to _Mathematical Statistics_ by RA Fisher, early in the last century, and look at his arguments about binning 'big data' into histograms, he has a nice little construction that uses the notion of an 'angle' running through the data set, does a Fourier Series expansion, keeps the 'DC' term from the cosine series, and waves his hand about second order effects. He does estimate them for the sine-like series, and finds for a data set of size N=1 Trillion it might be a 10% effect.

The only remnant of this whole proceeding in modern lore (and even Ph.D. statisticians may not have heard of it) is Sheppard's correction for equal class-interval histograms:

[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SheppardsCorrection.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SheppardsCorrection.html)

But of course when your datasets start to be 1 billion rows routinely, 10% effects a mere 3 orders of magnitude away in the size of the dataset should start to make you nervous.

Moral: once you get a billion data points of anything or so, it's time to redo the Maths, very very carefully.

<comment><USER5> I am a PhD statistician and I can't understand your comment.

What statistic is being calculated for the N=1 Trillion dataset? And what is the way of calculating that would be off by 10%?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my opinion, the main take-away here is that the proofs were, obviously, no proofs. If you program with modulo arithmetic you have to do your proofs with modulo arithmetic. If you use IEEE floating point, say goodbye to your theorems about real arithmetic.

If you forget/omit a single fact about your target platform/machine/api (whatever axioms you found your reasoning on) in your proof, it may be worth nothing.

<comment><USER7> Yup.

More annoyingly, for a binary search over an array (i.e. something that can fit in memory) their code is still wrong - they should be using size_t.

<comment><USER8> On top of that, this 'fix' from the article, even if it were corrected to use size_t instead of unsigned int...

      In C and C++ (where you don't have the >>> operator), you can do this:
      6:             mid = ((unsigned int)low + (unsigned int)high)) >> 1;

Has the same bug as the original snippet, just in unsigned space. Now, granted, binary searching a >2GB byte array in a 32-bit process is an unlikely use case... but it is technically feasible!

<comment><USER9> Yeah. That "fix" immediately jumped out at me in the sense of WTF??? All he did was double the max size of the array before his code fails again!

That so-called "fixed" code just couldn't do anything useful in a 32-bit address space. A billion 32-bit ints completely fills up the address space by itself. As you note, perhaps it could "technically" be possible to search a billion 8-bit bytes, but that's not what's being passed in to the function.

And if he's running in a 64-bit address space (otherwise how could he pass in an array of a billion ints), then he should be using 64-bit integer arithmetic. (I don't know enough about Java to know how feasible it is to do that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would guess that nearly all code, period, is vulnerable to integer overflow issues. I don't think it makes sense to worry about this except in very special cases.

<comment><USER10> Having an array with more than about 1.2 billion elements is all that it would have taken to break the old binary search, and that's not all that uncommon anymore.

Pure JavaScript code isn't vulnerable to integer overflow by virtue of not having any integer types, and I believe errors like this were the reason for leaving them out of the language.

<comment><USER11> JavaScript numbers are just floats and susceptible to precision loss as well as overflow to Infinity, aren't they?

In fact, if incremented repeatedly, 64-bit floats lose precision before 64-bit ints overflow.

<comment><USER12> > 64-bit floats lose precision before 64-bit ints overflow.

More precisely, a 64 bit IEEE 754 ("double precision") has 53 bits worth of "integer"[0], which allows for 15 digits (and almost, but not quite, 16: it can encode 15.95 decimal digits)

[0] even though only 52 bits are allocated to the fraction, because the fraction part has an implicit 53rd bit set to 1 outside of special values

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I understand why people actually using these huge data sets see this as a bug but personally I don't agree. Consider how hard programming becomes when you have to take into account integer overflows even for a /single addition/ of array indices. Our mainstream programming languages are build around the assumption that indices don't overflow and I would rather use the binary sort code as argument to support this than to support the argument that bug free code is really hard.

The real lesson in my opinion is to stop using 32 bit integers in big data applications. Which unfortunately doesn't seem trivial in Java.

</comment><comment><USER14> Previous discussions :

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130463)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=621557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=621557)

</comment><comment><USER15> One of the uncommon times a sensational headline is actually correct!

I love this bug - it's been my go-to example of how there are bugs in every piece of code, no matter how supposedly common. A bug in Java's implementatino of Binary Search - one of the most popular languages, and one of the most used algorithms - and still a bug managed to lay in wait for 9 years.

<comment><USER16> I was also thinking this was a stereotypical HN sensational headline blog post. Apart from being strangely correct, it somehow makes me want to code something in Java today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't believe this is necessarily a bug. All code will break under some extremes and nowhere are the requirements specified for what this code is supposed to be able to handle. Without requirements, you can't "prove" it correct (or incorrect for that matter).

</comment><comment><USER18> Off topic(since it's not about C/Java), but Python has a long integer type which won't over/underflow unless you run out of memory.

% python

Python 2.7.5 (default, Aug 25 2013, 00:04:04)

[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 5.0 (clang-500.0.68)] on darwin

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> i = long(9999999999999999999999999999999)

>>> i

9999999999999999999999999999999L

>>>

<comment><USER12> > Python has a long integer type which won't over/underflow unless you run out > of memory.

IIRC, so do Erlang, Ruby or Haskell (when using `Integer`), FWIW. And Java has BigInteger (though that one's a pain to use).

But there's a cost to their existence (they need to check for overflow at every operation), and a cost to going above machine word size. Also, now you've got "integers" which can take arbitrary amounts of memory and integer operations in O(n)

Still, definitely a plus on the correctness side.

There's also the option of type-encoded value ranges as in Pascal or Ada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I read far enough into that to see the code that could cause overflow and quit reading.

I've programmed various cases of binary search, merge sort, etc. for decades and in all cases wrote code with indexing that could never overflow. If some silly academic make-work, prof-scam, busy-work, nonsense code could overflow, so be it.

Heck, I even worry ahout

do i = 1 to n

wondering if the code is written to exit the loop when i = n + 1 tests larger than n, which in case n is the largest integer could never happen.

The title here "nearly all" is to me total BS. Take your insult of my code and stuff it. Capiche?

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand why such an old article came here again.

<comment><USER21> because Java arrays length is int, 32bit limited. I think we'll see these articles more and more :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good thing I learned about this in 15-122 freshman year

</comment><comment><USER23> Well, that was an overly melodramatic title.</comment>


Geoguessr Geolocation Game - <AUTHOR> https://www.geoguessr.com/ <comment><USER2> The title is misleading. It's not affiliated with Google.

<comment><USER3> My first response was "Did geoguessr get bought by Google?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice design. I did similar game for Android [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ym705.geo&...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ym705.geo&hl=en)</comment>


Hacker Jews - <AUTHOR> http://hackerjews.com/

<comment><USER2> Oh come on everyone, this is actually pretty damn funny. Am I the only one who finds 4Chan making fun of Hacker News funny? This place is too uptight and needs to learn to laugh every once and a while. It's an obvious parody, a pretty damn good parody at that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Flagged, just 4chan trolling.

[https://boards.4chan.org/g/res/38087806#p38101668](https://boards.4chan.org/g/res/38087806#p38101668)

<comment><USER4> You're right to flag this. Could you do me a favor? I started the 4chan thread that's now on the front page of HN. I want to add a comment there, but I have a policy of not commenting on sites which require accounts. I made an account to post this, but the HN thread disabled comments from new users. 4chan stuff seriously shouldn't be posted here and will just lead to more trolling, racism/sexism, and a general degradation in quality and more work for moderators.

Hi HN. I actually started that thread on /g/. I think it's hilarious and somewhat sad that it got cross-posted here. Chan culture is a really weird thing, and (usually) it only makes sense in that context. The fact that people here seem interested seems to indicate a couple different things. The first being that there are a non-trivial number of 4chan users on HN, and that is amusing. The other thing it indicates, though, is that enough people here are amused by the parody of "startup speak" that they want to see jokes about it here. Stop that.

4chan is a total shithole. I go there to shitpost, troll, and generally let off some steam. I love/hate it, but these things should not bleed over into sites like HN. The fact that people are upvoting this and taking it at all seriously is an indication that this site is becoming more and more "redditized." It also may be an indication that the comment system here does not allow for enough free expression, thus people upvote stuff like 4chan threads which express feelings people have but can't necessarily say. Then again, maybe the comment system here is part of the reason why comments aren't full of "memes", lame jokes, and racist vitriol like most other sites.

Doesn't it bother any fellow channers to see this on a "real" website? To the person who posted it here specifically, what were you hoping to gain by posting that thread here? Are you new, friend?

The insular culture at HN is weird and, at times, frustrating, and it would be interesting to see some actual analysis of it (or how internet communities evolve culture over time in general). But who the fuck cares what 4chan thinks about anything? What does it say about HN that some random 4chan thread gets tons of upvotes?

The internet is weird.</comment></comment>


What The iPhone 7 Might Look Like - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-7-concept-photos-2015-1

<comment><USER2> It's against the rules to editorialize titles on Hacker News. Please read the guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).</comment>


Performing History on PLATO: A Response to a Recent SIGCIS Presentation - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@brianstorms/performing-history-on-plato-4c501b8f2068 <comment><AUTHOR> From OP:

Rankin's presentation makes assertions about the PLATO system, its developers, its users, and its online and offline culture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in the 1960s and 1970s, that paint a decidedly negative picture, one where Rankin declares PLATO suffered from "endemic misogyny" and that she likens to a "fortress of patriarchal heterosexual power in American computing." Such a description stands in stark contrast to the picture described to me by roughly a thousand PLATO people over the course of more than thirty years of research. (The result of this research is my upcoming book The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture to be released by Pantheon Books in November 2017.)

Rankin's conclusions appear to be based on misunderstandings, historical errors, omissions, and confirmation bias, resulting in a general thesis that PLATO was a horrible woman-hating environment. A response and correction is urgently needed, in light of the fact that this presentation was given under the auspices of SIGCIS, a group devoted to a scholarly, nuanced, and accurate recounting of the history of computing, the fact that the conference was co- produced by and held at the prestigious Computer History Museum, and the fact that Rankin says that her talk comes from an upcoming book, A People's History of Computing, to be published by Harvard University Press. At least as far as PLATO goes, I feel it my duty to address each of Rankin's points and clarify the history to the best of my ability based not only on extensive past research but also present-day comments from actual PLATO people who have viewed Rankin's video, including a number of people whom I contacted for this article and who are identified by name in her talk and who were physically present at the PLATO lab decades ago.</comment>


Conlangs - Constructed languages designed by language inventors - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/columnone/la-sci-conlang24aug24,1,6245830.story?coll=la-headlines-columnone&ctrack=1&cset=true

<comment><USER2> registration required, someone copy/paste in here?</comment>


'Lulzsec hacker' latest to be arrested in US - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19409205 <comment><USER2> 15 years in prison for a simple SQL injection and publishing of data?

What else gets you 15 years in the UK? \- Repeated rape of same victim over a course of time or rape involving multiple victims : 15 years custody \- Rape accompanied by abduction: 11 - 17 years \- Murder if aged 18 or over at date of offence: minimum term of 15 years

Right. Leaking data is punishable at the same level as rape and murder. Great country.

<comment><USER3> Two things:

1) As stated in the first sentence and the title, he's been arrested in the US which is where he'll face charges and up to 15 years in prison, not the UK. Just because it's reported on a UK website that doesn't mean it happened in the UK. Unlike some US news outlets, the BBC sometimes has a look at what's going on in the rest of the world.

2) What you're doing here is comparing the maximum possible sentence (15 years) with I have no idea what but I suspect specific sentences (possibly time served?) that may have been handed out for the crimes in question without listing any detail that might put that into context.

If the 15 years were a UK sentence the comparison would be that the maximum sentence for rape in the UK is life and the maximum sentence for murder in the UK is life (in both cases meaning 15 - 40 years (Scotland) or 15 - 35 years (the rest of the UK)).

While in reality this may not the the actual sentence or the time served, until we have a conviction and an actual sentence, these are the only valid comparisons we can make.

So, great country? Maybe not, but you make no good argument as to why not.

<comment><USER2> Ah, I stand corrected, indeed it does. Why in God's name would ANY Lulsec memeber _EVER_ travel to the US after they attacked a big corporation is beyond me...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "He is also accused of using a proxy server to further avoid detection."

Accused seems like an odd word to use here. In UK and US jurisdictions the fact that you used a proxy to commit a crime does not make any difference to the scale of the crime does it?

<comment><USER5> Maybe he wasn't authorized to access this proxy server. Or using a proxy to browse the web is considered illegal ? After all, in some countries it is forbidden to go in the street and wear a mask (France). Using a proxy can be considered the same :)

Then, sometimes, journalists use terms they shouldn't. Maybe that wasn't a "real" proxy (according to the definition of a proxy), but a simple "bounce" (a hacked box/server somewhere), in which case it is illegal (for example he hacks a-company.com, installs a socks server and tunnels his traffic to this socks server.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The saddest thing about the lulzsec situation is that they are being burned at the proverbial stake for witchcraft while they seemed to be more interested in embarrassing and exposing the ridiculous state of security and security firms touting snake oil potions, lotions, and creams. Did lulzsec actually sell or cause damage with all the information they exposed publicly? (and please don't add any trite herpie-derpie about how posting it publicly makes them complicit or accessories in some form or fashion. It's a stupid and moot point that only exposes you as an idiot. As the article states and the government has been officially proclaiming, these were not sophisticated actions or attacks. They were the lowest of the low hanging fruit that was already so ripe it was starting to rot.

This is a clear and pathetic primitive case of the messengers being shot. Granted, they may have been a pretty shitty and annoying kind of messenger to the nationalist and apologist types, but they were messengers of a hidden danger. For as much as I don't necessarily agree with how those events transpired (to be as general as possible in describing the lulzsec-era in internet history). Our society does not provide an avenue for the creative and constructive exposure and notification of such issues. Many human societies, especially the American one is fundamentally incapable of adopting to the new realities that are forming. A rational and intelligent person would realize that, not only has our (American) society never been a very civilized and peaceful one, but it has gotten worse by significant magnitude over the last decade and the facade of peace and civility is starting to chip and wear thin as our dogmatic Constitutional framework becomes ever more weak with age and sabotage. There is ever growing institutional inertia to control, lock-down, monitor, hide, and penalize on trajectory of draconian levels. Civil society is showing strains and cracks and the destructive demons that civil society always has to be vigilant about restraining are pressing against their boundaries and straining their shackles.

Some may find the above exaggerated or flamboyant, but consider that there is not a single horrific period or action in human history that was a choice from one day to another and they all arise through creep...they ALL are creep; while the truly righteous are negligently satiated.

<comment><USER7> _> As the article states and the government has been officially proclaiming, these were not sophisticated actions or attacks. They were the lowest of the low hanging fruit that was already so ripe it was starting to rot._

That doesn't excuse it. What they did was still illegal.

They aren't messengers. They're vandals running around tearing up houses who happen to leave their doors unlocked.

<comment><USER8> Except that these "houses" happen to be banks, which customers have entrusted with their assets (E-mails addresses, passwords, credit card details) to keep safe. Their doors should not be unlocked.

While I believe Lulzsec went too far in their actions, I'd say that they were trying to prove that these companies did not go far enough in their responsibility to keep their systems safe.

To continue the analogy above: The PSN-hack wasn't a bank robbery. It was a person walking into the vault, unarmed, loading everything into their vehicle of choice and leaving the scene. In other words, the bank did too little to keep the assets safe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it social engineering by Sabu that lead to all the arrests?

</comment><comment><USER10> SQL Injection is so old, it should count as an open door. That is, you keep your possessions in a room with the door open and nobody guarding it.</comment>


Easily share multimedia content - <AUTHOR> http://chokoboard.com/

<comment><USER2> Why do I see scrollbars on the example chokeboards for videos that take up the entire container? area1 class has overflow-y:scroll. Maybe this should be removed from there and moved to text-block or video-block depending on what makes sense. Unless you do want the gutter between containers. But there are better ways to put gutters between containers.

<comment><USER3> Hey! I'm the creator of Chokoboard, I've never expected to see it on the first page of HN. Thanks for pointing that out I'll change that

<comment><USER2> Still see the scrollbars a week later. Would be interested to know what kind of bump you saw in traffic being on front page of HN? When my product was on front page of HN for a day or so I saw maybe 2000 hits on the site.</comment></comment></comment>


Fighting fire with volts: How water hoses could be replaced with electric wands - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1370616/Fighting-volts-How-water-hoses-replaced-electric-wands.html?ITO=1490

<comment><USER2> Is there video evidence of this anywhere? I read the whole thing, all I saw was a drawing...</comment>


Bye facebook, hello FACEBOOK - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/04/facebook-rebrands-as-facebook-can-capital-letters-save-a-toxic-brand <comment><USER2> Bye to both facebooks</comment>


The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/well/eat/the-benefits-of-intermittent-fasting.html <comment><USER2> People associate fasting with mental disorder (anorexia, bulimia) and religion, but it is a great way to optimize your body's metabolism. The key to intermittent fasting isn't eating less, it's eating the same amount but in more concentrated intervals.

> A man I know in his early 50s said he had lost 12 pounds in about two months > on what he calls the 7-11 diet: He eats nothing from 7 p.m. until 11 a.m. > the next morning, every day.

To add to this anecdata, I did this for two months and lost around 20 fatty pounds. I wasn't large before, but I am noticeably leaner now. Maybe we'd be healthier if we took just 3 months out of a year for 16 hour intermittent fasting.</comment>


Using Amazon EC2 as a web proxy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thestateofme.com/2010/10/27/using-amazon-ec2-as-a-web-proxy/ <comment><USER2> This tutorial is missing a crucial piece of information.

Firefox: Go to about:config, set network.proxy.socks_remote_dns to true.

Otherwise you'll be leaking out information on which domains you are visiting.

<comment><USER3> I believe that reverse DNS still leaks even if this is set in Firefox.

As long as DNS isn't blocked on the network you're on, you could change to a more neutral DNS provider (184.108.40.206 or Google)

<comment><USER2> I don't believe so. I checked with wireshark.

And there's no point in using another DNS provider if your network is compromised since they can see your requests in plaintext.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even better (for me anyways), is to use my Linksys router at home, flashed with a linux firmware with SSH enabled. I'm already paying for my connection at home, so why not use it?

<comment><USER5> If you can then place the router in the country you need the proxy to be, and access it, then yes, your option is probably better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been doing this for years to prevent various network providers (from employers to coffee shops) from inspecting my traffic, although I typically use OpenSSH, and AutoSSH for restarting in the event that I change networks throughout the course of a day on my laptop:

<http://www.harding.motd.ca/autossh/>

On Linux, they're both obviously available without any drama. On Windows, I use both from Cygwin.

I used to use a home-based system, but I've been slowly trying to simplify my "home computing experience", and moving anything "hosted" to external providers. They can offer much better uptime than I can these days, and with much less personal frustration, especially if you consider the cost of a low- end VPS.

</comment><comment><USER7> This coupled with the free micro instance Amazon is offering right now makes for a handy/free proxy.

</comment><comment><USER8> so at 25c per GB transfered (10c in + 15c out), this would be a couple bucks a month for all of my mobile traffic. Route SMS through google voice...

wow, I sure wouldn't mind my carrier being out of the loop with respect to SMS privacy.

<comment><USER9> Don't you also need an EC2 instance?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I tried this quite a few years ago to watch geographically restricted video content - e.g. at Hulu - but gave up on it because the IP-ranges got blocked quite quickly. Is that not the case anymore?

<comment><USER11> If so, somebody should automate this RIGHT NOW. $0.02/hour to watch British/American TV! (Depending which side of the pond you're on)

<comment><USER12> Why would it be any good?

Obviously, the local VPN avoiders who would implement this would get blacklisted, so its a no-go.

And there is the basic fact that Pirate Bay has shows, with no IP screwery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I highly recommend FoxyProxy for managing proxies in Firefox. <http://getfoxyproxy.org/>

You can easily enable/disable multiple proxy configurations and there is a rule-based mode where you define which traffic should go out on which proxy.

It is great for working remotely when your company doesn't have VPN access or you don't want to set the VPN up.

</comment><comment><USER14> The annoying thing is that e.g. flash will ignore that and try to open a socket. This means that it will use the regular connection and not the tunnel.

This also means that hulu decides not to work because flash doesn't respect proxy settings... :(</comment>


The Dublin Core Is Broken - <AUTHOR> https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dcmi-terms/ <comment><AUTHOR> The global purl resolver for persistent URLs is throwing 500s this morning.

All pURLs are down. Internet meta just broke entirely unless you run your own purl resolver and change all the URLs.

[http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/description](http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/description)

What is a pURL? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_uniform_resource_lo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_uniform_resource_locator)

It's an alternative to using DNS, essentially, woven into the XML standards among other things.

<comment><USER2> I was expecting a hard hitting critique of the semantic web, but this will do.</comment></comment>


Shedding light on the dark web - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/international/21702176-drug-trade-moving-street-online-cryptomarkets-forced-compete <comment><USER2> Any time I read anything about the illegal drug trade I am struck by how much the industry would change if all drugs were legalized everywhere. So much effort is expended to keep things hidden from law enforcement and other criminals that it adds an incredible amount of friction to the purchasing process for the purchaser and the seller.

From the buyer's perspective you now have to go into business with some often unsavory people just to get high. From the seller's perspective you have to make sure that the buyer isn't law enforcement and also not someone who is going to rob you because you have zero legal recourse. It's really a shitty experience for everyone involved. Considering how shitty that experience is it says a lot about people and their desire to take drugs that the market continues to exist and basically never stops serving the customer.

It really seems like when confronted with something inevitable, like drug use and sales, the effort to prevent it may be more costly and damaging than just allowing it to happen in a more controlled environment.

<comment><USER3> Any time I read anything about legalizing all drugs I am struck by how that opinion would change if they tried to function with a heroin addiction.

<comment><USER4> Why have you never tried heroin? I am struck by how often the response to that question is not "because it is illegal".

<comment><USER5> Is this your actual experience? I have talked with few friends about this and all of them pretty much said: "I don't want to destroy my life"

<comment><USER4> That's precisely my point. Most people avoid heroin because they don't want to destroy their lives, not because it's illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sellers of drugs, will ALWAYS sell drugs, both illegal and legal.

Buyers/Users of drugs will ALWAYS buy/use drugs, illegal or legal.

It is an interaction between humans of Earth, no government or entity, no system or blocks will ever stop it. Shut down the internet, it will continue. Short of a massive purge of life, drugs will never go away.

If you somehow...were able to shut down the "darkweb", it would move into something else that authorities are unaware of.

On a whim, if I desired, I can purchase any drug I want, probably get it today, without using the internet.

The war on drugs has no end. Stop trying to pretend you (the lawmakers) have never tried an illegal substance. Even the most powerful public figure in the world (Obama) has admitted to using illegal substances at one point in his life.

Government: It's time to sit down, shut up, stop wasting the taxpayers money and leave it alone.

<comment><USER7> I tend to feel the same way. These types of things are inevitable, you are never going to stop them from happening. However, when debating this point, I have a hard time defending my point when someone else says "so should we just not do anything? Wouldn't that increase the illegal activity? Should we let people buy guns too? Where do you draw the line?" I have to say, I'm not sure what to say about that. If the government did not actively fight this, successful or not, would it cause the markets and illegal drug users to proliferate?

<comment><USER8> First off if it were legal how would there be an increase in illegal activity? There probably would be an increase in drug use if that is what you mean.

The government could still fight it, but it would be a health and human services problem at that point. Which means a lot less high stakes do anything to not get caught crime going on. It could be paid for by taxes on the drugs. There would be fewer deaths from drug overdoses because quality and purity could be regulated. Drugs with little to no long term side effects would probably become popular. Drugs that have harsher side effects and highly addictive properties would probably still be stigmatized because of their effects.

The line would get drawn the same place it does for gambling and alcohol. Occasional use by grownups is OK, if it becomes life impacting then rehab and abstinence is probably best for you.

<comment><USER9> > First off if it were legal how would there be an increase in illegal > activity? There probably would be an increase in drug use if that is what > you mean.

I think the hypothetical here is that illegal activities could rise in search of money to feed drug addiction. This would come in the form of theft, robbery, etc. It's not as if no one ever stole money to buy food.

<comment><USER10> I don't know about the premise that there would be more people stealing to feed addiction. Is there a significant problem with people stealing now to feed alcohol addiction?

<comment><USER9> I'm only saying that a need creates a motive. When I was eighteen and addicted to cigarettes, I scrounged every inch of my apartment for coins to buy a pack. I imagine an addiction to harder drugs would create a greater need. I only pontificated on what I thought the parent might mean. I didn't state a fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Demand for recreational drugs is ever present, it seems, and it looks like the prohibitionists are losing 'the war on drugs.' I hesitate to recommend sweeping legalization, but surely it must be time to rethink drugs policy. I suppose it is happening, slowly, with medical and recreational marijuana legalization, but other drugs must be considered as well.

I don't use drugs or alcohol anymore because I couldn't control my use of opioids. I have had a very difficult time in the past 10 years because of this, and every rehab/behavioral health treatment I found myself in recommended 12 step support groups as a one size fits all solution to my substance abuse issues. It wasn't until I got into a methadone program that I was able to find some relief from my addiction and frequent relapses. Unfortunately, methadone is frowned upon as much NA/AA is favored by addiction counselors.

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough. The point is that I think addiction is the real problem we face when it comes to drugs. And two potentially addictive drugs are currently legal. I think that if enough money was allocated for medical addiction treatment, legalization could work. A lot of money could be made by regulating and taxing recreational drugs. Addicts could be kept out of jail and receive the help they need instead of falling into the trap of the criminal justice system.

</comment><comment><USER12> Using gwerns data I put together stats on the likelihood that vendors who sell one product sell another here:

[http://ryancompton.net/2015/03/24/darknet-market-basket- anal...](http://ryancompton.net/2015/03/24/darknet-market-basket-analysis/)

All the parsed data is available as a csv as well. I was surprised how well substance relationships could be recovered from vendor co listings

</comment><comment><USER13> Couldn't reverse tracing work? A fed poses as a customer, and uses a PO Box to receive goods, but also registers this in the Fedex, USPS, UPS databases, such that if this address appears anywhere on a package, it is traced to determine the origin. Build a network over time, repeat.

<comment><USER14> They could build a Physical Onion Router. Send package to a node, which opens it to find a smaller package already addressed to another location. Similar to TOR each hop will increase security at the expense of resource utilization.

<comment><USER15> Doesn't that leave a huge paper trail?

<comment><USER16> It works if you have a decent volume and can't trace individual inputs to individual outputs. If you get one package and send one package, it's a little obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congrats gwern for being written up in the Economist. Your research exposing the dark web (including your own battles with being implicated for wrongdoing) are commendable.

</comment><comment><USER18> Gwern's other writings on darknet markets are also excellent, with a lot of original research.

[http://www.gwern.net/#cryptobitcoin](http://www.gwern.net/#cryptobitcoin)

</comment><comment><USER19> The "Alprazolam" and "Xanax" bubbles that shoot out of the "Prescription Drugs" bubble should be combined into one bubble with a total of 2.1 as they are generic and brand name respectively for the same drug.

</comment><comment><USER20> Constitutionally the government doesn't have any right to tell a person what they can and can't do with their body so long as it only affects them and doesn't impact the _rights_ of another.

It's a slippery slope argument that could be applied to all kinds of things. People need to remember the Constitution and its foundation of natural rights, that it was created to protect those natural rights, not to establish any rights.

</comment><comment><USER21> The chart breaks down marijuana in to "skunk" and "weed". Are these distinct terms that I am unaware of?

<comment><USER22> The distinction is a loose one and to do with potency: skunk, originally a strain of cannabis with a 50/50 balance of Indica and Sativa varieties, is often used to mean potent, often hydroponically grown, cannabis flowers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Darknet markets are like Hydra with 10 heads, when Silk Road is taken down, more players entered and when one other dark-market owners closed shop and jumped with vendors bit-coins, new ones with multi-escrow showed up. Again, with each take down people are improvising and making the system a bit more resilient.

<comment><USER24> What an excellent example of Nicholas Naseem Taleb's concept of antifragility.

<comment><USER25> It's evolution. Survival of the fittest, quite simply. The weakest are taken down, leaving more customers for the remaining, stronger competitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Didn't realize marijuana was such a big factor on the darkweb. Think of the all the missed taxes!! :(

<comment><USER27> If you look at the second chart in the article [1] you can see that marijuana is much cheaper online than on the street in the US. A lot of it is coming from legal states and California, where it's cheaper to produce. Street weed in most of the country is usually either grown locally or imported from Mexico, so online prices are often significantly better.

[1]: [http://cdn.static- economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...](http://cdn.static- economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/print- edition/20160716_IRC989.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Do we really use the term "darknet"? I thought it was a layman's term and frowned upon.

<comment><USER29> The Economist is a broadly targeted publication. That's a term that's widely "understood", so just as Internet (capital I) is sort of silly, I don't take umbrage with it in such settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is one of those topics where I've made a conscious decision to not check it out. I have no desire to find out how deep that rabbit-hole goes...

<comment><USER31> There's not really much more to it than what you see in this article. You log onto one of a few crappy ebay-looking sites, and sellers list items for sale basically using the same list of categories in the graphic. No hit men or anything like that - and Craigslist works fine for prostitutes. Sometimes site managers don't even allow the sale of guns. It's mostly just people buying and selling drugs. And 15% of users of illegal drugs have obtained them through these sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> So when can I get my deliveries via anonymous drone?

<comment><USER33> I've seen a few articles where people are already delivering drugs with drones. So...I guess that's already now.</comment></comment>


Google Cloud Platform is 11 for 12 in World Cup predictions - <AUTHOR> http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/07/google-cloud-platform-is-11-for-12-in-World-Cup-predictions.html

<comment><AUTHOR> But the explanation for the wrong Germany prediction seems a bit weak in my opinion. Shots/Shots on target should not be a single deciding feature - <USER2> are many other featurs which have an influence on "expected goals" and which may have been in Germany´s favor.

The high certainity before (69% France) seems a bit off, especially compared to the betting markets (c. 69% Germany). Additionally I wonder about the high probability for a win vs brasil now (even without incorporating the loss of Neymar and Thiago Silva) - did they do a recalibration or change the model?

I would love a bit more background, like in 538s excellent piece about Messi[0].

[0] [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is- impossib...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/)</comment>


The Bitcoin Blockchain Visualized in 3D - <AUTHOR> https://symphony.iohk.io/ <comment><USER2> This looks like something from Tron, trippy. The height of the block is the amount of BTC, there are some huge (thousands of BTC) transactions happening. On a semi related note, I built a 3D visualization (globe) to see where these blocks are geographically mined. [https://coinminingstats.com/globe](https://coinminingstats.com/globe)

<comment><USER3> Very snappy site, nice work!

What front-end technologies did you use to build it?

I guess you're synching data to local storage and then querying it to get those quick page loads?

<comment><USER2> Its a vue.js site that I host statically on Netlify, with django backend on heroku that pulls all the data. The trick to get things to load quickly is caching the data on [https://www.keycdn.com/](https://www.keycdn.com/) (with the right headers you can set it up that the CDN queries the slow pages in the background and serves the cached ones meanwhile to keep things near real- time). I might do a writeup about that it took me a while to figure out.

<comment><USER3> I would happily read such a write-up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "It's a UNIX system! I know this."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URVS4H7vrdU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URVS4H7vrdU)

</comment><comment><USER5> Saw this live in Miami at IOHK's conference. They had a VR version setup for the public. A beautiful interactive tech art rendering that visualizes the "living creature" an active blockchain resembles.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great illustration of disparity between transaction values. Massive majority of transactions are below 0.1 BTC. And then almost every block includes a transaction of a few thousand BTC. I'd love to see something like this for Visa network.

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of a dramatized GUI from CSI or a hacking sequence in a movie.

<comment><USER3> Enhance!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are a lot of big bars in there, like 4000Btc transactions. Does anyone have a sense of whether those usually represent private buying/selling of coins, or are they exchanges like Coinbase cashing in/out, lightning network, etc? What's the story of these massive trades?

</comment><comment><USER9> The music sounds like the intro music from Tarkovsky's Stalker.

Edit: Link for those interested: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgocncu6MBw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgocncu6MBw)

</comment><comment><USER10> Now let's see something similar but for a private coin such as Monero! :-P

<comment><USER11> It's impossible :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It tells me there are only 30.000 transactions? In the last block? Because that number seems very small compared to the hype that surrounds Bitcoin if that is "All Transactions of all time"

<comment><USER13> This doesn't represent Lightning network, which is used for smaller, quicker transactions later synced onto the main Bitcoin chain by transferring only the differences between the nodes to save on transaction fees.

<comment><USER14> It's more honest to say "intended to be used for". The LN has been promised as the solution to Bitcoin's scaling woes for years, but somehow never seems to catch on.

<comment><USER15> The Lightning Network actually has seen parabolic growth since it started in Q1 2018 -- with roughly 40,000 payment channels opened and ~1000 BTC total capacity.

[https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/lightning- network?orgId=1&fro...](https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/lightning- network?orgId=1&from=now-2y&to=now)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection)

More isometric than 3D ...

</comment><comment><USER17> Yeah, yeah, Bitcoin valuation makes no sense. But it is a beautiful realisation of the Cyberpunk dreams of freedom.

<comment><USER18> Valuation of what does make sense though? Other than A=A, all valuations are artificial.

<comment><USER19> Most valuations make sense as they are tied to the intrinsic value of things. A potatoe will feed you for a while. The value can vary - a potatoe farmer won't be hungry, so the value is to learn a living, a hungry person will value a potatoe very high. The price at each step in the chain between the farmer and the hungry person is determined by a lot of factors - distance and the scarcity vs. need at each point. Same as real estate - the market value will vary, but is cornered by the fact that each piece of land only exists once.

With Bitcoins the value is only set by an artificial demand. There is nothing left over, if demand stops. You can't eat a Bitcoin. There is no limitation on creating new cryptocurrencies. It is like the million dollar homepage. It was once valued with a million dollars but I doubt, anyone would pay any significant amount for those pixels now. Why? Well, yes, there is only one million dollar homepage, but if there was any demand, you could create a similar page for a few dollars of effort.

<comment><USER13> You can't eat a dollar too. Intrinsic value of a dollar is smaller than a piece of paper, as it's not even that good for taking notes. It's valuation is the same: based on artificial demand.

<comment><USER19> The point of the dollar is, that it is backed by the United States of America. By the government the Federal Reserver Bank as the front line of setting and defending the value of the dollar. And by the whole US industry, which is trading their goods in dollars. That is the reason why modern currencies are generally valued vs. the gross domestic product of countries.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Federal Reserve hasn't been really backing the dollar. The gold is there, sure, but it isn't connected in any way with the value of dollar. The Federal Reserve surely doesn't have enough goods to back all of the dollars in circulation. The fact that US industry is trading by dollars doesn't change the matter. There are quite a few businesses that trade by bitcoin.

<comment><USER19> The dollar has not been backed by gold for a long time. It is backed by the Federal Reserve bank by the political power of the US and of course by the GDP of the US. Like with gold prices, there is quite some flexibility in the value of a currency, but that flexibility is contained in certain intervals because of the influence and the acting of the Federal Reserve bank. As long as the US doesn't default, the dollar has a value.

<comment><USER13> It is not backed. I cannot exchange dollars into political US power or GDP of US.

<comment><USER20> I get your point and generally agree fiat is not backed by much more tangible than BTC's math. To be fair, plenty of people trade US dollars for US political power. Lobbying, 500k speaking fees, PACs, Charity "Foundations". You and I can't trade in those markets because we don't have enough dollars (or have too many scruples)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well this is just awesome! Glad to see IOHK is putting some of that Cardano loot to use in fun ways :)

</comment><comment><USER22> I enjoyed this a lot, thank you :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Wow, cool. I'm not going to try and get it but I appreciate the aesthetics

</comment><comment><USER24> OP, did you make this?

</comment><comment><USER25> mycelium network ;)

</comment><comment><USER26> All his effort and the site is completely unusable on mobile Safari and barely/confusingly usable on mobile Firefox - I gave up about 20 seconds into it.

what's the point of all the nerdiness if it's unusable.

<comment><USER27> What's the point of seeing it on mobile?

It's way too rich to be experienced on such a small screen.

<comment><USER26> because my "mobile" is my primary computer?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Baker Street – A simple client-side load balancer for microservices - <AUTHOR> http://bakerstreet.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> We made this because we discovered that _lots_ of companies using microservices have independently converged on this type of architecture for load balancing (client-side HAProxy + integrated service discovery component + health checks), but there wasn't a simple, easy-to-setup, end-to-end solution out there. (Our favorite for the record is AirBnb's SmartStack.) We'd love for some feedback and/or PRs and/or GitHub stars!

<comment><USER2> Airbnb recently merged some great changes into SmartStack [0, 1] provided by Yelp, among which are reducing the number of connections to zookeeper [2].

[0] [https://github.com/airbnb/nerve/pull/71](https://github.com/airbnb/nerve/pull/71) [1] [https://github.com/airbnb/synapse/pull/130](https://github.com/airbnb/synapse/pull/130) [2] [https://github.com/Yelp/synapse/commit/82775562a35a89d60084f...](https://github.com/Yelp/synapse/commit/82775562a35a89d60084febb42af135a6362b52c)

<comment><USER3> The changes that yelp have made are great for SmartStack users, but you still need to set up zookeeper in order to get going. Yelp is really pushing these changes for the multi datacenter use cases. I suspect this is one area where the strong consistency model of zookeeper is an even worse fit for service discovery than within a single datacenter.

<comment><USER4> To be honest my favorite part of SmartStack is that you are not tied to a single discovery backend or mechanism. Both Synapse and Nerve support custom backends using whatever system you want (zookeeper, etcd, DNS, etc). At the end of the day both just expose basic configuration files and we exploit that at Yelp to do pretty cool stuff like allowing multiple systems to inform nerve/synapse about services (e.g. marathon or puppet) and allowing us to control service latency using a DSL that compiles down to those configuration files.

Just to clear something up, we have not found it necessary to run zookeeper at a cross datacenter level to get multidatacenter support. We're still working on writing up the details but the general gist is run zk in all datacenters and then cross register from a single nerve instance to multiple datacenters. That's why we had to remove fast fail from nerve, because by its nature cross datacenter communication is flakey. This approach has some tradeoffs however, as all approaches do.

All that being said, this is an interesting system and I look forward to more mindshare in the area of service discovery!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, great to know the details (we heard about what you guys were doing second hand from Igor). Looking forward to more details whenever you post!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks really handy - thanks! A word of warning though: TfL _aggressively_ protects the roundel trademark.

<comment><USER6> Yes. Came here to say this. Expect a nastygram from TfL. eg:

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/16/tube_map_madness/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/16/tube_map_madness/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks great! Looking forward to playing around with it.

I loved the idea of Airbnb's Synapse, but it's tricky to configure (you basically have to write an haproxy config from scratch plus learn how synapse config sections map to the haproxy config). Plus it seemed like the non- zookeeper backends were pretty unstable, I had to fix a few things to get it working with ec2 tags (and fwiw, at this point it's been over a month and my PR to merge the changes back upstream hasn't even been commented on).

How does Baker Street handle restarting haproxy, does it do anything like this[0] automatically to get zero-downtime configuration reloads?

[0] [http://engineeringblog.yelp.com/2015/04/true-zero- downtime-h...](http://engineeringblog.yelp.com/2015/04/true-zero-downtime- haproxy-reloads.html)

<comment><USER3> Currently we use the restart procedure as described in the haproxy manual. We would like to get to true zero downtime though, we've been looking both at the method described in the post you mention as well as possibly using nginx in favor of haproxy to achieve this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I'm reading it right, the directory service today is a single host. That was very misleading after these statements (which suggested something closer to netflix eureka):

"Zookeeper provides a strongly consistent model; the directory service focuses on availability."

"Baker Street doesn't use Zookeeper or the other popular service discovery frameworks because we wanted a simple, highly available service, not a strongly consistent one."

Edit: Which is not to say that the project isn't interesting, just that some of the copy felt like a bait and switch. :)

<comment><USER9> I had the same reaction, and I have severe reservations about availability- focused service location. The potential of firing traffic at the wrong nodes and having it dropped on the floor is a real red flag for me. A failure of a directory service due to a lack of consistency allows an application to, if not trivially, at least _reliably_ cache requests to be pushed later when the health of the overall architecture can be established.

<comment><USER3> In a distributed architecture it is very difficult to avoid the possibility you mention even with a strongly consistent store at the center of your service discovery mechanism. The consistency the store provides doesn't necessarily extend to the operational state of your system.

For example, your zookeeper nodes may all be consistent with each other, but given that a server can fail at anytime, that information while consistent may still be stale. Likewise, if a client is caching connections outside of zookeeper's consensus mechanism, then these connections will also become stale in the face of changes.

Given these possibilities, there is always the potential for traffic to be dropped on the floor regardless of how consistent your store is, so ultimately what matters is how to minimize the probability of this occurring and whether your system can cope when it does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for sharing. Sent this to my team as we were talking about this problem just this afternoon.

Points for sudo nano in the install guide.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Datawire Directory" => Mycroft

</comment><comment><USER12> Curious: why choose something like Watson over using haproxy's pretty solid built in health checking mechanisms?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're running 1 HAProxy per application instance. The HAProxy built in health checking mechanism is designed when it front-ends > 1 app instances (i.e., it serves as a central proxy).

Watson checks the health of your local application, and propagates it to the (global) service discovery framework, so when other microservices want to connect to the service that Watson is monitoring, they know whether or not that service is available.

<comment><USER12> Seems like you're trading away haproxy as a centralized SPOF for brand new custom code, which itself is a centralized SPOF; and also needing a new watchdog daemon to do what the haproxy instance would have done. Would be interesting to understand what the problem was that forced that complex arrangement, because it's not obvious to me at the moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Three reasons:

1\. In the central LB setup, if the LB server dies, you're service dies. Not in this setup (HAProxy is deployed side-by-side with each instance). 2\. Elasticity. Imagine you have a shopping cart microservice, a search microservice, and a users microservice. Each of these requires its own HAProxy instance. Every time you spin up or spin down a new instance of these microservices, you need to configure the central HAProxy to pay attention to these new instances. 3\. Health checks don't work well in DNS. In the centralized load balancer infrastructure, you end up relying on DNS so that your users microservice can talk to the shopping cart microservice (for example). DNS requires client polling and has propagation delays, so if one of your shopping cart microservice load balancer dies, it takes time for all the other microservices to figure out where to connect to.

A central LB works well if you have just a single microservice. But when you have dozens of them, you're suddenly managing dozens of load balancers dynamically, and it gets to be pretty chunky to manage at that point.

<comment><USER13> Except most people deploy dual HAProxy servers connected via heartbeat, which share a floating IP. There's no SPOF. Deploying new microservices is as simple as managing the HAProxy config file via Chef or Puppet.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can definitely do that. There is more programming involved, since you need to figure out how to tie a new instance deployment into Chef/Puppet/etc to update HAProxy. You also need to figure out how to get it to update quickly. Finally, you'll need to figure out how to deploy your dual HAProxy server with heartbeat setup automatically every time you deploy a new type of microservice, and update DNS appropriately. It just means that instead of deploying Baker Street as part of your microservice push, you're deploying a) your microservice b) your dual HAProxy setup and/or new HAProxy config and c) DNS.

Lots of ways to solve this problem; our big focus here is on simplicity. If you have the Chef-fu and time to do all the above, you could definitely make it work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> so if a HTTP request comes in, how does it communicate with existing HTTP microservices and know that it's available or not? Does it do this by polling?

I might actually give this a go since I need to route HTTP request to hundreds of flask servers but if they are busy, I don't want to keep hitting it.

<comment><USER3> The way this works is described here:

      http://bakerstreet.io/docs/architecture.html</comment></comment>


Man arrested for threatening to kill FCC chairman's family over net neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-arrested-on-charges-of-threatening-to-kill-fcc-chairmans-family/ <comment><USER2> This seems more like a mental health issue-- but even if it weren't -- would it really be that surprising? It seems to me like we're in a revolution or civil war, and have been for some time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Utterly disgraceful.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommend a command line tool to generate neat-looking graphs/charts? - <AUTHOR> I have used gnuplot for basic tasks in the past. This time I am trying to generate graphs that'll be sent to the customers and it's important that they look neat and aesthetically pleasant.
Spent last 3 hours on different ways to do that. Checked out some scripts etc to make gnuplot output nicer looking, but it just doesn't seem to compare with the output of some of the js libraries (D3/charts). I wonder if there is a command line way to generate slick graphs that are visually every bit as appealing as using libraries?
TL;DR: Anyone know a way to get stylish looking graphs generated from command line on linux? <comment><USER2> The only one I found so far is [https://github.com/sindresorhus/sparkly- cli](https://github.com/sindresorhus/sparkly-cli)</comment>


Universal Edit Button - <AUTHOR> http://universaleditbutton.org/Universal_Edit_Button <comment><USER2> I almost crapped my pants when I saw this title -- I thought it was a dream of mine come true. For years I've hoped that someone really clever would make every webpage a wiki via a browser extension. Unfortunately, "universal" is here being used to mean "not universal". I'm still waiting. Cmon guys.

<comment><USER3> I sort of had a similar idea: an extension that would let you point out typos on any page on the internet, and the person responsible for the site (assumed to be admin@whereever, but can be redefined with a link tag on the site) will be automatically informed, or can set a preference using _their_ extension to receive the corrections as an RSS feed that they can feed into, say, their bugtracker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this is a good idea. but come on, that is one ugly button!

<comment><USER5> Agreed, way too many colors to hope to be a universal icon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Universal... except for the parts of the universe that can't be edited.

<comment><USER7> Yeah... why _can't_ pi be 22/7 ?</comment></comment>


70% of Bitcoins Have Been Hoarded for Six Months or More - <AUTHOR> https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/70-bitcoins-hoarded-six-months/

<comment><USER2> This also means that 30% of bitcoins have turned over in the past 6 months. Which is huge compared to almost any other commodity that can be hoarded. (Although the 30% includes change addresses, which means the real amount that changed hands might be less.</comment>