Ask HN: Swift or Objective-C? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'll take the counter-point here and vote for Objective-C. Swift has not reached a level of maturity that we're comfortable with it for mission- critical code. Each Xcode revision brings breaking changes which require you to address manually, as the migrator is lacking. Interop with Obj-C works OK - not great - but with pure C, it's a hassle. And the libraries and tools around Swift are just nowhere near as mature as they are for Obj-C... even first party; case in point, Xcode cannot even rename methods or extract constants from Swift code. No refactoring capability at all.

Having built several large apps which are live in the Store in both languages, I'm sticking with Obj-C for 2016. Give Swift another year before going all in.

</comment><comment><USER3> Learn Swift now, and then Objective-C later.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions with the migration to Swift is that it will be a lot easier to be an iOS developer with no experience. After teaching new to programming students iOS development with both Objective-C and Swift, the actual syntax mattered very little - the underlying iOS APIs were difficult to understand.

You'll still find that many API tutorials are written with Objective-C, so even if you don't code in that language, you'll need to translate in your head as you read how to hook up X or Y to Z. In addition, a lot of stack overflow questions for common iOS programming questions are in Objective-C, so you'll at least need to know how to read it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Your choice is quite clear as of Jan 2016. Almost all of the latest tutorials/books/online courses and other learning material have moved to Swift. So, if you are looking to develop for iOS 9 and Xcode 7 and above it is Swift.

Even if you wanted to learn Objective-C all the good versions of learning materials are at iOS 7 and below. Not a good choice since it is very likely none of that stuff works cleanly anymore. So, go with Swift. Yes, you will need to be familiar with Objective-C on an as needed basis, but if you learn Swift and iOS programming it will be a translation and not that bad.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think when Big Nerd Ranch decide it's time to move to Swift, then it's time to move to Swift.

[https://www.bignerdranch.com/we-write/ios- programming/](https://www.bignerdranch.com/we-write/ios-programming/)

<comment><USER6> But their motive is to sell books and lessons, not necessarily code that works in a production environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The majority of companies still have code bases with a ton of Objective-c code. The company I am currently working at has an approximately 30% Swift code and we have been writing Swift since 2.0 went live.

The reality is if you can't be proficient with Objective-c no one will hire you at this point. The more time passes, the more Objective-c code will become legacy, and the less important this will be.

That being said definitely start with Swift. It is an excellent language and is the future of the iOS platform.

</comment><comment><USER8> Q: What made most developers fear iOS Development? A: Objective-C. Then there were programmers who spent countless hours learning Objc, these objc programmers will always tell you to use objc and not Swift. Apple, introduced swift because it is the future. Learn swift, once you know swift and you are comfortable with iOS Frameworks you can easily transition to objc.

</comment><comment><USER9> Both. You have to know both languages to develop iOS apps in 2016.

<comment><USER10> No you don't. You can make all your apps in Objective-C.

<comment><USER9> If you want to be technically correct, you can make all your apps exclusively in Swift too. The fact is most large projects are already using both. The trend for new code is to be written in Swift.

At the very least, your need to be able to reason about both languages. Refusing to learn one of them is a disservice to yourself as an iOS dev IMO. Denying that would be silly. If you haven't taken a look at Swift, there is no better time than now to start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it really depend on your level of knowledge. If you are just starting out then I would start with Swift as it is easier to learn and most new learning materials are in Swift. Once you get the hang of the API and Swift, you will eventually have to learn Obj-C.

</comment><comment><USER12> Swift is a better language in almost every way but you should still know Objective-C if you want to work professionally.

<comment><USER13> Not when working with C++ libs as of today. Even working with C is a bit of a pain. Apart from that, yeah go full Swift.

<comment><USER9> To clarify, in this case you can (should?) use Objective-C++ wrappers to create an interface for Swift.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Swift for new stuff.

<comment><USER15> What do you feel is the primary or greatest benefits of using swift? I get it is the new way but is it that much more productive, easier, flexible or?

<comment><USER13> Safety and builtin encapsulation. No more included properties in inplementation files. :-).

<comment><USER16> Not to mention verbosity, and ease of reading and writing. Its syntax is so much less dated. As far as programming languages go, Obj-C definitely "feels" as old as it is.

<comment><USER13> I prefer Objective-C syntax ;-) that's why I chose to learn it after Ruby's "odd" syntax and quirkiness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Swift is the future, Objective-C is the past.

<comment><USER18> But Objective-C is also the current, as most big codebases are still in it.

<comment><USER19> rekt

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Objective C++</comment>


Student jailed for 2 nights when she can't show ID - Suraj-Sun http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45135682/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/t/student-jailed-nights-when-she-cant-show-id/

<comment><AUTHOR> So whats the startup opportunity here?

A mobile app that lets good cops anonymously dob in bad cops?</comment>


Ask HN: What educational YouTube channels do you watch? - <AUTHOR> There are a few I'm a big fan of:
- LindyBeige for European history told in a funny way. His extended stories are amazing (most recent was Last Charge of the Light Horse) - Journey to the Microcosmos for amazingly shot videos of the microscopic world with interesting voiceovers - Technology Connections for interesting tangents about technology from a (funny) pedant with strong opinions about all kinds of things - Ben Eater for building an entire computer starting with logic gates, and also a nice 6502 series - Cody's Lab for all kinds of strange things, most recently mushroom growing, told by someone passionate about it
Others worth mentioning but sometimes hit or miss for me are PBS Eons and PBS Space Time, Half as Interesting, Kurzgesat, Kings and Generals, Invicta, LGR, 8 bit guy, Strange Parts, N-O-D-E.
I'm always on the hunt for more great interesting channels like these, and always love sharing the ones I've found. <comment> chris-orgmenta \- Stefan Milo (Anthropology): [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ9jWH_8tJ- Nmaj8dSQdEYA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ9jWH_8tJ-Nmaj8dSQdEYA)

\- The Tim Traveller (History): [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LVhJH_9cT2XKp0VAfsKOQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LVhJH_9cT2XKp0VAfsKOQ)

\- Numberphile (Mathematics): [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoxcjq-8xIDTYp3uz647V5A](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoxcjq-8xIDTYp3uz647V5A)

\- Practical Engineering (Engineering / Sciences): [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMOqf8ab-42UUQIdVoKwjlQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMOqf8ab-42UUQIdVoKwjlQ)

\- Smarter every day (Engineering/General): [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6107grRI4m0o2-emgoDnAA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6107grRI4m0o2-emgoDnAA)

\- Objectivity (Sciences): [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtwKon9qMt5YLVgQt1tvJKg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtwKon9qMt5YLVgQt1tvJKg)

\- Every frame a painting (Film): [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjFqcJQXGZ6T6sxyFB-5i6A](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjFqcJQXGZ6T6sxyFB-5i6A) (No longer active)

\- Primitive Technology: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA)

\- Domain of Science: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxqAWLTk1CmBvZFPzeZMd9A](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxqAWLTk1CmBvZFPzeZMd9A)

\- BPS.Space (Rocketry): [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCILl8ozWuxnFYXIe2svjHhg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCILl8ozWuxnFYXIe2svjHhg)

\- Moth Light Media (Biology): [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOh5Ht3eB4914hMUfJkKa9g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOh5Ht3eB4914hMUfJkKa9g)

</comment><comment><USER2> Tom Scott [https://www.youtube.com/user/enyay](https://www.youtube.com/user/enyay)

He has a series called "Things You Might Not Know", where he spends 5-10 minutes talking about some interesting oddity or other, often but not always computing-related.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Biggest Ideas in the Universe A physics tour de force by Sean Carroll [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI09kat_GeI&list=PLrxfgDEc2N...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI09kat_GeI&list=PLrxfgDEc2NxZJcWcrxH3jyjUUrJlnoyzX)

</comment><comment><USER4> Tech Ingredients [https://www.youtube.com/c/TechIngredients](https://www.youtube.com/c/TechIngredients)

Applied Science [https://www.youtube.com/c/AppliedScience](https://www.youtube.com/c/AppliedScience)

Essential Craftsman (Construction) [https://www.youtube.com/c/essentialcraftsman](https://www.youtube.com/c/essentialcraftsman)

Practical Engineering (civil engineering) [https://www.youtube.com/c/PracticalEngineeringChannel](https://www.youtube.com/c/PracticalEngineeringChannel)

Adam Neely (music geekery) [https://www.youtube.com/c/AdamNeely](https://www.youtube.com/c/AdamNeely)

Other favourites that are less science/education:

Scary Pockets (Funk covers with top tier musicianship and production values) [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-2JUs_G21BrJ0efehwGkUw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-2JUs_G21BrJ0efehwGkUw)

VASAviation (air traffic / radar of recent aviation events) [https://www.youtube.com/c/VASAviation](https://www.youtube.com/c/VASAviation)

</comment><comment><USER5> PBS Eons (Paleontology) Fall of Civilizations ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT6Y5JJPKe_JDMivpKgVXew](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT6Y5JJPKe_JDMivpKgVXew)) EyeWitness (TV-Series I watched as a kid) ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEBTfxJ13zkpZVbZTF3aukg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEBTfxJ13zkpZVbZTF3aukg)) Physics Girl ([https://www.youtube.com/user/physicswoman](https://www.youtube.com/user/physicswoman)) SciShow ([https://www.youtube.com/user/scishow](https://www.youtube.com/user/scishow)) Extra History ([https://www.youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz](https://www.youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz)) The Royal Institution ([https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRoyalInstitution](https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRoyalInstitution))

</comment><comment><USER6> Other commenters have pretty much mentioned all of the interesting channels that I consume out there, so I'll add a couple more educational channels I find interesting:

* What I've Learned (science behind health and fitness) --[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqYPhGiB9tkShZorfgcL2lA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqYPhGiB9tkShZorfgcL2lA)

* Lemmino (general stuff) -- [https://www.youtube.com/lemmino](https://www.youtube.com/lemmino)

* Wendover Productions (aviation/transportation/logistics) -- [https://www.youtube.com/user/Wendoverproductions](https://www.youtube.com/user/Wendoverproductions)

* Second Thought (general trivia) -- [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJm2TgUqtK1_NLBrjNQ1P-w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJm2TgUqtK1_NLBrjNQ1P-w)

</comment><comment><USER7> Jonathan Blow [https://www.youtube.com/user/jblow888](https://www.youtube.com/user/jblow888)

Sean Barrett [https://www.youtube.com/user/silverspaceship](https://www.youtube.com/user/silverspaceship)

Eskil Steenberg [https://www.youtube.com/user/eskilsteenberg](https://www.youtube.com/user/eskilsteenberg)

Bisqwit [https://www.youtube.com/user/Bisqwit](https://www.youtube.com/user/Bisqwit)

</comment><comment><USER8> * Like Stories of Old

* Mike Zamansky (Emacs)

* Podcastage (How to podcast)

* Stumpy Nubs (woodworking)

* Alliterative (etymology)

* Better Than Yesterday

* After Skool

* patrickJMT (math)

* Dr. Tracey Marks (mental health)

</comment><comment><USER9> Khan Academy is required watching: [https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy](https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy)

Shameless plug for Dev (mostly Go and NextJS tutorials): [https://www.youtube.com/c/adoxyz](https://www.youtube.com/c/adoxyz)

</comment><comment><USER10> I am into metal work, wood work, electronics, climbing. My favorite channels are:

-AvE (electronics, metalwork, tools)

-Laura Kampf (design, metalwork, woodwork)

-Alec Steel (metalwork/blacksmithing)

-Matt Estlea (woodwork)

-This old tony (machining, metalwork)

-Magnus Mitbo (climbing)

-Игорь Негода (in russian, but has english subs, machining, metalwork)

-Fireball tool (machining, metalwork, invention)

</comment><comment><USER11> Veritasium ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA))

</comment><comment><USER12> > \- LindyBeige for European history told in a funny way. His extended stories > are amazing (most recent was Last Charge of the Light Horse)

Worth noting also that Lindybeige is a climate change denier.

</comment><comment><USER13> MrBettsClass for high school history.

Nextlesson.com my channel for teaching kids how to program in Scratch

</comment><comment><USER14> Simon's institute for hard math and computer science

One brown two blue

Sexplanations

<comment><USER15> _3Blue1Brown_

<comment><USER14> Same thing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Edutainment

</comment><comment><USER17> Rare Earth[0] Travel and history

Displaced Gamers[1] Programming and classic game architecture

Game Maker's Toolkit[2] Game development

Techmoan[3] Retro computers

Technology Connections[4] Retro hardware

Thomas Game Docs[5] Game design and theory

TB Skyen[6] Character design, writing

12 Tone[7] Music theory

Pad Chennington[8] Vaporwave and underground music

Filmmaker IQ [9] Filmmaking and history

Drachinifel [10] BOATS

GDC [11] Game Developers Conference

Oddity Archive [12] film and tv ephemera

[0][https://www.youtube.com/user/ColChrisHadfield](https://www.youtube.com/user/ColChrisHadfield)

[1][https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWoSKWs8h6lFdiEDAjuIfpA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWoSKWs8h6lFdiEDAjuIfpA)

[2][https://www.youtube.com/user/McBacon1337](https://www.youtube.com/user/McBacon1337)

[3][https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5I2hjZYiW9gZPVkvzM8_Cw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5I2hjZYiW9gZPVkvzM8_Cw)

[4][https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q)

[5][https://www.youtube.com/c/ThomasGameDocs](https://www.youtube.com/c/ThomasGameDocs)

[6][https://www.youtube.com/user/TBSkyen](https://www.youtube.com/user/TBSkyen)

[7][https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTUtqcDkzw7bisadh6AOx5w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTUtqcDkzw7bisadh6AOx5w)

[8][https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH4dD2XaQGE6OIG3avq5Sjw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH4dD2XaQGE6OIG3avq5Sjw)

[9][https://www.youtube.com/c/FilmmakerIQ/videos](https://www.youtube.com/c/FilmmakerIQ/videos)

[10][https://www.youtube.com/user/Drachinifel](https://www.youtube.com/user/Drachinifel)

[11][https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0JB7TSe49lg56u6qH8y_MQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0JB7TSe49lg56u6qH8y_MQ)

[12][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q-EeKznZyY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q-EeKznZyY)</comment>


Lobbyists, Bearing Gifts, Pursue Attorneys General - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/us/lobbyists-bearing-gifts-pursue-attorneys-general.html?referrer=

<comment><USER2> Reading about the American system is getting pretty depressing.

Just once it'd be nice to see someone representing the populace as opposed to monied interests. The whole system appears to be bought.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.warren.senate.gov/](http://www.warren.senate.gov/)

[http://www.sanders.senate.gov/](http://www.sanders.senate.gov/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In many states the IG is appointed by the AG. I wonder what the frequency of a State IG office investigating that State's AG. My guess would be that it is infrequent or unheard of, but I have not investigated the matter.</comment>


The first Bitcoin Cash block has been mined - <AUTHOR> http://blockdozer.com/insight/block/000000000000000000651ef99cb9fcbe0dadde1d424bd9f15ff20136191a5eec <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14899881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14899881) is related.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most fascinating to me has been Coinbase's position throughout this.

Which was essentially they are treating the new Bitcoin cash as a shitcoin, aka not supporting it.

They took the position that if you want your "free" Bitcoin Cash, move your BTC out of Coinbase.(1)

This led to the inevitable service decay & delays that CoinBase has become well known for in the bitcoin community whenever leading up to a high volume event. (2)

And yet their internal PR team has given somewhat measured responses that "if Coinbase decides to support Bitcoin Cash in the future, it will distribute the balances that accrue at the time of the August 1 fork." (3)

The article w/that nugget goes on to state that when Ethereum split "Coinbase eventually let customers withdraw their share of the new currency, known as "Ethereum Classic," even though it still does not allow it to be bought and sold on the Coinbase site."

Seems like a risky bet not to just say something closer to "Hey if Bitcoin Cash is a thing and worth more than 1% of the original BTC we'll support it. If it's not at the end of 90 days we'll give you a way to take it out either way."

Judging by the volume of concern and disdain from newbies in the Bitcoin forums a lot of people got woken up by this event and what it means to have your decentralized currency controlled by a central authority.

(1) [https://blog.coinbase.com/update-for-customers-with- bitcoin-...](https://blog.coinbase.com/update-for-customers-with-bitcoin- stored-on-coinbase-99e2d4790a53?gi=5c5ca3523686)

(2) [http://bitcoinist.com/mass-exodus-from-coinbase- spawns-12hou...](http://bitcoinist.com/mass-exodus-from-coinbase- spawns-12hour-bitcoin-withdrawal-delays/)

(3) [http://fortune.com/2017/07/31/bitcoin-fork- coinbase/](http://fortune.com/2017/07/31/bitcoin-fork-coinbase/)

<comment><USER4> Coinbase CEO here - apologies for the confusion on that.

I certainly wouldn't say we are treating it as a "shitcoin". I tweeted out a few thoughts here to share how I think about it:

[https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/89248668753155686...](https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/892486687531556865)

Hope it helps. Thx!

<comment><USER5> This is completely off topic, but does it bother anybody else that we live in a world where the CEO of any technologically savvy company disseminates announcements as a picture of text?

<comment><USER6> Well, that's kind of the _de facto_ standard for tweeting large blocks of text that don't read well as a sequence of tweets.

<comment><USER7> I think the idea was more along the lines of "Remember blog posts?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Something very important that I don't see advertised, with regard to BCH. The primary client, BitcoinABC, completely changed consensus rules a mere 5 days before the hardfork:

[https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin- abc/blob/174846aaaf56...](https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin- abc/blob/174846aaaf564e64b6bd06d679996b52ba86ad53/doc/release-notes/release- notes-0.14.5.md)

The important bit:

> Enforce strong replay protection (require SIGHASH_FORKID and > SCRIPT_VERIFY_STRICTENC compliance)

That completely changes the consensus rules of BCH. Again, 5 days before a hardfork. 5 days.

I just ... I can't wrap my brain around why _anyone_ in their right mind would think that BCH should be worth anything, if this is the acumen of the development team.

Why would any exchange trust the code? Why would users trust the code?

If BCH is any kind of experiment, it's not an experiment of big-block vs small block (Bitcoin has had bigger block functionality for over 6 months now). It's an experiment to see if cowboy programmers can patch a live $40 billion network willy nilly and convince everyone that that's okay.

<comment><USER9> If anything the fact that things are working as intended(so far) proves that such a change is not nearly as dangerous as BCC developers make it out to be.

If you don't trust the code powering BCH then you can simply ignore all your coins on BCH and pretend they don't exist, you're in the exact same situation as you were yesterday.

The fear mongering of 'all hard forks are dangerous' is just that, fear mongering, and has no basis in actual reality.

<comment><USER10> I agree with the fearmongering bit, but ignoring BCH is a little more difficult. BCH just caused a pretty decent dip in the price of BTC, and will likely make it drop further.

Unless it crashes and burns, in which case faith in Core will be even stronger.

<comment><USER11> 5% at Bitcoin's level of volatility is not a dip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> To me, it seems like Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is just a cash grab (no pun intended) by a minority of misguided Bitcoin enthusiasts. From what I can tell, the main reason for the resistance to Segwit is that it reduces the power and influence of miners. That's why the people who are pushing BCH are also invested in mining. Miners earn money from transaction fees, and therefore have an incentive to artificially inflate the fees by delaying transactions (transactions are processed in order of highest to lowest fees).

There's a great blog post which summarizes the situation here: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-heck-bitcoin-might- split-...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-heck-bitcoin-might-split-two- august-1-mohit-mamoria)

<comment><USER13> It really takes some twisted logic to paint BCH has a miner-friendly measure. It is unfriendly to miners in every way that matters, which is why miners have never achieved consensus on any of the large-block proposals so far.

Specifically, it:

\- reduces the need for fees on transactions, as block space is no longer a sufficiently scarce resources

\- makes orphaned blocks more likely, which means that the probability of losing a block that you already successfully mined is increased.

Although I'm a large-blocker myself, Segwit has one thing going for it, namely, fixing transaction malleability. For anyone who has to deal with bitcoin in bulk (any business using bitcoin, basically), malleability is a killer bug -- it makes it very hard to detect if your transactions have made it on to the network, and impossible to chain transactions together reliably. That's who benefits from Segwit, and it's a big benefit.

It also enables some off-chain solutions that are infeasible in a malleable- prone network.

The opposition to Segwit, in my opinion, stems mainly from the fact that it is complicated, and was given priority over the "clear and present" problem of blocks being full that had a simpler solution of hard-forking to increase block size. So it's being held up as a totem by the large-blocking crowd of the poor decisions of Core, and for alleged conflicts of interest around the off-chain solutions.

Other than the risk of a hard fork itself, the negative effects of a block size increase are so small as to be meaningless, for users and for miners.

<comment><USER14> > makes orphaned blocks more likely, which means that the probability of > losing a block that you already successfully mined is increased

A higher orphan rate won't reduce miner profitability. Since everyone would experience the orphaning, the difficulty will stabilize at a lower level and profitability should be the same.

<comment><USER15> No, you don't have an orphaning problem on _your own_ blocks, so it drives centralization.

This is _exactly_ what happened when blocksize jumped from 100k to 250k: every small miner jumped to the largest pool (ghash.io) because they were seeing increased orphan rates, driving that pool over 50% of hashing power.

<comment><USER16> I don't actually see why that would happen. The chance of a block being an orphan is dependent upon the number of competing miners solving the block at the same time. Why would block size impact that at all?

Larger block size increases computation necessary to solve the block, so it is equivalent to increasing the difficulty. Another factor is that you might decide to wait longer to get more transactions in the block. This reduces your chance of solving the block, but increases your payback. I can't see how it could possibly increase the orphan rate because it _increases_ the possible spread for solution time (some people will wait, while other won't). In other words, it should _decrease_ the orphan rate.

I suppose block size increases the network latency for advertising solved blocks... but going from 100k to 250k every 10 minutes does not strike me as being particularly problematic.

Also, I'm trying to verify your claim and I can't see any evidence of it. It appears that different clients were using different block sizes for a long time. The maximum block size on the BTC network has been over 250K since 2013, according to [0]. Also take a look of this graph of orphaned blocks [1]. It seems to be highly variable between 2014 and 1016, but then lower since then. I see no evidence of a sudden increase in orphans. Clearly, having most of the hashing power in one miner will reduce orphans, but I just don't see a connection at all with blocksize.

So what am I missing?

[0] - [http://hashingit.com/analysis/39-the-myth-of-the-megabyte- bi...](http://hashingit.com/analysis/39-the-myth-of-the-megabyte-bitcoin- block) [1] - [https://blockchain.info/charts/n-orphaned- blocks?timespan=al...](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-orphaned- blocks?timespan=all&daysAverageString=7)

<comment><USER15> > Larger block size increases computation necessary to solve the block

No, they're merkled, so it doesn't.

> I suppose block size increases the network latency for advertising solved > blocks... but going from 100k to 250k every 10 minutes does not strike me as > being particularly problematic.

Doesn't matter how often it is, I find a block, I mine the child immediately. You have to wait until you've received and validated the block. It's all about latency.

> Also, I'm trying to verify your claim and I can't see any evidence of it. It > appears that different clients were using different block sizes for a long > time. The maximum block size on the BTC network has been over 250K since > 2013, according to [0]. Also take a look of this graph of orphaned blocks > [1]

Yep, this is now ancient history. Mean blocksizes tend to mask what's really happening, but I recall the orphaning problem and ghash.io spike personally.

And blockchain.info's orphan block measurements are completely unreliable :(

More background: [https://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=535](https://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=535) (my blog)

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the reply. I have to say that I still can't quite understand how block sizes affect orphaning, but I'll have to think about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It has a lot more hashrate than I expected, I've been pretty surprised. Last number I saw was 3.9% and 247 petahash/s and climbing. I hope it can survive, I actually prefer it to the segwit Bitcoin plan and it seems to follow the original Satoshi plan.

<comment><USER18> There are some key words that are copy pasted into every conversation of Bitcoin lately. "Satoshi's plan" is one of them. Make of that what you will. Personally I find it a tad bit creepy. Bitcoin is innovative, but it attracts penny stock-like investment schemes like sugar to ants.

Of all the sales pitches for this coin, Satoshi's original plan makes the least possible sense. This is a fork from Satoshi's coin that _removes_ features, the most important of which is the enabler of payment channels, which if anything _was_ Satoshi's plan.

It's not like it's hard to read Satoshi's writings directly from the source. It's seven years ago, not ancient Rome. The forum has almost all of it intact verbatim and then there's the wiki. In what little sense there ever was a "plan" it's in plain view for everyone to see and read all about what people thought of payment channels, fraud proofs, and everything else.

<comment><USER19> What??

I'm not for or against either side, but what you just said is just plain wrong and it looks as if you are the one who has not read either the paper or the forum post. He did not mention payment chains either in the paper or the old original post about block size.

<comment><USER20> The very first version of bitcoin had payment channels in the code. That's what sequence numbers are for. That's why there are sighash flags and weird rules for blanking sequence numbers. That's why the first version of bitcoin had transaction replacement.

It just happens to also be the case that the design Satoshi had for payment channels at that time was horribly broken and left nodes open to DoS attacks. So it was removed by other developers and slowly over time safe versions of the features were added again in the form of BIP68 (sequence number transaction replacement) and BIP141 (segwit).

<comment><USER21> It did not have payment channel code. There is nothing to indicate that the nLockTime field was originally intended for use in payment channels. There is no source for when the conversation between Satoshi and the developer, in which Satoshi describes payment channel functionality, took place.

And large blocks were very much part of Bitcoin's original plan. They were described even before the initial release of the software:

[http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg099...](http://www.mail- firstname.lastname@example.com/msg09964.html)

<comment><USER20> Ok, well I HAVE the early code and it very much does have transaction replacement code using the sequence field.

<comment><USER22> is this the original code - [https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/4405b78d6059e536c3...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/4405b78d6059e536c36974088a8ed4d9f0f29898) ? or can you point to earlier version?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That gets the chain un-stuck. The difficulty starts off with the old, huge value. The next difficulty adjustment will be at ceil(478560 / 2016), correct? That's 1248 blocks ahead. Check me on this, please.

If mining of that chain is very low, it will take a long time before the difficulty adjusts downward. So far 6 blocks have been mined on that chain.[1] Rate is maybe one per hour, instead of the usual one every 10 minutes. That puts the difficulty adjustment maybe six weeks out. We'll have to see who mines on that chain. The hash rate may go up or down, depending on what the big miners do. Mining will be unprofitable until the next difficulty adjustment, because the price of the coin is lower than the "mainstream" coin. Confirmations will be really slow. After the next adjustment, the chain will work better.

Something similar happened to some altcoins. Some big miner mined for a while, made some money, ran up the difficulty adjustment way up, and then stopped. Block generation then stalled. This thing self-adjusts, but adjusts to big changes in hash rate very slowly.

[1] [http://blockdozer.com/insight/](http://blockdozer.com/insight/)

<comment><USER24> IIRC, this particular hardfork has a change to allow for fast downward adjustments of its difficulty after just a few blocks, in case too few blocks were found in the last 12 hours. It should already have enough blocks for this special code to get triggered.

<comment><USER23> Here's the code change.[1] "Triggering it require to lose 92% of the hashrate abruptly." That's protection against a total stall. It looks like hash rate is down, but not by that much. It may still take a while to get to the next difficulty adjustment. It's up to the big miners.

[1] [https://reviews.bitcoinabc.org/D298](https://reviews.bitcoinabc.org/D298)

<comment><USER23> The emergency difficulty adjustment finally tripped, and block times are now around 25 minutes.[1] 40 blocks mined so far, 1208 to the next difficulty adjustment. So about 3 weeks to go until the next regular difficulty adjustment, which should bring block times down to the usual 10 minutes.

After that, BCC should function normally. The financial end is a separate issue; that won't be clear until BCC markets are fully functional.

[1] [https://medium.com/@SimpleCrypto/bitcoin-cash-difficulty- adj...](https://medium.com/@SimpleCrypto/bitcoin-cash-difficulty-adjustment- results-in-25min-blocks-48cbc1ac004e)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1.9 MByte in size / 6985 transactions.

This is about twice as much as is possible in a block of the old Bitcoin chain.

This will become super interesting.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, if the fees are lower and the network is less congested I wonder if legacy Bitcoin could get overtaken for small transactions?

<comment><AUTHOR> If so, that would be a historic victory of pragmatism.

A lot of popular engineers in powerful positions have been working for years on how to scale Bitcoin.

Now some people said "Fuck that! We will just increase this integer from 1 to 8".

Reminds me of how Linus Torvalds created a simple monolithic Kernel while GNU&Co were working on sophisticated microkernels. Now, 26 years later, everything from servers to smartphones runs on Linux. And GNU Herd is still considered experimental.

<comment><USER26> Except nobody was "investing" (speculating) on GNU Herd. It should give a lot of people pause that Bitcoin can just suddenly split like this. What's to stop it from being split again and again?

<comment><USER27> The split itself is not damaging. It's like if 100 bars of your gold were suddenly 100 bars of gold and 100 bars of gold cash. The original gold marketplace is only affected as much as it is _replaced_ by the gold cash marketplace. So it doesn't matter how many times the coin gets split in this fashion

<comment><USER28> While This analgy works only to some limited degree - gold has a value in itself, you can use it to build some jewels, an electric conductor or a door stopper among other things. A Bitcoin has no inherent value. If nobody is interested in Bitcoin (or Bitcoin cash) anymore it's just a few bits in a disk which can be overwritten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Now 4 blocks in: [https://cash.coin.dance/blocks#blockDetails](https://cash.coin.dance/blocks#blockDetails)

<comment><USER30> Wasn't the fork scheduled to happen ~7 hours ago? Why did the first block take so long if the hashrate is high enough to produce 4 blocks in the subsequent half hour?

<comment><USER31> The new chain inherited the difficulty from the previous chain. Now that the network realized there isn't as much hash rate the difficulty has been reduced and a more normal rate of block creation restored.

Edit: that didn't happen yet, I stand corrected

<comment><USER32> My understanding is that it will take much longer than that for the BCC chain difficulty to significantly adjust.

<comment><USER33> 2016 blocks from what I understand. That's 14 days at 10 minute blocktimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As someone who missed the Bitcoin boat, I admit to having to read up to figure out what was going on here.

From what I read, Bitcoin Cash is an alternative cryptocurrency like Ethereum, but based on a change to the original design of Bitcoin algorithms, which increased the basic block size of the transactions. It seems this was done to increase transaction performance.

Also it seems there were competing proposals in the community about how to accomplish the goal of increasing transaction performance, "SegWit2x" and "BitCoin Cash" \- and the folks who started the BitCoin Cash fork didn't agree with the SegWit2x strategy.

Anybody else more in the know, can explain it like I'm 5?

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Are people exploiting this via some sort of arbitrage or whatever to try to make money again? It seems risky?

EDIT: Removed quotes around the word "fork".

<comment><USER35> > From what I read, Bitcoin Cash is an alternative cryptocurrency like > Ethereum, but based on a change to the original design of Bitcoin > algorithms, which increased the basic block size of the transactions. It > seems this was done to increase transaction performance.

It is an altcoin, but unlike most altcoins it has a shared history with Bitcoin. Basically, at the moment of it's creation (today, August 1st), everone who owned bitcoins owned an equal number of Bitcoin Cash. So now they are two separate coins and two separate chains, but with a shared history.

> Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

It's hard to give a judgement. When Apple started working on a self-driving car, was that a good thing or a bad thing? Hard to say, it more of just was a thing to know, unless you had a horse in the self-driving car race. Bitcoin Cash will either be successful in some capacity or it will flop altogether, but the original Bitcoin certainly isn't going anywhere.

If you don't have a horse in the race, I wouldn't think of it as a good or bad thing. It's just an event that doesn't mean too much unless you are excited about Bitcoin Cash and the principles it stands for, or if you have Bitcoin and don't realize that you also have an equivalent number of Bitcoin Cash (currently trading at like $200 each - a nontrivial sum!)

<comment><USER34> Is this kind of like having a new denomination of currency? For example, why carry around 10 $1 bills when I can carry around one $10 bill?

If the number of bitcoins you have stays the same, but just the block size of storage in transaction changes, then I'd guess it's very similar to a bigger unit of currency.

<comment><USER35> No, not quite. It's like having $25 in your wallet in USD, and then next time you look at your wallet you have $25 in USD and also $25 in USD-different. Then you go to the store and find out they only accept USD, and not USD- different, but if you go to a currency exchange you can trade your USD- different for $1 or $2 in USD each.

Not a great analogy I guess, but the point is that it's definitely not the same as having a new denomination of currency. It's a whole new currency entirely, it's just that everyone who had Bitcoin was "granted" (sorta) this new currency too, in the same volume that they had the old currency.

<comment><USER34> I understand - thank you for sharing!

I find it interesting that the two split and then essentially float as different currencies at different rates. Surely, there will be some inter- relationship between them as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can someone provide a summary explaining the significance of this event?

<comment><USER37> Outside the bitcoin community? Not much.

Inside? First salvo in a massive political civil war between interests with different goals. There's this Bitcoin Cash implementation vs Segwit.

<comment><USER35> The first salvo was called Bitcoin XT. And the second was called Bitcoin Classic. And the third was called Bitcoin Unlimited.

And really, there were lots of skirmishes before any of that even. This is a long, old battle, and the fork is more like a resolution (two sides peacefully going their separate ways) than a continuation of the war.

<comment><USER38> Can you mention some of the salvos fired by your side?

<comment><USER20> Such as? If there are any complaints against Bitcoin Core it is that they have been ignoring this issue, not fighting battles.

<comment><USER38> Gavin, a bitcoin developer, Satoshi Nakamoto himself gave commit access rights to Gavin.

They have not been ignoring this issue, they have been firing salvos and censorship left and right. Fighting the original bitcoin with all they had.

<comment><USER20> Gavin setup the github repo. So I guess he granted himself commit rights? But in any case I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interesting to see that the backlog in unprocessed transactions on the original bitcoin chain is exploding at the same time: [https://jochen- hoenicke.de/queue/#24h](https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#24h)

<comment> TD-Linux I suspect that many people are sending their balances to a new address, so that they can import their old keys into a Bitcoin Cash client.

<comment><USER40> The fees are very low, and all the same sizes.

My take on this is this is partisans of big blocks saturating the original chain; as if to try to prove a point. It does cost them some little amount of money, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> ELI5: For folks who moved BTC out of Coinbase before the hard-fork, what's the next step? Said I want to keep both BTC and BCC. I had a hardware wallet, what are some implications that I move my BTC now to my hardware wallet?

<comment><USER42> I had the same question earlier, and I found the following statement by the maintainers of the Electrum wallet very englightning:

[https://electrum.org/bcc.txt](https://electrum.org/bcc.txt)

In particular this section:

> How to redeem my BCC?

> BCC wallets will require you to import your seed or your private keys, which > can be exported from Electrum. Doing so will expose all your Bitcoin funds > associated with that seed to the BCC wallet you decide to use.

> Therefore, _after_ the BCC fork, but _before_ you enter a seed or private > key in a BCC wallet, you should move all your funds to a new Electrum > wallet, with a new seed. You will still be able to use the old seed or > private key with BCC, because BCC has replay protection. Wait until your > funds are confirmed in your new Bitcoin wallet, before you enter the old > private key in a BCC wallet. This will protect your BTC funds from > rogue/untrusted software.

<comment><USER41> Great find! I guess I will have to wait for that Electrum wallet which supports BCC then, then transfer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Not surprisingly, when BCH started, it ran up about $150 and at the same time, BCT fell by a similar amount (approx $2800 to $2650). And as BCH slowly falls, BCT is slowly climbing. Which makes sense if you view this as an equity spin- off.

I would expect this relationship to hold -- that for every dollar BCH gains, BCT is prevented from gaining a dollar. Unless somebody has some good reason this wouldn't be the case.

At the same time ETH ran up from about $205 to $225.

<comment><USER44> For posterity it's notable that at this moment BTC is at $2694.88, while BCH is at $691.94.

Following your assumption that means that the split increased the total value by about $600!

Make of that what you will. :)

<comment><USER43> Where did you get that price from because i dont see that BCH has been anywhere close to that since yesterday.

<comment><USER44> [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin- cash](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-cash)

I did happen to write my comment around the top of the price chart, as the current price is $447.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Quick Question: Sorry, don't know much about Bitcoin, but does this mean Block #478559 is the last block that was forked? Or the first block that was forked?

<comment><USER45> 478558 is the last common block 478559 is the forked one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Interesting -- It still shows "NO UNPLANNED CHAIN SPLIT DETECTED" on [https://www.btcforkmonitor.info](https://www.btcforkmonitor.info), which a lot of folks are using to monitor the fork (from the other HN thread).

<comment><USER47> Well it's not unplanned.... Note how the Bitcoin Cash box is a different color and says "This node's scheduled chain split has occurred."

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Does this mean Coinbase wallet holders have officially missed out on the fork?

<comment><USER49> It means that Coinbase is currently sitting on a bunch of bitcoin cash that they don't currently publicly plan to distribute (Though if they do add support for cash, they will distribute it, apparently)

<comment><USER43> This is seems susceptible to a lawsuit. It would be the equivalent of a stock M/A or spin-off and your broker refusing to give you any stock issuance you were to receive.

<comment><USER50> Or is it something like this: SingerSoft has decided to give 1 share of SingerSoft owner of each share of Microsoft. Unfortunately you're broker isn't going to add it to your account for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Are there any reputable exchanges which you can buy bitcoin cash from yet?

<comment><USER52> Bittrex and others

<comment><USER53> Bittrex is telling me I can't... what others?

<comment><USER54> You can get them on Kraken

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Despite having a higher hashrate than expected, the price of BCC is crashing towards 1/10 of a bitcoin. The network effects and name recognition of Bitcoin are too strong.

<comment><USER13> More markets are opening; bittrex [1] just opened and the price is now moving upwards pretty steadily (they opened at ~0.079 BCH/BTC and are now over 0.12), with good volume, 780 BTC ~= $2.1M so far

[https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC- BCC](https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC-BCC)

<comment><USER56> The bittrex price appears to have diverged quite sharply from, for example, the ViaBTC price[1]. At the time of posting this ViaBTC is 0.127 BCH/BTC and bittrex 0.194 BCH/BTC. I think this may be because ViaBTC is accepting BCH deposits and bittrex isn't.

[1] [https://www.viabtc.com/quot/realtime?currency=btc&dest=bcc&c...](https://www.viabtc.com/quot/realtime?currency=btc&dest=bcc&chart=simple)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Forgive the naive question, but how does the whole 'free Bitcoin Cash' thing work? I have a small amount of Bitcoin in the Exodus wallet.

<comment><USER58> Think of it like copying twitter's database then launching a competitor. All tweets, users, etc. on both sites are the same up until the day the database is copied. Then the tweets, users etc. can be different depending on which site folks use.

You get all your tweets on the new site for free.

Same with BCC. They copied the Bitcoin database at block 478558. So if you have a coin in a BTC account before block 478558, you now have the same coin on the BTC chain, and a copy of that coin on the copied BCC chain.

To use it, you just need to use a BCC wallet, the same way you'd use a BTC wallet to use BTC.

But if you don't know your private key (usually because your coin was on an exchange) then you are out of luck. Google if your exchange will credit you BCC.

<comment><USER59> I've tried explaining this to numerous people but never thought about comparing it to starting a clone of a website with the same DB to start with. Great analogy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Finally BTC has been hard forked and BCH & BTC are live.

Some fun facts: Forked should have name XBC as per ISO bt thats already taken so they named BCH

1st BCH block 478559 & BTC Block no 478559 where mined by ViaBTC

ViaBTC dedicated BCH block to her daughter by adding comment on 1st Block of BCH "�_M�*/ViaBTC/Welcome to the world, Shuya Yang!/�q���3�0c"

<comment><USER61> And it was rejected, wasn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Is it possible that all these forks will eventually just become alternative cryptocurrencies just like Etherum or Litecoin?

People will use whatever fits their use case and there will be well-oiled exchanges arbitraging the valuations.

I'm probably neglecting some of the short term effects of a splitting chain here.

</comment><comment><USER63> Also [https://pointsproject.org](https://pointsproject.org) for those interested in new curriencies

</comment><comment><USER64> Does this take the pressure off the planned hard fork for Segwit2x? Big blockers now have what they wanted. Seems like BTC could now be the small- block paradise Core wants.

</comment><comment><USER65> I'm confused by all this. What happens if you have a small paper wallet from a few years ago? That means you also have bitcoin cash now?

<comment><USER66> Yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> tl;dr what does this mean?

<comment><USER38> There is 2 bitcoins now. Bitcoin Core with feature of segregated witness (segwit).

And Bitcoin Cash with increased block size limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> now bitcoin cash [https://www.exchangeratesdata.com/convert/BCH/USD/](https://www.exchangeratesdata.com/convert/BCH/USD/)

</comment><comment><USER69> So, if you held 100 BTC before the fork, now you get to have 100BTC + 100BCC? Nice! Can we fork it few more times please? Me likes free money :-)

</comment><comment><USER70> with an ounce of confidence, maybe people will be too greedy to sell it off.

</comment><comment><USER71> the tyranny of the miners.</comment>


Apple Approached Time Warner About Possible Merger Before AT&T Talks - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/at-t-time-warner-talks-could-set-off-deal-frenzy-1477081862 <comment><USER2> Please stop reposting this story to Hacker News.</comment>


Hacking Team: a zero-day market case study - <AUTHOR> https://tsyrklevich.net/2015/07/22/hacking-team-0day-market/ <comment><USER2> This is a really amazing post.

Two things that startled me:

First, there is apparently a market for vulnerabilities that bypass the Flash access controls for cameras and audio recording. There can be no benign purpose for those exploits. Nobody penetration tests a Fortune 500 company looking to see if they can light up the cameras on worker desktops.

Second, there's an _eighty thousand dollar_ price tag for a Netgear vulnerability. That shocked me: serverside, highly targeted. Only, it turns out, there probably isn't any such market. Apparently, some of these bugs are listed for sale at exorbitant price with no anticipation of ever selling them. They're not listed at close to a clearing price, but rather just aspirationally, with the idea being that anyone who will someday, maybe, engage a serious zero-day broker for a Netgear vuln is probably going to derive six figures of income from that bug.

That's the theory, at least.

For future HN bug bounty/black market threads: _note the absence of Facebook XSS vulns on these price lists_. Nobody is paying tens of thousands of dollars for web vulns. Except the vendors. :)

<comment><USER3> > For future HN bug bounty/black market threads: note the absence of Facebook > XSS vulns on these price lists. Nobody is paying tens of thousands of > dollars for web vulns. Except the vendors. :)

Is this due to the fact that the value of a Facebook XSS vuln is very low, or that the high likelihood that Facebook will notice the vulnerability (possibly from another source) and patch the issue before a profit can be realized?

<comment><USER4> It's because Facebook, Google, and some others run generous bug bounties / white-hat programs. Without committing a crime, people can make a lot for disclosing it directly and confidentially. Vulnerabilities can pay 5-15k and there have been 30-40k payouts. Occasionally, you'll see a blog post explaining the process from detection to payment, like: [http://homakov.blogspot.com/2013/02/hacking-facebook-with- oa...](http://homakov.blogspot.com/2013/02/hacking-facebook-with-oauth2-and- chrome.html)

FB paid out 1.3m in 2014. [http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-bug-bounty- program-pai...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-bug-bounty-program-paid- out-1-3-million-in-2014/)

<comment><USER2> No. Facebook is probably not outbidding the black market for their vulnerabilities. I think 'grugq is exactly right: the market for serverside vulnerabilities with hours-long half lives is very thin. Facebook could pay $500 for RCE, and so long as they do everything else they currently do for security, a thriving black market would not emerge for their vulnerabilities.

It's interesting to me that there's a real market price for an Adobe Reader flaw, but that Facebook flaws have (generous) fiat prices set by Facebook.

<comment><USER5> Seems to me you could "quite easily" double dip.

Sell your exploit on the black market. A day later, sell it to the vendor. "Sorry, they must have found and patched it"? Just ask Facebook not to disclose your information when highlighting vulnerability payouts.

<comment><USER2> If you read this whole post, you'll see that buyers expect this behavior, and payments are escrowed or tranched to account for ti.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excellent post; very interesting!

How many of these "expensive" bugs are directly due to memory safety? From a quick glance it looks like this entire market is held up purely on that quirk of C/C++. Of course this is nothing compared to the money being poured into compiler and runtime tricks to try to undo those quirks. Which is probably little compared to the amount of money via time lost developing and debugging such an environment.

Overall these prices seem low compared to the capability. Is that because it's easy enough for governments and big corps to just hire teams and dev in house? These prices are well within SMB price range if an unethical company wanted to attack a competitor (though there's probably cheaper ways in). That, plus given that the price to compromise even federal agents (going off known cases where FBI and CIA agents were turned)... my doubt increases that companies can actually keep secrets. I think of this when folks like Nikon refuse to document camera formats under the claim that it's a trade secret they are hiding from competitors.

It is curious though how little these go for, overall. Perhaps because they aren't overly directly profitable (exploitable for cash)? I wonder if there's more money in exploiting server software that you can use almost directly for profit? Perhaps not; it could be easier for the criminals with the infrastructure in place to find and exploit directly as part of operations.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great writeup.

Lest not forget, that people got imprisoned for political reasons because of vendors such as HT, FinFisher by Gamma and others.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/16/finfisher_criminal_c...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/16/finfisher_criminal_complaint_gamma_international/)

Vendors selling to HT and HT themselves should be sued and brought to justice for supporting oppressive regimes. The UN charta says it all.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some intersting stuff that shows up in the e-mails:

Kaspersky discovered one of the exploits in use by Hacking Team, but kept shut for a while to trace its users and other linked code. HT's CTO Marco Vallery considers this behaviour "morally despicable". [[https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/990150](https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/990150)]

The price for iOS exploits is apparently in the millions, because the price is "driven by federal programs" [[https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/15494](https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/15494)]

<comment><USER2> The price for iOS exploits is also high because they are distinctively difficult to generate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The market for exploits is far cheaper than the cost of defense against them. It seems like firms would be better off hiring real black hats to make real exploits than mess with white hat firms.

</comment><comment><USER10> What is HACKING TEAMs motivation for publicly sharing all of this seemingly private underworld information?

<comment><USER11> They didn't share it voluntarily, they got hacked and 400GB of data from their servers turned up in a data dump.

[http://leaksource.info/2015/07/07/hacking-team- hacked-400gb-...](http://leaksource.info/2015/07/07/hacking-team-hacked-400gb- data-dump-of-internal-documents-emails-source-code-from-notorious-spyware- dealer/)

<comment><USER10> I see, thank you for the context!

So then my next question would be what is this person hoping to do by publishing the info like this?

<comment><USER12> Activism. Hacking Team were not liked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't want to be that guy but trying to read this on a tablet is a major pain. The scrolling keeps breaking. Why do people mess with something that isn't broken?</comment>


Am I the only one that thinks Color is #winning? - <AUTHOR>

Alright, Color's gotten a lot of backlash since launch for a terrible first experience, bad UX, being overfunded, not rolling out correctly, among many other things. Now am i the only one that thinks they're absolutely winning? And I mean winning in the Charlie Sheen sense.
Imagine the other alternative. An allstar team raises a crap-ton of money. They launch a 1.0. and do everything right. We check it out and everything looks ok. Everything is as expected and we go back to our business. At the end of the day, they still have an all-star team, a ton of money and not all that much more.
What do they have now? Now they have a story. A ton of money and gasp a train wreck. They got something we didn't expect and we can't look away. Theyve created a stir with a terrible product. Now, they still have an all-start team, ton of money, and also, they have our attention. Question is now if they'll pull something out of their back pockets before we forget about it. <comment><USER2> Interesting thought. This whole time I keep thinking that had they only raised a couple million or less, no one would have paid attention. The sheer size of the funding has made us all look at it and scratch our heads. Even if we think it is overvalued or another dumb social media startup, we've all looked at it and given it some thought, which is hard to buy.</comment>


Ask HN: What cloud-based back-up solutions are compromise-proof? - <AUTHOR> Cloud-based backup solutions that I have tried or looked at so far (such as tarsnap, dropbox, crashplan and some others), would allow an attacher to delete all backups (including "previous versions") in case of a host compromise, which is a scary prospect.<p>What cloud-based backup solutions are available that are actually guaranteed have your back in case of host compromise? <comment><USER2> With tarsnap-keymgmt you can create key files which can't be used to delete data.</comment>


As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/29/us/computer-science-cheating.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news <comment><USER2> It's pretty surprising students think they can get away with this. If there's any class you'd get caught in, it'd be a CS class. In the CS classes I took in undergrad and grad school, the professors would tell everyone they would be using automated plagiarism detectors, and even explain a bit about how they worked and explicitly say they were smart enough to detect the "rename-the- variables" trick.

That said, I've got to imagine that claims that "as many as 20 percent of the students in one 2015 computer science course were flagged for possible cheating" are a misrepresentation or a misunderstanding, on the part of the journalist. I mean, sure, if you set the threshold for the plagiarism detector at a low level, you can flag 20%, 50%, or however many students you want for "possible cheating", but it's not necessarily a real thing.</comment>


Asians may face tougher college admission process, study finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/10/12/24103/

<comment><USER2> I find it darkly humorous that people express surprise that institutions which publish studies in support of racial discrimination, file briefs with the Supreme Court in favor of racial discrimination, write (and write, and write) in favor of racial discrimination, and have officers with six figure salaries put in charge of their departments of racial discrimination, might actually be engaged in racial discrimination.

<comment><USER3> True and nicely put. But, I would say the "surprise" here is not that it's harder for Asian Americans to get in relative to African Americans. You'd think that if you are guaranteeing or biasing towards a certain number of select groups, then the unselected groups would be equally biased against. But that's not what this study is finding. It's pointing towards the possibility that Asians are not just disadvantaged relative to their fellow minorities; they are disadvantaged relative to whites as well.

<comment><USER2> That's an interesting perspective that honestly had not occurred to me. I've have an unhealthy interest with admissions policies for, crikey, more than a decade now. The fact that affirmative action would require a disproportionate discrimination against Asians was obvious from the public data, and much remarked upon, more than a decade ago. It was also frequently remarked that this concern was just a stalking horse for white Republicans, for what its worth.

Speaking of public data: universities have gotten very good at shutting it up like a drum because when it surfaces (in, for example, the Grantz vs. Bollinger litigation) it typically reveals that they are bald-faced liars on this subject.

Relatedly, Princeton's written Affirmative Action Plan is available for inspection only if you go to campus and read it in their presence, but you won't be allowed to make copies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Schools are not looking to admit the best students - they are looking to admit the best _class_. That means that they have an idea of what the shape and character of that class will look like, after taking into account certain restrictions (legacies, athletes, the band needs a tuba player, whatnot). There are only so many slots for high-achieving student council presidents.

I look like every other Indian kid to the admissions committees; I needed to distinguish myself in other ways. If you're poor and Latino and you qualify academically, guess what, _you've already distinguished yourself_. Anti-Asian quotas aren't anti-Asian. They're anti-homogenous.

<comment><USER5> I would think a school wants more future billionaires and Nobel prize winners instead of cherry picking 10 whites 10 asians 10 hispanics 10 blacks majoring in Art History and Divinity.

This is certainly the image that Harvard et al. are cultivating.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps diversity is part of the education.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely. Elite schools are selling a product. And the product that Harvard, Yale, etc sell is the image that they create well-rounded future leaders who are going places.

There is an easy way to see whether you're part of the target market the school is selling to. Just look at how much financial aid they are willing to give you. If they are willing to give you generous financial aid, then you're part of the product being sold, not the target market. According to Harvard's current financial aid packages, if your parents make under $60,000, you're part of the product. If they make up to $120,000, you get steep discounts.

If you're honest, there is an even easier way to judge. When I was at Dartmouth College the figure I heard was that they got more in donations each year than tuition. If your family is able to make those donations, then you are _really_ in their target market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I actually have some experience in university admissions procedures at the University of Wisconsin. It is interesting that Princeton is being sued because it was one of the schools following a program that many had considered to hold some promise. It is based on socio-economic standing. So Mr. Li is saying Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites were admitted to Princeton, even though they were less qualified. Now I don't work at Princeton, but I am familiar with the admissions there. I am almost positive that lower and middle class students were admitted to the University in lieu of better qualified students from the elite classes. Probably causing Mr. Li to be rejected. The article alludes to this fact when it talks about poor whites being given admission over better qualified wealthy whites. I am also all but certain that poor asians were given admission over better qualified wealthy asians at Princeton that same year. Though I don't have the data to back up these assertions, it seems that the gentleman in the article does.

It is pretty safe to say that the nation's universities will be watching this law suit with great interest. It will determine whether this socio-economics based admissions practice is wrong or if it is acceptable. More importantly, if it is acceptable, under what circumstances is it acceptable?

This one will be VERY interesting. Not just an ordinary affirmative action suit. This one is quite out of the everyday.

<comment><AUTHOR> _It is interesting that Princeton is being sued_

Strictly speaking, Princeton is not being sued by anyone. There is no lawsuit here. There was a complaint by a rejected applicant to the federal Department of Education Office of Civil Rights

[http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintprocess.ht...](http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintprocess.html)

and while the complainant first matriculated at Yale and then transferred to Harvard the inquiry was expanded.

<http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/09/08/21307/>

There still has not been any announcement of findings from the inquiry.

The controlling law is a federal statute prohibiting discrimination by race in any higher education institution receiving federal funds.

<http://www.ed.gov/policy/rights/guid/ocr/raceoverview.html>

(All elite institutions of higher education receive federal funds.)

Amazingly, this law has been on the books since the 1960s, but apparently most students have not been aware of their opportunity to make complaints to the federal Department of Education Office of Civil Rights in regard to the practices of privately operated colleges and universities. Previous Supreme Court cases on affirmative action have been based on a different body of law, the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution as applied to state universities.

<comment><USER8> So are they going to opine on whether there was discrimination by race, or perhaps not opine at all? Or is there any chance that they would look at data, like that of Thomas Espenshade, that points to widespread socio-economic discrimination? Perhaps give some guidance as to whether that is acceptable or not?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Department of Education may not issue an informative finding at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't really want to fight the last war. The real evil to be fought here is credentialism. Apparently even PG might agree: <http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.html>

If you take care of that, both from a social angle and for employment, it won't feel like your life has taken a hit if you don't get into one of these schools. In fact you might not even want to go anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> _The real evil to be fought here is credentialism._

That's a very good point, and thanks for the link to pg's essay on that issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a white, it makes me somewhat sick to my stomach to think that I might have benefited from affirmative action. If Asians are better than me, score better than me, I shouldn't displace any of them in the university.

I almost always assume that blacks who are in any kind of engineering, math, physics, or hard science schools are placed there because of their race. I don't want to be thought of in that manner.

Now, was it wrong that the first thing I thought of when I saw a black in the engineering department was affirmative action? Maybe so, but what is one to think when affirmative action programs are in place?

<comment><AUTHOR> _what is one to think when affirmative action programs are in place?_

I wish I could be 100 percent sure that today's affirmative action programs operate like the first one I heard of (in 1968), when the idea of the program is that it connected students who didn't have college-educated parents to colleges that easily gained applications from children of alumni, but didn't get many applications from first-generation college students. Then what I would think of anyone admitted under an affirmative action program is, "It's only fair that he is here too, even though he didn't have the advantage I had of being a third-generation college student." But it's not clear now, college- by-college, just what happens in detail when the admission committee meets to decide whom to admit.

The great majority of United States colleges admit nearly all of their applicants. Hundreds of colleges have explicit open-enrollment policies. So this whole issue only pertains to a small subset of the most desired colleges, colleges that reject the majority of their applicants.

<comment><USER6> FYI, the whole idea of affirmative action used to bother me enormously.

But not so much now that I realize that working for others is not a desirable goal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At least part of the problem is that it isn't well defined what colleges look for in applicants. For applying to something like YC, the goal is pretty clear. Applications are selected based on their likelihood of making lots of money in the future.

Colleges select (I think) looking for people who will be "successful". Being "successful" in life is fortunately very hard to define.

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember reading an article about this a while back. A college admissions officer was interviewed, and she admitted to thinking something like, "Oh great, another one of these kids" whenever she saw another Asian applicant who plays a musical instrument, (insert other stereotypical activities), etc.

Your first reaction might be to accuse her of racism, but you can see why she would have the reaction she does. In certain areas, especially with large, high-achieving Asian communities, a lot of Asian children are encouraged by their parents to do essentially the same things to increase their chances of being admitted to the "top" schools. Is it any surprise that college admissions officers are getting bored of seeing very similar applications?

Not that this necessarily justifies the decisions, or that this is the only reason for this phenomenon; obviously, it is not.

</comment><comment><USER12> The study could show that Asian applicants are less likely to apply to lower ranking private colleges. Or, the "soft factors" they talk about could be something obvious, like admitting student athletes with lower SAT scores. Asian students might be less likely to focus on sports in high school.

<comment><AUTHOR> A different study reported in various news sources this year

<http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/20/mismatch>

suggests other possibilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> College admissions ain't YC. If schools actually admitted students based on merit, I'd be against this. But since they admit mostly based on grades and SAT scores, I find it difficult to complain.

(And while they do theoretically factor in other stuff, for the most part that just means that in the event of a tie they choose the person who made a documented appearance at more after school 'clubs'.)</comment>


Proton and Mozilla Partner for Privacy - <AUTHOR> https://protonvpn.com/blog/mozilla-partnership/ <comment><USER2> The combination somewhat makes sense, and I can imagine this leading to Mozilla acquiring ProtonVPN like they did Pocket, if this experiment turns out to be a success. (Though perhaps that's not really an option if being based in Switzerland is a relevant selling point. Come to think of it - how does Mozilla collecting payments in this case influence that?)

That said, I wonder what metrics they are using to evaluate whether this is a success. Obviously, number of people switching to a VPN. However, the screen shots in Mozilla's blog post [1] look pretty intrusive and distracting from the browsing experience. I wonder if they will be able to capture user annoyance, if applicable.

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/10/22/testing-n...](https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/10/22/testing- new-ways-to-keep-you-safe-online/)

</comment><comment><USER3> am i wrong or is this really an endorsement/marketing campaign rather than some sort of integration.

<comment><USER4> Seems true.

Maybe this will eventually allow me to easily use the vpn in a specific window/tab/container, but what's actually making the biggest difference to me is that a third-party I trust has vouched for ProtonVPN.

<comment><USER5> I trust both, and I like that both are working together. I get my email through ProtonMail, and I've been a little skeptical of recent moves by Mozilla, but this is one I can really get behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone tell me why is it better for my privacy that all of my data flows through a 3rd party? A 3rd party who will now know everything about me (at least what pages I browse)

<comment><USER7> It comes down to trust. You already _trust_ your internet traffic to your ISP. If you trust a 3rd party VPN more than your ISP, then VPN is the way to go. You'll never be completely free of reliance on a 3rd party, except with TOR and the alike decentralized internet models. But, even those have caveats too

<comment><USER2> You also only need to trust this third party, rather than your home ISP, your work ISP, the ISP in the coffee bar you're working from today, the ISP that provides public transport WiFi, etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So proton has bought in-browser apps that cannot be blocked by ad-blockers because they're directly within the browser GUI instead of inside the HTML page.

I really love Mozilla and what they stand for, but for the love of God, sponsored ads within the browser proper don't sound like a good idea. Once you open that path, what's next? Imagine MS Clippy suggesting you drink a red bull because it noticed your typing is becoming slower. Plus all the greenwashing in the public announcement feels dishonest. Let's call this what it is: experimenting with in-app ads as potential revenue stream.

<comment><USER9> So what you're saying is that money from a paid service going to Mozilla's pocket could be a new potential revenue stream? I can't believe nobody noticed that.

<comment><USER8> desktop apps having pop ups like a website, that's the thing they're trying out here</comment></comment></comment>


Is there a tool to backup my email inbox - <AUTHOR> I am running out of space at my current email provider and I hate being held hostage to upgrade my account.<p>I need to be able to backup my email regularly. This could be a scheduled job/cron etc. Preferably this should work on Linux. I would like to also run searches for my email on this tool. I am not expecting a cloud based services as I am more than happy with having it on my desktop (or my own servers). Is there any such tool? <comment><USER2> If your e-mail provider supports the IMAP protocol, you can sync your e-mails on the provider's mail server with a desktop e-mail client like Thunderbird. Once you have a local copy of your messages in Thunderbird, you can search them locally, back them up (copy the local files/directories), etc.

If you want to retain messages on the desktop and delete them from the mail server, you can move them into a local e-mail folder that's not synced with the server.

This is how I manage my e-mail (my e-mail provider is FastMail).

<comment><AUTHOR> the problem is with using multiple devices for email, that the local storage within apps like thunderbird wont suffice. I need to have a backup of all email somewhere, where I can quickly access/search stuff as well, not matter where i am.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fetchmail is a Linux/Unix/Windows mail backup tool; it's scriptable and CRONable. Here's one example of how to use it. - [http://lifehacker.com/235207/geek-to-live--back-up-gmail- wit...](http://lifehacker.com/235207/geek-to-live--back-up-gmail-with- fetchmail)</comment>


Ask HN: Which device to test android app - <AUTHOR>

I developed Apple iOS apps and am thinking develop their Android version also. The problem is that which handset I should use to test (since they are so many)?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> All of them with the emulator. :)</comment>


Google Co-Founder Has Genetic Code Linked to Parkinson's - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/technology/19google.html?_r=1&oref=slogin <comment><USER2> Bit of a non-story, no? The NYT try hard to find something in this, but come up with nothing.</comment>


Court Ruling Opens The Door To Rejecting Many Software Patents - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110817/03120415557/court-ruling-opens-door-to-rejecting-many-software-patents-as-being-mere-mental-processes.shtml

<comment><USER2> Quote: _the Supreme Court ruled very narrowly in the Bilski case, without making any explicit statement (as precedent) on overall software or business model patents_

I really don't get why so many people say this. The Court ruled narrowly on the particular question before them, but they were 9-0 on what software patent opponents care about. They all, majority and dissent, said not to use State Street as precedent. Further, the majority affirmed the Federal Circuit opinion that said to ignore their earlier State Street and Alappat opinions.

We're back to Benson, Flook, and Diehr. Any patent where the novelty and non- obviousness is entirely contained in software should be invalid right now. Why is this not recognized?

<comment><USER3> _Any patent where the novelty and non-obviousness is entirely contained in software should be invalid right now. Why is this not recognized?_

Because the decisions appear to be extremely incoherent.

Firstly, software is a type of hardware. Any computer algorithm can be forged in steel and powered by a steam engine.

Secondly, their definition of "abstract" does not pass the giggle test. If the claimed process is practical for a human to do, it is "abstract" and hence unpatentable. So we get the ludicrous argument that the math of BCD calculations is "abstract" while GPS signal analysis equations are concrete. Say what?!

Thirdly, even if we grant them the laughable practicality test, how is fraud- screening millions of transactions a day practical for a human?

Basically, the practicality standard seems to be if it makes the judge's eyes glaze over, it's impractical. In other words, if you can spoon-feed the invention to the judge and he gets it, then the innovation is purely cognitive. And unpatentable.

But if he chokes on the ideas, the innovation is a patentable _deus ex machina_. This absurdity is underlined by the _Research Corp. Techs. v. Microsoft Corp._ case discussed in the ruling. The invention relies on extremely abstract processing of the dithering signal in the frequency domain. Judges do not understand the Fourier transform--hell, they aren't even aware of its existence--so the invention is patentable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Coverage from a better site: [http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/08/if-the- software-meth...](http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/08/if-the-software- method-is-not-patentable-then-neither-is-the-computer-readable-medium.html)</comment>


Expertise is falling out of favor - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/future-of-work-expertise-navy/590647/ <comment><USER2> The examples are mostly about the military. It's hard to extrapolate that to IT.

If anything IT is becoming more specialized because our tool stacks are becoming more complex. For example, pre-web, UI's were generally easy to create and change due to their WYSIWYG nature. The Web pissed on WYSIWYG big- time because it's "flow-based", and different browsers, versions, and OS settings would render differently.

Thus, it generally requires a UI specialist to do it well. It might change with a new tool or standard, though. The pendulum of approaches often swings back and forth over time, similar to how the industry swings between server- centric and client-centric designs. And, data-centric versus code-centric, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Admittedly this comment isn't related to the article itself, but I had the opportunity to tour the USS Gabrielle Giffords a couple of years ago. I'm not an expert in naval ships, but it seemed very impressive. Being made out of aluminum instead of traditional steel, much of the insides were covered in reflective anti-fire material; made it look "space-agey". If you live in San Diego, or another naval town in the U.S., keep an eye on local news as the navy occasionally offers tours open to the public.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Fast is smooth, smooth is slow" is the phrase that comes to mind.</comment>


Process hack: Efficient verbal recital of ID's - <AUTHOR> https://kiwidev.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/idea-efficient-verbal-recital-of-ids/

<comment><USER2> Why not? UPS schedules their truck routes to minimize left turns.</comment>


StalkerBot: view a HN user's recent comments and state of mind - <AUTHOR> http://stalkerbot.com/

<comment><USER2> Doesn't work for me. I get "User name not found. Might be a temporary outage. Sorry."

</comment><comment><USER3> Did someone type in one of the karma brothers, tptacek or patio11? That might be what crashed the site.

I'd be interested to see the analysis it returns for a prolific poster.

<comment><AUTHOR> The sentiment analysis is on a comment by comment basis -- see screen shot. So no overall personality assessment. We only analyze and display the top ~10 comments from a given user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dead for me too ... "User name not found. Might be a temporary outage. Sorry."

The screenshot is nice though.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the outage. Not sure what's going on right now -- our server can't get the HN site. Here's a screen shot to give you an idea:

> <http://stalkerbot.com/Stalkerbot_sample.png>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We put in a fix. Looks like it's working again. But there might be some continued instability. Please let us know if you find a persistent problem. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome. I had no idea I how I felt about poverty (when did I comment on that?)

<comment><USER6> Why would you comment on this like this... when you worked on it?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like we overwhelmed the HN server trying to service 1500 queries in the last 3 hours. We are getting it sorted out. Thanks for your patience.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am not sure it's all there but it's definitely funny.

<http://stalkerbot.com/#/pg>

<comment><USER8> "User name not found. Might be a temporary outage. Sorry."

<comment><USER3> That might be the funny part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm pretty sure my recent comments have been very grumpy. I wish I could get confirmation of this, but the service seems to be down.

<comment><USER10> You do sound pretty grumpy about the server being down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone got a screenshot of this thing working or something, its obviously having problems at the moment.

<comment><USER12> Found this on the hacker day page: [http://static.diffbot.com/images/webmininghackday/stalkerbot...](http://static.diffbot.com/images/webmininghackday/stalkerbot.png)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Should be a lot more stable now. We were up late coding up an alternate route to access HN. Enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER13> User name not found. Might be a temporary outage. Sorry.

</comment><comment><USER14> Can it run on a comment _before_ it goes live, to preemptively advise on perceived tone?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great suggestion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> seems to be working now..

</comment><comment><USER16> You think I was born yesterday? Give me an actual HN username!

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks like twitter back in the ol day

<comment><USER15> did early twitter use to analyze the tweets as well ? how is it similar to old twitter?</comment></comment>


Unemployed Thomas Cook employees job opportunities - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YnTzcqQn3NyqreuZrAlt7u9QSphj4SJiTIU4eXTc9xI/edit#gid=0 <comment><AUTHOR> Came across this link where people are trying to help out the staff of Thomas Cook after they announced them shutting down and stopped trading. God bless the internet.</comment>


Who Did the Maya Sacrifice? - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/08/01/who-did-the-maya-sacrifice <comment><USER2> It is hard to imagine the horror of exploring a new place and coming across Tzompantli made from children.

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

<comment><USER3> To be fair, the people who were the first explorers in these lands were hardly the squeamish type

<comment><USER4> But they were likely the zealous type for whom this was plenty justification to classify Maya as subhuman and have no trouble killing all of them.

<comment><USER5> At least for the first conquistadores, this is wildly incorrect. It is true that they saw the Mesoamerican culture as wrong (particularly the human sacrifice bit), and put the conquest of territory for Spain as of high importance, but their understanding of the world was more complex than what you describe. I really recommend reading Bernal Díaz del Castillo'a firsthand account of the conquest of "New Spain" to get an idea of how these people viewed the world!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://outline.com/urvuEC](https://outline.com/urvuEC)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190803011609/https://www.econo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190803011609/https://www.economist.com/science- and-technology/2019/08/01/who-did-the-maya-sacrifice)

<comment> mark-r Thanks for trying, but neither link worked for me.

<comment><USER7> [https://archive.fo/UvEKU](https://archive.fo/UvEKU) works for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hm. Is it that bad?

The data would seem to at least falsify the warfare hypothesis: if they were mostly prisoners-of-war, you'd expect a few localities & demographics to be overrepresented (as they are from the usual enemy city-states, or a burst of young male sacrifices from a victorious battle with many prisoners).

And a gradual dispersion of victims falling off steadily with distance yet with a long tail of very remote origins sounds to me like what you'd get from a mature long-distance network of slave traders.

<comment><USER9> I think the idea that they sacrificed slaves (exclusively?) is a bit overhasty of a conclusion, the Spanish reported that when they "freed" many "victims" waiting to be sacrificed by the Aztecs, they were indignant and demanded to be returned and sacrificed.

A different time, and a different culture, but with a huge amount of similarities too.

Perhaps people viewed it as their sacred duty to be sacrificed?

<comment><USER10> The Spanish might be unreliable narrators. Perhaps we cant trust their assessment of situation and even less their reports. They could have been wrong in many ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At Chichen Itza, tour guides there will tell you that people there actually competed in pelota (ball) games for the honor of being sacrificed. According to them, it was something the competitors actively sought out. Unsurprisingly, it seems as though this is false. The losers of the game were the ones sacrificed during certain periods in Mayan history. [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame#Human_sa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame#Human_sacrifice)

</comment><comment><USER12> The list of cookie using parties on the economist.com is longer then the article...(?)

</comment><comment><USER13> *Whom

<comment><USER14> _Hwæm_ , actually, if you really feel a need to attach yourself to obsolete words. Language changes, and the dropping of _whom_ should not bother you anymore than does _here_ having entirely supplanted _hither_ or the near absence of _whence_ in everyday conversation.

<comment><USER15> In that case using the correct word would render the title unambiguous and comprehensible to everybody. As it is written I read it as "who was responsible for the act known as the _Maya Sacrifice_?". As a non-native English speaker who learnt the language in a rather formal way, interpreting the word "sacrifice" as a verb is ungrammatical to me.

<comment><USER16> As a native speaker, sacrifice is a verb.

<comment><USER15> It can be a noun or a verb, depending on the context [0]. In this sentence it seems to be a noun, which is qualified by the adjective "mayan", written simply as a noun in apposition "Maya". If "sacrifice" is a verb, the sentence has no object, thus it is ungrammatical, because "who" cannot be the object, only the subject. Or so I was told when learning this damn language!

[0] [https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sacrifice](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sacrifice)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was hoping it would dig into how they got all the bones and stuff out of the sinkhole but it glossed over this point.

Anyone know if the source material is better?

</comment><comment><USER18> "Sate their lust for blood"?

<comment><USER19> "Bloodlust" is a common phrase that refers to a desire to kill.

<comment><USER18> Even denuded of its emotive connotations like that, a culture's willingness to commit human sacrifice doesn't logically indicate desire; indeed, the evidence suggests most cultures that practiced sacrifice (in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas) believed they obtained some utility from the act.

<comment><USER20> I'm more inclined to think the utility is a pretext.

If you do human sacrifice, it's probably because you _want_ to do human sacrifice. Smart people can always come up with a pretext.

<comment> swagasaurus-rex Perhaps they are linked. Perhaps at a certain time there was a need for it; the utility became apparent.

I could imagine a collapse in the food supply necessitating either sacrifice, or cannibalism.

It may have become fashionable to do for various religious and ritualistic reasons, even during good times.

<comment><USER19> > _I could imagine a collapse in the food supply necessitating either > sacrifice, or cannibalism._

That's not possible because (as every European famine ever has shown) if you choose "none of the above" then people will starve naturally until the famine is over. Not every hard situation is a trolley problem.

<comment><USER21> Which may result in more death than necessary. You observe a failed harvest. Your foodstock is sufficient for a thousand days for one person. You expect the next food to be available in 100 days. Your population is 100 people. If you feed all people for just 5 days, 5 people might survive. If you pick 10 at the beginning and sacrifice 90, 10 people can survive.

Whatever you choose makes a difference in how many people die. It's still kind of a trolley problem.

<comment><USER22> Such a good point. It IS a trolley problem. Cannibalism would have saved so many European societies during so many famines. I am unironically #TeamCannibal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not sure i can agree with using the word "sacrifice" here. This could have been a voluntary trek into "some other world" - we simply don't know what it was. When i hear sacrifice i think heads rolling.</comment>