WordPress is now 13 years old - <AUTHOR> https://wordpress.org/news/2003/05/wordpress-now-available/ <comment><USER3> A few free safety and performance tips when dealing with wordpress:

\- Whitelist IPs for access to your wp_admin and wp_login.

\- If you have the skills to automate WordPress updates yourself, remove all write access (except for the uploads folder) from the user WordPress is running as (i.e. www-data). It's all just unzip and untar over the structure of the directory anyways.

\- If you remove write access, you might as well block the "cron" as well.

\- Limit the WordPress DB user to the usual crud operations; don't let it create or alter tables.

\- If you feel like getting really into it, whitelist explicit URLs. Maintaining it isn't really too hard, and it reduces your attack surface significantly.

\- Set up even a simple nginx cache in front of WordPress - even a 1-5 minute cache will let your site run on crappy hardware and handle HN or Reddit with a minimum of sweat.

<comment><USER4> May I add a very general tip for web servers? Mount /tmp on its own volume and set the noexec mount flag.

I've seen too many old php apps fall due to files uploaded and executed from /tmp. Bulletin boards, blogs, but this was all 8 years ago.

<comment><USER5>
      nodev,noexec,nosuid

is how I've mounted /tmp (and several others) for going on two decades. I've never been a fan of installers creating a single partition by default and I wish they didn't do it.

Years ago, like you, I saw an out-of-date web app get hit by an exploit but was "saved" because of some of those mount options.

I'm a big fan of SELinux on public-facing servers too (especially web servers, for the same reason), but that's an argument for another day.

<comment><USER4> I wanted to add nosuid too but I kept it simple, thanks for adding your own two cents.

Edit: Also a big fan of SElinux, high five!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The fundamental lesson WordPress taught me is that the product wins over technology. Even back in 2004 it was clear that the internal code wasn't that great. So what? It installed delightfully quickly, and let me create posts with valid markup and good typography right out the box.

And then the community management and plugin/theme ecosystem. For example, Drupal may have a more programmer-approved API, but (at least when I worked with it back in 2011) it was a hundred times more complex to make a custom content-editing form in Drupal than in WordPress. Again, product over technology.

<comment><USER7> I was always a little bit weirded out by features for ease-of-use that required you to go against what the documentation described as security best practices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Say what you will about WordPress - its codebase, security, speed, architecture, DB schema, whatever. Haters are going to hate.

It's a pretty amazing accomplishment what Automattic has done by staying so popular and relevant for so long.

Looking at it from a non-hardcore programmer's perspective:

* Quick to learn backend

* Easy to use plugins for non-devs

* Painfully maintaining backwards compatibility overtime

* It just works. Built to run from basically a potato of a server. E.g.: HTTP/transport check [1]

[1]: [https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/wp- includ...](https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/wp- includes/class-http.php#L430)

<comment><USER9> "Haters are going to hate." \-- by using that phrase you make it sound like people are criticizing WordPress without cause.

I haven't looked into it recently, but as I remember it, in the last 13 years there have been abundant legitimate reasons to criticize WordPress (many in the categories you listed). Yes, some people will hate on something just because they don't like it (regardless of any merit it may have). But I wouldn't lump in all of the people with _legit_ criticisms of WordPress into the same group as "haters".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wordpress is still massively popular and after 13 years, I hope this still isn't true:

<azonenberg> wordpress is an unauthenticated remote shell that, as a useful side feature, also contains a blog

<comment><USER11> The core is hopefully audited and so far except some XSS problems no remote exploits are know for the last few years?

However having an usable remote exploit gives you a shell on more than 20% of the websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember my first install. It was glorious, started posting like a madman. At some time - when gaming Google was the thing, say 2008 - had thousands of sites based on WP.

Then I had my first major vuln and spend my week-end fighting fires. Then I had my first encounter with encoding mess ups... an add-on going wild...

Fond memories...

<comment><USER10> I remember thinking back then, and sometimes now I still do, that I would gladly pay a fee for a togglable feature that let me exclude all wordpress sites in my search results

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> 13 years ago Movable Type and Blogger owned the space. MT was for folks who wanted to install software on their own server, Blogger for those who wanted a hosted option.

Blogger was bought by Google a few months before WP appeared.

<comment><USER14> Fun note: you could let Blogger publish to your own FTP and host it that way and use the site only as the CMS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> oh, wordpress, the burner, breaker of balls, mother of confusion, queen of the seven installs, protector of the bots. blood of my blood, i bow to you and swear my allegiance until the internet shall break.

</comment><comment><USER16> I only recently tinkered with wordpress/buddypress plugins for a hobby site. I can see why it became so popular. It's dead easy to start tinkering because it forces you to learn very little. Just find the place where you want to hook your code, and dump tons of godawful code in there. That means that people use 1000 different styles in their plugins, but its the big price to pay. In comparison, try tinkering with oxwall without digging deep into their object- oriented code.

</comment><comment><USER17> I alternate between thinking how great Wordpress is, and how it isn't so great.

If you hit its (admittedly broad) use case, you are great, but if you go even a little off, its a pain.

<comment><USER18> To me, what's great about WordPress is how they've fostered and managed their community and maintained backwards compatibility to an impressive extent. The code itself on the other hand... oy vey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wordpress is, imo, the reason PHP has historically gotten a bad rap. Needle/haystack/type/performance PHP jibes aside etc etc, WP has been the single point of contact for situations where my company has had to remediate a hack/data breach/script kiddie scrawl. I've seen full hosted servers being unplugged with no comebacks, tens of thousands of dollars in rebuild costs, lost clients due to security concerns.. the culprit? _pointing over there_

The easy retort is "just keep it patched and up to date", natch. The ongoing costs/technical debt involved in maintaining a Wordpress install sometimes ends up being greater than what it cost to roll the thing out.

Wow, I'm getting old and complainy.

<comment><USER20> I think it's more likely that the low barrier to entry required to build a WP site is what has caused these issues, well, in the past, anyway.

What you are describing could be attributed to any poor quality code, it's not specifically WP core that is to blame, but rather poor quality code built on top of it.

In regards to managing WP sites being costly and taking up time, I manage many WP client sites and find the opposite to be true (I did write the code for all of them, though)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wordpress's success has to be down to it's ecosystem. There are other CMSs that are better targeted to more specific uses, but the amount of options and choices to a web designer with Wordpress are unreal.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wow, congrats WP!

</comment><comment><USER23> The problem I have with wordpress - and any php project for that matter - <USER2> that I'm afraid of the code. I've done some template editing for WP and it already scarred me enough.

But maybe I just prefer writing and working in my own familiar codebases instead of spending a small amount of time in that of others, a curse that a lot of PHP developers have (the "I'll write my own framework / cms" curse)

<comment><USER24> Its template system is ugly. There are projects that bring modern templating to WordPress though e.g. [https://github.com/tormjens/wp- blade](https://github.com/tormjens/wp-blade)

Consider though that when its template system was "invented" there wasn't much else available and people back then used to mix code and html all the time (both PHP and ASP developers). In their attempt to keep it backwards compatible we still have to suffer through the template system.

<comment><USER25> Timber does this too if your like your Twig. [http://github.com/timber/timber](http://github.com/timber/timber)

Disclamer: I'm on the dev team

<comment><USER26> Also the [http://roots.io](http://roots.io) project is pretty interesting with their "alternate" template implementation and workflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The community and massive amount of plugins developers created and still create for Wordpress contributes to its success.

Same thing with Minecraft. The huge community of modders pushed Minecraft to be as huge as it is.

Developers flock to both because they themselves can gain recognition and make money off these platforms.

I personally love the success story of both because they both started off small and initially had no intention of getting this big.

</comment><comment><USER26> Anybody attending Wordcamp in Asheville this year?

</comment><comment><USER28> At this point I don't think Wordpress is going to change their codebase into something more modern and secure. Is there any other easy to use blogging platform like it? PHP based because PHP is everywhere, based on a modern framework (symfony2, laravel, etc), jinja-like template system, support for databases other than mysql?

<comment><USER16> > and secure

Given it's popularity , i would assume wordpress is (by sheer force of Trial and error ) the safest choice.

<comment><USER28> Yet the Panama Papers thing happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've started a small WordPress cheatsheet for myself here: [https://github.com/CHH/cheatsheets/blob/WordPress.md/WordPre...](https://github.com/CHH/cheatsheets/blob/WordPress.md/WordPress.md)

More tips always welcome :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure if it's me, but when ever I see WordPress in a news article, the first association is always with 'Mass Hacks'...

<comment><USER30> It's a much safer platform these days...

...most of the sites with really important data have long since migrated away. Haha

<comment><USER24> WordPress itself is not as insecure as people make it to be. Its code base gets a lot of scrutiny and security issues are fixed promptly. The problem begins when you start installing plugins... which most of them are coded by designers-turned-programmers who needed to add a new function to a client#s WordPress site. Reading their code its obvious that they are build by mix and matching tutorial and example code they googled.

<comment><USER7> I haven't dug into any of this stuff, but wouldn't a smartly designed plugin system give plugin code fewer permissions to prevent precisely this sort of issue?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jacob Barnett, boy genius - <AUTHOR> http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/09/01/jacob-barnett-boy-genius/

<comment><USER2> Quote: "Diagnosed with severe autism as a child, Barnett is now 15 and one of the world's most promising physicists"

Translation: "Once again, psychologists confuse sickness and intelligence."</comment>


Death by Gentrification - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/21/death-by-gentrification-the-killing-that-shamed-san-francisco <comment><USER2> "Alejandro Nieto was killed by police in the neighbourhood where he spent his whole life. Did he die because a few white newcomers saw him as a menacing outsider?"

No, he died because: a) police officers are inadequately trained and trigger happy. 50 shots fired by officers. 0 from the victim who had no gun. b) structural and deeply rooted racism in our society.</comment>


Experience with the Mergenthaler Linotron 202 Phototypesetter (1980) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/202/summer.reconstructed.pdf <comment><USER2>
      "Since we began using this program instead of Mergenthaler's
      formatter, most of our "hardware" problems have disappeared.

      ...

      There is also a memory diagnostic sufficiently better than
      Mergenthaler's that the repairman asked for a private copy (which we
      provided, on paper tape)."

Reading this part made me think, "of course! It was written by some of the most brilliant minds at Bell Labs." Many compaines would be lucky to have had software for them written by Bell Labs.

Considering what a piece of junk the 202 and the software running it turned out to be, Mergenthaler would have done better to just give the 202 to Bell Labs for free and opened up all their hardware and software specs to them, on the condition that the Bell Labs team rewrote their software, and made suggestions for improving the hardware, or even paid Bell Labs for the privilege. That would have been a win-win for both companies.

<comment><USER3> Linotype/Mergenthaler shipped 1000's of 202s, they where considered to be very reliable. I used one for about 8 years and never had any problems at all with mine. It sounds like these guys got a lemon machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related video : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVxeuwlvf8w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVxeuwlvf8w)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is great. They replace the software entirely, provide hardware schematics and timing diagram for interfacing, figure out the font format and devise their own fonts. Finally they add a driver to troff - I always wondered at the Mergenthaler Linotron 202 being mentioned in the troff manual.

Note the cost of the Linotron 202 is implied to be relatively inexpensive at $45k without options.

Ken Thompson wrote a disassembler on day one so they could examine the machine code.

Read it! It's full of goodies.

<comment><USER6> Production machine for $45K is a steal. Budgets at Bell were huge.

<comment><USER7> $45K in 1980, or $130K today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reading about all the hardware problems they had getting a printer to work was rather amusing. As I sit here waiting for the photocopier repair man to turn up it's illuminating to contrast the giant steps which have taken place over the last 40 odd years regarding the admittedly extremely difficult technical problem of printing black text and images onto pieces of paper.

<comment><USER9> Amazing video on the history of photocopiers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2NIAD5qn7E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2NIAD5qn7E)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Computerphile interviewed one of the writers of this paper in a series of videos, who explained the brilliant and exiting history of this paper and its recreation, as well as the history of Phototypesetters.

1\. [https://youtu.be/CVxeuwlvf8ww](https://youtu.be/CVxeuwlvf8ww) 2\. [https://youtu.be/XvwNKpDUkiE](https://youtu.be/XvwNKpDUkiE) 3\. [https://youtu.be/HdModNEK_1UU](https://youtu.be/HdModNEK_1UU)

<comment><USER11> In the description of the first video there is the link to the paper about that recreation, it was published in 2013:

[http://www.eprg.org/papers/202paper.pdf](http://www.eprg.org/papers/202paper.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I started reading about Condon and found he had no Wikipedia entry, so I created one at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Henry_Condon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Henry_Condon) ... also the interesting historical engineering philosophy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_engineering)

</comment><comment><USER13> I remember the 202, the sound of the photo paper feeding, and the cracking sound the floppies made at certain times--was it when one was saving fonts to them?

<comment><USER3> I worked as a systems/software engineer at Linotype-Paul in Cheltenham UK, which is where the 202 was designed and built. I worked on tbe hyphenation programs on ut, and wrote a large part of the application used on the Linoscreen 7000 book pagination terminal that was used to drive paginated books into a 202. Tbe Linoscreen 7000 was a derivative of the Datek 7000, aquired (including myself) from Datek systems in Wembly North London. Mergenthaller was our US AGent. I used to have my own 202 taking up a full third of my office. They where incredably reliable, so this story here is an unusual tale. A definate lemon machine.

<comment><USER13> As you say, they were very reliable. I had a lot to do with 202s over several years, and don't remember any problems that resulted from the 202 itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So did phototypesetters basically work like printers, or was the output just used as a "master" to duplicate more copies of things like books using another kind of machine?

<comment><USER13> The 202 ran out "galleys", photo paper maybe eight inches wide. The typical workflow was a) typesetter at a keyboard enters the file, b) program maybe tidies the file up for hyphenation & justification, c) galley run out and proofread, d) corrections entered if needed, e) galleys cut up and pasted onto cardboard pages, f) photographic negatives made from cardboard pages, g) lithographic plates made from the negatives, h) the pages printed.

Items c and d could repeat a couple of times as necessary, and the customer usually had a look at the product as well ("bluelines" produced from the negatives).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> About ten years earlier, in 1970, at Chi Corporation (a spinoff of CWRU) in Cleveland, I used the prototype Harris Intertype phototypesetter. We were one floor below the Harris Intertype Printing Equipment Research Center, and they'd built the first CRT-based phototypesetter. It had a custom CRT one line high and about 12 inches wide, which wrote letters onto photographic paper. The photographic developer, with rollers and tanks of chemicals was built into the machine, so it emitted developed pages. The machine was its own darkroom, with a door so that people could walk inside. This was the prototype of what became the Harris 7000.

Input was via a magnetic tape drive, and fonts were sequences of strokes. John Langner at Chi wrote a program called Procrustes, which took in fonts in some grid format and turned them into a sequence of vectors. There was no need for reverse engineering; this was done with full cooperation from Harris Intertype. There was also a primitive markup language and layout program, all text-driven. All this ran on an UNIVAC 1108 mainframe. Tapes were written on the mainframe and carried to the phototypesetter. The end result was quite good. I still have some manuals printed from its masters.

We also had the first electrostatic printer, built by Clevite/Brush Instruments.[1] This was a small machine which ran paper over a row of tiny pins which could be turned on and off. This placed an electrostatic charge on the slick coated paper, which was then pulled over a tank of liquid containing toner. The toner was attracted to the charge, and was then somehow fused to the paper. The result was more like dark grey on light grey than black on white. Resolution was under 100DPI. This was a prototype.

Al Misek at Chi built a controller for the thing so that it could talk to the 1108. The controller had an early character generator, so it could print text in one rather bad font. It could also do graphics, I wrote software to do 3D plots with it, and still have some of the printouts. I think that's one of my drawings in the Computerworld article [1]; my 3D graphing program was often used as a demo.

Clevite/Brush didn't intend to build a printer. They built chart recorders (like this [2]) to draw plots on paper from analog input data. (That's how you recorded data from experiments and industrial processes back then.) Those devices moved a pen back and forth mechanically, so they had very low frequency response. The electrostatic printer technology was developed for a faster chart recorder. Then someone realized it could do more than draw lines, so they made up a prototype and let Chi use it.

Clevite never did much with that technology, but Versatec did, and for most of the 1970s, electrostatic printers were a popular output device. Quality never got very good, but the machines were fast and not too expensive. "Troff" supported Versatecs.

[1] [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=849&dat=19700225&id=Q...](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=849&dat=19700225&id=Q5obAAAAIBAJ&sjid=v1MEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6030,1625397&hl=en)

[2] [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Clevite-Brush- Instruments-15-6327-10...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Clevite-Brush- Instruments-15-6327-10-Mark-280-Recorder-AS-IS-/262113928622)</comment>


Facebook: fake / not fake - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2016/12/06/facebook-fake-news-survey/ <comment><USER2> Interested to see how accurate this data will be. After all, wasn't it because people couldn't detect fake news that this problem became so widespread in the first place? Wonder if we'll see this get misused as an ersataz 'I don't like the source of this information' button as well?

</comment><comment><USER3> From the examples that mashable shows, it seems more like a measure against clickbait than against fakenews (which ofc uses clickbait)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to learn about their reasoning as to why this could be considered an effective corrective action.

</comment><comment><USER5> Clever, putting your users to work, to improve your product.</comment>


Trees in the database: Advanced data structures - <AUTHOR> http://www.alberton.info/talks <comment><USER2> As an exercise in masochism, I created my own threaded comment system for a social news site I built. This question took me a long time to figure out.

Eventually I found Jow Celko's _Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties_. <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1558609202/>

Highly recommended if you're modeling trees in your database.

</comment><comment><USER3> A brilliant illustration, clear yet concise, too bad there still isn't a clear winner.

<comment><USER4> Just a simple observation on an otherwise brilliant presentation. I had success modelling an organization chart in the past, just by simply adding a reportsTo field in the employee Database! It removed a lot of unnecessary tables in the database.

<comment><USER5> Assuming you have lot's of little tree's in different area's one quick read optimization is have (parent node) and (root node). Writes become a pain but being able to grab most tree's from the DB and update them in code often brings significant speedups.

<comment><USER6> I do that one a lot, since I've yet to need to stick a multi-million node tree in a database. Careful attention to the tree re-assembly algorithm results in an O(n) re-assembly, regardless of the order of the incoming nodes. With a bit more work the same algorithm cost can give you detection of invalid trees; unless you _really_ can't afford to load in whole trees at a time this is as fast as anything else. Ordering of the tree can be provided by either a sort at query time or an ordering parameter in the worst case. (If you use an ordered child representation and append children to their parents in the order you receive them, and you sort the tree nodes by, say, date, then the resulting tree will have all children sorted by date too, with one simple ORDER BY clause. This works great for a comment tree, for instance.)

I consider this the go-to representation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GitHub Down - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com/#14102013 <comment><USER2> Is it really necessary to always broadcast Github being down? They have a perfectly good status page for this express purpose.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's rather sad that DDoS attacks seem to just be the norm at this point.

<comment><USER4> Well, a lot of people are part of a botnet but few can spot that. I am always told that ISP is always being attacked.

<comment><USER3> Everybody is always under attack. The internet is falling to pieces because of botnets, and people forming clans for protection (by which I mean CloudFlare, they're forming CloudFlare)

<comment><USER4> I wonder if we could ever produce a statistics on the financial loss, power consumption of these attacks.

Can you please expand on the cloudflare clan? Sounds interesting!

<comment><USER3> I'm making light of the fact that we repeated the same thing that happened in history. When people started getting attacked, they formed larger groups to defend themselves. and now we're doing that on the internet with things like CloudFlare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. About 20 minutes ago I just finished cloning down linux kernel to my new vm, which was almost 900MB.

I was able to get roughly 1.3MB/s and the connection seen stable. I supposed I was lucky to be serve from a stable server at that time.

 _EDIT_

I thought about contributing after watching this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLBrBBImJt4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLBrBBImJt4)

Gonna fine some low hanging fruit like style fixing and then move my way up!

<comment><USER5> Remember kids, if you're just building there's no need to clone the whole history, a shallow clone of remote HEAD with --depth=1 should suffice.

<comment><USER4> Well, I am contributing to the kernel. But thanks.

<comment><USER6> Best comeback to a patronising response ever!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Conshelf experiments - <AUTHOR> http://www.cousteau.org/technology/conshelf-i-ii-iii/

<comment><USER2> A lot of people talk about interstellar colonization as a path to human survival of mass extinction events.

It seems like if we're serious about that, we'd start by learning how to colonize hostile environments here on Earth, like the ocean floor.

Any long space voyage, even to the outer solar system, will depend on knowing how to put large numbers of people in a self-sustaining sealed environment.

We have the chance to put our engineering skills to the test right now, while conducting overlooked scientific research.

NOAA and NASA are both facing steep budget cuts. Part of me would like to see them integrated, since NOAA uses satellites to study the ocean and astronauts have used the ocean to train for space. It might eliminate some redundancy, help compare priorities, and maybe together they could levy a stronger, joint fight for funding scientific progress.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Conshelf proved that human beings can live under the sea for long periods > of time but that, even though they have the physical and psychological > capabilities, humans are not made to exist in a world without sun._

I wish they'd go into more detail about this. Vitamin D deficiency? The lack of external cues for circadian rhythms?

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Without_Sun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Without_Sun) ? Available at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cIjgL2lkwA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cIjgL2lkwA) . Don't know what details it covers - just found out about it now when researching your question.

Edit: [https://youtu.be/6cIjgL2lkwA?t=1138](https://youtu.be/6cIjgL2lkwA?t=1138) says that the aquanauts take turns 'sunbathing' in UV rays for 10 minutes each day, for health and morale. At around 18:00 "Their sense of time has become hazy. They neglect the clock and the calendar."</comment></comment>


UK Police Accessed Civilian Data for Fun and Profit, New Report Says - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/read/uk-police-accessed-civilian-data <comment><USER2> I'm not at all surprised by this and I doubt many others are, either. There is a long and well-documented history of people abusing their position of power.

That said, I fear that the "the govt/police know everything you do" idea is so commonplace now that people don't care any more. It certainly seems that way amongst my peer group at any rate.

A very sorry state of affairs.

<comment><AUTHOR> > the "the govt/police know everything you do" idea is so commonplace now that > people don't care any more.

It is indeed sad, I know many non-techy people that are not happy about it, but they feel that nothing can be done so they don't bother, even to try and prevent the spread of their personal information to third, fourth etc parties. It seems people don't want to learn anything from their history lessons, everyone just thinks that oppressive regimes are the past and can not be the future and thats understandable - humanity is generally optimistic as well as suffer from end-of-history illusion, but that doesn't mean it can't show its ugly side once in a while.</comment></comment>


Lawyers and accountants are prime targets for cyber attacks - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/f52f6fee-ccf4-11e6-864f-20dcb35cede2 <comment><USER2> paywall

<comment><USER2> I shouldn't have to do any of this (and don't want to). I think pay-walled links should not be allowed on HN.

<comment><USER3> Here's a Tell HN on the topic from a year ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

It's in the FAQ as well.

The submission header includes the site URL. You can avoid clicking on submissions for sites with paywalls you don't have access.</comment></comment></comment>


Javascript Super Mario Kart - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nihilogic.dk/2008/05/javascript-super-mario-kart.html

<comment><USER2> When I first started in IT I worked in a help desk where all day I'd write clones of popular games in Excel with VBA. Half to pass the time, and half to practise and get noticed by the "real programmers"(it worked).

After doing it for a bit I found lots of other people doing the same thing. Now it seems cloning these games in Javascript is all the rage. I think it's a great progression.

*edit: just wanted to add, the reason for using VBA/Excel for me and at least a few of the other people at the time that I found doing it was that our workplaces closely monitored the running applications of lowly helpdesk staff to ensure no slacking but excel was an approved application so seeing Excel in the process list from their admin console was all good.

<comment><USER3> You don't have to excuse using VBA as your first language. I bet you a full third of the readers here got started with VB or VBScript of some sort. It doesn't speak poorly of anyone's skills. It just says you're willing to do the work with the tools you've got.

<comment><USER2> Oh, it wasn't my first language(My grandma bought me Turbo C when I was 12) and I'm not embarrassed really(Excel + VBA is pretty good at what it does), just explaining why I used such a weird setup to write the games in. Someone might be confused about why myself and others choose to use Excel as our development environment.

<comment><USER3> I'd just assumed it to be "I did it in Excel _because I could_ "

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not generaly a client side coder, but stuff like this is the reason I like javascript. Rapid development of fun ideas. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER5> Has anyone coined the term an "adsense tip?" Fun stuff!</comment>


Privacy is dead, Harvard professors tell Davos forum - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/privacy-dead-harvard-professors-tell-davos-forum-144634491.html <comment><USER2> These people quoted aren't just making observations, and are on our side. They're against privacy, whether they want to come across that way or not.</comment>


With Surface Pro, Microsoft Is Trying To Recreate The PC Market - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2014/05/21/microsoft-surface-pro-market-strategy

<comment><AUTHOR> Although I disagree with his conclusion's, he's right about Microsoft's strategy: they're creating a new market with the Surface Pro 3.

In my opinion it will be a massive hit particularly in the Enterprise; just where the MBA/MBP are unusable.</comment>


Netflix Flexes - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2019/netflix-flexes/ <comment><USER2> My takeaway from Bird Box is that if Netflix wants to make any of their original content one of the most-watched media events of the year, they can do it, regardless of the quality of the content itself.

All it takes is for them to slip it in to people's "custom, curated" lists at a higher frequency, and maybe do a little subtle social-media engineering on Reddit/Facebook, and bam: instant box office smash of a derivative film with a 66% on Rotten Tomatoes.

That's a huge "flex". Big studios could pump hundreds of millions into a decent film and still have it flop. Netflix can take a B-movie and make it a sensation with relative ease. No wonder every game in town is trying to break into this model. Why invest millions on a potential flop when you can engineer one with 75% accuracy whenever you wish?

(though maybe I'm being just a bit too paranoid here. I have to admit some of the Bird Box magic stems from its intriguing concept. guerilla marketing doesn't work so well if what you're selling doesn't seem too interesting)

edit: people are debating the idea of "box office smash" here. I didn't use that phrase to emphasize direct earnings as a result of the film (which is "free" to watch if you pay for a subscription). The article addresses this:

> Secondly, and relatedly, Netflix is counting on subscription revenue. To > that end, producing a piece of content that 58% of its subscriber base > viewed in a single month is by definition a triumph (and yes, worth ~$700 > million).

The idea is that Netflix was able to coerce _more than half_ of its subscribers to watch this film. That's crazy. The result, as we see in the article, is a tidal-wave of Bird Box achieving near-meme status. How does that feel to someone who does not have a Netflix subscription? What big joke/story are they missing out on? For only $14.99 a month, they can win social acceptance by being "in the know" of the current big thing.

<comment><USER3> Indian Netflix and Amazon prime are making originals that are border line porn with no story or acting or what so ever. They know one simple thing. Sex sells.

<comment><USER4> Do you have specific examples in mind? I've really liked most of their original content so far, like Sacred Games, Mirzapur, Rajma Chawal, Selection Day, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All the signs indicate that Netflix has become a user hostile company that is prioritising ongoing user engagement and stickiness over their users needs.

It's starting to remind me of another company which at one point in their evolution prioritised user engagement over everything else – Facebook. Once this occurs, it is a long slippery slope which leads to a series of user hostile internal decisions which ultimately leads to the user and their privacy becoming the product.

When you actually pay for Netflix and this is their modus operandi it leaves a large opening for a competitor with a more user-focused approach to come in and gain marketshare.

A few examples of how Netflix is prioritising engagement over their users:

\- Auto-playing shows once a show has finished (this leads lazy users unnecessarily watching more Netflix)

\- Promoting Netflix shows above third party content, irrespective of quality. This prioritises what's best for Netflix instead of promoting the best content for the user.

\- Algorithmically modifying the poster frames / thumbnails of shows to be more appealing to users. Again promoting engagement and misleading users of the true content of the show.

\- Removing the ability to easily see the complete catalogue via comprehensive categories, which enhances the reliance users have on algorithmic suggestions

I'm sure all of this has been tested in Netflix and they can show that these approaches increase stickiness and engagement. Stickiness and engagement is not what is in the users best interest however and over the medium and long term I think it will be detrimental to a better measurement which is user satisfaction.

<comment><USER6> I think their worst decision of late is to include auto-playing "trailers" (with sound!) when you pause for more than a second on a title. Between that and the lack of a decent "browse by category" interface you mentioned, I rarely bother using the TV UI to discover content. Googling "what's good on netflix" works much better for me.

At least you can still disable the auto-play next episode "feature".

<comment><USER7> > auto-playing "trailers" (with sound!)

I've read about this a few times. If you disable it once, does it get disabled permanently? Because Netflix (unlike the Amazon Prime Video ads) never plays trailers with sound for me.

> auto-play next episode "feature"

I'd certainly call it a feature. I'd hate having to manually click every time I want to see a new episode.

<comment><USER8> My TV's Netflix app doesn't have an option to disable the auto-playing trailers, or even just their sound (short of muting the TV). It's quite annoying.

<comment><USER7> ah, okay, that makes sense. Though to be fair, that sounds like a shitty app (one of many reasons I have a dumb TV).

<comment><USER6> Are you able to disable auto-playing trailers, or are you just using the web interface or a smartphone/tablet that don't have this feature in the first place?

I have a recent AppleTV, which doesn't have any way to disable auto-playing trailers. Same for my previous STB (Roku). This is a somewhat new feature, so some older STBs and Smart TVs don't have it, but that's just because they can't be updated to the latest version of the Netflix app.

You can disable auto-play next episode across _all_ interfaces and devices in the settings on netflix.com. I just wish there was an equivalent switch for trailers.

<comment><USER7> Never seen a function to disable trailers completely (my dumb tv is a large, wall-mounted 3rd computer monitor, so I'm using the web interface), but at least they don't play sound which would probably make me cancel my Netflix subscription.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Having dedicated nearly a decade of my life to a startup competing in this space, the OA is right about Netflix's superior strategy when it comes to user experience and content production. Netflix surged ahead of the pack because they focused relentlessly on the quality of the streaming experience while all the legacy players were focused on deal-making. In other words, while Netflix was building a solid video delivery platform, the rest of the industry was fumbling around with biz dev deals like TV Everywhere that have a very low UX ceiling in the best-case scenario.

However that's the past now, and the OA is missing a few trends:

First, Netflix will not maintain its UX lead at the same level for long. Video streaming like all technology is commoditizing, the experience will get better and better from non-tech companies. Meanwhile Netflix is continuing to plow down this path of algorithm-driven engagement and ramming stuff down people's throats with auto-play, bad search, and other dark patterns. Given the current cultural zeitgeist (eg. Facebook backlash), this isn't going to end well if they don't change course.

Perhaps even more important is the fact that Netflix has a long way to go on the production side. There's a lot of volume of Netflix productions, but not a lot of quality. This is where the OA underestimates Disney—their content is way broader and better than Netflix, and people care a lot about that.

Netflix's experimental Interactive content and Reed Hasting's comments about Fortnite also give me pause. This is typical SV-style next-big-thing thinking, but it also represents taking the eye off the ball. Video games are video games, Netflix doesn't know shit about them, and if you ask me they are better off focusing on their core competency versus trying to build a moat with a gimmicky concept.

5 years ago I would have said Netflix has a better chance at becoming a great producer than Disney has at creating a great streaming experience, but now I'm not so sure.

<comment><USER10> I agree Netflix is trending towards failure, but I couldn't disagree more about why and the path leading them there. Netflix is and has been the least attractive of these services for a long time, specifically because other platforms have far expanded inventory and integrate the ability to instantly rent or buy additional content not directly included.

Ultimately what _everyone_ wants is a super easy interface to pay for precise a la carte content, never bundled, never subscription-based. If a given person wants to buy everything from HBO, they still could, and maybe could get a discount for subscribing, but nobody wants to be _forced_ to subscribe to watch just a handful of content items.

It doesn't matter if it's Disney streaming, Netflix, Premier League soccer, or anything else. It's clear rent-seeking to create walled gardens of content only unlockable by bundled subscriptions, and the clear consumer drive existentially threatening the TV industry is that all anybody wants is a dumb pipe with an easy interface to individually purchase each content item on its own merit, flat out.

Many streaming services, particularly Amazon's, offer this to a way higher degree than Netflix, especially in terms of sports access and new release films.

Netflix is betting that it can create locked-in content that will compel people to stay subscribing, but I think this is a long-term failing idea. Bird Box is a great example: really poor production, sloppy writing with contrived villains, lowest common denominator stuff. Stranger Things? I couldn't see one reason to care about it. Not exceptionally bad, just overproduced blandness. The gimmick of making things into viral phenomena is not a stable business plan in this area.

As prices rise, Netflix just becomes another HBO. A walled garden of content, except HBO actually makes good television and knows how to do it. Netflix is trashing its own brand with mindless crap. It's network quality for premium add-on prices. Especially if economic hard times hit, this is exactly something people are going to realize they can live without.

<comment><USER11> _Ultimately what everyone wants is a super easy interface to pay for precise a la carte content, never bundled, never subscription-based._

I 100% do not want this. I want to pay for one subscription to get all the media I want (music, tv shows, movies, books, etc). And I don't care at all about ownership. I'd pay $50-100/month for this subscription, and we're getting close if you don't mind cobbling together a half dozen subscriptions and using a bunch of different apps.

<comment><USER10> You start by saying you don't want a unified interface where you can get exactly the content you want, then your very next sentence is that you want a single unified interface to get exactly the content you want.

It sounds like you specifically _do_ want a single interface for a la carte content (note: this has nothing to do with ownership vs restricted access), and you currently achieve something like this with a combination of subscription products that bundle a bunch of content you do want with a bunch of other content you don't want but also don't care about.

A situation where the price is broken down to individually activate just the content you want and not the content you don't would offer exactly the same experience but with less irrelevant content and you'd only pay for what you choose to consume.

In other words, the concept of "I pay for one subscription and get exactly and only all the content I personally want" is equivalent to a unified portal for a la carte purchasing.. activating an on-going payment for ability to see Show A and never activating the same payment for Show B which you don't care for. The "subscription price" is just the total price of your personal a la carte activations (be they ownership purchases, rentals, or recuring payments to license access to that singular content).

At any rate, your comment here is explicitly contradictory.

<comment><USER11> You've misread my comment. The unified interface part is not what I objected to.

I explicitly do NOT want to pay a la carte. I understand what you're saying about only paying for what I consume and not paying for any irrelevant content.

And yet, I _prefer_ a subscription, even if the total cost is higher. I don't want the cognitive overhead of constantly trying to decide if it's worth a little bit of money to purchase or rent a specific piece of content. I'd much rather pay a flat fee once per month for all-you-can-consume access. If we were talking about something very expensive, then my position might differ, but in the grand scheme of things, this is relatively trivial, so I'm happy to pay a few extra bucks to not think about it as much.

<comment><USER10> > "I don't want the cognitive overhead of constantly trying to decide if it's > worth a little bit of money to purchase or rent a specific piece of > content."

But you already engage with this decision-making overhead when deciding what to watch and not watch. It's built into any viewing system whether it's all- you-can-watch after entry in a portal or not.

Also I hardly believe you never purchase on-demand content _at all_ , especially since no combination of subscription services currently covers everything, and large chunks of content still can only be purchases in an on- demand fashion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My takeaway from Birdbox is the old adage: "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes."

Sure it got tons of views because of all the advertisement and the tons of focus on viral media advertisement on every single platform. But the reaction from people watching it before me when asked if it was good was "Well I mean, I did watch it to the end, but i wouldn't call it good". Personally I didn't care for it. It was a huge and expensive stunt by Netflix to show that they could game viewer numbers for a one-shot thing. And I get that this is an important thing for them to do, but it's in no way sustainable or valuable either to them or their viewers.

If they did more stunts like bird-box throughout the year, most would quickly start to completely ignore them with an attitude of "Oh sure I head about X, and it's "blowing up on facebook" but that's always the case with Netflix focus pieces, they aren't worth watching though."

<comment><USER13> For me it was: "Cool, this is some decent new content from something I was already paying for."

Perhaps if I wasn't already a subscriber and the social media hype led me to subscribe I would be disappointed, but for an existing subscriber? I'll keep my auto-renew going.

<comment><USER14> For me, it was the time to ask myself seriously if I should cancel the subscription. The "decent new content" is subjectively mediocre and most of what I see in the catalog is mediocre or worse. I have just 3 TV series I enjoyed in the past year, 2 are British weird stuff and one is Altered Carbon, all were ok, nothing great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article made a great point about TV Everywhere and the inconsistency of app logins. This is something we encounter with apps like the History Channel app, for example. it wants us to log in, go to history.com/activate, but doing so brings up a blank screen or some bizarre error message. I've been trying to authenticate with DirecTV Now, which should be supported and is on the list, but it just sits there. Is it a problem with pihole? unlock origin? Safari? Tried Firefox and Chrome, and same issue. Not a good user experience.

Logging in with a friends credentials for a tv provider she cancelled over a year ago still worked, oddly enough.

Netflix has been way more attractive, even with the slight price hike. Hulu as well.

<comment><USER16> Something that bugs me a slight bit in the TV app diaspora was that one of the original Hulu mandates back when it was a GE project was to be a strong software provider for TV frontends and backends; that as much as Hulu would be a thing itself there'd also be "Powered by Hulu" opportunities to avoid every TV app having an entirely different experience or missing some should-be standard backend/frontend features.

It shouldn't be a surprise that that original vision was somewhat lost when Comcast bought NBC/Universal and gained a huge stake in Hulu, but it's still a shame that we don't have more "powered by Hulu" apps per that original vision. I still don't understand why NBC/Universal's Seeso attempt wasn't "powered by Hulu" given how central NBC/Universal was as a Hulu content partner (nor why Hulu didn't just inherit the majority of Seeso content when they got bored with the experiment), and that's a large part of why I didn't bother with Seeso. I guess I'm still often angry at the CW for dropping Hulu support for their own app which is just full of technical papercuts that Hulu fixed a long time ago; I would mind the CW app less (even if it was still a separate app) if it was at least "powered by Hulu" and had some of the backend streaming tech improvements, UX improvements, and commercial volume smoothing tech that Hulu uses.

Disney+ supposedly is using backend tech/knowledge from ESPN+, so it won't be entirely from scratch, but with Disney now being majority owner of Hulu, again it seems a shame that it probably won't just be "powered by Hulu", and is likely yet another case where we'll see bugs and UX papercuts that the industry as a whole could have worked to fix together instead of each their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would only speak anecdotally and from what I've observed from people I know. Thus I don't try to infer anything at all, but at least locally I've found it remarkable: in a couple of years, Netflix has become synonym of _streaming_ in their mind, it has really become _a thing_. They are watching Netflix movies and series a lot, mainly because there are on Netflix, good or bad, indiscriminately, and even more surprisingly, they are discussing about them. It seems to me some people really like Netflix, the service, like some people like Amazon Prime, the service. Netflix seems to have succeeded in building a relationship with them.

</comment><comment><USER18> I find this to be off-base in a number of ways, starting with the premise that Netflix is a two-sided platform like Facebook, Google and Amazon.

Netflix used to be a distributor. It paid content owners to license its back catalog which no longer had any value in primary channels, namely cinemas. It then charged users for access. In contrast, two-sided Facebook's user do not pay anything, but the advertisers pay for access to them. The relationship is roughly the reverse.

Netflix also do not have suppliers that build up the attractiveness of the platform to end users. Netflix paid for back catalogs. Amazon doesn't pay its merchants. Today, Netflix is both a distributor and a producer. This doesn't make Netflix twice as strong but introduces a number of dilemmas into the organization. In the same way that Disney would look to external distribution channels to maximize the return on its investment in content, Netflix now has the same incentives. Netflix has no suppliers in the sense of Amazon - it pays for all the productions on its platform. It supplies itself.

In fact, they could theoretically make more by having staggered releases where premium channels like cinema receives new titles first. Why? First, because a single ticket to the cinema costs more than a month's subscription to Netflix. Second, because the direct income from Bird Box is $0.

Certainly Bird Box has a positive effect on subscriptions but it can only be inferred. This is an enormous problem. How can you justify spending say $100 on a production which could directly generate $700M at the box office, and then just release it to a limited audience? There are going to be numerous internal battles over this. I bet we'll see Netflix go for wide cinematic release of some titles.

Another issue is capital. Not only does Netflix has to produce content from which there is no direct return. They also have to market it. A $100M production may receive half or the same amount of spend on marketing. They have to build IP that is as relevant as Marvel. In summary, the challenges Netflix has is contradictory incentives between distribution and production, mastering the art of production and building of IP, and spending on marketing new productions.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have been a Netflix subscriber for over 5 years now, but seldom use it anymore.

Most streaming is via Hulu (commercial free) or Prime in our house nowadays.

I don't have children, but I could see how having the Disney catalog would be enticing to parents of young children.

Also, strange the article did not mention Fortnight, by name, as a competitor.

<comment><USER20> I honestly don't think a Disney streaming platform should scare Netflix that much. You can get the entire classic Disney DVD back catalogue for ~£200, why would parents buy a streaming service for £10-20/month for years on end?

And that's the whole classic catalogue - when you bear in mind that kids will happily watch the same old Frozen DVD over and over again, I don't see it as a huge compelling offering. Even adding all of Marvel, I still believe people will prefer to pick and choose their favourite individual media over an expensive subscription.

It's the continuous flow of new and unique TV/movies that is really working for Netflix. Disney just don't output anywhere near the same content hours to make a subscription worthwhile, and kids probably wouldn't care even if they did.

<comment><USER21> Disney are much, much bigger than you seem to think. They own Pixar, Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios. They already own a large chunk of the US cable TV market, including ABC and ESPN. They have just gained regulatory apprival to buy 21st Century Fox. They aren't newcomers to streaming, because they have a 30% stake in Hulu, which will increase to 60% after the Fox deal is completed. They also own BAMTech Media, which provides streaming video services for the MLB, the NHL, the PGA Tour and WWE.

Netflix should be very, very worried about Disney's streaming ambitions.

<comment><USER20> The sport is probably the most interesting out of all of those mentioned. There will always be a market for sports subscriptions, so they could have a very competitive offering there that Netflix aren't even involved in.

Marvel, Lucasfilm, etc. I'm still not seeing it. Two or three movies a year that I can pick up on DVD/Bluray cheaper. And that's if they're even worth buying on DVD after having watched them once in the cinema. Marvel movies have been wearing fairly thin, and Star Wars is showing similar fatigue.

I'm not saying they won't have a big market, Disney are huge afterall. I'm just saying that I really don't see them as strictly a direct Netflix killing competitor. They're in a slightly different game, content-wise, and Disney's biggest enemy will be itself.

<comment><USER22> > Marvel movies have been wearing fairly thin

Outside of your bubble, Infinity War is the highest-grossing film of all time. (With Black Panther following in 2nd or 3rd place if I'm not mistaken.)

Sure, Marvel does not particularly contribute to the pantheon of cinema, but it's nowhere near "wearing thin" commercially. Quite the contrary actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've said this before, but I expect Netflix to continue to flex their muscle until they have an average subscription cost of $35-40/month.

There's so much room in the entertainment market for them to save customers $50/mo, offer them more, and increase their revenue.

<comment><USER24> The market is on its way to fragmentation as more content producers move to have their own apps instead of going through an intermediary. And they all want $10-$15 a month. It won't be long before people refuse to pay for more apps, as the total cost of both the Internet connection and all app subscriptions surpasses the price they used to pay for cable. That is what limits the price any one app can charge.

<comment><USER25> Perhaps. But we just recently tried CBS's streaming service, and it was _terrible_. AFAICT, only 720p, and the encoder they used appears to have had the quality set to "potato" (blurry, tons of what look like interlacing jaggies during rapid motion). It made me really appreciate how good of a job Netflix is doing on the technical side of things.

<comment><USER24> I have not seen it myself, but CBS is the clear loser of all the apps. They seem to be trying to build a pay service on the back of Star Trek (maybe they think the Internet is just for nerds?) and everything else they have is free content OTA anyway.

<comment><USER26> Yep, besides, why not just watch the OG Star Trek reruns (if they still do that, I don't really follow Star Trek anymore) or pirate if the app is so crappy? And OTA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Netflix is so confident in its position it is effectively stating that if customers choose to watch TV, they will choose Netflix."

That is, until they stop choosing Netflixt.

I cancelled my Netflix account a week ago after finally realizing what a huge time suck it has become in my life. I know I'm just one data point but I'm pretty sure others will come to that conclusion eventually.

<comment><USER28> I was an early Netflix adopter and evangelist to family and friends. I canceled my account months ago last time they had a price increase and haven't missed it. I got sick of spending more time scrolling through uninspiring content looking for something to watch than actually watching enjoyable content.

I see a flaw in a lot of subscription models in that they lead to companies optimizing for "engagement" rather than maximizing the value of my time as a consumer. In theory this seems like it shouldn't be fundamental to a subscription model in that Netflix's costs could be lower if they offered me less but higher quality content but in practice it doesn't seem to work out that way.

Netflix might be right that if people choose to watch TV they'll choose Netflix. I chose not to watch TV any more rather than switching to another provider.

<comment><USER29> > I see a flaw in a lot of subscription models in that they lead to companies > optimizing for "engagement" rather than maximizing the value of my time as a > consumer

This is really interesting. I suppose the question is how do you measure value delivered?

Typically people show that they value something by paying for it. Normally you pay for goods with money, but many subscription services and F2P games are happy for you to pay with time. I feel like using "time paid" is a valid proxy for how much value customers get from the service. What doesn't make sense to me is why it appears that so many people value their (free) time so lowly.

Perhaps if Netflix offered a second PPV service its recommendation engine would have different incentives. With that model you also have payment friction and discovery friction. But honestly I'm not sure why they don't do it -- Amazon has been for a while.

<comment><USER28> It seems like there's something misleading going on with the paying with time trend. Companies can increase "engagement" for a while by making their experiences waste more of their users' time. There's a frog boiling effect where people don't really notice incremental changes but one day suddenly realize the service doesn't seem like a good use of their time any more and they ditch it completely. This has happened to me with Netflix, Facebook and Instagram and while it's not super common yet there does seem to be a bit of a trend of early adopter types ditching these services.

From the company's point of view this might look like a positive trend in engagement followed by a sudden hard to explain complete drop off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Netflix should create less content, not more. I find it low quality and will discount titles with Netflix logo that otherwise look interesting. I'm also a Mubi and Amazon Prime subscriber. It's surprising to hear the original content is working for the company.

<comment><USER31> I don't see how they could pursue anything but that considering how they probably won't be able to license the shows of other streaming services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I actually really enjoyed Bird Box. It's the closest thing we've got to a Lovecraft horror film.

</comment><comment><USER33> A lot of observers, especially on HN, worry about the balkanization of video streaming content and see it as hindering Netflix's growth. In my opinion, I don't really see it. When the dust settles I think we'll see Netflix and Amazon as the duopoly of this era of video streaming.

I don't think Disney's streaming service is out to compete with Netflix directly, to me it's more of a play to leverage the Disney brand and ensure they still have a 1:1 relationship with the consumer. Look at it this way, dozens of journalistic outfits have gone by the wayside in the era of Facebook and Google, but the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are not trying to compete by being aggregator platforms like Facebook and Google, instead they are leveraging and monetizing their goodwill and reputation by putting up paywalls, I see Disney doing the same for their content. Also, Disney (smartly) is going to hedge their bets and continue to put new original content on ABC, ABC Family, movie chains, etc. They are not playing the same game as Netflix. The same can be said for Hulu, yes Hulu has more original content -- but at the end of the day Hulu is mainly a channel for the traditional networks to get their hit shows on a streaming platform ASAP from original air date.

As long as Netflix keeps their debt under control, they will continue to grow and have a lot of room to keep raising their prices. Netflix is still drastically cheaper than the cheapest cable bundle, even if you combined a Netflix subscription with Amazon, HBO, Hulu, etc.

<comment><USER34> FWIW, Netflix will no longer be able to license Daredevil shows from Marvel / Disney. I think a lot of folks signed up for Netflix to watch that catalog of films and shows specifically, including the latest Avengers and whatnot.

I think the more likely scenario is Hulu goes away and we're left with Amazon, Disney/ESPN and Netflix. And HBO, of course.

<comment><USER35> Disney has a large stake in Hulu, due in part to the Fox acquisition. Moreover, Disney+ will focus on kids and family content, they will need Hulu to provide the network TV along with more adult focused content. Per Disney's own admission, Hulu will partner with their streaming service and will likely not go away anytime soon.

<comment><USER36> Yep, they already own a 30% stake which will become a controlling stake (60%) provided the Fox buy closes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> offtopic, are the diagrams made in photoshop or something more approachable?

</comment><comment><USER38> Netflix gradually turned from bad to worse. First they pushed DRM into HTML standard. Then they joined the MPAA cartel. Nothing good should be expected on that trajectory.

<comment><USER39> 0.01% of customers care about that and less than 1% could even decipher those acronyms.

<comment><USER31> That is not a measure of moral good or bad. It sucks that it doesn't matter.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook in 30 years (pic) - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/tech/facebook/facebook-in-30-years-334419.php

<comment><USER2> Do you think that FB will last 30 years? I don't.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you maintain Inbox Zero daily? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for specific techniques/psychological tricks you use. I'm aware of the general principles like filtering out spam, unsubscribing from useless information, etc. Beyond that, is there anything unique you're doing that has helped you? <comment><USER2> I wrote a blog a few years ago analyzing my inbox[1] (I've done much more since), I recommend you spend time doing the same. What hit me, was that I didn't need to cut down on email, or ignore stuff - I needed to maximize my time. With that, here is what I did:

1\. Unsubscribe from useless or even useful information you don't have time to read

2\. Prioritize email first. That's probably your primary way to communicate professionally, be tidy and respond quickly.

3\. I noticed that I needed to cut down on vising RSS readers, instead I had what I want to follow sent to my inbox.

4\. I wrote a series of apps trying to turn my inbox into my news feed (but better), it made it easier to me to go through. Similar, to the people (all of us here) probably visit HN or Reddit to cruise through and get informed, and interact. Originally, I wrote something to send me jokes[2], then interesting stories & investment information [3]

5\. I laid out my inbox so I can quickly prioritize. For instance my gmail had different domains organized on the right (3 - 4) and the center was all email. This let me target the more important emails. Now, I have something similar on fastmail.com

6\. Just to emphasize you have to check emails every morning and night and just constantly try to keep your count at zero. I actually leave my inbox full of hundreds of email, but spend about an hour cleaning up a month (back down to 20 or so - keeping the necessary threads).

7\. Use your desktop. It's easy to use mobile for most things, but your desktop is a real work horse when it comes to quick replies, categorization, and deletion.

[1] [http://austingwalters.com/analyzing-email- data/](http://austingwalters.com/analyzing-email-data/)

[2] [http://lettergram.net/](http://lettergram.net/)

[3] [https://projectpiglet.com/](https://projectpiglet.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Auto-filter into mailboxes (for instance, one for each type of service that sends notifications).

Each mailbox can typically be gone through rapidly in a batch a couple times per day to get your unreads to zero.

If something requires followup or reply, record that fact in an external system rather than using the inbox as a to do list.

Oh, and get your colleagues to move away from email as a default medium for conversations.

</comment><comment><USER4> I registered an alias with my middle initial: Darren.n@ that I give to anyone non-critical. It forwards to my main email and I have a filter to automatically put those messages in my "low priority" folder that I check once a day.

That with keyboard shortcuts to mark all as read and archive does the trick for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Move inbox email to monthly archive folders.

2017

-01

-02

-03

-04

-05

Email is not a task list.</comment>


Swift 3.0 Release Process - <AUTHOR> https://swift.org/blog/swift-3-0-release-process/ <comment><USER2> It looks like a really well thought out language, and the willingness to break some things that looked like C holdovers in 3.0 for future clarity is also interesting.

I'm wondering if Swift will hit a sweeter spot than Go (GC, weird takes or delay on things like packaging, generics) and Rust (complexity) for userland systems software.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious how Swift is getting adopted on Linux and what success folks are having in writing Linux command-line apps or other apps?

<comment><USER4> IBM is betting on it as a programming language for enterprise applications. Expect a Swift EE coming from them.

Microsoft also acknowledged that Swift support is the top request for their iOS bridge.

<comment><USER5> They already built a flask type server side framework :

[https://github.com/IBM-Swift/Kitura/](https://github.com/IBM-Swift/Kitura/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did not realize that we were this close to Swift 3?!

This is really awesome news. I'm pretty excited to see what they do in 3.0, I'd love to have another language under my belt without fooling around with NS-nonsense. That they might actually take Linux desktop seriously is really exciting to me also.

I'd love to see a widely-used tool where games and popular apps that would traditionally be put out on Win/Mac are able to be used seamlessly on Linux also. On top of that, I definitely don't want to write Java, I definitely don't want to write ObjC, etc.

Interestingly enough, I think this might even compete with Dart, which I suspect will end up getting Wasm support and ultimately replacing Java for android development... (Just a wild shot in the dark...) So I can't wait to see what the Swift starts brewing up in the Concurrency department.

How exciting!

<comment><USER7> > I did not realize that we were this close to Swift 3?!

WWDC is June 13-17, so they basically have to have something ready by then. Not so coincidentally, June 13 is "4-6 weeks later" from the May 12 date for making the release branch. Similarly, the late 2016 release for the final version of Swift 3.0 is probably actually mid September, since the version of Xcode with iOS 10 support has to ship before the next iPhone model.

Hurrah for marketing-driven release schedules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's good that they are making these breaking changes now. I like the language and the changes they are making.

The next focus should be on performance in my view. String processing in particular is too slow to be usable for server-side tasks.

Also, I wonder what to do with Foundation in the long run. It's huge but its design is extremely antiquated. At some point Apple will have to shed that past where URL manipulation and file system operations are methods on a string class.

<comment><USER9> Regarding strings...

I briefly ran the code sample you graciously provided me with a month ago through the profiler ([https://gist.github.com/austinzheng/d6c674780a58cb63832c4df3...](https://gist.github.com/austinzheng/d6c674780a58cb63832c4df3f809e683)).

Long story short, it looks like the reflection machinery in the standard library is improperly being used to construct String instances. Doing so, while probably not sufficient to account for the entirety of the awful performance, is probably quite expensive. This looks like a bug and I'll try to dig deeper into it this week.

Swift also badly needs a native version of NSCharacterSet, even if only for programmer ergonomics.

The developer in charge of the standard library has mentioned that that team intends on redesigning the String API in the near future; this should provide an opportunity to reexamine the performance implications of the current implementations.

<comment><USER8> That's excellent news. Thanks a lot!

<comment><USER9> After a bit more investigation, I found that if you replace the following code:

      result.append(begin == eos ? "" : String(cs[begin..<end.successor()]))

with this:

      if begin == eos {
        result.append("")
      } else if let str = String(cs[begin..<end.successor()]) {
        result.append(str)
      }

runtime goes down from ~3 seconds to ~2.2 seconds.

This is due to a rather insidious API design decision:

      init?(_ view: String.UTF16View)

constructs a string out of a UTF16 view, but it can fail. If used in a context where its type is inferred to be non-nullable, the following generic reflection-related init is used instead:

      init<T>(_ instance: T)

I'm going to bring this up on the list and see if there are better ways of doing things.

As far as I can tell most of the rest of the time is spent in the Swift native Unicode --> UTF16 decoding machinery, and NSCharacterSet.

<comment><USER8> I'm seeing a 23% increase in running time after making that same change. Strange.

That's with Xcode 7.3.1 (7D1014)

<comment><USER9> Weird. I'm using the same version of Xcode, running on a trashcan Mac Pro running OS X 10.11.4.

<comment><USER8> OK I found the cause of that weirdness. I had slightly changed my test code since I posted it here weeks ago. After undoing that change I'm seeing the same thing you do.

But this raises more questions, because what I changed is the test code generation. I'm now generating a million different strings instead of adding the same string a million times (note the \\(i) at the end of the string):

        func generateTestData() -> [String] {
            var a = [String]()
            for i in 0..<N {
                a.append(",,abc, 123  ,x, , more more more,\u{A0}and yet more, \(i)")
            }
            return a
        }

The running time of generateTestData() isn't what we measure but apparently the performance improvement you found only works if the same string is used every time. Otherwise performance drops.

<comment><USER9> That's bizarre.

One thing I've noticed is that performing the string scanning operation is relatively cheap. (If the splitAndTrim code is modified to not use Strings and to return a [String.UTF16View], the runtime is around 1.2 seconds.) It's the process of building Strings out of those UTF16 views that is destroying performance.

I still don't know why changing the way the input data are constructed would have that effect, except to guess that the underlying representation is different somehow. I'll file a ticket.

<comment><USER8> This looks to me like memory allocation / reference counting is at least part of the problem. Slicing a UTF16View to get another UTF16View mostly likely doesn't involve any dynamic memory allocation at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've had a quick look on 3.0 changes and didn't find major features related to protocols. I'm thinking of things like more complex generic type constraints, or a mechanism to better code against protocols ( see all videos that talk about swift protocol oriented in "real life" and how annoying those limitations).

Did i miss something ?

<comment><USER11> That was discussed by Apple Dev Douglas Gregor in a massive post here:

[https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of- Mo...](https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of- Mon-20160229/011666.html)

It's not clear what the schedule would be but I suspect a number of the constraints changes will be in Swift 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would love it if Swift could become the next-gen C++ for cross-platform development. The Apple platforms/Linux advances are great but is it ever going to be adopted on other platforms? I don't think Apple would care, it's mostly Lattner & the team behind pushing the language. (bless 'em :))

<comment><USER13> Swift is more like Java ecosystem than Rust is ideal as the next gen C++. Otherwise, Obj-C would have been popular when it tried to compete with C/C++. There was an article mentioning.

<comment><USER14> > compiles to native code, specific to a platform > deterministic runtime > performance (no GC, no JIT) > lightweight "exceptions"

Seems way more similar to C++ than java.

Also Obj-C's success or failure as a C replacement (I can't imagine using it as one... it's not going to run well on embedded devices) has little to do with swift's future path besides that both languages are heavily used at apple.

The key difference may be that Chris Lattner is basically a compiler superstar, and I think he could make it happen if he chose to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was hoping to see some changes to the error handling. The extensive use of implicitly unwrapped properties always makes me nervous because basically we still have the null pointer dereference problem. Also, optional chaining seems really well geared to the use case where silent failures area OK, but things get ugly quickly when trying to handle individual errors. Maybe I've just been spoilt by Rust, which I've been learning at the same time, but their approach to error handling seems much more holistic and less tacked on than in Swift. I'd definitely like to see more done with this because that feels like the only complaint I have with the language.

</comment><comment><USER16> Anyone know how Swift performance compared to Scala? Those are pretty similar, I've heard. I'm pretty familiar with Scala, but not Swift. Is there any reason to switch to Swift?

<comment><USER17> They aren't so similar. Feature-wise, Swift is much closer to Kotlin, which is (on purpose) significantly simpler than Scala.

Also if you're using Scala, there's a huge ecosystem of libraries and frameworks that just doesn't exist in Swift. If you want native compilation, just wait for [http://www.scala-native.org/](http://www.scala-native.org/)

<comment><USER13> That will rely on LLVM?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really don't like the way that objective c express everything, so i was looking forward to Swift.

This tells me that Swift is not ready for prime time 3 versions later:

"Swift 3.0 is a major release that is not source-compatible with Swift 2.2. It contains fundamental changes to the language and Swift Standard Library. A comprehensive list of implemented changes for Swift 3.0 can be found on the Swift evolution site."

Fundamental changes??? Let me know when is stable across versions.

<comment><USER14> Since apps include the swift runtime library though, changes won't interfere with your current apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe I'm too old school but the removal of for loop is quite surprising.

for-in doesn't tell you the index of the current object so you'd have to manually keep track of the index.

Also, x++ is a common syntax in many languages and I think a new developer looking at Swift would try that first before using the other syntax (x += 1).

<comment><USER8> I think what a new developer would try first isn't a particularly good yardstick for language design. But I also think that the removal of ++ causes some problems.

For instance, now I have this code

        mutating func next() -> Element? {
            //...
            pos += 1
            return data[pos-1]
        }

or alternatively

        mutating func next() -> Element? {
            //...
            let e = data[pos]
            pos += 1
            return e
        }

where previously I had

        mutating func next() -> Element? {
            //...
            return data[pos++]
        }

<comment><USER20> FYI, a third option is

        mutating func next() -> Element? {
            //...
            defer { pos += 1 }
            return pos
        }

Whether it's better is a matter of opinion

<comment><USER21> Nice. That's a beautifully idiomatic implementation of the original intent of post increment, if nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was hoping all Swift professional are motivated to contribute patches, features and tuning performance to Swift 3.0 in a swift pace instead of until 2017. Release Process is such a lengthy discussion that could have been shorten and spending more time on improving code.

Why not using JIRA?

</comment><comment><USER22> What I really miss is a proper compiler for Swift. I've encountered two bugs in the last few days: one in the IRGen and the other one in the TypeChecker. That can be really annoying. And that error "expression is too complex to evaluate" is just ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER23> Any talks about Windows port?

<comment><USER24> You could take a look at [http://www.elementscompiler.com/elements/silver/](http://www.elementscompiler.com/elements/silver/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It'd be nice if they stopped breaking the language at some point. I don't want to rewrite my program every year. I would have called that future stable version 1.0 (like, say, Go and Rust did).

<comment><USER26> Version 3.0 is supposed to have a much stabler API going forward. They've been making a lot of changes even since 2.2 that really clean up the standard library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Today I have submitted a proposal for "memorization", "memo", "memorize" keyword for a function that allows to run only once through out the lifecycle in Swift 3. Repeatedly execute the function will only return the same result without having to rerun the function everytime. As far as, I don't see my submission is being visible for discussion.

      memo func hello(fname: String, lname: String) {
        return fname.lname
      }

<comment><USER27> Is this not better suited to GCD operations? dispatch_once handles this exact use case.

<comment><USER28> How about using `lazy` for a memoized function?</comment></comment></comment>


MereChurch – Simple and usable church websites - <AUTHOR> https://merechurch.com/

<comment><USER2> We started MereChurch to help small churches and ministries without resources for a custom project to have a usable, sustainable, effective, and performant site, very easily. Let us know if we can help.

[https://merechurch.com/welcome-merechurch/](https://merechurch.com/welcome- merechurch/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Most small churches can't afford $750 and $75/month. I applaud your effort to help the Church, but I think you've priced yourself out of your target market.

<comment><USER2> Actually, most of the competition is slightly more expensive.

We've done quite a bit of research. :)</comment></comment>


Money can't buy happiness? That's just wishful thinking - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/17/money-cant-buy-happiness-wishful-thinking <comment><USER2> Money doesn't buy happiness, but some money (it doesn't need to be millions) makes things a lot easier. With nothing but money, most people won't be happy.

If you have those other things, some money can make it a lot nicer. Example:

Living alone in a city with highly paid contractors and nearly zero social life is not going to be "happiness" for most people.

Then again, a couple living on one average income would definitely have an easier (and that usually means happier) life with extra money.

Think of it like this: Life is a pot of water. Money is salt and/or pepper. All the other nice things in your life (relationships, friends, family, sports, hobbies, etc) are the meat & vegetables.

You _can_ make a soup with just water, meat and vegetables, but its a shit load easier with a little salt & pepper.

Water with salt and pepper is not soup.

</comment><comment><USER3> If something you require to be happy is for sale, money will buy it. But money won't tell you what to buy, nor will buying it guarantee you'll be as happy as you were supposed to.

Also, poor people are not unhappy people. We all know how to have fun, minus those who don't.

Anxiety is the enemy though, and with a significant amount of our population either debt riddled, on prescription meds, or living paycheck loan to paycheck loan, it's no question many are unhappy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Money is very good at solving certain classes of problems. And it is easier to be happy if you don't have said problems.</comment>


Scientific Concepts We All Ought to Know - <AUTHOR> https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2017/03/scientific-concepts-know/ <comment><USER2> The idea of "entropy" always seemed to me as a misrepresentation of the actual underlying principle, given a half-dozen other names in scientific literature. Everything reaches the lowest equilibrium state. It's like pouring water into a glass: eventually, all the waves will be gone and it will all settle into the lowest state on the ground. That doesn't really say anything about "order" at all - from the perspective of the atoms, all the "order" is still there. The "messy" vs "useful" analogy also is poor since you can use more energy to make a completely useless contraption (a "messy state") and construct it in a way such that it degrades into a useful one (a bit of a contrived Rube- Goldberg, but still...). Heck, does throwing water into the air and letting it fall into a pond make it "orderly" against the Second Law? That's what the analogies imply. The more analogies that try to compare the Second Law to common experiences like a dirty room, etc., the less people get an idea of what Joules per Kelvin is supposed to mean when they finally meet it in their chemistry book.</comment>


Casascius Coins now only available by invitation - <AUTHOR> http://casascius.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/orders-now-accepted-by-invitation-only/ <comment><AUTHOR> I imagine there's a startup opportunity to start making lower denomination coins for consumers. Anyone interested? Where would you get custom coins manufactured?

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a decent idea. From bottom of article: "Are you thinking of producing physical bitcoins? Do you have the resources to do any kind of mass production of a product like this and just need the magic that ensures that the product is a reliable functional physical bitcoin? Please contact me."</comment></comment>


What went wrong with the coronavirus tests in the U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/what-went-wrong-with-the-coronavirus-tests/2020/03/07/915f5dea-5d82-11ea-b29b-9db42f7803a7_story.html <comment><AUTHOR> > Interviews with a dozen laboratory experts and government health officials > reveal a six-week-long series of glitches, missed opportunities and delays > that contributed to the shortage.</comment>


Behind the Facebook-Fueled Rise of the Epoch Times - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/trump-qanon-impending-judgment-day-behind-facebook-fueled-rise-epoch-n1044121 <comment><USER2> Some of these staffers have been exposed as driving sockpuppet / bot campaigns on Wikipedia and Reddit. I wonder if they're going to get deplatformed too?</comment>


Talk Less, Matter More - <AUTHOR> http://thetalentcode.com/2011/11/08/a-word-of-coaching-advice-talk-less-matter-more/ <comment><USER2> What the what is this? Guys, we're not Lifehacker and this isn't even tangentially related to technology, coding, or tech entrepreneurship.

I've flagged this because I like to arrive on the HN homepage and see tech articles every once in a while. You should flag too.

<comment><USER3> No, I would like to see every kind of articles in HN.</comment></comment>


User Interface Myths - <AUTHOR> http://carsonified.com/blog/design/top-10-ux-myths/

<comment><USER2> Top 5 ways I feel about this article:

1) I

2) Hate

3) Top

4) 10

5) Lists

<comment><USER3> He could have left out the "Top 10" in the headline and all the numbers. Then, I guess, you wouldn't hate it anymore (at least if you don't also have something against ordinary lists), even though nothing has changed about the content. Is that really the case?

(Please note that the author doesn't claim that the myths are the definite ten or something similarly grandiose – they are just his ten personal favorites.)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly how I felt, so I changed the title (which I rarely do) for submission. This is interesting content which only becomes distracting by putting it in a list.

No matter what you do, _someone_ will find the weakest link to pick on. Reminds me of a few years ago when my mother gave me 2 sweaters for my birthday. When I next saw her, I wore one of them and she said, "What's the matter, don't you like the other one?"

<comment><USER4> Lol :) I can't believe that actually happened to you? I've been telling that story for years as an example of how some people will never be satisfied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "...but if you're not familiar with it then enjoy the research and storytelling of Barry Schwartz who discusses how too many options can not only lead to your customers making no choice, but (counter-intuitively) resenting the choices they do make."

That's _very_ true. And I think the best compromise/solution is to _hide_ advanced features/choices so that one click will still produce a great result, but if someone needs more options that ability is still there.

</comment><comment><USER6> Oddly, I've never even heard of most of these myths.

<comment><USER7> Or not oddly at all. He seems to have started with a set of rules he wanted to put forward, negated them to create putative 'myths' and then tried to argue back to his original points. So the whole thing reads like it was written backwards...

Which frustrating, since _some_ of what he's saying is a little bit interesting...

<comment><USER8> Case in point:

 _Myth #1. The Design has to be Original.

"Truthfully, I don't know if this one is a myth, or just a hard lesson for me to learn..."_

What the hell? He admits he is not even sure of his own premise?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _The Linux approach, in my opinion, is the best of any platform. Other platforms don't offer such a seamless experience; I'm looking at you OS X, and your confusing virtual disk image installation method._

Huh? The installation mechanism on OS X for 99% of apps is literally "click icon, drag to desktop".

</comment><comment><USER10> Do we really need to give carsonified the oxygen of publicity? This article is on par with "websites are dead. use channels like twitter, facebook for self promotion" (I think they are too serious to get the irony) which was a real gem in self-gratifying internet detritus.

</comment><comment> onreact-com This article uses the word "myth" while rebuking some best practices of the trade. While it's a good read it mostly relies on stirring controversy. That makes it less valuable and trustworthy. For instance "Design to Avoid Clicks" is not a myth but common sense. In case you "overly optimized" (like having no clicks at all?) your interface you end up less user friendly than with a 10 clicks before reaching your goal app or site? I doubt that.</comment>


Etymonline: -ty (1): "English ... retains traces of a base-12 number system" - <AUTHOR> https://www.etymonline.com/word/-ty#etymonline_v_18884 <comment><AUTHOR> >"English, like many other Germanic languages, _retains traces of a base-12 number system._ The most obvious instance is eleven and twelve which ought to be the first two numbers of the "teens" series. Their Old English forms, enleofan and twel(eo)f(an), are more transparent: "leave one" and "leave two."

Old English also had hund endleofantig for "110" and hund twelftig for "120." One hundred was hund teantig. The -tig formation ran through 12 cycles, and could have bequeathed us numbers _eleventy ( "110") and _twelfty ("120") had it endured, but already during the Anglo-Saxon period it was being obscured.

Old Norse used hundrað for "120" and þusend for "1,200." Tvauhundrað was "240" and þriuhundrað was "360." Older Germanic legal texts distinguished a "common hundred" (100) from a "great hundred" (120). This duodecimal system is "perhaps due to contact with Babylonia" [Lass, "Old English"]."</comment>


CommBank: What you need to know about heartbleed (responses in comments) - <AUTHOR> https://www.commbank.com.au/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-heartbleed.html

<comment><USER2> I never really worried about heart bleed with CBA as I figured if they were stung by it our consumer banking laws would pretty much effectively ensure that the bank wore the costs (at least until they could pass it on to a merchant). The banks are in a position where they need to promote internet banking (it keeps their costs down) and the small costs they incur on providing a security guarantee pretty much ensure as a consumer your going to be OK.

On the other hand the ridiculous response is moronic. Someone needs to loose their job over that. Repeating a canned answer that fails to answer the question is the height of arrogance and adds nothing to the conversation.

If they don't know then they need to say that it is being dealt with by another team and the information will be available at a (defined) later date. In the mean time people can rest assured that their money is secure and CBA will guarantee it against these and other threats.

What a way to turn a great feature (their security guarantee) into a negative by treating people as mushrooms.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, that's entirely disheartening. As a CBA customer I'd expect an actual response, not just something that's effectively "It's all OK, stop asking" copied everywhere. A technology blog should be run by those who can actually give technical details on demand.

Changed my password anyway, like I did with every other service I use.</comment>


MMU side channel breaking aslr from JavaScript - beng-nl https://www.vusec.net/projects/anc/ <comment><AUTHOR> Brilliant. One thing I'd love to see is the actual code for these timers, but obviously it is good that they haven't released it publicly.</comment>