Welcome to masterWiki: stolen from MasterClass, republished as wikiHow - <AUTHOR> https://masterwiki.how/ <comment><USER2> Looking at the bottom of the page, this is part of some overall large marketing campaign. A lot of the other stuff is also labelled "theft" : I'm not totally sure it is; the point of the project appears to be to commit almost-IP theft, but in most cases they seem to go right up to the line but do not cross it. (E.g. shirts with corporate logos / brands cut up and barely recognizable, that kind of thing).

There's an app, there's a FOMO "drop" list, there's some larger thing at play here. Can't tell if it's something authentic / art-related, or if someone is just trying to build another brand.

Edit: indeed, this is some new brand / business: "WHO WE ARE MSCHF Product Studio is an internet company. We operate online store(s), create content, communicate with our fans and customers through texts, email and social channel(s), and occasionally promote our products and services both online and offline"

MSCHF (presumably 'mischief') is just another edgy shopify stunt.

<comment><USER3> As others have pointed out, this is a pro(ject/duct) of a creative studio called MSCHF

[https://mschf.xyz/](https://mschf.xyz/)

Their work satirizes art and commerce, usually simultaneously, often while still being both.

To me this project is about the absurdity of gatekeeping celebrity branded common-sense for $180, when it can more effectively be conveyed in the low- rent wikihow style for free.

<comment><USER4> If it's just _"common-sense"_ there is nothing to _"gatekeep"_. I (edit) don't see in absurdity in Masterclass product. It is not worth for me, but not absurd in the least.

<comment><USER5> Well, many people seem to lack "common sense", of which everyone has their own definition. And absurdity is in the eye of the beholder.

I don't agree with what this company is doing, stealing content from a commercial product and making it free. But I can see they're making a point, as a kind of perfomance art and social criticism. They're brazen about its controversial nature, and perhaps the free content will benefit someone who doesn't have the means to access this knowledge.

It also makes me question, how will such knowledge production be funded, if not as (highly priced) commercial products? If everyone started stealing and giving away knowledge for free, how can it be sustainable? Is it even possible to "steal" knowledge? Well, yes, in the form of information/data - but, if it's digested and re-presented, as they have done here, does copyright extend to such works?

Perhaps their goal is to raise such questions in the audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For anyone confused, this a parody from MSCHF.

> MSCHF isn't a sneaker company. It rarely even produces commercial goods, and > its employees are reluctant to call it a company at all. They refer to > MSCHF, which was founded in 2016, as a "brand," "group" or "collective," and > their creations, which appear online every two weeks, as "drops."

> Many of those drops are viral pranks: an app that recommends stocks to buy > based on one's astrological sign (which some observers took seriously), a > service that sends pictures of A.I.-generated feet over text, a browser > extension that helps users get away with watching Netflix at work.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/style/millennial- entrepre...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/style/millennial-entrepreneur- startups.html)

<comment><USER7> To me the name seems like an abbreviation for "mischief" aka "playful trouble maker"

<comment><USER8> That's exactly what it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I chuckled at the "How to Make Perfect Scrambled Eggs" with Gordon Ramsay.

Who adds sea urchin and white truffle to their scrambled eggs?

<comment><USER10> Dunno about white truffle and sea urchin, but I can attest that using good, actual truffle oil on it can be an inexpensive way to REALLY add to the flavor of it.

<comment><USER11> Agree with this, it's pretty awesome tweak.

I also use a bit of whole milk instead of butter to get a nice fluffy, creamy scramble.

<comment><USER12> I'm always surprised when people _don 't_ use a little milk in their scrambles/omelettes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't this copyright violation?

Or am I just misunderstanding what copyright applies to?

<comment><USER14> Despite the branding, this isn't actually a copy: it attempts to summarize each hours-long course into a handful of bullet points. That probably changes the expression enough that it's original in the eyes of copyright law, and the underlying ideas are not subject to copyright.

IANAL, but I suspect they'd have a larger issue with using all of these celebrities' names and likenesses without permission.

<comment><USER15> It's odd, because the content itself isn't actually very useful or any sort of "good" summary like a true cliffnotes type of thing — which should give them enough leeway to stay up and be fine. Yet, they're putting themselves right back in front of the gun: "We stole MasterClass' content..."

Props to whoever drew all those illustrations, they really took the time, that's probably 99% of the effort there.

<comment><USER16> > Props to whoever drew all those illustrations, they really took the time, > that's probably 99% of the effort there.

Most likely the same freelance contractors as wikihow.

[https://onezero.medium.com/we-finally-figured-out-who- makes-...](https://onezero.medium.com/we-finally-figured-out-who-makes- wikihows-bizarre-art-6c5d69b71347)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Before you cite copyright violations, I seriously think there's a huge amount of over simplification in those content. The presentation is fantastically parodistic

</comment><comment><USER18> The "How to Write a Thriller" guide, by renowned author 'Dan Brown', is spot- on:

[https://masterwiki.how/courses/how-to-write-a- thriller/](https://masterwiki.how/courses/how-to-write-a-thriller/)

<comment><USER19> Having taken some of the classes, they summarize them exceedingly well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This actually makes me re-interested in the official Masterclasses

<comment><USER21> I'm an enthusiastic home cook. A friend of mine has a subscription and let me watch one of the cooking masterclasses from Massimo Bottura. The quality is pretty garbage. You're getting a very surface level look into a smattering of a chef's dishes, with really very little added in terms of commentary, technique or otherwise interesting content. If all of their other masterclasses are as shallow as that, it seems like a waste of money.

<comment><USER20> One important thing to know is that each masterclass is essentially it's own thing. _Especially_ the early ones. They seem to have approached high-level people and said "we'll do whatever you want", so some people said they wanted to make garbage.

If you get the chance again, check out some of the other chefs to see of there's one that really provides value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Of course this is a MSCHF project. The instant I heard it I thought "this sounds like some sort of meme high art project."

</comment><comment><USER22> First I want to point out, what is obvious, the point of MasterClass is those famous people taking to YOU. I don't think this in any way takes away from experience of MasterClass.

Did you see how fast site loads? With all slow-poke sites, this is refreshing to see and you don't see it every day.

</comment><comment><USER23> This looks like an out of context marketing stunt.

Could someone link or describe the context?

<comment><USER5> From another comment: [https://www.theverge.com/21320127/mschf-products-jesus- shoes...](https://www.theverge.com/21320127/mschf-products-jesus-shoes-puff- chicken-office-business)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is similar to rage marketing. By using the word 'stolen', though they are technically not stolen, you are raising attention.

I remember White Moose Cafe giving outrageous replies to unhappy customers which lead to cult following and people just checking in for fun. Looks like they pivoted to a restaurant from a hotel since I last saw them couple of years ago: [https://www.facebook.com/WhiteMooseCafe/](https://www.facebook.com/WhiteMooseCafe/)

</comment><comment><USER25> This... has to be copyright violation.

<comment><USER26> Looks like satire to me

<comment><USER25> That's arguable enough that a lawyer would find a case here, I'd wager.

<comment><USER27> A lawyer would agree that the longer both lawyers talk the richer both of them get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> They can republish stuff all they want imo, but these are _not_ wikiHow articles unless you are cooperating with the company WikiHow (it's a brand). I'd be most afraid of _their_ reaction .

<comment><USER29> Does wikiHow have a patent on ugly clipart and low-effort content?

<comment><USER28> Probably not, but they definitely have a registered trademark.</comment></comment></comment>


Rails Rumble Apps - <AUTHOR> http://railsrumble.com/teams

<comment><USER2> Repost this here in case the other thread dies: Some seriously nice apps in there. Really impressed by the concepts and execution.

My favorites (thus far):

An awesome looking iPhone game powered by a Rails app: <http://warsquare.r10.railsrumble.com/>

AirportAtlas, find power, wi-fi, etc. in airports: <http://r10.railsrumble.com/teams/team-rocketpants>

Newspaper.ly looks like an app I had an idea for: a news reader that only shows you stuff the app thinks you would like: <http://r10.railsrumble.com/teams/infinity-pool-boom-boom>

A co-worker's IM gateway project: <http://r10.railsrumble.com/teams/this-we- can-have>

Project management that makes sense to me: <http://splendidbacon.com/>

(And of course my entry - <http://tldr.it> , a summarizer for RSS feeds and other URL's - <http://r10.railsrumble.com/teams/my-other-car-is-your-face>)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, I am super impressed with the graphical designs of these sites. How did you guys get such a polished look in such a short time. Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess this explains the explosion of "48 hour" apps popping up recently and making me feel incompetent. Some very, very nice work in there, and some I'm insanely jealous someone else got to make before I did (like newspaper.ly).

Thanks for this :).

</comment><comment><USER5> Sorry to throw a tiny little wrench, but the list reads like a well-crafted parody of modern startup culture. There's nothing truly interesting in there. Just bland reshuffling of pseudo-innovative social networking stuff.

Sure, some of them look really polished. Sure, some of them might be somewhat useful. But man, the cognitive power wasted on yet another "SHARE YOUR TOP FIVE LIST", "SHARE YOUR TODOS", "SHARE" [+ something you didn't use to share]? Astounding. Now, the downvoting shall commence.

</comment><comment><USER6> My team built a lightweight news aggregator aggregator(<http://agragr.com>) which pops things up as they hit the front page in various places. So far I'm finding it's replaced a couple of tabs I would normally have open.

The stand out project I've seen so far is probably <http://desksnear.me> for finding nearby desks that are available.

</comment><comment><USER7> Language Exchange looks neat, though I don't know anything about learning foreign languages.

At IO this year, Paul Graham and a bunch of other cool people talked about how interesting education via the Internet will be. And how tough it is to monetize.

<comment><USER8> Empowering traditional education buy slicing off a few of the hundreds of millions of hours lost to waste a year is easier. Plus, you won't get the unions trying to kill you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> repost HN didn't catch for whatever reason...

original: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1801784>

</comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me, or are most of the apps inaccessible?

<comment><USER11> I think they're having DNS problems right now.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, they are. We moved our app to our own domain for the time being.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very cool. I wish I had heard about this before it was over.

<comment><USER14> It's an annual thing, so there's always next year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of my friends did Kensho: <http://kensho.r10.railsrumble.com/>

Click on the little about box, not only is it a website, but also an API...</comment>


An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything (not a joke) - <AUTHOR> http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=196498

<comment><AUTHOR> Slides here:

<http://relativity.phys.lsu.edu/ilqgs/lisi111307.pdf>

Audio here:

<http://relativity.phys.lsu.edu/ilqgs/lisi111307.mp3></comment>


Seeking cofounder for new cross-platform IDE - <AUTHOR>

Just checking to see if there are any other experienced engineers on here who might be interested in joining me to develop a new cross-platform IDE, primarily for C/C++. The goal would be to bring the best of Sublime, Visual Studio, and XCode to Linux devs, and a unified experience regardless of platform. (Read: If you think Vim or Emacs is as good as it gets, this isn't for you.)
I'm a hardcore C++ guy who just left his job in finance in NYC. I am looking for someone to commit to this idea. I'm willing to work remotely with somebody, and/or I would potentially relocate to work with somebody in-person. I plan to seek funding after finding a cofounder.
Let me know if you're interested.
cplusequalstwo at gmail.com <comment><USER2> JetBrains is doing good in this space. You probably lost any chance of getting a response when you offended Emacs AND Vim users there!</comment>


1968 Created the 'Ultimate' Anti-Sport Sport - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/08/18/639615807/1968-created-the-ultimate-anti-sport-sport <comment><USER2> I played a lot of Ultimate in High School in the late 90s, and went on to play for the top University team in Australia in the early 2000s while pursuing my undergrad in Comp Sci.

One thing I've noticed about ultimate that makes a significant difference to other sports, is the degree of control you have over the flight of the disc. Releasing the disc parallel to the ground it should fly straight in the direction you release it. But angling it will cause the disc to curve as it flies, quite significantly depending on the angle.

This allows the thrower to curve the disc around defenders or even out of bounds to reach a spot on the field where only your player can get to.

While you can curve a pass or a shot to some extent in ball spots like football, the degree of control is much smaller. This gives frisbee a "3 dimensional" aspect I find really compelling and really adds to the depth of strategy available to players.

<comment><USER3> _the degree of control is much smaller_

[https://i.imgur.com/XECdomK.mp4](https://i.imgur.com/XECdomK.mp4)

<comment><USER4> Do you think people can't do that with a frisbee?

Curving is a better illustration — you can get a much greater angle with a disc.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure people can do it with a frisbee. The claim I responded to was that you _couldn 't_ do it with other types of sports equipment. The linked image is a counterexample to that claim.

<comment><USER2> The type of curve in your video is probably used in about 1/4 of medium range passes in an intermediate level game of Ultimate. So what you've shown one of the best football players in the world is capable of in a low pressure situation, is typical fare for an intermediate level Ultimate player in a game situation.

There is literally en entire sport called frisbee golf that involves that level of accuracy and control in every throw, at similar distances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a weirdly anemic article. It could have explored so many interesting avenues like how the sport spread, what kept the "spirit of the game" alive, or how that jives with being a professional (and possibly olympic) sport. But it just ended.

<comment><USER6> Yea. It went "Ultimate is a thing, and things started existing at some point. Ultimate also started existing at some point. Also there are no refs. Because no, man, I'm not gonna."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I recently discovered Disc Golf [1]. It's basically golf but with a frisbee! Here's one of the best players going through one of the best of his rounds [2]. Anyway, it seems popular and I was amazed I never heard of it before since I play Ultimate every summer.

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

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=352G0B4OClU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=352G0B4OClU)

</comment><comment><USER8> Non-tracking text-only link: [https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=639615807](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=639615807)

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember playing it as a kid in camp c. 1973, so it must have become a thing pretty fast.</comment>


Watch Out Facebook Connect, Apple Pushes Twitter Sign-Ins In iOS 5 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/06/watch-out-facebook-connect-apple-pushes-twitter-sign-ins/

<comment><USER2> Excellent choice, but a little odd. Is Apple planning to buy twitter? They could use a few extra servers ....</comment>


Show HN: Stack Exchange Area51 Proposal for a Dedicated Amazon Web Services Site - <AUTHOR> http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/100199/aws <comment><USER2> Nice example of how positive momentum of AWS leads to more defensibility (a dedicated third party site) of market position. Reinforcing positive cycle of success.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/amazon-web- service...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/amazon-web-services)</comment>


US hiker 'lost for 26 days before dying' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36389383 <comment><USER2> A long time ago -- before cell phones -- I was a member of a wilderness search and rescue team. Based on the description of where this person was found, I can tell you it's one of the last places we would have gone. Finding lost people is a game of profiling and math -- certain types of people (e.g. injured, despondent, young, experienced hiker) are more likely to do certain things, but AFAIK going to high ground and setting up camp isn't on anyone's list. I don't know if that's changed as a result of cell phones.

<comment><USER3> Well, you'll need water, which generally finds itself at lower ground ....

Are folks not taught stuff about lighting smokey fires to attract attention, or would there have been local factors that prevented it in this case?

<comment><USER2> One article[1] at least suggests that she wasn't able to start a fire.

      She had also tried to make fires using the matches and
      lighters she kept in her backpack. There was a stream
      near her camp, but it's unclear whether she was able to
      find any food.

[1]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2016/05/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2016/05/26/when-you-find-my-body-please-call-my-husband-wrote-dying- hiker-lost-along-the-appalachian-trail/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder why people aren't more aware of personal locator beacons that use satellites to work in areas without cell reception. For the cost of a smartphone, this could have saved her life :(

[https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/personal-locator- bea...](https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/personal-locator-beacons.html)

<comment><USER5> Looking at it the other way, why don't search and rescue services have a mobile cell-phone "tower" attached to an aircraft?

<comment><USER6> This is a fantastic idea, although they'd need to have several carriers to make it feasible (what if someone uses t-mobile instead of verizon?

<comment><USER7> At least on UK networks you get an indication that says 'emergency calls only' when you are within range of any network.

Does a similar thing happen in the US?

Also seems like a perfect application for those Stingrays the police have stockpiled.

<comment><USER8> I'm not aware of a similar thing in the US. And depending on the remoteness of your location, you may get an indication of a good signal (3+ bars) but still be unable to transmit or receive a text. It's common in the mountains where I hike and backpack to get "ghost bars" like that which suggest you should be able to send and receive messages but only a tiny percentage ever get through, if any.

<comment><USER9> The US has actually several emergency networks, a cellphone even without a valid sim card can still be used to dial 911 this is part of every cellular standard. But in more common cases when you are outside of the coverage of your carrier and with roaming disabled/no roaming partners you will still see Emergency/SOS displayed on your phone.

[http://s9.postimg.org/umb1a3tjz/s5570.jpg](http://s9.postimg.org/umb1a3tjz/s5570.jpg)

Besides 911 there are probably a few other emergency numbers in the US which are open on all cellphones, as well as the emergency broadcast system which will display push notifications on every modern cellphone in such cases as natural disasters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's another article with some more specifics:

[http://outthere.bangordailynews.com/2016/05/26/outdoor- recre...](http://outthere.bangordailynews.com/2016/05/26/outdoor- recreation/warden-file-on-largay-disappearance-leaves-plenty-of-questions/)

This part stood out:

 _On the initial missing persons report that was filed, Largay's husband itemized a number of items that he knew she'd been wearing or carrying. Under the category labeled "GPS, PLB, Compass" — the acronyms referring to Global Positioning System, Personal Locator Beacon– the responding warden wrote: "SPOT. Left at motel." SPOT is a company that makes, among other things, satellite-based devices that allow hikers in remote areas to communicate their whereabouts to others without the benefit of a cellular signal._

So apparently she had a beacon, but for some reason she did not take it with her on that leg of the trail.

</comment><comment><USER5> This article has some more details:

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/05/25/hiker-who- died-...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/05/25/hiker-who-died-after- disappearing-from-appalachian-trail-survived-for- weeks/KAcHuKSdYVHNTNu0qQobvK/story.html)

<comment><USER7> I don't think I understand how dangerous these forests must be.

It seems extraordinary that someone can step off the trail like this and get so lost so near to where they need to be.

It also seems extraordinary that a hiker of her age, carrying as little kit as she was, decided to do this alone.

<comment><USER8> It's not dangerous if you have navigational skills. Most people, however, do not, or haven't developed theirs very effectively. I see it myself sometimes with other hikers at the front of a group—they take a wrong turn and suddenly have no idea where they are and start freaking out rather than just backtracking. Fortunately they're in a group, generally of people who can navigate and do know where they are, but when someone with poor navigational skills gets into that situation it usually leads to panic and bad decisions.

It's not at all extraordinary that a hiker of her age decided to go backpacking alone (which in this case she didn't—she was with someone else who left). It's a very common thing for people to solo hike and backpack. Carrying a small amount of gear is not a problem either—it's the norm. But navigational tools of some sort, even just a micro compass and a map, are generally considered an essential.

<comment><USER7> > It's not dangerous if you have navigational skills.

I'm ex-military so this point is probably why I don't understand the mindset, I just had navigation slammed into me time and time again. And we weren't allowed GPS so you got it right and you learning to recover if you did screw up.

> It's not at all extraordinary that a hiker of her age decided to go > backpacking alone (which in this case she didn't—she was with someone else > who left).

Another articles mention she started without them and stayed at a lodge with a number of other people so definitely took the decision to go alone. I guess the buddy/buddy thing is built into me too.

> Carrying a small amount of gear is not a problem either—it's the norm.

Another article mentioned she was carrying less than the normal 35lbs. Obviously I'm not sure what the norm is so defer to your experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really sad. Part of me wonders why, in such a remote area, she decided to go far enough off the trail to get lost just to use the bathroom.

It's scary how disorienting the woods can be.

I was hiking in the woods in my _backyard_ and after a few twists and turns to get around thorny areas, discovered about 20 minutes later I was hiking in the _opposite_ direction I thought I was. It was completely dumbfounding.

<comment><USER11> This kind of thing is why a visual marker - orange reflector tape, sidewalk chalk, whatever - should be a part of any serious hiker's kit. Going off trail at all? Leave a nice obvious path back to it.

<comment><USER8> Please don't do this. I see people doing it, even going so far as to leave flagging tape on obvious, maintained trails so they don't "lose their way". And usually people don't remove it after. It makes an area trashy, especially when done unnecessarily—and saying you should do it whenever you go off-trail is very unnecessary.

If your navigational skills are poor enough that you can't trust yourself to walk off-trail without getting lost, use a passive system like running a GPS receiver during your hike so you can backtrack along its track until you find your trail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Probably the "trail" wasn't marked every inch like a sidewalk. But had blazes every so often so hard to return to.

</comment><comment><USER13> We can expect to see a movie made about this within 2 years.

<comment><USER14> We already have Gerry. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0302674/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_19](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0302674/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_19)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a very regular hiker and backpacker, and while I always feel bad in situations like this, I also always feel that people who get lost so easily that they can't find the trail—especially one so developed as the Appalachian Trail—after stepping off it for a few minutes shouldn't be hiking alone, or should be using some sort of navigational aid to help avoid that happening. She wasn't initially hiking alone, but she should've left when her hiking partner did if she wasn't competent enough to navigate solo.

Perhaps I'm unusual among hikers, in that I hike off-trail regularly, hunt for lost and abandoned trails for fun, and am a trailwork volunteer with the Forest Service, but I cannot understand how people get lost. If you lose the trail, you simply go back the way you came until you find it again. And yet people get lost all the time.

<comment><USER7> Apparently Maine is singularly treacherous for hikers due to the density and scale of it's woods.

I've seen comments from many experienced hunters/hikers how say they live/hike in the woods up there and all of them mentioned how easy it would be to become disorientated.

Here's one for instance:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/2r32uy...](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/2r32uy/how_could_a_woman_just_vanish_on_july_22_2013/cncex4z)

<comment><USER15> I wonder if a "road pressure" map would be useful to encourage people to know what they are doing. I've spent a lot of time in the woods in Michigan where there are developed roads all over the place. When there's (even moderately trafficked) roads 1/2 mile away in 3 directions, you aren't very lost, so I've never felt the need to be incredibly well prepared. When it's 5 miles in one direction the thought process needs to be a little different.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I won't work a developer job anymore (Joshua Fluke) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbUvTbD9q4A <comment><AUTHOR> My opinion is that the guy in this video, Joshua Fluke, comes across as very sincere.

In my opinion, this video should be watched by everyone on HN.

<comment><USER2> I think he pivoted to wrong platform. He is mechanical engineer turned YouTuber. He should have leveraged his knowledge into anything else.. like IoT or V2X or anything.

Very heart felt and sounds like PTSD to me. I hope a better future for him.

<comment><USER3> He really did get screwed. I feel lucky to have worked for a number of companies but never one that treated people so badly. But I also knew I have been lucky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I get where he's coming from - but his content feels like failure porn in vlog form / some weird form of an online self-deprecating sob story.

This kind of content is what gets people to give up and blame others for their problems...

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow why isn't this gotten more attention. This is an amazing video. Everyone should see it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very heart felt.

Not to be coarse, but can't vendors be fired? clients be fired?

Anyone can get fired.

</comment><comment><USER7> wow thanks for posting this, loved the video.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your 2011 resolutions? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious to find out. <comment><USER2> 1920 x 1200, 1366 x 768 and 1440 x 900 mostly.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Financial and career

\- Payoff, in full, my remaining student loan balance.

\- Launch 42 niche online "businesses" that earn (within 3 months of launch) an average of $500-$1000/month.

\- Find and join a company that affords me: freedom/autonomy, respect, great coworkers, and interesting problems.

2\. Social and cultural

\- Donate 10% of every dime that enters my bank account to charitable causes of my choice.

\- Refresh social circle to include only supportive, like-minded individuals with goals similar to my own.

3\. Spiritual and ethical

\- Listen to Brainwave Entrainment audio and meditation tapes for 30 minutes EVERYDAY, preferrably before going to bed.

\- Listen to online sermons as a baby step to getting back in tune with my religion, and overcoming the "fear of what others think."

4\. Home and family

\- Stop hating my mother for spending the money I sent to payoff student loans.

\- Buy a 4b/3ba single family house (2500 sqft or greater) by the end of Q2 for atleast 5% less than the going market rate.

5\. Mental and education

\- Read self-help and personal development material for atleast 5 hours each week.

\-- Subscribe to and read atleast 100 publications related to the startup, software development, and marketing categories.

\-- Read 1 book each week on any of the following topics: starting a business, software architecture, online marketing, personal branding.

\- Attend 1 personal development seminar.

6\. Physical and health

\- Cook my own meals by the end of Q1 2011.

\- Drop bodyfat percentage from 15.4 to 11.

\- Gain 25lbs of lean body mass.

Not even done yet..

Reach for the stars.

</comment><comment><USER4> \- Accumulate as much experience from my job as possible. 10 people firm (financial services, investment management). Build a portfolio of skills that is both transferable and valuable

\- Take far more risk with my own personal investing, play poker more regularly and often & approach more women

\- Continue building a phenomenal network of high powered professionals, investors, start-up founders and established business men with a focus on private equity/venture capital. Follow up regularly and build a relationship

\- Improve my communication. I'll do this by enrolling on a stand-up comedy course, toastmasters and blogging more regularly

</comment><comment><USER5> My main one is getting 1000 paying customers for my startup.

</comment><comment><USER6> mine is simple i am will get a wife. Wasted a lot of time looking for the exact woman of my dream i am 34... ugh!

<comment><USER7> Well you know what they say about guys with small hands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My biggest challenge / resolution: Separate consumption and creation. Focus more on the latter.

</comment><comment><USER9> -Make $1000/month in passive income from software sales

-Release another iPhone app

-Healthier eating/exercise habits

</comment><comment><USER10> Run a 50K!

</comment><comment><USER11> Take <http://www.webpop.com> from private beta and to a profitable product!

</comment><comment><USER12> 1\. Daily 10,000 unique views of sites/products by the summer. 2\. Raise online income from "pennies" to $2000+/mo.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1\. Ship 1 iPhone app.

2\. Increase blog readership to at least 50 per post (avg)

3\. Experiment with body hacks

4\. Make jammm.in a success

</comment><comment><USER14> Make enough money from web services (and minimal consulting) to live off of.

</comment><comment><USER15> Finish this <http://beepl.com>

</comment><comment><USER16> Make 300k this year coming from different avenues.</comment>


NASA announces one of Saturn's moons could support alien life - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nasa-announcement-today-alien-life-exist-saturn-enceladus-cassini-hydrogen-plume-hydrothermal-a7681821.html <comment><USER2> Comparative size of our Moon and Enceladus [http://callumprentice.github.io/apps/celestial_bodies/index....](http://callumprentice.github.io/apps/celestial_bodies/index.html?v=2&1=moon&2=enceladus)</comment>


What it costs to live in Japan - <AUTHOR> http://bemmu.posterous.com/what-it-costs-to-live-in-japan <comment><USER3> One thing he doesn't mention is transport costs. Japanese people have their commuter train costs paid for by their employers. If you aren't Japanese, you probably have to pay for this yourself. I thought I was clever by living in a $280 apartment 40 minutes outside of Tokyo. However, my train fares ended up costing $600 a month, so I moved to a more expensive apartment where I could walk to work.

Likewise, road tolls are incredibly high by North American standards. I remember one 30 mile stretch that cost $17 each way.

<comment> T-R Whether or not you have to pay for your commute probably depends on who you work for and what your contract is. I worked full time for a Japanese company, and they did pay for my commute; granted, I was also being paid a typical Japanese salary, not an expat salary.

<comment><USER4> > I was also being paid a typical Japanese salary, not an expat salary.

I'm curious if you mean to imply that an expat salary would be higher or lower?

<comment> T-R In Japan, employees mostly start at roughly the same salary - <USER2> between $20k and $30k per year, regardless of position, with salary increases reflecting time spent at the company.

Expats often move at the request of the company, and not into entry level positions. Employees who are asked to relocate would expect to do so in exchange for a raise (particularly if their home country has higher salaries and they expect to move back eventually), so expat salaries tend to be significantly higher.

Given that, I wouldn't necessarily expect expats to be offered the same benefits as native Japanese employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like hanging out in Japan and I can confirm this.

Last year I spent 2 months right outside Tokyo (on the Keio-Inokashira line) and this year I'm here for 4 mo right smack dab in the middle of it.

Since I'm only here on a tourist entry visa, I can't get "real" services so I'm paying 140,000 yen/mo in rent (for an admittedly pretty decent place, and no "key money" and they charge it right to my credit card) and $250/mo for an unlimited data SIM card rental (can't even get prepaid without a proper visa…), but aside from those inflated costs, everything here is the same or cheaper than in Sweden. Especially eating out. E.g. back home you can't get any prepared meal aside from sloppy tax-evasion kebab for less than 90 SEK (US$13) but here you can get away with it for at least half of that.

Public transport is about the same price as at home, but it's really easy to underestimate how big Tokyo or even the whole country is. Thinking "oh I'll go to yokohama for that party" it's really easy to forget that at home that'd be the equivalent of taking the train to the next country over.

I absolutely love it though, anyone even remotely considering coming here should definitely do it, even if just for a short while. It's an amazing place.

Edit: oh yeah, I got an ear infection while here and had to go to an ear doctor without any insurance. For the first visit (which included a signup fee, a hearing test and a prescription), I paid $150, and the 2 followups each cost closer to $40 each. This sounds about right for what I'd pay at home if I wasn't european and got free healthcare (my reference for the cost of European care comes from my parents, they moved to Australia and lost european coverage so when my mom fractured her jaw when she was here for a visit she had to pay out of pocket).

<comment><USER6> By the way, you can get a prepaid Softbank mobile on a 90-day entry permit if you look in the right places. I had luck at the Don Quixote in Roppongi (no surprise there). It probably didn't hurt that I had my Japanese address written out in kanji and folded in a piece of paper inside my passport.

Data service, though, is still unavailable prepaid, I think.

<comment><USER7> You can get prepaid data from b-mobile and I highly recommend it. They piggyback on Docomo's network and they sell both data-only and data/voice prepaid sims. I don't know if they check visas for the voice version nut the data version is cheap and you can buy it online with no credentials. It's the best thing I've ever seen out of the Japanese mobile industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing he doesn't mention is that Tokushima, is, I believe, something of a backwater, It's not even on honshu (the mainland of japan), wikipedia lists it as the 86th most populous city: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_cities_by_popu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_cities_by_population)

I'm not sure how much this plays into the cost of living; I am assuming that things are a whole level cheaper than in Tokyo, as it would be compared to any other country, but I'd also be curious how it compares to secondary cities, such as osaka, or other smaller places w/ more population....

<comment><USER9>
      > I am assuming that things are a whole level cheaper than
      > in Tokyo

Depends on what. If it's not even on the mainland, then shipping could be expensive. For example. Yellowknife (Canada) is away from major cities, and I'm sure that real estate is cheap, but shipping costs have to be through the roof.

<comment><USER8> There is a land bridge to Tokushima.... I assume most goods are trucked in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
      [it costs] about 1400 eur ($1870) / month.
      I live with my wife ...
      All of these expenses are just what I pay. For now we are
      splitting everything ... keep in mind these costs are just
      what I personally pay.

So basically it costs 2800eur assuming he splits evenly with his wife.

Why on Earth would you not include her share? (even if you maintain separate accounts or something... people want to know the _total_ cost)

<comment><USER11> I think you don't get it. He is talking about his personal expenses. Things that are shared between the couple are paid by them both.

For example, the total cost might be 2200Eur because the husband spends more money on Gadgets, Laptops...

<comment><USER9> But things like Internet access can't really be 'split.' If his ISP costs $62/month, then a person living alone wouldn't be paying $31/month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That speedtest is interesting considering popular conception of Japanese FTTH speeds. Under 10 Meg download for over $60 per month? Where's the 100Meg for $20 or whatever is usually mentioned in the "bash US broadband" articles?

<comment><USER13> What's funnier is that upload is twice that of download. You usually don't see the ratio's flipped like that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "I am enrolled in the Japanese national health insurance system. My monthly premium is 20 eur ($26), which is low as my income in Japan is zero (my income is officially in Finland, where I pay taxes). A 15 minute doctor's visit costs 58 euro ($77) without the health insurance."

Moving to Japan would save me approximately $4000/year in health insurance costs. Right now I pay $260/mo for myself and $160/mo for my kids.

Damn.

<comment><USER15> From everything I've read, and from talking to Japanese friends, it sounds like doctors in Japan are generally far worse than you would hope for.

<comment><USER16> I am convinced that for 99% of doctor visits the quality of doctors is completely irrelevant. So long as they can fill out prescription forms and scold you for your blood pressure/weight/drinking/smoking, you're going to have the same experience.

I would be more concerned about surgeon quality, but that sort of thing is rarely needed.

<comment><USER15> As someone who had Kaiser Permanente coverage as a young adult, I don't agree with you. The doctors were incompetent, incapable of diagnosing why I was falling ill with the same symptoms every month. They gave outright bad advice on the subject of an ankle injury, which scared me off from doctors for years. In my experience, the difference between a good doctor and a bad doctor is enormous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What is "key money" ? A bribe? Or is it security deposit?

Can you imagine them marketing a 660cc car in the USA? I'd love to have one but it will never happen.

<comment><USER18> Traditionally, when folks from the country moved to the city, they would bring 礼金 (money in return for a kindness - n.b. It is what you call paying someone to tutor you, too) to show thanks for their landlord taking them under e landlord's wing socially. In modern Japan this doesn't really happen, but traditions are durable. Prevailing norms differ by area, but it can be anywhere from nothing to, most commonly, 1 to 3 month's rent, and it is compulsory. You never receive 礼金 back. Most apartments also charge a security deposit, generally one month's rent. Custom in Japan favors the landlord heavily with regards to security deposits, for example in accepting debits against it to return the apartment to pristine condition (such as buying new tatami), so most people wouldn't expect to receive it back either. e.g. I got charged a $350 "cleaning fee" after paying for my own cleaners to make it absolutely sparkle. Their employee apologized but said it was standard practice.

<comment><USER19> So with the key fee @ 3 months' rent, first and last months' rent, and a security deposit, you could have to front 6 months' rent to move in!?

<comment><USER20> I don't know what you mean by "last month rent", but yes, between key money, deposit, real estate agent fee (1 month's rent), insurance and, if you're foreign, guarantor's fee, you typically pay something like 4~6 months' rent upfront.

<comment><USER21> Last month's rent means you've prepaid for the final month of your rental. In the US, if you're in a region where this is legal/accepted, when you give 30-day notice you don't owe any money for that final month.

<comment><USER22> You mean last two months' rent. The two you pay in advance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For Americans, it's worth noting that Japanese apartments don't come with appliances. You'll get to buy your own fridge, microwave, and washing machine. Dishwashers are insanely expensive, and some older places don't even come with a stove.

Appliance sales here are like car sales in the US, so negotiate the bejeezus out of them. A friend of mine picked up a free 50+ inch brand-name TV when he bought his refrigerator and bistro oven, to give you an idea of what's possible.

<comment><USER24> This is an important point especially if just wanting to stay short-term. Furnished places for rent are extremely rare. Pretty much the only chance for that is if you go through an agency which targets foreigners and you will pay through the nose for that.

Sometimes though appliances are included. My flat included a small bar fridge. Another flat I looked at (but didn't rent) included a washing machine and TV.

You'll also need your own washing machine. Rental buildings don't have a common laundry room.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> One thing he doesn't mention is that living in Japan without visa "sponsorship" is a chore. There's this weird requirement that you need someone to sponsor you, either a Japanese national or your company (you can be self- employed but it's much harder). You wouldn't think it walking about Roppongi or China Town but it is.

This comes into play when renting too. The real estate agent usually requires someone Japanese to sponsor you. I know lots of guys that got their girlfriend to do this. Only applies to the initial contract.

The city version:

Living quarters suck. The closer to Tokyo, the less space, the more rent.

Anything involving services will seem overpriced. I think it has to do with high median salaries overall, inefficient distribution (lots of middlemen), and low labor productivity.

However, one thing people underestimate is the number of ways you can save by shopping smart, especially things like groceries and electronics. Or for example gyms, lots of local governments run fitness centers open to anyone on a walk in basis as long as they live or work in the area for $3 while a brand name gym will cost you $120 for full membership.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, we were actually denied an apartment once because I am not Japanese.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wait, $350 a _day_ to feed one person?? Is that a typo?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out, fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I lived in Japan for around six months last year, and I estimate that I spent around $2,000 per month. I stayed in a nice dormitory-style guest house run by Oakhouse. Rent was about $750 per month, with no key money or anything like that. The bedrooms (bed, desk, and mini-fridge) are private, but the rest is shared, which led to me making friends with some really great people.

I wasn't in full-tourist mode, but I didn't go out of my way to save money. I found it fun to learn how to shop and cook most of my meals like a local might (lots of chicken curry and yakisoba), but I regularly went out for dinner with friends, and drinking binges on the weekends.

I lost quite a lot of money to Bank of America's ATM and currency conversion fees (I later got a Capital One money market account, which has better fees, and finally Schwab, which has none). I saved a tremendous amount of money by buying huge bags of chicken at Seiyu (Walmart), and learning what out-of-the- way big grocery stores my Japanese housemates shopped at. I could have saved a lot of money on train fare if I'd blown $100 on a cheap bike from Seiyu (or gotten a local to buy a bike at the ward sales they have every few years -- abandoned bicycles collected by the police are sold cheaply, but it's only open to ward residents).

Getting a cell phone is a huge hurdle now. You have to pay exorbitant rental fees, _or_ have a foreign resident card (not available on a tourist 'visa'). Or, do what I did, and get a local friend to buy a prepaid phone in his or her name. That will have to be a very good friend. :-D

<comment><USER23> Oak House Kiba, by chance?

<comment><USER15> Higashi-jujo in Kita-ku.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> TL;DR: About the same as in Northern Europe.

<comment><USER28> I live in Sweden and spend about a third of what he does. Then again, I bike instead of drive, and I don't often fly to the other side of the world, so that saves me a bit of money.

<comment><USER29> and you pay rent?

<comment><USER28> Yes, 2/3 of my expenses are rent (including phone/electricity).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Machine Learning Is a Metaphor for Life - <AUTHOR> https://adeshpande3.github.io/adeshpande3.github.io/Why-Machine-Learning-is-a-Metaphor-For-Life <comment><USER2> Isn't this sort of the other way around? It's called Machine Learning because it's at least somewhat analogous to, y'know, learning. It just seems weird to me to apply psychological concepts onto systems that were deliberately designed in order to replicate psychological effects as if that's something new. Of course maximizing optimization functions is a conceptual way to think about decision making; that's why started using optimization in decision- making algorithms in the first place.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I guess you could make the case for it being the other way around. Although, I think that a lot of ML concepts have groundings in optimization, probability, and a bunch of other mathematical concepts as opposed to concepts that wanted to replicate those psychological effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that there is much hype on ai and neuroscience. Actually we know many thinks of the brain as organ but we know really little about mind think and consciousnes. There isn't scientific evidence that consciousness have a material origin. And actually all the air we do is based on weak ai

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting post. I had written something similar a couple years ago as well. Nice to see someone else see the same patterns.

[http://wp.me/p3SyBR-4l](http://wp.me/p3SyBR-4l)

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought the regularization analogy was kind of a stretch, but otherwise, everything else was on point!</comment>


Mobile networks are killing Wi-Fi for speed around the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/23/mobile_v_wifi_speed_report/ <comment><USER2> And those mobile networks will work fantastically, right up to the point where you hit their 1GB limit, at which point they shut you down.

But WiFi doesn't do that. At least, not on its own — your upstream network provider could cut you off or throttle you, but then that's not the fault of the WiFi network.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an odd article, and disappointing to see this on The Register.

What was backing those tested wi-fi connections? What devices were tested? Of course "wi-fi" in Australia is going to be slow - there's still plenty of people on ADSL and we've got excellent takeup of 4G.</comment>


How Ubuntu startup script deletes everything - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/557177

<comment><USER2> I find the response of the maintainer to be typical of the kind of detached attitude that you come across every now and then with issues reported.

I've had bugs converted to 'wontfix' and 'unconfirmed' in spite of giving detailed info and / or situations where it clearly is a bug.

It shouldn't take a 'thinking over a cup of tea' to recognize this is highly undesirable behaviour, a fix is practically free and very easy, the results of executing that script are potentially very expensive.

It's a bug. Not a feature for the wishlist.

And I never did get why there has to be yet another way to start stuff up in the first place. /etc/inittab, /etc/init.d/ and now 'upstart'...

It doesn't seem to be a great improvement over the previous system but requires a bunch of new stuff to be learned and old stuff to be unlearned. That should come with a clear advantage of sorts and I can't seem to find any.

<comment><USER3> Yay open source! Yay linux!

This is why I'm slowly backing away from anything to do with linux.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, this is the sort of fiasco Microsoft _wishes_ that money could buy. "I'm a PC ... because Windows DOESN'T wipe all your data without asking first. "

But I think your comment is still vast overkill. The fact is, I get really, really worried every time I see a BSOD'd airline departures board or worse, an ATM booting up Windows (usually Win 2000). Don't these people _know_?! That there's another OS out there called (GNU/)Linux and it's fast and free and doesn't have a long tradition of crap engineering?

And then I see this and remember that while Linux is (mostly) well-engineered, it has all sorts of equally well-engineered, completely unmarked "self- destruct" buttons. And if there's anything scarier than Windows near airplanes, it has to be Windows users near Linux near airplanes.

<comment><USER5> _if there's anything scarier than Windows near airplanes, it has to be Windows users near Linux near airplanes_

... an all-time great quote

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      On Wed, 2010-04-07 at 14:12 +0000, Thomas Krause wrote:
      > The problem is, that you don't know this script is
      > dangerous before you executed it.

      Then you should not execute it.

      Scott
      --
      Scott James Remnant
      <email address hidden>

Brilliant. Exactly what you want to hear when a seemingly innocent vendor init-script just erased your harddrive.

<comment><USER7> A few comments down is a particularly rich response to this:

So, just to clarify that:

What you are basically saying is that the manpage stating

> start JOB... > Requests that the named jobs be started. The status of the > jobs will be output to standard output until > they are succesfully running, > or in the case of tasks, until they have completed.

should in fact be read as: "might either start the job or delete all your data, and we neither check, warn or document regarding this issue anywhere visibly"? Seriously?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ubuntu has a cultural problem at times, wherein sane bug reports from experienced UNIX users are dismissed as "not getting it", or similar. There seems to be a certain smugness when they make decisions that are obviously wrong, and certitude where there shouldn't be. I don't know why this is so; Debian has a somewhat argumentative culture, and occasionally makes dumb decisions, but folks usually try to argue their way to a consensus rather than just say "This is the way it is". Ubuntu has diverged from that seemingly entirely, and maintainers sometimes make bizarre proclamations and stick to them against all reason.

I think it's an interesting aspect of the different Linux distributions. Someone else mentioned Gentoo being similar to Ubuntu in this regard, and I would agree...though it takes it to such an extreme that it's hard for me to even take it seriously as an OS. At least the end result of Ubuntu's obstinance is pretty solid, even if every new release has some weird quirks that I just can't figure out how they made it through QC (and more often than I'm comfortable with, those quirks are intentional).

</comment><comment><USER9> I have a patch

       if [ -z $MOUNTPOINT ]; then
        echo "MOUNTPOINT not defined.  Not deleting your file system.";
        exit(1);
       fi

This patch will be included in Zippy Zebra due out in 2018

<comment><USER10> Those in a hurry please check this reply first: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/55717...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/557177/comments/24)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> To add insult to insult to injury (the first insult was "Don't do that then"), the person handling the bug is a member of the "Canonical User Experience and Design team". It's like they're annoying people on purpose sometimes...

<comment><USER12> Seriously, add a "set -e -u" to the top of the script and close the bug already. He wasted more time arguing about it then it would take to fix it.

<comment><USER11> This could be a default one day really... Like php disabling register_globals. It would stop so many silly mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of why I finally left Gentoo. Some maintainers started believing that their default configurations where the only correct configurations. For example, the Apache maintainer believed the virtual hosts was the correct way to run Apache. I felt that my simple static html webpage didn't need that, so I just used /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and /var/www/htdocs/index.html plus a handfull of other static files.

Then around 2005 or so, an update to Apache replaced my httpd.conf with the default and deleted everything in htdocs and added a default index.html. Lots of people complained and the Gentoo maintainers said anyone not using virtual hosts was wrong, so it was not their fault the user's lost all their data and configuration on an upgrade.

After that, I started noticing more and more arguments from maintainers and users. Frankly, I am glad I am no longer using Gentoo and fighting their system. And I am glad I don't use Ubuntu and fighting their system either.

<comment><USER14> What operating system are you currently using? I just transitioned from Ubuntu to Gentoo, but now you've got me wondering if I have overlooked a better alternative.

<comment><USER15> Uh, Debian? It's like Ubuntu but the packages don't break your system as often.

<comment><USER16> It's too bad that the last time I tried to install Debian the installer only supported WEP for wireless installation.

<comment><USER15> One thing that's nice about being a long-time Linux user is that you don't even consider the possibility of installing over WiFi ;)

(Though to be fair, good luck installing Windows or OS X with a 256M memory stick and a wireless router.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think that this is a perfect illustration of software developers not being real engineers as they don't think as engineers. My first degree is in Mechanical Engineering and I can assure you that proper engineer would never consider anything like that short of being an "absolutely critical flaw". Real-life machines such as elevators or various industrial equipments have all sorts of fail-safe mechanisms built in. These people aren't born with safety always being the first thing they consider, it's something they are taught at university.

Simply telling people to "don't do that" is not an adequate approach because people make mistakes, it is part of human nature.

</comment><comment><USER18> Such a lack of any failsafe behavior in a script that can potentially erase whole disk should have been against all reasonable policies that distribution's init scripts should have. I'm not a fan of Ubuntu, and I have very, very low opinion about it, but still, there must be such guidelines and policies. If there aren't, it's the primary bug.

<comment><USER19> Are you saying that other Linux distributions are better? It used to be that Debian was more solid, but I don't think this is the case any more.

<comment><USER20> Debian is still considerably more solid. However, improvements and software development has outpaced the Debian release cycle. In order to be "competitive" for what a large number of people want on the desktop side, unstable or testing are the repo's they should be pulling from rather than stable. However, unstable and testing are exactly that, unstable and testing, and it can be pretty frustrating for unfamiliar users to have to deal with kinks that haven't been worked out yet.

<comment><USER19> I didn't do any statistical survey of thousands of users, but I am using Debian5 and Ubuntu8.04. The former feels and acts considerably more broken, in my experience. This is in addition to being more pain to install. Just my $0.02.

<comment><USER20> The way Debian manages it, only bugfixes are added once something hit's "stable" (current Debian 5). This means that drivers and new versions of applications are typically frozen except for bug patches only. Debian 5 was released a little over a year ago, leading to the software being outdated by standard desktop/consumer use compared to the number of improvements and bugs fixed in the mean time (most applications provide feature+bug releases which are not added to Debian once it hits stable). For servers, this is reliable and actually wonderful to deal with. For desktop/laptop systems, it can be frustrating because the code exists, and it should be nice, easy and non- broken for applications and drivers, but in reality it's not, because the release is behind. Ubuntu's goal is to have a much quicker release cycle to keep this from happening, but in the mean time never get a system that's really 100% stable and usable. Ubuntu also does some weird crazy hacks to get things to appear smooth to the user, when in reality they have pre-programmed guesses you can't override. So if it doesn't work, the only recovery is seasoned Linux experience. Debian, on the other hand, gives a large number of options making the installation not seem as smooth, but is recoverable with quick Google searches or reading of the explanations.

<comment><USER19> I know all this, as I've been using Debian/Ubuntu for years, but I think that far fewer people are using Debian now than Ubuntu, resulting in less testing. Developers probably migrated as well. People vote with their feet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This crap is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with Linux.

Another non-serious example. I used a dual-boot Linux&Vista laptop. Innocently tried to update Ubuntu. This changed the boot loader to Ubuntu only (removed the Windows menu).

This may be fine for me, but it fails the grandmother test (or any other test of a normal casual computer user). Aren't updates tested before they are added?

<comment><USER17> To be fair, Windows would have overwritten the MBR (so that it boots Windows only) without asking too many questions either.

<comment><USER22> I've actually taken to installing Windows on a separate hard drive, and disconnecting my primary drive before I even begin the installation, because I've had Windows screw so many things up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you check the recent update from the maintainer [1] this was just a misunderstanding - it was fixed yesterday and the bug report was wishlisted as an idea for a broader fix.

1\. [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/55717...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/557177/comments/24)

<comment><USER24> _In which he calls his detractors "flaming idiots" and tells them to pick up their toys..._

<comment><USER23> yep, but not nastily. And in this instance I don't really blame him :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Quite the anti-Linux group of people here. I wonder how much data is silently corrupted every day by OS X's lack of an atomic rename syscall...

<comment><USER16> Stories like this just become lightning rods for people with similar grievances against the group in question. If there was a story about OS X deleting all of your data, we would have threads full of people complaining about how poorly Apple manages their operating system, and how they delete threads on their forums about issues that don't want to address.

<comment><USER25> Didn't that come out with Snow Leopard and Guest Accounts? <http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=12031>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sometimes I do wonder if these older established Linux distributions aren't doomed to implode on themselves. There's just so much complexity and legacy stuff all over the place that it's unsettling to me. I've been using Debian based Linux distros for more than a decade and I'm still confused trigger shy about doing certain things because I can't mentally calculate the outcome with confidence or have a clear back-out plan if something goes wrong. This is actually why I run Linux in a VM whenever possible. Snapshots have saved me so many times.

</comment><comment><USER27> Actually: How an Ubuntu script which is not meant to be run manually, temporarily had a bug that deleted the file system when using the _development version_ of Ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER28> Added my 2c to the bug thread. Reposted here:

From: <http://www.ubuntu.com/education>

"Above all, Ubuntu is set apart from other operating systems by its unwavering focus on simplicity and ease of use. Ubuntu's motto is "Linux for Human Beings" and every development decision and application has that goal in mind."

</comment><comment><USER29> Similar posting regarding the state of the community at Ubuntu:

[http://www.fewt.com/2010/03/bye-ubuntu-it-could-have-been- fu...](http://www.fewt.com/2010/03/bye-ubuntu-it-could-have-been-fun-but.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> what a lousy maintainer

<comment><USER31> I think he made a bad choice and didn't like his responses either, but from that, on one bug report, to 'lousy maintainer' is pretty harsh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I added a complaint to the bug report

<comment><USER32> No, that's not where complaints go.

Bug reports should hold information that explains how to fix the bug or how to reproduce it. A complaint that says "me too! hurry up and fix it!" adds nothing useful and pollutes the rest of the helpful posts there.

Post your "me too!" comments on the Ubuntu forums. That's the place for them. Failing that, the "This bug affects me too [change]" button is more than willing to listen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This must be why the iPad doesn't have user runnable scripts.

</comment><comment><USER34> Uh, Seriously? Why would you run any command without knowing its purpose? Should they also disable 'rm' because idiots wipe their system with that as well?

Sure the maintainer is being a bit lazy about the issue but everyone always thinks their problems are the most important in the world. Everyone criticizing him is failing to question whether he may have more critical bugs, ones where a stupid user isn't involved.

<comment><USER35> Name any commonly used Linux executable that deletes the server root when run without any arguments, with no confirmation or warning.

It's a little unexpected.

Even after reading the script, you may not catch the fact that not setting the right environment variable causes massive damage--it's not documented anywhere.

<comment><USER36> This isn't on Linux, granted, but killall will ignore its arguments and kill _ALL_ accessible processes on a number of other UNIX-like OSes (such as Solaris).

<comment><USER11> I'd consider the name _killall_ to be both an explanation and a warning. But yeah - I made that mistake once on Solaris. That's why you should never have applications like that. Even _shutdown_ needs some option for scheduling when it should work.

<comment><USER37> Even then - neither killall or shutdown is as serious as deleting the root partition. It's the difference between a reboot and a complete reinstall/restore from backup.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unions in the 21st century: A potent weapon against inequality - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/09/03/unions-in-the-21st-century-a-potent-weapon-against-inequality/ <comment><USER2> I've been invited to join unions a number of times over my career and despite supporting collective efforts, and have declined every time.

In manual labour industries where the difference between a good worker and a poor worker is a similar unions make sense. For example, a new bricklayer may lay 10 bricks an hour, while a quality bricklayer may lay 60 bricks an hour. But there will still be a limit on how much 'better' someone can be than someone else.

However, in white-collar jobs the difference in out put between a poor worker and a good worker can be astronomical - hence the myth of the 10x programmer. Personally, I am pretty good programmer to the point where I'm now running a start-up and doing quite well. When I came across management that treated me poorly, I left and found a better job - I didn't need a union.

However, far too often I've seen in white-collar jobs where there are unions, they protect people who shouldn't be protected. Poor workers whose output is well below the median, or whose behaviour is professionally terrible. Or they focus on niche issues while ignoring the needs of everyone.

So for me, joining a union would have offered nothing to me, while they can boast greater average output or higher memberships. So why join at all?

If union, especially white-collar/knowledge worker unions, want to become and remain relevant they need to get comfortable setting _minimum_ performance to stay in the union and up hold those performance targets and even pre-emptively sanction underperforming workers _before_ management does.

<comment><USER3> Manual labor Unions set productivity standards to qualify. They demand the appropriate training, where applicable, before such an individual can even join the union.

"The 10x programmer" is a myth, as you yourself acknowledge - there is still a limit to practical human productivity. But I see no acknowledgement of such protections which ensure workers' productivity, and keeping unskilled scabs out of skilled-workers' unions.

Skilled Worker Unions have weathered genuine attacks against such unskilled scabs with audition periods, training requirements, and rigorous professional quotas.

In those cases where Union Coders genuinely suck, it is because the Union was organized without regard to _how such Unions work._

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm concerned with the a priori assumption that inequality of outcome is bad, partly because it leads directly and necessarily to idealistic, and frankly unequivocally unacheivable, communism.

But I'm not trying to argue here, I'm trying to understand. People here that think inequality of outcome is a thing to be fought, help me understand when enough equality of outcome is enough. At what level of outcome distribution will the fight be won? When is the fight concluded and victory acheieved?

Note: it's important to distinguish equality of outcome, which is a belief of the modern left, from equality of opportunity, which everyone on the political spectrum has been in favor of for at least a generation.

<comment><USER5> One possibility might be equal output for a given situation. For example, if a business increases profits then everyone who contributed should benefit. I'm not saying that a factory worker should make as much as the CEO, but they should both share in the reward since they shared in the work

<comment><USER6> And yet I've never heard the counter outcome being discussed. What do you do when the business goes on a down period and there's just enough money to pay the employees but not the owner(s)?

Assuming the employees don't get let go (to have a simple example here), do the employees have to get a negative delta on their salary?

If an owner's pay is the true net post expenses, what if that net amount is $ < 0?

<comment><USER7> I think the answer to this is a bit more complicated, and requires demonstrating how the other answer is also a bit more complicated.

When the business goes up, the first thing that happens should be neither giving money to the owners nor giving money to the employees. It should be putting some money in the bank. The most salient reason for this is that just because the business is up this quarter (or over whatever short-term period is being considered) does not mean that is a stable increase.

Similarly, when the business goes down, the first thing that should happen is neither reducing the pay to employees nor reducing the pay to owners. It should be dipping into savings. That is, in fact, why the savings should be set up in the first place.

With this stated, it should become clearer what the answer to your question really is. Because neither employees nor owners should see an increase in pay until there are _stable_ increases in business over multiple measurement periods, similarly they should not have to see a decrease unless there is a _stable_ decrease in business. And if there is a sustained decrease in business, then there are likely other efforts going on to combat it, both in terms of cutting staff and in terms of finding out why the decrease has happened and trying to reverse it, so any decrease in compensation would not be happening in a vacuum.

The shorter statement that increases in business should result in employee wage increases is not (generally) meant to indicate that every temporary fluctuation in business should ripple to the employees, but rather that they should be given some of the long-term increase, _as opposed to_ the owners getting the entirety of it and the employees getting nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In good old europe 30 days of vacation per year are considered normal. Thanks to unions.

<comment><USER9> It's more like 20-25 paid vacation days per year in most countries. Except Andorra I think

<comment><USER10> Standard is 25 days but that doesn't include public holidays... So 30 days total is pretty normal.</comment></comment></comment>


Network Update: Multihomed, Increased Transit, Peering - <AUTHOR> https://blog.linode.com/2016/11/02/network-update-multihomed-increased-transit-peering/ <comment><USER2> > per-customer VLANs

I am looking forward to that! Linode is my go-to hosting service, but it's a little troubling that anyone in the datacenter can hit your private IPs [1]. On the other hand, maybe it shouldn't matter, and you should always act like the network is compromised. Isn't trusting their private network how Google leaked traffic to the NSA? Still, it seems like a nice improvement that would make compromises less likely.

[1] [https://blog.linode.com/2008/03/14/private-back-end- network-...](https://blog.linode.com/2008/03/14/private-back-end-network- support/)

<comment><USER3> > _On the other hand, maybe it shouldn 't matter, and you should always act > like the network is compromised._

What about cases like AWS's VPCs?

<comment><USER4> To add color to both your comment and parent's.

Everything at Google Cloud is encrypted at rest and in transit [0]. Any GCE project is essentially a VPC by default, and a global one at that [1] (aka no need to VPN between regions). Traffic between GCE zones/regions never hits public wire by default ,and Google will carry your packet to the nearest Google POP around the world on its private backbone [2].

(work at Google Cloud, but not on networking/GCE)

[0] [https://cloud.google.com/security/encryption-at- rest/](https://cloud.google.com/security/encryption-at-rest/)

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/docs/compare/aws/](https://cloud.google.com/docs/compare/aws/)

[2] [http://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure](http://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure)

<comment><USER5> Nice, great information. Google Cloud has the networking model right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I appreciate how transparent they are about their locations, transit and peering.

I'm looking to replace one of my VPS at digitalocean because of stability issues (need to reboot the VM every couple of months, it just entirely drops off the network apparently).

Linode seems like a good alternative. My criteria for this application are ≥ 1G of RAM, SSD storage, fast RTT to my other VPS, native IPv6 support.

</comment><comment><USER7> I fucking love Linode. I've been hosting with them for years and over time I've gotten more performance and more data transfer for the same money.

[https://jsonip.com](https://jsonip.com) is hosted with Linode and supports millions of requests a day. It's been a great home for the service.

<comment><USER8> Just don't store cryptocurrency there:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655137)

<comment><USER9> Don't store it on any cloud service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess it never occurred to me before, but with the increased amounts of attacks lately it's been near the top of my mind. These guys seem to be throwing around the physical addresses of data centers pretty freely. What is the security of these places like? How decentralized are we really? It seems like a few strategic strikes could deal a devastating blow to our edge infrastructure. I know personally, my servers are only hosted in a single datacenter. The company I work for is in 3 datacenters, but I'm not sure the other 2 data centers could handle the full load for an extended period of time if the primary one was completely taken down.

Granted not as big of deal as power plants etc, but if you're looking for soft targets, it's a scary thought.

<comment><USER11> These are all very well-known datacenters with several layers of physical security (there are standards and certifications for datacenters). Their locations aren't exactly secret.

Most datacenters have fences/gates, require access cards and/or biometrics to get in and move around inside the building. Once inside, you can only get into your own cages.

It's not like you can walk up, knock the door in with a battering ram, and then have access to everything inside.

<comment><USER12> >It's not like you can walk up, knock the door in with a battering ram, and then have access to everything inside.

Well, I mean, yes you can. The actual doors/gates used aren't 'milspec' intrusion rated. They're `better-than-home-depot` doors (all steel, steel door frames, reinforced). Cage door are often hilarious flimsy (thing metal sheet/bars).

Certainly breachable by even modestly equipped attackers.

The reason you pick real DCs and not the basement of your fortified house is because there's human security in addition to the physical security measures. Which means, some one will notice if you try to bust down the door

<comment><USER13> And here I thought the reasons to choose a DC over my basement was multi- homing, abundant bandwidth, redundant air conditioning and battery/diesel electrical backup.

<comment><USER12> We were talking about security...

But yes, it's almost like DCs were built with this in mind. Wh would've guessed...

<comment><USER13> Security in my basement > Security in average data center. Similar quality locked doors. No visitors. Armed response by owner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are they still running a hard-to-audit ColdFusion CMS?

<comment><USER15> Wanted to know that as well. They were making a major rewrite. Not sure if it is finished yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is good news for their users, incl. us given the frequency of DDoS attacks lately. There has been hardly a month go by without their status page flagging an incident report involving increased traffic to one of their datacentres as a result of a DDoS attack.

</comment><comment><USER17> "we now manage our own true service provider network, allowing us to deliver robust and reliable connectivity."

What's needed to combat DDoS attacks is distributed defense. Without their own backbone / private transport links between all of their locations, their network is just a disparate set of data centres and there is no advantage to their having multiple locations, so far as protection from DDoS attacks are concerned.

They also fail to mention what capacity each of the links are. They could be anywhere from 1Gbps to 100Gbps, but I presume they'd mention as a selling point anything 40Gbps and up, so let's assume they're using all 10Gbps links and not 1Gbps to give them the benefit of the doubt. So, they range from 50Gbps (Singapore) to 100Gbps (London) per location.

It's an impressive list to look at in aggregate, but not really that much for any one location in 2016, especially given a company of their size and visibility, when you can rent shared access to a 200Gbps+ botnet for $19.99. [https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/20161015_Winward_T...](https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/20161015_Winward_The_Current_Economics_v1.pdf)

Instead of buying transit from up to 7 carriers per location, when there are starkly diminishing returns after 3 or 4 so far as routing performance is concerned, they should have instead bought higher capacity to each provider (to ensure at least 10Gbps of unused capacity per provider outside of regular legitimate traffic), external DDoS mitigation, or domestic backbone links and turned up more capacity at the LA Any2 (for Asia) and NYIIX (for Europe) to absorb the majority of DDoS traffic which comes from those regions. With up to 7 carriers, they simply have 7x different points of failure each at only 10Gbps, while getting worse deals on transit pricing due to lower volumes with each provider.

<comment><USER18> You don't need a private backbone to be able to mitigate attacks across multiple locations. I've done it fighting off multi-hundred Gbps attacks and it was never an issue. You can QoS your own intra-site GRE tunnels.

Linode is moving 200-300 Gbps globally. That is about 37.5 Gbps per location, and when you figure in a 20% utilization (because you need to be able to burst)... they have about 300 Gbps of transit per location. Spread across 3-5 carriers I would guess they have 40-100 Gbps from each. Way more than your estimated 10 Gbps.

As far as "routing performance" they appears to be buying from a few Tier 1 networks per location, and a mix of regional Tier 2s. That is in line with best practices. Sometimes to reach the right networks you do need to spin up circuits with multiple Tier 2s, there is no such thing as "diminishing returns" if you are doing traffic engineering properly.

The right way to build networks is to meet your performance needs first and foremost, have enough headroom to grow and serve your customers, and work with your upstreams to manage incoming attacks. An external scrubbing service makes no sense when you can adapt your network as Linode has done so they can easily blackhole targets at their upsteams edge.

I applaud their efforts. This is some smart network engineering.

<comment><USER17> Why the heck would you send traffic out transit links using GRE tunnels, when it's more cost effective and you have more control over your own private backbone links? At the scale I speculated 1/10th of what you're suggesting, it would have already been cost effective to operate a backbone. If they're anywhere near the scale you're suggesting, then it should be a no brainer for them to operate their own backbone of 100Gb waves.

I'm quite skeptical of the numbers you're citing though. Their PeeringDB profile suggests they only have 10-20Gbps of peering per city. Considering their profile was updated just a few days ago, I would be inclined to consider those listed capacities accurate. Although they mention 'hundreds of Gbps' of capacity per city, they also mention sending up to 50% of traffic through peering in London, where they only have 50Gbps of total peering capacity. Perhaps you're right on that 300Gbps of capacity per location, in which case they would run much lower utilization rates on transits than peers. But that would be even worse allocation of spending than in my initial assessment, considering the cost of a port at an exchange is much cheaper than a transit link with CDR. It also leaves them highly vulnerable to DDoS attacks through exchanges.

For a content network, public peering at exchanges in North America just with route servers and networks that have open policies would result in 30-40% of traffic going through the exchange. They would easily do more traffic at the exchange than any one transit in a mix of 3-4, let alone in a mix of 5-7.

With any significant private peering, easily 60% of traffic could be settlement free. And guess what, most significant peers require peering at multiple locations with a full set of prefixes, which requires you have a backbone. With the traffic levels you're suggesting they run, they should be able to negotiate settlement free peering with many major regional Tier 2's, making it even less sensible to be purchasing from multiple ones. Considering most Tier 2's within a given region will all peer with each other, there are very few improvements to be had by turning up additional ones. Where there's the most room for improvement is being on the right long haul fiber paths. In which case, given their North American focus, they should be buying from Level3 and they probably could at comparable rates to their current agreements by concentrating more of their commits at fewer providers. If they had their own transport, they could also determine which fiber paths they take across their backbone to ensure optimal latency. Beyond that, given that Tier 1's all peer with each other by definition, it's just a matter of dumping traffic out any one of them for local traffic without traversing a congested peering link. The microseconds it takes to go an extra AS hop within a city has indistinguishable impact on performance.

I'm not sure what best practices you're referring to. Who else can you name that utilizes up to 7 transit providers in a given city, without operating their own backbone? The only one that I can personally think of Internap, when they abandoned building their own backbone halfway through turning it up. Ask their former network engineers, from their golden years when they had their highest market share, how that worked for their network and for their business.

Are you a current Linode customer in one or more locations? If you were, you'd probably have experienced packet loss issues on a regular basis due to DDoS attacks. There's a reason why they're performing these network upgrades; they've had near daily network interruptions due to DDoS attacks since Christmas of last year, with some outages lasting up to almost a day. Smart network engineering would have never let their network become that unreliable in the first place. And if you were going to blame a lack of budget for that, my suggestions would be even more appropriate for them as they would them to scale their network in a much more cost effective way. An external scrubbing service makes sense, when they've been ineffective at mitigating attacks to date. Your network is only as resilient towards DDoS attacks as your weakest links, and spreading out capacity to a larger number of providers instead of concentrating higher capacities with fewer ones makes it much easier to saturate connectivity to one of them.

The only way Linode's current network strategy makes sense, assuming that it's not due to technical oversight, is if it's marketing driven. That's a fair reason, but it should also be fair to call them out on it. I'm not sure why you feel that strategy is in any way optimal, when it's the opposite of the models of hosting companies most renowned for their networks. Take for example SoftLayer, who went to great lengths to build out their own backbone fairly early on. I may halfheartedly agree that Linode's network upgrade strategy might be smart marketing, but I would wholeheartedly disagree that it's smart network engineering. It's not cost effective, is sub-optimal for resiliency against attacks, and fails to leverage peering effectively.

<comment><USER18> > Why the heck would you send traffic out transit links using GRE tunnels

I was responding to your statement that you needed a backbone to be able to deal with DDoS attacks. That is simply untrue. Most hosting providers announce separate space from each location and do not backhaul. If you do want to sink attacks closer to the source (which in itself only really makes sense if you have highly diverse POPs) you can GRE the clean traffic between sites.

Your PeeringDB profile indicates you push 10 Gbps at peak. As this is getting quite long in the tooth for a HN thread, email me next time you are in the bay area. I'd happily share some operational tips for running high volume and attack sinking networks that really require a whiteboard. Heck, maybe we can get someone from Linode to join us too for beers. :)

<comment><USER19> We're usually around at nanog!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of DigitalOcean in 2015. Curious what a "per-customer VLAN" is in reality.

<comment><USER21> Maybe one way to describe MPLS is its kinda a VPN for VLANs. Or a way to put VLANs in something like a VLAN sorta.

I can't speak for them but I worked at what boils down to a semi competitor a decade ago doing network stuff. MPLS is old stuff now and you can google the specific cisco model numbers and MPLS if you'd like to read configuration guides.

Superficially only having 4096 VLAN labels on an ethernet connection appears to be a big problem if you have more than 4096 customers. However MPLS label space is 20 bits so you're good to a million customers.

Then you have some "fun" mapping games such that your router connects traffic on MPLS label 123456 (which is your customer number) to local ethernet interface port wtf on vlan 100 or whatever you have been given.

At least that would have been cutting edge a decade ago and probably still is today.

Its unlikely to be any more, or any less, secure than anything else in a virtualized cloudy environment.

<comment><USER11> > _Or a way to put VLANs in something like a VLAN sorta._

802.1ad, a.k.a. "Q-in-Q" [0]

> _However MPLS label space is 20 bits so you 're good to a million > customers._

VXLAN, cf. RFC 7348 [1], is the latest coolness, allowing for up to 16M "virtual" networks (using 24 bits) and bridging layer 2 over IP (4789/UDP).

[0]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.1ad](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.1ad)

[1]: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7348](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7348)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Know of a service to notify of new books by author? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a service that will notify me via email when an author I like has a new book out.  Ideally this would be hooked into Amazon since I get all my books through there but I don't think they have this.  Right now I accomplish this by continually polling Amazon's author pages or by signing up to the individual author's email newsletters.<p>If this doesn't already exist, any idea where I might get the data to build something simple?  Some sort of publisher/bookseller data dump, or, even better, API service... I doubt Amazon would appreciate me scraping their site for the info. <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure Amazon recommendation service does this. Or you could login to your account to tweak it show this happens.</comment>


The Internet Can't Save Us from Loneliness in Pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-internet-cant-save-us-from-loneliness-in-pandemic-11583958251 <comment><USER2> Unfortunately vr isn't readily accessible to everyone. Out of all my virtual interactions vr has been the most human.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mirror: [http://archive.md/oFjix](http://archive.md/oFjix)</comment>


Imagine 1985 heard 2015 would have AIDS cures, gay marriage and a black president - <AUTHOR>

If you took your DeLorean back in time to 1985, and you told someone, "In the year 2015, we'll have an effective treatment for AIDS, gay marriage will be the law of the land, and a black man will be president," your interlocutor would probably assume that you live in a perfect Star Trek future, where all racism and discrimination have been made obsolete. After all, you even have a portable, handheld supercomputer that can diagnose health issues. Two things are undoubtedly true: 1) The world CAN change. 2) We still have much to do. <comment><USER2> Cure for AIDS? Is this Hyperbole or was there some news I missed?

<comment><USER3> "Effective treatment" rather than "cure".

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

The results of antiretroviral drugs have been astonishing, and most people with a new HIV diagnosis for whom multidrug antiretroviral therapy is available (and who comply with it) will never expect to develop AIDS symptoms.

"Effective treatment" is in the body of the post, while "cure" is in the title, and is misleading.

<comment><USER4> agree, nowadays HIV infection is a kind of chronic condition, far removed from what it used to be

<comment><USER5> We've spent a fortune on AIDS research in the past 30 years. Why wouldn't we expect to have treatments?

[http://blogs.poz.com/peter/assets_c/2009/03/NIH_AIDS_Researc...](http://blogs.poz.com/peter/assets_c/2009/03/NIH_AIDS_Research_Budget- thumb-540x367-2.gif)

We could do so much more research for all diseases. Personally, in 1985, I would have expected cancer, AIDS, and many other major disease to all be cured by now. It's actually depressing how much work remains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "black president"

I'm not sure why this is even relevant. I don't care who is president (ethnicity,gender etc), as long as they can run the country. Focusing just on race is part of the problem. We need to be focusing on the best person for the job.

<comment><USER3> It would still have been surprising in 1985.

Gallup has been tracking people's willingness to vote for members of various demographic groups since 1937 (!).

[http://www.gallup.com/poll/3979/americans-today-much-more- ac...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/3979/americans-today-much-more-accepting- woman-black-catholic.aspx)

[http://www.gallup.com/poll/155285/atheists-muslims-bias- pres...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/155285/atheists-muslims-bias-presidential- candidates.aspx)

[http://www.gallup.com/poll/183713/socialist-presidential- can...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/183713/socialist-presidential-candidates- least-appealing.aspx)

They've changed the questions in the survey somewhat over time. (I'd love to see all of the historical data in this survey.)

If you think that any of these things is irrelevant to someone's being president, and you think the poll is accurate (so people don't overstate or understate their opposition to having presidents with particular characteristics), these are probably the numbers that you should be worried about if you hope people will focus on the "best person for the job". After all, lots of people in each year have told Gallup that they would be moved by these factors -- many of which you may see as irrelevant.

<comment><USER5> 79% in 1987 was probably high enough to win. Jesse Jackson ran in 1984 so it wasn't a foreign idea. I'm sure a well-spoken Harvard graduate could have won then too.

"The willingness to vote for a black for president was at 37% in 1958, when Gallup first included the category in its survey tests. That number rose through the 1960s and into the 1970s, although, as recently as 1987, only 79% of Americans said they would vote for a black person for president. By 1997 that number had risen to 93%, and it is now at 95%."</comment></comment></comment>