Earn money in your sleep - <AUTHOR> http://www.netmagazine.com/features/earn-money-your-sleep

<comment><USER2> There's an interesting dynamic at play with things like this. When you first build one of these "earn money in your sleep" SaaS products, it really doesn't make you all that much money. After a few months of being launched and signing customers, it's not at all uncommon to be bringing in something like $50/month.

At that point, it's tough to keep motivated to tweak, market, A/B Test and otherwise keep moving forward. Especially when you look at your consulting rate, or make the dreaded calculation to see how much your effective hourly rate has been for this f'ng side project.

But here's the thing. After a while, that $50/month starts looking more like $500/month. Then $1,000/month. Then $2,000/month. Sure, that's still, what? Two days worth of consulting revenue? Even then it's a bit hard to stay particularly excited. Consulting will pretty much always blow the doors off of what you can make on a side project.

But the thing with consulting is that as soon as you stop consulting, people stop sending you money. Products don't work like that. Want to take a month off and go backpacking through Honduras? Cool. Your product will pay you $2,000 to do that. Want to take a leap and try to build that shoot-for-the- moon startup idea you've always had kicking around? Go for it. Your product will take care of the rent for you.

Even better, products that charge by the month have a way of making you _more_ money every month. Until attrition really kicks in, you're going to be signing more customers than you lose. Even if you only sign a few per month, that's revenue that just keeps piling on top of itself. So now, a couple years after that trip to Honduras and that woefully failed startup, check it out: you're bringing in $5,000 or even $10,000 every month on that silly little product. You really don't need to work anymore if you don't want to. Wow!

So yeah, products are actually pretty cool. They just don't seem like it at first. Stick with it though. It gets good.

<comment><USER3> _Even better, products that charge by the month have a way of making you more money every month._

This bit of advice is probably in the top 3 of "Things I wish someone had told me in 2006."

<comment><USER4> Do you think that if someone told you that you wouldn't have built BCC? What I'm really asking is can you make everything reoccurring or are their certain markets that won't tolerate it.

<comment><USER3> I believed very strongly in 2006 that teachers would never go for recurring purchases. I also thought that there were only ~1,000 people in the entire world that would ever buy bingo card creation software. Belief #2 is demonstrably catastrophically inaccurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hate to seem cynical about this, it was an interesting article, but I can't help noticing that all the product examples were for a market of other web developers.

I doubt this is a sustainable market; surely, all web developers can't just sell to each other. The market for web development products can only be created and paid for by having a sustainable web product market for non web developers.

patio11's Bingo Cards feels a lot more 'real' to me as a product business, and I would be interested in hearing other examples done by small teams.

<comment><USER6> "patio11's Bingo Cards feels a lot more 'real' to me as a product business"

Why? He's basically selling _only_ to teachers.

What's wrong with a web developer selling a product to a niche of other web developers?

And, actually, if you're selling byproducts like rejected logos or vector images or stock photos or Wordpress themes, wouldn't that actually be for more than just web developers? We've bought vectors for our mobile app in development and just because bloggers who are in the market for a custom theme are technically "on the web" doesn't mean they're developers.

<comment><USER3> _Why? He's basically selling only to teachers._

Sixty/forty or thereabouts, actually. There's also Fortune 500 companies, people planning a birthday party for grandma, a whole mess of ladies planning baby showers (baby shower bingo is A Thing), assisted living communities, churches, NGOs, and if I remember correctly every branch of the military.

I emphasize the teaching bit when talking about BCC because that's how I _thought_ about it, that's generally how I _think_ about it, and it makes a very good story, but it isn't 100% of the business

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just as a quick example for other people who are thinking about doing this, I sell UI design & development tutorials at Design Then Code (<http://designthencode.com/>) for 1) designers learning how to code, and 2) coders learning how to design. I've been selling them since March and the total money earned is now about 1/3rd the salary I earn at my full-time job. Not enough to fully supplant it, but jumping my income up 33% has been pretty awesome.

Waking up in the morning to check out how much money you made last night is an incredible feeling. Or, getting an email while out at dinner that you just sold a thing that paid for your dinner? It's tough to explain just how satisfying it is. And anyone can do it. I write about the things that I _do_ every single day. All of us have special, deep knowledge about a subject that other people might want to become more knowledgable about, it's just a matter of putting that knowledge into a compelling package.

<comment><USER8> Way cool! Any tips for success for folks who might want to set up a similar business model on other topics?

<comment><USER7> I think the best decision I made was finding a niche (UI development for iOS) and sticking with it, trying to build up my knowledge so that I was a very knowledgeable person in the field.

<comment><USER8> How did you identify your niche (personal interest and hope it worked, or did you evaluate it with metrics of some sort)?

Any recommendations for payment processing and goods delivery services?

<comment><USER7> The niche worked out because it's what I'm most excited about :)

I use Quixly for payment processing, it's the service that Pictos icon set uses because Drew, the creator of Pictos, wrote it himself. It's outstanding and very cheap. I highly recommend it for selling digital goods online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good read, but what the article only mentions at the end is that the first step for all of these strategies is:

"Work really, really hard."

Writing a book, creating a whole icon set, or creating GitHub are all much harder and more time-consuming than doing client work.

So I think the biggest barrier to earning money while you sleep is probably the amount of work involved, not the lack of ideas.

<comment><USER10> The difference between the two is that work for a client can typically only be sold once. Work like creating an icon set or writing a book can be sold infinitely and require virtually no post-support. Additionally, those streams of income can continue while you're working on more client work if that's your thing.

<comment><USER11> Except you can also scale your consulting business by hiring or tying up with other devs. This means you can still earn while others are working for you!

<comment><USER12> I recommend you to read this article: [http://blog.asmartbear.com/consulting- company-accounting.htm...](http://blog.asmartbear.com/consulting-company- accounting.html)

While I don't agree with everything he says, there's a large amount of truth in that post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh, what a thoroughly misleading post.

One thing to keep in mind is that projects like Dribbble and Pictos would've not nearly as successful if they were not launched by people with a lot of existing exposure. Getting noticed and acquiring critical mass that would self-propel project's marketing is a _really damn big_ issue.

Second thing to notice is that all listed examples are of an exceptionally high quality. The title of the post sort of implies that you can just ruffle through your recycle bin, pick something that doesn't completely suck, stick it on a website and it will magically earn you $$$ in your sleep. It will not. Regardless of how _by_ the byproduct is, it will still require a lot of attention and effort to be brought into a marketable state.

Going back to Pictos as an example. It would've long disappeared from the radar if Drew would've not been very busy promoting himself (and Pictos) on Dribbble and in other places. He might not be working on the Pictos much, but he certainly puts a lot of effort in keeping it afloat.

</comment><comment><USER14> Earning money while sleeping is not that difficult. I (living in Europe) run a site with many visitors from US and Japan. Most of the revenues are generated during my sleep time. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER15> When I read this article I thought immediately about keynotopia from a fellow HN member. He created those keynote ui templates (which he used in his day job) and sells them, bringing in between 5'000 - 10'000 $ revenue per month, which is pretty huge. Those kind of examples just make it look easy and I'm questioning my own projects when I see something like that. Nonetheless, good article.

</comment><comment><USER16> This has its downsides as well:

<http://dresdencodak.com/2006/10/07/summer-dream-job/>

</comment><comment><USER17> Isn't that the difference between an entrepreneur and a freelancer? Freelancers only get paid when they're working and entrepreneur's set up businesses bigger than themselves where they can make money while they're not working (sleeping).

<comment><USER18> I see the main difference as whether you're making the decisions on what to build/sell, versus doing it to a specification given by a client.

It somewhat correlates in tech, but in most industries entrepreneurs aren't defined as making money while they sleep. For example, a very traditional kind of entrepreneurial activity is to open a brick-and-mortar shop. A mom-and-pop bakery doesn't make money when they aren't there, but is entrepreneurial (in fact opening a bakery is basically the economics textbook example of entrepreneurship).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't that the defining characteristic of all SaaS and web product-based companies?

</comment><comment><USER20> I once created a cool website (Wordpress + jQuery) for a share in the adsense revenue... and man, it is the best bussiness i have done so far!

</comment><comment><USER21> adii ftw!</comment>


Uber and Apple maps mayhem - <AUTHOR> https://dhariri.com/posts/5726be6bd1befa66e7b8e0c3 <comment><USER2> I've had an uber driver take the on-ramp instead of the side road beside the highway at the destination because the pin indicated it's a bit further ahead.. I guess it's my fault for not noticing (since I was in the front seat). Added 20min to the trip, good thing Uber refunded though. Seriously, driving + gps = zero common sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's such a striking example of people ignoring their common sense in favour of a computer's (none)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> >Especially when one of them has such a rich history of failure.

Apple Maps has greatly improved since it was first release 3 years ago. If Apple Maps can be better in some way than Google Maps, why Uber shouldn't make the experiment and try?

<comment><USER4> Anecdata, but Apple Maps still places my address as a block and a half way from where it actually is. I know this because the occasional Postmate uses Apple Maps and calls me, unable to find my location. I live within a block of Moscone Center in SF.

<comment><USER5> The US Census has an address to latitude/longitude service, which I've seen put things about a block and a half from where they are supposed to be. I wonder if Apple is using that?

Here's an example of a URL to lookup an address and get back the latitude/longitude in JSON, in case you are curious to see where it places you:

[http://geocoding.geo.census.gov/geocoder/locations/onelinead...](http://geocoding.geo.census.gov/geocoder/locations/onelineaddress?address=747+Howard+St%2C+San+Francisco%2C+CA+94103&benchmark=9&format=json)

The address I used in that URL is 747 Howard St, San Francisco, CA 94103, which is Moscone Center.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best Bluetooth keyboard for coding on an Android phone - <AUTHOR> I recently discovered and configured termux on my Pixel 3 XL. I want to use the phone for quickly fixing stuff in vim on the go without a laptop.
Termux allows to add rows of special configurable keys above the main keyboard, but at the expense of the remaining editor space on the screen.
Thus I am looking for a Bluetooth keyboard of the size of a large smartphone with a layout that is friendly for programming. <comment><USER2> For me there is no doubt the Thinkpad Bluetooth keyboard is the one [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd026744](https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd026744)

they are difficult to purchase from some reason, I am not totally sure there still manufactured. I just manged to order 2 in the UK 150 pounds each</comment>


Ask HN: Working at a startup vs. working at an established company? - <AUTHOR> I just wanted to re-ignite this discussion now that we're coming off of a high in the startup ecosystem. It'll be interesting to see how people's opinions have changed over the past couple of years.<p>Personally, I've seen the fervor cool down considerably and I see a lot of peers gravitating towards the more established companies. Even in the public tech markets a lot of the money is seemingly going to the FB/Goog/AMZNs of the world. <comment><USER2> Working at a big company = more pay, better benefits, no "unlimited vacation" nonsense, better hours, stock that isn't Monopoly money and that you don't have to _pay for_ , and often a better environment (much less likely to have "office music", distracting dogs, people making noise, "totally not mandatory" alcohol events, etc.).

<comment><USER3> > much less likely to have "office music", distracting dogs, people making > noise, "totally not mandatory" alcohol events, etc.

You fucking nailed it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've worked in both and have even been _in_ a company that went through from startup stage to established company stage (IPO'd). I've been working in this field professionally for about 12 years, and more as side projects as a student before that.

Short answer, try both. People who think they prefer one over the other and never having worked in both, owe it to themselves to try different environments, over the years. You should be well aware that whatever choice you're making now is not permanent. In any industry and particularly in Silicon Valley, most people make a jump on average every few years (5 years or so seems like a good length).

I just think that there is enough experience and knowledge to gain from both types of environments that you shouldn't just think of one better than another.

</comment><comment><USER5> Startups are trying to come from almost nothing to billions in a short time span. Additionally, if they're in a market space that is not just some stupid idea/fantasy, there will be an intense competition from other startups trying to capture the same market (as software markets are largely winner-take-all). This creates large incentives for founders to turn it into a death march for the staff - and conversely, there's little incentive to keep staff happy with their work-life balance (because if we do that, the company may not survive next 24-36 months, and then who cares about happy staff).

</comment><comment><USER6> You can't compare startups vs established companies. Each organization has its own culture. I know a lot of big companies where the culture is horrible, but the perks are better. Where the mission is amazing but there is no work/life/balance. A startup of a 100 employees could have an amazing culture and a simple 9 to 5 schedule.

Plus, what you'd personally value in a company is not necessarily something I'd value the most. The mission? The location? The brand? The perks? The office? It's really case by case.

</comment><comment><USER7> Rather than lumping more established companies into one bucket, realize that your experience at a large company is going to be determined by the team you are in and the managers who dictate the fate of your group. If the goals of your team and it's place in the company are aligned with what you want you will be fine. Otherwise you'll be unsatisfied.

With a small startup it's probably easier to see what you are going to get before you accept the offer. It may be easier to avoid jobs which are a bad fit since small startups may be less obfuscated than large companies.

Also realize there are plenty of large non-tech companies that hire tech people. These companies don't pay the salaries or provide the perks you see at large tech companies. But they may offer solid 9-5 jobs in locations with reasonable costs of living.

Bad management, politics, and bureaucracy will probably damage the motivation of somebody who actually cares about their work and wants to do a good job. I suspect you'll see more of this at large companies as opposed to startups, but there are probably plenty of startups (I worked at one) that have this issues. Many people don't seem to care about these things so this stuff matters less to them - they do their jobs and go home.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've worked at 3-4 startups ranging from 4 to 20 people for about 4 years and at a big co for about 3 years now.

Cons of big co:

At my current company (600+ people) it takes ages to get anything done.

Days full of boring meetings where you repeat the same info to the same people.

Company claiming to be agile yet micromanaging and not really being agile.

0 autonomy.

Design by committee.

Mostly boring repetitive work (if you can get anything done from all those meetings.)

Corporate "culture".

Very few leaders, 90% middle-managers.

Pros:

Stable job. Extra healthcare + more benefits equaling to about 1/6th of your pay.

<comment><USER9> Protip: don't assume any of these things will go away when working at a startup. Most of these are just characteristic of bad management, which can be found in companies of all sizes and ages. Also, the younger the company, the less likely the necessary management expertise has accumulated, unless it's a company started by people who are already excellent managers in addition to whatever other high level of expertise that let them become managers. P.S. These are exceedingly rare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have an alternative:

Work at an established old economy company, build a network and start off on your own as a single founder.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think if you're starting out in your tech career, the experience of working at a startup is more beneficial career wise then working at a big company. After a couple of years of startup experience, then you can re-evaluate and decide which type of company would best fit.

<comment><USER12> I feel exactly the opposite. A few years at established companies will prepare you for determining if your startup is doing something idiotic or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As mentioned here, it depends what your motivations and career aspirations are. Working at startups (worked at one mature startup, then consulted for a bunch of small ones) gave me experience dealing with customers directly and delivering high impact in a short timeframe. Working in a big company is teaching me to think really big (reach big customers, scalability/performance, high ROI, etc) and giving me the opportunity to learn from many, many brilliant people.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've done both. Now I'm working on my own company. Not a "startup" (high growth) but just my own company that I'm growing with the sweat of my brow. That's a possible road as well!

</comment><comment><USER15> Established tech companies are the best.</comment>


Software patents: the good, the bad and the ugly. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mugunthkumar.com/articles/software-patents-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

<comment><USER2> I think the problem is not whether software patents should be abolished or not, but what kind of software/codes can be patented.

And I recommend everyone who is considering this problem to watch this documentary: "Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system" <http://patentabsurdity.com/> .</comment>


Mountain View is threatening to shut down Hacker Dojo - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120130/the-only-thing-less-stable-than-working-at-a-start-up-working-at-a-start-up-co-working-space/

<comment><USER2> I'm not a Dojo member, but I have attended classes there and I think it is a wonderful resource that is surely bringing long-term benefits to Mountain View. It would be a shame to see it shut down.</comment>


99.999% - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Chakib/99-999-f68bb712fd05

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of the end of the famous DFW commencement speech [1]:

"I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

This is water.

This is water."

[1] [http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf](http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf)</comment>


Anatomy of an Upvote - <AUTHOR> http://www.mahdiyusuf.com/post/42327257550/upvotes

<comment><USER2> I've asked before what's best to upvote here on Hacker News:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1065084>

I'm always happy to hear advice on how to upvote better, to make the discussion here more informative and interesting and to make the community here more civil and thoughtful.

</comment><comment><USER3> I disagree. I think about up votes in terms of their impact.

I upvote if I think something is worth talking about, or deserves the attention of the greater community. Because that's what it literally translates into -- raising the position of a post on the front page.

<comment><USER4> What would be interesting is to have two buttons -- one to raise awareness, and a second button labeled "me too" to indicate agreement. Maybe have it where both can be clicked by the same user, or where only one or the other can be selected. Not sure which would be better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does I need to know if you agree outside of you wanting to raise awareness? If you want to comment sure :) but that metric means what outside of raising awareness.

<comment><USER4> Raising awareness affects the comment / article position, whereas the agreement button changes the points value.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Script kiddies have awesome tools  - <AUTHOR> http://dow.ngra.de/2008/11/04/script-kiddies-have-awesome-tools/ <comment><USER2> Wordpress has had a catastrophic history of insecure code, based on a number of basic design flaws:

* Reliance on ad-hoc hand-coded SQL.

* A system that registers psuedonymous Internet commenters in the same user table as Wordpress administrators.

* Mishandling of internationalization.

Yes, Wordpress is also the most popular blogging platform, and yes, it's also much more dynamic than its competitors, but phpBB and vBulletin seem to have had better track records than Wordpress have. It's just not very secure.

<comment><USER3> Basically, Wordpress is written in PHP and this is the root of all evil.

Let's look at the roots of PHP: it was never designed as a programming language, it was a tiny script language used to create Rasmus Lerdorf's website. Thus, it has a lot of oddities like the === operaor.

Do you know why it it is there? Because they wrote a broken instr() wrapper and messed up the error handling. And instead of doing one thing right, they added another obfuscation layer. Great design.

Then, PHP was traditionally used by webdesigners, not programmers. This lead to tons of bad code and bad practices. It is not that you cannot write elegant code in PHP, but there is so much more bad code around that it is hard to find the good code.

So, why do wonder about this?

<comment><USER4> Can we stop this argument already?

Real hackers can appreciate every damn language out there. If it weren't for Basic in the early 80s, I wouldn't be programming now.

PHP is a wonderful gateway language for a generation of web programmers. It is installed on every webserver and is always ready to rock-n-roll. No other language has achieved that level of ubiquity.

<comment><USER2> No. We can have a productive discussion about whether a language and its frameworks are conducive to secure coding without it devolving into a language war. We're adults here, and there are more than just stylistic differences between PHP and its competitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone that have read Wordpress' source code should not be surprised that it is the most exploited piece of software on the web.

It was not created by programmers. It was created by web designers (hence its great visual design).

Wordpress was probably the only company that has migrated from Ruby to PHP (when they purchased Gravatar).

<comment><USER6> Not just one. Derek Sivers: "I spent two years trying to make Rails do something it wasn't meant to do, then realized my old abandoned language (PHP, in my case) would do just fine if approached with my new Rails-gained wisdom."

[http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_swit...](http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_p_1.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the script.

<http://madnet.name/eng/files/1/10.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> Most of the blog exploits on the web (including the one in the article) seem to be focused on WordPress. Are there are a large number of people exploiting vulnerabilities in other blogging platforms, like Movable Type?

<comment><USER9> First, I assume this is for the same reason that most viruses are for Windows -- WordPress is one of the most common species in the ecosystem.

Also, If I understand the architecture of Movable Type correctly, it renders much of the site into static pages. I would expect that this tends to reduce the number of points where vulnerabilities would be possible, at least as far as points where it might be exploited via causing it to execute with malicious parameters via an HTTP request. i.e. In Wordpress, every page you load is the result of the execution of some PHP scripts, while in a blog that is rendered to a bunch of static files, it's conceivable that the only thing that unauthenticated users can mess with is the comment system.

<comment><USER10> Yep, much of Movable Type is static. I think there is an option for dynamic pages but by default it's static.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This happened to one of my old wordpress blogs, I had to delete the whole thing. That's why I just use blogspot through Google now, it's not worth the time to keep track of all the updates and stuff.

</comment><comment><USER12> Now point-and-click kiddies are the rage. Scripts are so 90s.

"No sympathy for the devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride."</comment>


Bijlmer: City of the Future, Part 1 - <AUTHOR> https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bijlmer-city-future-part-1/ <comment><USER3> The Bijlmermeer (which is the official name) is a collosal failure. It's the closest thing to a ghetto that the Netherlands has. The city has sunk massive funds into attempts to improve things with some very limited effect. In the end the decision was made to tear down a large number of the flats (in one part aided by a cargo 747 that crashed right on top of one of the flats), but even that could not get rid the area of its stigma.

If you want to read more about it the wikipedia page (in Dutch) has a ton more information:

[https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijlmermeer_(Amsterdam)](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijlmermeer_\(Amsterdam\))

The last few years have seen things improve a bit, but it is nowhere near an integral part of Amsterdam, and the only reason people live there is because it is cheap or they have nowhere else to go (such as: Almere, Hoofddorp, Zaandam, Lelystad, Hoorn and Purmerend which are the other satellite cities of Amsterdam attracting the people the original Bijlmermeer was intended to house).

<comment><USER4> I'm a foreigner living in Amsterdam and I'm assuming you're Dutch. Look, the Bijlmer area is certainly problematic within Dutch standards, and I would just call it a massive failure within these standards. Really, there are no no-go areas in this country and it's a very well accomplished land in many societal parameters, when comparing to the world. I'd call a colossal failure the city I'm from, Rio de Janeiro.

<comment><USER3> It's all relative, that's for sure. I've lived in lots of different places and indeed, by _Dutch_ standards the Bijlmer is a collosal failure, at the same time it is obvious that that is the context. This is a country that is pretty big on making stuff work, if not for that the country itself wouldn't even exist. Engineering on this scale is nothing strange to the Dutch mentality at all, turning sea into land or having Eifel-tower sized movable dams to keep out the water is something people don't even bat an eye at (probably because they are unaware of the feats of engineering underpinning that).

That there are much worse places in the world I readily concede, but it did not at all turn out how it was meant to be and that's what differentiates Bijlmermeer from the rest of the Netherlands and how major planning is done here, and _that_ is why to me it is a collosal failure.

By the way: welcome to our little rainy country!

<comment><USER4> Bedankt! (Thank you, in Dutch)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If this topic interests you, read about the development of "Plan West" (+6000 houses) and "Plan Zuid" (+2000 houses) both in Amsterdam.

* [https://www.indonesia-investments.com/about-us/who-we-are/ou...](https://www.indonesia-investments.com/about-us/who-we-are/our-history/item300)?

</comment><comment><USER6> Architecture here is held up as the core issue, but close examination shows design isn't even relevant. This complex in the Netherlands was not connected to transportation and became host to concentrated poverty which we now know is socially toxic. Pruitt Igor receives mention, but it was intended from the start to host concentrated poverty and was built so cheaply that it was falling apart when first residents moved in and proved to be impossible to maintain.

Just one interesting contrasting development is the Barbican in London which is not only a dehumanizing tower complex but also built in the now largely disliked Brutalist style. The Barbican has all of the design flaws called out and yet is a popular, fully occupied, and highly desirable success.

If you want to have a meaningful impact on design then you will have to stop lying about concrete tower block development.

</comment><comment><USER7> For those not from the Netherlands (and since the second part of the article is not out yet). The Bijlmer was struck by a disaster known as the 'bijlmerramp' (dutch for: Bijlmer disaster) in 1992 when a 747 cargo plane crashed on one of the structures.

See [0] (Dutch) and [1] (English):

[0] [https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijlmerramp](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijlmerramp)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862)

</comment><comment><USER8> I really love 99% Invisible podcast. Fantastically executed stories.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm really not a fan of this architecture. I think it would be pretty depressing not to have a clear view over the horizon in _some_ direction.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've lived in the Bijlmer for two years and had a wonderful time. The streets are clean, has great restaurants and the people are warm, kind and generous (within a few days neighbors dropped by with delicious leftovers of a birthday dinner as a welcome gift). I never experienced any trouble or felt unsafe while I lived there. Perhaps people perceive it to be a failure because the majority of inhabitants happen to be black.

<comment><USER11> I've lived there for five years, and like you, I'm always very surprised by all the articles and comments made by people about the Bijlmer (about it being the worst place ever..) But all these people tend to have one thing in common, they have never lived or even visited the Bijlmer, or indeed tend to be a bit racist. It's sad, because it is not a failure at all. In retrospect I even believe it's one of the most unique places The Netherlands has to offer.

<comment><USER3> Hilarious. I've known the Bijlmer intimately since roughly 1980, my mom lived there for quite a while, and extended family has lived there since the early 1970's and continue to live there today. I've seen parts of it being built (the later sections), school mates in 1977 lived there and I used to bike there regularly.

Gliphoeve, Kelbergen and other areas of the Bijlmer were so bad at some point that the police did not want to go there unless they went as a team. Robberies were on the order of the day, drug use in the subway stations and on the trains was so common nobody even noticed any more. The parking garages were essentially chopshops by night.

At a guess you have only seen the Bijlmer since long after the attempts to clean it all up have started. Maybe you'd believe my mom who had to get a large dog just to be able to make it from the shopping center to her house without being molested or robbed?

If you feel the Bijlmer is one of the most unique places NL has to offer then you are definitely part of some exquisite group of people with acquired tastes, the vast majority of the people that I know that have lived there and have moved out were happy to finally leave it all behind them.

<comment><USER12> How common? I just ask because I moved from a country where many people I know, including myself, have been violently robbed or attacked at one point in their lives (england), to Germany - where I've never even heard of somebody getting mugged.

The Germans are pretty unaware of how safe it is here, on the whole - they'll often explain to me a particular street is dangerous, or an area is bad - <USER2> honestly, if you're from any other country, it's a bit ridiculous.

I mean, feeling unsafe is bad - but to put it in perspective, one of my german friends lived in Coventry for a short while. On his second day there, he was beaten up at a bus stop for having long hair. That's what an unsafe area is like in england, which I'm sure is far more mild than most places in the world.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


10 years ago Julian Assange was doing cryptography in OCaml - <AUTHOR> http://caml.inria.fr/pub/ml-archives/caml-list/2000/08/6b8b195b3a25876e0789fe3db770db9f.en.html

<comment><USER2> Assange talks a little about his earlier activities in the Forbes interview from 11 Nov 2010, which is very interesting.

[http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an- intervie...](http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview- with-wikileaks-julian-assange/)</comment>


Singapore to require public servants to access internet from separate PCs - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/24/singapore-to-cut-off-public-servants-from-the-internet <comment><USER3> To quote a commenter on /r/singapore:

[–]erisestarrs 38 points 3 hours ago

The "no Internet" thing really just means, our Internet access will be on a separate PC from where we usually do our work, not that we have no Internet access at all. People constantly joke that they don't know how we're going to do our work without Internet, and it gets tiresome after a while.

– [https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/4zb4iv/govt_empl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/4zb4iv/govt_employees_of_rsingapore_what_are_some_truths/)

<comment><USER4> Many Indian outsourcing companies do that as well. Employees can only access internet and few technical sites from their own computer but to access Gmail they have to login into a separate computer.

<comment><USER5> This is done in "secure sites" in the militeraly all over the world. the site itself doesnt have internet but some provide connections through a completely seperated series of thin clients outside of the network

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've seen this happen in a lot of industrial networks as well. At the end of the day the work needs to get done. If internet access is necessary for that, then somebody will plug in a mobile router or phone to this "isolated" network. This is especially common when remote vendors and support teams need access to this network to troubleshoot issues.

So now instead of centrally designed and managed IT infrastructure and remote access, you have something like a Teamviewer service enabling remote access through these rogue gateways.

<comment><USER7> The proper way to do this is to have 2 machines, one connects to intranet and one connect to internet. The one connect to intranet won't accept any external devices, completely unable to connect to internet or even copy data out using thumbdrive. If cost is an issue, VM could work (but riskier).

<comment><USER8> Isn't it annoying if you cannot transfer data from your Internet computer to your offline computer? And what's about cloud services?

<comment><USER9> There will usually be a one-way file copy service (with AV scanner) that you can use to transfer files to the secure network. No access to cloud services is very much a feature, not a bug, as these measures are implemented for security.

<comment><USER10> The purpose of security is to help the business get its job done without disruption. If security were a goal in itself, you could just shut all the servers down and go home.

If a "security" measure is causing disruption to the business, it's not doing its job.

<comment><USER11> It's a spectrum. Business would be a lot easier for DBAs if there were no firewalls between PCI (credit card) data and their applications, but we do it because it mitigates risk.

<comment><USER10> DBAs as in database admins? I'm talking about the business goals of the _company_ as a whole, not for individual employees / departments. The reason you want to mitigate risk is because you want the company to get its business done (i.e., you want customers to be willing to give you money).

I don't think there's any spectrum here. Good security is what helps the company's business goals. Bad security (which isn't really security) hurts it. Sometimes there are legitimate questions about whether to optimize for short- term or long-term goals, but that's no different for every other business decision a company makes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> i don't know whether this is true or not... maybe hongyi can comment here ;)

but a lot of personal data in Singapore is wonderfully linked up across almost all government departments in the country. all government services can be accessed through a single log-in: taxes, property, immigration, CPF (a plan similar to the 401(k)), healthcare and insurance, etc. are all on the same system.

this might mean only one point of failure in any of the civil departments is needed to gain access to a lot of details about a person living in Singapore, resident or not. afaik, few other countries have integration as tight as this, so a failure somewhere could be contained. I suspect it is more vulnerable here.

<comment><USER13> Problem is, since everything accessible via this single log-in is by definition open to the public Internet (because otherwise citizens can't use it), cutting government bureaucrats off the net does precisely nothing to reduce _this_ attack surface or secure this data.

<comment><USER12> you might get personal details of a single person by going through the public internet, but find your way onto a civil servant's machine and you might get personal details of everyone in Singapore.

guessing it's probably going to be like how you access microdata in the US.

<comment><USER13> That public website is pulling the data from _somewhere_ , yes? So if you can hack into that, you can likely extract all the data.

I suspect this is more about the Singaporean government being paranoid about internal gov't docs leaking out, which airgapping _would_ go some way to preventing. This is, after all, the country that tried journalists for revealing a deep dark secret: GDP growth figures. [http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/22/news/22iht- sing_0.html](http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/22/news/22iht-sing_0.html) (Yes, that's 1993. But still.)

<comment><USER12> unauthorized dissemination of economic data is a serious offense in many countries. in the states, you can go to prison for it.

in this Singapore case, the journalists and the official involved were fined. no jail. lucky them. the official involved is now our deputy PM and chairman of the central bank, after holding various ministerial positions in the last few decades.

<comment><USER14> > unauthorized dissemination of economic data is a serious offense in many > countries.

We're talking about GDP growth figures. Those can be under an embargo, but these should NOT be hidden. Pointing at others isn't needed.

<comment><USER12> they were not hidden. they were released ahead of time. the uncanny accuracy of an expectation article a month before the official release led to the opening of the case

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's not an unreasonable thought, but they'd better make sure there are no serious dependencies on the Internet for their work.

I guess they'll find out how proper their network is and how much they were relying on external "shadow IT". :)

It's mentioned at the end some Japanese companies tried it and failed; not encouraging, but perhaps different circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this has anything to do with the recent story by the Intercept which released some more slides from the Snowden cache.

One of the slides (this one here:[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3031643-CNO- Course-E...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3031643-CNO-Course-EAO- Redacted.html) \- see slide 9) has an ip address on it.

Curious, I did a reverse lookup on the IP and found it to belong to a Singapore government agency. (It seems to be a generic verizon IP now - <USER2> there an easy way to see the history of whois records?)

Given the timing of the release of the slide and the new policy, it's plausible that the two are related.

</comment><comment><USER17> Won't this basically cut off a lot of small/medium public-cloud companies from doing business with Singapore public agencies? All sorts of networking trickery will be required to enable such services, which will be unfeasible for "appointment reminder"-size businesses.

<comment><USER18> Keeping data away from the cloud is presumably the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I guess this will be a movement in the years to come: 1) Air gapping computers 2) Electromagnetic shielding of computers

Just to be far away from hackers who stole three-letter-agency spying tools...

<comment><USER20> EM shielding, audio isolation, light tight, and physically secure (including guards to put everyone through a metal detector), supply chain security. Any one of them imposes costs, and EM shielding most of all. (Will, a culture of fear and anxiety might be more expensive, but we already live with that.)

It is too expensive for almost everyone. I think we will collectively settle for pretending nothing is wrong.

<comment><USER18> You've essentially rattled off the US Government SCIF specifications (which are public and a fascinating read).

Also non-conductive ductwork and plumbing at the edges of the SCIF and careful selection/programming of the phone system to make sure an attacker can't remotely set a phone off hook and use it as a microphone.

<comment><USER20> Mostly right. SCIF phones are always press to talk with speakerphone disabled. Typically they are very simple POTS phones, with high roll-off lowpass filters where they exit.

Having a smart PABX which can transparently route cell calls to internal numbers is very important to making SCIFs functional.

It was interesting to read that Hillary Clinton had problems at State because her staff couldn't access their phones in the office - primarily SMS or BBM I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A real problem if you are serving the public.

</comment><comment><USER22> The title is misleading and false to some extent.

We had this debate when the new just broke a few months ago and many people simply assumed that public servants cannot surf Internet during work. This is not true, and it was pointed in the article as well:

 _> Public servants would still be able to surf the web but only on separate personal or agency-issued devices._

<comment><USER17> _> separate personal or agency-issued devices._

Which, for budgetary reasons I'm sure, will probably end up rationed and shared. For The Powers That Be, this will mean less machines to track for potential dissent-related activities, activities which will likely self- curtail anyway because of reduced privacy while using such machines; but that's just an unfortunate side-effect, I'm sure.

<comment><USER23> My company did the same thing recently, the general consensus seems to be that it was entirely security driven. Old internet is locked down to a bunch of whitelisted sites (before this it used a blacklisted gaming/nsfw sites) and they put in a new private wifi you can do mostly whatever you want on and they setup some terminals for people without their own devices.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A tool that help teams build better sales scripts - <AUTHOR> https://www.saleslio.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everybody! One of the creators here.

This idea came from a pain point I felt when I was trying to become better at selling my main project. I was trying to learn to become a better sales person, so I watched Jordan Belfort's straight line persuasion which requires building a really solid sales script and sticking closely to it.

I followed his guidelines and wrote a script, but I realized that it was annoying to jump around to different sections of the script and follow along on paper. I figured it would probably be better if I could build a web app that would link me to the correct section of the script based on customer responses, so I built something that did it! Once I used this instead of the paper script, it was much easier to stay on track and not get lost in the pages of the script anymore.

Excited to get feedback on whether or not this is useful for any other sales teams!</comment>


Growing Up with Science Fiction (1978) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/1978/05/28/archives/growing-up-with.html <comment><USER2> The article is Carl Sagan's perspective, and a lot of it is his current views of the SF he read when younger, as well as a general discussion about the value of SF to young enquiring minds.

For a very different take, I really enjoyed the novel "Among Others" by Jo Walton which is a coming of age story about a young girl who is avid reader of SF/fantasy. It really puts you in the mindset of someone who is growing up with SF while they are in fact growing up, rather than thinking about it as an older person.

</comment><comment><USER3> I grew up with Doraemon comics. It's a robotic raccoon from 22nd century travel back in time to 1980s to help babysit a stupid boy - well, that's mean, but with future tech helped, he got off pretty well and married the prettiest girl, etc. The future tech that raccoon has really got me into engineering. I think that series is a precious. ;-)

<comment><USER4> I always thought Doraemon was a cat robot. I doubt it's a racoon, because those don't exist in Japan. And I also don't think it's a Tanuki.

<comment><USER5> It is a cat, but as for racoons:

[https://www.tofugu.com/japan/raccoons-in- japan/](https://www.tofugu.com/japan/raccoons-in-japan/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. I don't mind if the science is not perfect. If the science conformed 100% with what we know it would not be science fiction, it would simply be fiction.

I have heard people say that hard science fiction has to simply not contradict something we know. And that is a whole genre of course.

2\. But what does bother me is when books, or movies, violate laws of human behavior. A perfectly gentle person suddenly becomes a killer, or an immoral law breaker sees the error of her ways and suddenly starts doing something to make amends.

3\. What fascinates me about the books that Sagan grew up -- the classic age -- is the weird direction people thought science would go in. Radiation changes genes? Okay, instead of cancer it might give us super powers. There is current in your nervous tissue? Maybe you can "harness" it to produce currents etc.

<comment><USER5> > _A perfectly gentle person suddenly becomes a killer_

Hasn't that happened numerous times in history?

Perfectly common and nice everyday people have become killers under stress/passion/etc.

<comment><USER6> The purpose of the fiction is to show how it happens so we believe it, even expect it. The "suddenly" part is what makes it bad fiction. Even if it happens in real life, in fiction we want to see the mechanism and have it convince us.

<comment><USER5> > _The "suddenly" part is what makes it bad fiction. Even if it happens in > real life, in fiction we want to see the mechanism and have it convince us._

If something happens in real life, and especially as often, it should be convincing enough when presented in a story without a contrived mechanism to "explain" it pulp-novel style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone who grew up in the 70's I completely agree with Dr. Sagan. I believe I have read everyone of these stories mentioned. I found it astounding he continually mentions Heinlein as he is my favorite author to this day. He taught a young moldable mind (mine) to think outside of societal norms and to believe that things can be done. His stories no longer seem to fit what the PC world we live in. The one book I was surprised to not see mentioned was Stranger in a Strange Land. Maybe Dr Sagan never groked it. I have read it more than 10 times and still wonder if I grok.

<comment><USER8> I still reread Stranger in a Strange land and think I learn something new every time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I seriously doubt that reading modern science fiction would have the same effect on anyone. Unfortunately. Unfortunately.

<comment><USER10> There are still lots of good science fiction written today. Unfortunately in the past many of the writers did it because they in turn loved science fiction.

Many (most?) writers in the past barely made a living off their writing and many had to have a second source of income to continue. In other words they did write thinking it would make them rich.

Today with science fiction movies like Blade Runner, Star Wars and Star Trek, and TV shows like West World and Doctor Who and successful books on the Best Seller list writers think there is big money to be made.

This has us ending up with a lot bad writing from people hoping to break in without learning even the basics of science fiction much less learn real science itself.

<comment><USER11> All media contains a mix of good things and bad things.

The good things survive the test of time and, years on, are remembered and much loved; the bad things are quietly forgotten.

So, when we look back at the past, it feels like the good we have now is much more dilute and harder to pick out than what we remember; but this impression is not an accurate reflection of reality.

(The effect is even stronger with old foreign media, since only the better things crossed borders especially pre-internet but with each year we are exposed to more and more of the firehose).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Star Trek definitely influenced me into electrical engineering, along with much SciFi of the 70's.

<comment><USER13> And to be fair, the episode Sagan criticizes (presumably "The Omega Glory" in which the Enterprise visits a post-apocalyptic planet where there was a nuclear war between countries exactly like the US and USSR, down to the US side having an exact copy of the Constitution), is widely viewed as one of the worst episodes and most of the show wasn't like that.</comment></comment>


33m Married – Seeking city that is not San Francisco - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@_buf/33m-married-seeking-city-that-is-not-san-francisco-to-live-in-855d316ead84#.j83f4tqds <comment><USER3> Not in the US, but Waterloo, Canada is a pretty great spot for tech. Housing is still cheap and potentially could have good growth in the future. The summers are nice, and there are a bunch of freshwater beaches all within 1 - <USER2> hours drive. Ontario cottage country in the summer has been ranked as one of the best vacation spots in the world. ([http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/best-trips- summe...](http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/best-trips- summer-2011-photos/#/kahshe-lake-muskoka-ontario_35156_600x450.jpg)) Schools are good, and if you want to enjoy the big city, you can drive to Toronto (45 minutes), which is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. There are lots of multicultural festivals throughout the year

</comment><comment><USER4> Neither extreme of walkability is cheap. You've experienced nearly the extreme on one side (got some hills there though), and know that drives up housing. At the other extreme, you spend lots of time and money driving because it's dozens of miles to anywhere.

How about some moderation? There are plenty of places where you pretty much need to drive everywhere, but it's only 1 to 5 miles without much traffic. THAT INCLUDES YOUR COMMUTE. Observe that your current walkability situation is horrible, with a commute that is 45 minutes on a good day. You get to suffer walkability envy, seeing San Francisco every day but actually living a minimum of 45 minutes away.

Example in Florida: Indialantic, Melbourne Beach, Satellite Beach, Melbourne. It's not exactly walkable, but the driving is trivial. I go a mile to work (just 3 minutes), 3 miles to Publix (the nation's 2nd-rated supermarket), a mile to the beach or to freshwater fishing/boating, and so on. Houses are dirt cheap by your standards, sometimes even below 6 figures for what you are seeking. For the prices you are used to facing, you could literally live in a house on the beach.

</comment><comment><USER5> I say it as nicely as I can -- OP wants diversity, affordability, investment opportunity, job opportunity, and family-friendly-but-not-devoid-of-activity; he needs to pick three of the five.

But I noticed, Chicago, New York, and Toronto are conspicuously absent. These cities, which admittedly don't command a larger-than-average share of devs, and don't enjoy year-long 70-80 F weather, hit most of the points that he's looking for, especially in their extensive suburbs/exurbs.

They have diversity, cultural institutions, jobs (including tech), and their metro areas have locations that are affordable and/or home to rising property values. Do only boomtowns appeal?

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd tell you to check out State College Pennsylvania but we already have too many people who come here for college and never leave.

</comment><comment><USER7> Minneapolis Minnesota</comment>


Entrepreneur Challenges Peter Thiel To Million Dollar Chess Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/steigman-challenges-thiel-to-million-dollar-chess-game-2012-7

<comment><AUTHOR> A.J. was my classmate and chess-teammate in elementary school. I still remember his kicking my ass in a game of blindfold chess while I was sitting next to him on the plane to the scholastic nationals, while concurrently my dad was getting _his_ ass kicked by our coach in the next row up. I had no idea until I came across this article what he's been up to since then :-)</comment>


Qemotion: A new solution to analyse automatically customer comments - <AUTHOR> https://www.qemotion.com <comment><AUTHOR> Q°emotion harnesses the power of NLP, Affective Computing and AI to help detect emotional insights from the customer experience reviews and open comments and launch impactful corrective actions.

"We believe that the emotional insights helps to accelerate the launch of corrective actions to help have an impact of millions of customers.

We enable customer experience professionals to diffuse customer centricity within their organisation by making transparent and sensible the emotions lived daily by their final customers."

Market leaders in the tourism, retail, banking, services and FMCG industries - such as TUI, Parc Astérix, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Chanel, McDonalds, Crédit Agricole, Sodexo, Caisse d'Epargne, Heineken, Savencia, Banque Casino, RATP, Kantar use Q°emotion platform to manage millions of reviews and comments.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Last update: Want to test it for your customer comments for free ?

Send an email to email@example.com with the code : HACKER-NEWS-IS- EMOTIONAL-TOO and we will offer you a free test on the CXinsights.io platform.

Valid up to September 2020.</comment>


Certificate-based Mozilla Persona IdP - <AUTHOR> http://unmitigatedrisk.com/?p=328

<comment><USER2> It's a pity that client certs were not widely adopted.

I hope that someday Github.com could allow browser tls login using the same cert as personal git repos.</comment>


MarCO: Interplanetary Mission Development on a CubeSat Scale [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2016-2491 <comment><AUTHOR> I didn't want to editorialize the title, but the buried lede for the HN audience is that its camera subsystems run Linux and Python:

> MarCO's camera systems, two per spacecraft, run a customized embedded Linux > distribution on a GumStix single-board computer. A Python script spawns at > boot time on each system, and effectively serves as the interface to the > spacecraft. The script receives commands from and sends data to the FCPU via > the RTC microcontroller, which acts as an I2C-UART bridge. A simple > communications packet protocol defines the way the camera and FCPU interact, > and includes basic data integrity checking through the use of CRC16-CCITT. > The camera systems are powered on for short periods of time directly by FCPU > GPIO lines to perform brief imaging campaigns, process the images, and store > them on standard SD cards. Images can be retrieved any time the systems are > powered.

As far as I can tell, this is the first time Python or Linux have been used beyond earth orbit.

These spacecraft flew past Mars yesterday and took this picture [1], in addition to successfully relaying the InSight landing telemetry.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1067189007455539202](https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1067189007455539202)</comment>


Silk Road: Not Your Father's Amazon.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2011/06/12/137138008/silk-road-not-your-fathers-amazon-com

<comment><USER2> This is from 2011. Any updates on the Silk Road since then?</comment>


Show HN: Space marketplace for makers, artists,& creatives to build cool shit. - <AUTHOR> http://concourse.co <comment><AUTHOR> more on product hunt [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/concourse](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/concourse)

<comment><USER2> Is this your site? If it meets the guidelines, it's likely better as a "Show HN": [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is. Thanks for the heads up. Much appreciated.</comment></comment></comment>


Moving sofa problem - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_sofa_problem <comment><USER2> I didn't realise that this was a real thing when I saw it in Douglas Adams "Dirk Gentlys Holistic Detective Agency" a number of years ago

Quoted here

[http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=1122885&sid=a35...](http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=1122885&sid=a3510905698f35ad44c40f16f6a8ef5b#p1122885)

</comment><comment><USER3> Better visualizations: [https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~romik/movingsofa/](https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~romik/movingsofa/)

<comment><USER4> Funnier visualization: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5DHU8SwYJ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5DHU8SwYJ0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was hoping this would explain how the upper bound was derived, but citation [1] just listed it with its own citations, and citation [6] is a book that I'm not going to purchase.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. Oddly enough, I used to have this _massive_ custom sofa which was a real PITA to move... could only fit in storage unit if stood up on a roller dolly and so on. I bet there'll soon be an app using CV/ML to figure out if a sofa will fit/which way to move it. ;)</comment>


Ask HN: Why do we still use paper receipts? - <AUTHOR> Isn't it a huge waste of paper? There's a push to use less plastic bags, less plastic bottles, but not much talk of reducing receipts. In my opinion if you pay by card or digitally, the receipt should be digital. If you pay cash, I guess you might need a paper receipt, but it should be optional to receive the receipt. I think the pos industry is outdated. <comment><USER3> Also, maybe more significantly, BPA (a endocrine-disrupting, estrogen- mimicking plastic) is absorbed through skin from touching thermal-printed receipts. And has a variety of other environmental effects, e.g.

"A 2009 review of the biological impacts of plasticizers on wildlife published by the Royal Society with a focus on aquatic and terrestrial annelids, molluscs, crustaceans, insects, fish and amphibians concluded that BPA affects reproduction in all studied animal groups, impairs development in crustaceans and amphibians and induces genetic aberrations."

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

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51979440_Bisphenol_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51979440_Bisphenol_A_in_Thermal_Paper_Receipts_An_Opportunity_for_Evidence- Based_Prevention)

</comment><comment><USER4> It is optional in most places in the US. They normally ask if you want the receipt. Lots of people say no. I only say yes when I need to report expenses.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not really optional, it is always printed I think, and just thrown out by the cashier if you say you don't want it. If you do self checkout in my experience it's always printed. I think maybe gas stations are the only place where it asks you if you want a receipt.

<comment><USER5> It depends on the place. I know a couple of small, independent cafe/takeouts that don't print it and don't even ask you if you want one. They'll give you one if you ask. (One doesn't even give you a paper bill, it's displayed on a tablet at the cashier.)

Come to think of it, 7-Eleven is the same way, you have to ask for one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Over here in the UK it is optional in many places. Most self service checkouts will ask you whether you want a receipt when you're done, and most cashiers will ask the same.

So for the most part it is optional. Only encountered one shop in the last few years that always printed the receipt out.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's not a huge waste of paper. It costs far less than a penny to produce that amount of paper. It's a fraction of the credit card processing fee and this way less information about customers or purchases is shared between entities.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's an option in many places in the UK, but people often won't give out their email for a receipt because it also means that you'll be signed up to someone's shitty newsletter.

If I could pay on my phone and receive JUST the receipt, I'd be happy - <USER2> outside of receiving a copy of the receipt and having to flag future emails as spam, there isn't an option for this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Fraud is/was the main reason for receipts. Without the physical receipt it's possible for the cashier to make a transaction that is not recorded by the cash register/Point of Sale terminal and they can then pocket the cash. Used to be a print receipt was the only option. Things have changed...

</comment><comment><USER10> > If you pay cash, I guess you might need a paper receipt, but it should be > optional to receive the receipt.

This is how it is in most places in India. Even the card machines will ask if you want to print a customer receipt. Most people say no.

</comment><comment><USER11> Be careful if you are a person who cares about preserving testosterone. Receipt thermal ink contains BPA which is highly absorbable through contact with skin.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's to make sure the cashier rings up the sale and isn't stealing from his employer.

</comment><comment><USER13> CVS will email you a receipt.

<comment><USER14> And then put your email in their marketing database which no doubts gets shared with creepy entities that stalk people. No thanks.

I once gave my email to a store in the UK when they offered an email receipt (I suspected something bad would happen but decided to give them the benefit of the doubt). Of course, a few weeks later I received some BS from a third- party company asking for "feedback", so there's _at least_ one extra third- party that now has my email without me authorising that.

<comment><USER13> If you are concerned, use a different email account for receipt purposes.

<comment><USER14> I shouldn't have to create/maintain/remember unique email addresses just to keep the privacy that paper receipts already offer.

<comment><USER13> If you're that concerned about "privacy", then yes you should.

Do you also pay in cash for everything? If not, you're already being tracked by your credit cards and will be re-marketed to... You may as well sign up for rewards/store cards and get the discounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A: it's simple and easy.</comment>


Portuguese ISP shows us what our non-neutral internet will look like - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2017/10/28/warning-taken-as-suggestion.html <comment><USER2> Whilst I completely think net neutrality should be enshrined in law, I do wonder whether "the market" will ensure it is always available.

If you have a choice of two ISPs and one of them is net neutral, the other is not, which one are you going to choose? If you are not able to choose your provider, you have a monopoly issue - the way to deal with that might be net neutrality for now, but you _really_ need to break the monopoly irrespective of that.

Some consumers may be ill-informed. I think if plans are explicit, that's actually going to cause pause for thought and consumers will educate themselves: there is some evidence of this younger consumers at least and the choices they're making (e.g. Facebook is dying off with < 30 year olds).

For me the really scary option is when your ISP is preferring traffic for a major incumbent and limiting traffic to a new competitor and not making that explicitly clear to you. At that point you don't get to make an informed choice of ISP, you don't get consumer education calling out there are options, and you don't get shifts in the market. That's the really dangerous one we need to be wary of, IMHO.

<comment><USER3> I agree that net neutrality becomes much less important if there's real competition between ISPs. But for most of the US, there isn't. Monopolies and non-competitive duopolies are common. Yes, this should be fixed, but it's really, really hard, far harder than regulating neutrality.

<comment><USER4> Getting blanket downvotes for going against the hivemind so nevermind.

<comment><USER3> What's complex about it? ISPs should be dumb pipes. They shouldn't care what you use them for any more than the electric company does. Seems pretty black- and-white to me.

<comment><USER4> And I disagree, because the average consumer would not want to pay for what it would cost if the ISPs priced that into their fees.

There's no need for an ISP to throttle, they could just charge consumers the exact cost to build out as much capacity as they need. But that cost would raise rates to one that consumers don't want to pay.

To me this is about idealism meaning the real world. In a perfect would I'd love for ISPs to be dumb pipes, but even in your example, Electricity companies don't charge you like a dumb pipe and offer time of use pricing, pricing based on zones, discounts or rebates based on energy efficiency. Likewise different sites generate enormously different costs on the ISPs side, and consumers are benefiting from ISPs balancing being a dumb pipe, with not charging the consumers the price of a pipe that can carry every type of load at every time at perfect speeds.

<comment><USER5> I think you don't understand what net neutrality is?

Yes, electricity companies do charge you like a dumb pipe, exactly as ISPs should (and most are).

A dumb pipe does not mean that the ISP cannot count your traffic and bill you for it, possibly even at varying rates throughout the day. It only means that the ISP doesn't get to look at the contents of your traffic, just as the electricity company doesn't get too look at what you use your electricity for.

A non-neutral electricity company would be one that didn't charge you according to load on their network and generation facilities, but based on the application you use electricity for. Now, they usually do offer various plans intended for different types of uses--but mind you that that does not mean that you only get to use them for those uses, the contract is about load profiles and energy prices.

For example, you might have a plan for storage heaters. But there is absolutely nothing that forces or requires you to use the electricity for storage heaters. The contracts is simply about different prices per kWh during different times of the day. If you run a startup that produces gadgets at night using cheap electricity from that plan, that is perfectly fine.

Fetching email from gmail's IMAP server produces exactly the same load on an ISP's network as fetching email from some local email provider's IMAP server. Net neutrality is about not distinguishing between those. There is nothing wrong with offering a "1 GB/month, 1 Mb/s" plan that is well-suited for only receiving and sending emails. The problem is when they want to prevent me from using IRC instead, or they only allow specific email providers.

<comment><USER4> I do understand net neutrality, my example might have been poor though.

Electricity companies can't (reliably) tell what you're using the power for so in a sense they do act as dumb pipes (except they do care if you use it for commercial vs residential), but they don't _strive_ to be dumb pipes. To put it in terms of your space heater analogy, they can't give you electricity that only works with your space heater, so they'll give you rebates for using a specific space heater.

The goal is the same, the implementation just takes the limitations of granularity in metering electricity usage.

I know what net neutrality is, and I have no problem with a non-neutral internet. It's not the same as a lawless unregulated internet. Right now zero- rating is what ISPs have taken advantage of it for. People argue zero rating means base prices must be encompassing the cost of the "free" service, but it's coming with strings attached like reduced bandwidth or as a way to attract new users. While I do feel certain companies might be able to use zero-rating to reinforce monopolies, I don't feel zero-rating inherently creates an environment where companies can't compete.

If ISPs do take further moves to absurd it, those moves can still be regulated/blocked, but my experience in many other countries has been that it doesn't progress further than that, certainly not to the 2 mock images shown in the article (the one real one has a subtle, but important difference, access isn't blocked if you don't choose one of those packages, you just pay the normal base rate)

That being said, I'll refrain from talking about net neutrality on HN. This is the crowd that would have the most reasons to support it. After all, zero rating on Netflix doesn't help a unicorn become the next Netflix, and there are plenty of people here who feel like all of this goes against the very spirit of the internet.

But it's impossible to have a meaningful discussion when everything you say is immediately downvoted to ghost status. I mean I made that were barely more than a single fact got downvoted until they couldn't easily be read anymore, and people are _still_ mass downvoting my statements hours later.

<comment><USER5> > Electricity companies can't (reliably) tell what you're using the power for > so in a sense they do act as dumb pipes (except they do care if you use it > for commercial vs residential),

No, actually, they don't. That is what the plans are labeled as, but they really don't care about whether you are commercial or residential, that is the point that I was trying to make. What they care about is your load profile. Residential vs. commercial users on average have a very distinct load profiles (throughout the day and throughout the week), and that leads to different costs, which is why they want to bill you according to your load profile. Ultimately, if you happen to run a business that has the load profile of a typical residential user, they would often rather want to have you as a residential customer because that matches their costs. It's just that billing using load-dependent prices throughout the day has traditionally not been technically feasible, which is why the simplified distinction of residential vs. commercial plans was developed, because that matches reality well enough in most cases.

> People argue zero rating means base prices must be encompassing the cost of > the "free" service, but it's coming with strings attached like reduced > bandwidth or as a way to attract new users.

How is that a contradiction? Yes, it comes with reduced bandwidth ... which still is being paid for with the income from the base prices, isn't it? And yes, it is being used as a way to attract new users ... while also hurting the existing customers, the new users, and their competition!? I really don't see how this in any way reduces the negative impact of it all, and thus why you even bring it up?!

> While I do feel certain companies might be able to use zero-rating to > reinforce monopolies, I don't feel zero-rating inherently creates an > environment where companies can't compete.

Well, what do you mean by "can't compete"? Do you mean "are unavoidably destined for failure", or "have an increased risk of failure"?

The former probably isn't the case, but also is not a useful standard. Almost nothing that is generally agreed to be bad directly guarantees total failure. Does putting carcinogens into food mean that everyone will die of cancer? No, it doesn't. Do we still consider putting carcinogens into food a bad thing? Yes, we do. Why? Because it increases the risk of dying of cancer.

Now, if you do agree that increased risk of failure is a good enough reason to consider something bad ... isn't it obvious that having higher costs than your competition increases the risk of failure for a business?

> (the one real one has a subtle, but important difference, access isn't > blocked if you don't choose one of those packages, you just pay the normal > base rate)

What practical difference does it make whether access is blocked or prohibitively expensive?

Suppose we introduced a new law that requires you to pay a million bucks, not refundable, in order to leave the country (for travel or otherwise), except if you purchased the travel package for 100 bucks that allows unlimited travel to Australia? Would you also say that it's a subtle but important difference that traveling abroad was not forbidden and relations to other countries would not suffer, you would just have to pay the base rate?

> After all, zero rating on Netflix doesn't help a unicorn become the next > Netflix, and there are plenty of people here who feel like all of this goes > against the very spirit of the internet.

I guess there are. But isn't that much more importantly against the spirit of a competetive market economy, and thus in particular against the interests of the customers?

> But it's impossible to have a meaningful discussion when everything you say > is immediately downvoted to ghost status. I mean I made that were barely > more than a single fact got downvoted until they couldn't easily be read > anymore, and people are still mass downvoting my statements hours later.

Really, looking through which of your comments got downvoted, my impression is that's mostly for glaringly obvious errors in logic, primarily a failure to consider solutions to problems that are possible without a violation of network neutrality. The mere fact that there is a problem and an ISP that is not bound by network neutrality can solve that problem by violating network neutrality just doesn't say anything about whether net neutrality is a good idea, if you don't ever consider how the same problem might be solved with network neutrality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I don't need anything more than the free Facebook plan. If a new startup creates something FB will just copy it and I'll soon have it for free anyway" -future internet user logic

<comment><USER7> If a user can get FB services for free and can't afford internet otherwise is it better for them to have no internet at all?

<comment><USER8> Yes -- otherwise they are squandering their long term Internet freedom for short term access to addicting garbage (Facebook).

<comment><USER9> jesus that's judgemental.

<comment><USER8> Here is some information:

* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/12161461/Facebook-addiction-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/12161461/Facebook-addiction-activates-same-part-of-the-brain-as-cocaine.html)

* [http://www.salimvirani.com/facebook/](http://www.salimvirani.com/facebook/)

* [https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/04/05/the-tru...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/04/05/the-true-costs-of-facebook-addiction-low-self-esteem-and-poor-body-image/)

* [https://www.wired.com/story/our-minds-have-been-hijacked-by-...](https://www.wired.com/story/our-minds-have-been-hijacked-by-our-phones-tristan-harris-wants-to-rescue-them/)

* [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609104/smartphones-are-we...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609104/smartphones-are-weapons-of-mass-manipulation-and-this-guy-is-declaring-war-on-them/)

* [https://journal.thriveglobal.com/how-technology-hijacks-peop...](https://journal.thriveglobal.com/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3)

* [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-bin...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-binge-breaker/501122/)

* [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/25/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/25/facebook-orwellian-journalists-democracy-guatemala-slovakia)

More things are happening in real life, email/telephone, newspapers, magazines, and in books than on Facebook. I think that Facebook is bad for the human mind and bad for society.

<comment><USER9> I 'm not disputing that facebook is an addiction (like many things in life). But there is a big chunk of users who learned to use the internet SOLELY for facebook, they remain there solely for that and would stop using it if it wasn't for facebook. Having the freedom to research any topic, while sounding noble as a thing, is just not something that a lot of people want to do.

<comment><USER8> > But there is a big chunk of users who learned to use the internet SOLELY for > facebook, they remain there solely for that and would stop using it if it > wasn't for facebook.

I'd argue that it would be better in most cases not to use the Internet if Facebook were the only option. Accepting Facebook as your "Internet" means that the next generations probably will not have a Free, open Internet.

I grew up before the Internet was widely used. Many aspects of life were better without the Internet. If you aren't doing something critical to your life with the Internet (and Facebook is not one of those critical things in most cases), then the Internet is not a necessity.

(The Internet _is_ a necessity for many people these days, but Facebook is not a genuine necessity.)

<comment><USER9> What kind of thinking is that? TV was equally bad in our times (if not far worse). You realize how horribly authoritarian is what you propose?

<comment><USER8> It isn't authoritarian at all to say that Facebook is not a necessity.

TV is mostly-garbage, but it isn't as bad as Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> People need to stop spreading this without even knowing what's going on, this is the kind of behavior that gets Trumps elected and creates mass histeria.

What that Portuguese ISP is selling has nothing to do with net neutrality per se. It's just a promotion, a marketing campaign, and a very common one around the world. I'm not saying it's okay or that it does not hurt competition, user choice and neutrality to some extent: but get your facts together before spreading half truths.

So for the facts: these are add-on packages to an otherwise common 10gb/mo mobile data plan. You don't get to buy them individually and they won't otherwise affect your plan. What they do is to make the access to the particular services in the list unlimited.

So you get your 10gb for everything, but maybe you watch a lot of Netflix and are willing to pay a few extra bucks to have it not counting a giants your data plan. That's all this is.

Again, I'm not saying this is fair, ideal or neutral, but it's also not what the article is saying it is. It's also more tailored to get such services users into the carrier business than the other way around. It's more like a "join us to use Netflix for free" than "we allow you to use Netflix only" kind of thing.

It is concerning to some extent, but it isn't new, exclusive to Portugal, or hurting the core concept of Net Neutrality at all, at least not directly. One might be right in argue that making some services cheaper is essentially the same as making other services more expensive - this being a clear violation of the neutrality concept - but it does not block, censure or otherwise limit access to any particular service or domain.

Call it an ethical loophole if you will, but please don't spread mass hysteria with images you can't read.

<comment><USER5> A lot of words for "it's a violation of net neutrality that hurts competition and makes using non-mainstream services excessively expensive"!

<comment><USER11> and I am not sure if it doesn't violate eu law

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Our Silicon Valley congressman points out that this offers "a huge advantage for entrenched companies, but it totally ices out startups trying to get in front of people, which stifles innovation."

[https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/92370196295609139211111](https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/92370196295609139211111)

<comment><USER13> You have a few extra 1s at the end :) [https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701962956091392](https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701962956091392)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I work for an indie ISP, so I really hope the big incumbent ISPs in the U.S. start doing this.

Customers will flood to my company instead, since we would never package like this. And I'll be rich!

The reality is this isn't going to happen, because the incumbent ISPs know it will destroy them.

<comment><USER15> The real problem is that there is far too little competition in this market. When consumers only have 2 options, or even just 1, that's a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is horrendous. The only way to combat it is for the companies in these plans to block ISPs that do this.

<comment><USER17> Another way is to legislate net neutrality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> You know what I'd like to see a net neutrality exception for? Adverts should be zero-rated. If ISPs are gonna shove bullshit down my throat they sure as hell deserve to accommodate the cost of getting that to me.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is the norm in Philippine mobile data ISP for Smart or Globe.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just in time for Halloween. This is chilling.

<comment><USER13> Nah, Meo has been doing this crap for a while. Plans by other operators (like Vodafone) also have zero-rating, although with a fixed set of apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So what does the ISP get out of doing this?

<comment><USER22> Product segmentation. Currently this is normally just done by speed or data limits. This gives another option to screw people out of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This whole thing reminds of something happened (happens) in the consumer product world.

In India, long time ago, there was 300 ml Coca Cola for Rs. 10. For years, they tried to find a way to penetrate the rural market. You see, people were poor and normally couldn't afford the Rs. 10 worth of coke. Coca Cola came up with a brilliant plan. They started selling 200ml for Rs.5 . This achieved two things -

a. opened up the market for people who "couldn't otherwise afford" coke

b. Make the soda "considerably cheaper". Now 400 ml could be have for Rs. 10

Over time things have changed, 300 ml is no longer readily available. The 200 ml variant rules the market at the price of, you guessed it, Rs. 10.

<comment><USER13> So they dropped the prices, how is that a problem? If it's because it now costs more, if it was so long ago, are you sure that's not just inflation?

<comment><USER23> It is due to both inflation and clever marketing. I was trying to make a point about the latter.

It started out about being about "affordability" and choice but it no longer was about that.

Same goes for people talking about this net neutrality being about affordability and access. That is not true. It is a simple marketing tactic which will cause the internet prices to go above and beyond inflation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The concept of net neutrality seems very short sighted. Cell provided is starting to compete with cable. There's also satellite and copper wire from the phone companies. As a consumer, I feel like the trend is in the right direction. Why would I want to setup a regulatory environment that would likely deliver higher rates and poorer service?

<comment><USER25> (First of all, satellite in no-way can compete with copper. That's lunacy, and not even remotely comparable.)

But to answer your question, the regulatory environment helps ensure the desired outcome.

I mean, why have building codes? If enough buildings go up in flames or crumble down killing everyone inside, then maybe we could look into regulating the building industry.

Why have food safety standards? Nobody really dies that much these days from food-related illness, so shouldn't we get rid of all that pesky regulation?

But more to the point, just because they _seem_ to be going where you want today, what has that got to do with where they will go tomorrow?

<comment><USER24> From my view wealth is the primary mechanism these really great changes are delivered.

I used to work in electricity regulation on the side of consumers. I watched the utilities use the regulatory process to bilk customers. The regulatory process sets the stage for rent seeking. The companies out match the state over and over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm so tired of seeing this example being brought up.

The packages are for making those services _cheaper_ not more expensive. This is essentially partial zero-rating.

Zero-rating has its own effect on competition, but people are acting like an ISP is blocking access based on subscriptions which is an doomsday of a non- neutral internet I've seen trumpeted that's I don't believe will happen, and hasn't happen in other countries.

Well I guess net neutrality is another one of those topics I'd better know to not go against the guard on.

<comment><USER5> You do realize that there is no difference in the result whether you start with high prices and then selectively make some services cheaper or you start with low prices and then selectively make everything else more expensive, right?

<comment><USER26> Reading the articles it seems this ISP is forcing you to buy a package of services to get any internet access at all; this is terrifying. Optional zero- rating is bad but not much worse than internet with a stupidly low data-cap already is, even if the net result may be the same.

<comment><USER4> That's not true, this image has made at rounds already, multiple first hand users confirmed this is a set of options to save on top of a base package.

<comment><USER13> That depends on the base package, if you get a pre-paid plan you don't get any included Internet service. You _can_ still access the regular Internet, but it debits 2€ for any day you use it, and only gives you 60MB for that day. To use more you must purchase some extra package.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I 'll be that guy. What's so bad about consumers having more choice? E.g i dont use facebook or netflix, would enjoy the (cheaper rates|larger speeds).

<comment><USER3> What makes the choice to pay extra for Facebook superior to having it included?

<comment><USER9> makes it cheaper for everyone else

<comment><USER3> How?</comment></comment></comment></comment>