Freicoin - easy-to-use demurrage currency - <AUTHOR> http://freico.in

<comment><USER2> Q: What is the Freicoin Foundation? A: The Freicoin Foundation is a non-profit organization, aiming to support sustainability and biodiversity by integrating Freicoin into economical relations.

Q: You said that Freicoin is decentralized. But the Foundation makes it centralized! A: You are right. But we have no other solution. Initial coins should be distributed to the society.

Q: Why can't you just give these coins to miners (as in Bitcoin). Why do we need a bureaucracy? A: The mining community consists mostly of enthusiasts, not ordinary people who use computers to browse the Internet.

Q: How many coins does the Foundation have? A: The Freicoin Foundation distributes 80% of the total Freicoin money supply through grants. The remaining 20% is a reward for miners, who support the network with their computing power.

Hahaha... no.

<comment><USER3> My gut tells me that somehow there is room for a "everyone gets N" style ~~ _virtual currency_ ~~. Like you prove your identity and get the same amount that everyone else gets (scrubbed on transfer) because the whole early- adopters-win thing is sucky.

But this doesn't look like the answer.

<comment><USER4> So, like a virtual allowance?

Is the "whole early adopters win" thing only sucky because you are not an early adopter? Note that I'm not an early adopter either, but it seems a bit nonsense.

Also, BTC is still pretty young, you could still be a relatively early adopter. You could spend a few months researching, and a few tens of thousands of USD to purchase a competitive mining rig, and you could still make a fortune, or you could lose it all. It isn't the same "anybody can do it" world that it used to be, but it certainly is still low barrier to entry. Is this really a dislike of systems that reward personal risk taking?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One does not simply invent a currency to solve a percevied problem in our economic system. A currency must also provide compelling economic reasons to actors for adoption. That is, what is in it for me to use freicoin?

I don't see any reason to give money, buy, or sell, or do anything with freicoin. To me, the fact that freicoin decays when not used is a bug, not feature.

<comment><USER6> Encouraging currency to be used/passed around more is not a bug for me.

Might interest you: <http://www.lietaer.com/2010/03/the-worgl-experiment/>

<comment><USER7> I can't speak for others, but in my case, if I came to possess some of this currency I would immediately seek a way to convert it into something that would not decay as I kept it.

I think that saving money for both unexpected problems and future investments is an important part of social responsibility, and I would not adopt a currency that was deliberately designed to make saving difficult unless it was forced on me. Even then, I'd probably try to turn it into some kind of commodity that I could sell again later in order to dodge the losses.

There are a few assertions on the main page that I find interesting, in particular the one about money value vs goods value being "the underlying cause of the boom/bust cycle." I don't have time to read the linked book about it, is there a quick version of the explanation?

<comment><USER8> Yes, the point is to get you to convert the currency into something that doesn't decay. That keeps the money supply flowing and encourages you to invest in productive assets, both of which are good for society. A deflationary currency encourages you to stuff all your coins under your mattress.

<comment><USER7> How does it improve the situation if I'm just buying something else to stuff under my mattress (e.g. silver)? I guess my issue is that it seems like even with a system like this implemented at a national scale, over the long run you'd end up with people rushing to convert the currency into "real" money, that being whatever commodity people land on as being most easily traded/stored/etc. At that point it seems like the commodity becomes the currency.

<comment><USER9> Because the assets you're holding under your mattress aren't affecting macroeconomic factors derived from the supply and demand of the currency of trade. More simply, you are conflating money as store-of-value and money as medium-of-exchange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anybody else feel that the current proliferation of P2P cryptocurrencies looks symptomatic of a pyramid scheme that has proven its viability (in the form of BTC) and is now being repeated by unscrupulous copycats who smell a quick buck?

I'm not calling the concept of BTC-style cryptocurrency a deliberate, malicious pyramid scheme in itself. I think this is an unintended side-effect.

<comment><USER11> Yes. Well, qualified yes: I don't believe that the new cryptocurrencies are _more_ of a pump-and-dump than Bitcoin is. The pump-and-dump model is intrinsic to why Bitcoin is popular: creating lots of widely distributed coins early, then making them increasingly dear, creates a built-in base of... let me be charitable and call them "cryptocurrency evangelists", who have high incentive to go to their local online watering holes and claim that Bitcoin is the next big thing.

The equilibrium is predictable:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2608891>

 _[Y]ou can create an arbitrarily high number of bitcoin-like electronic currency units. [These new varieties will have] guaranteed scarcity, anonymity, and a new goldrush phase -- so if you got dumped rather than pumped, you have a new opportunity to start at the top of the pyramid scheme this time.

The equilibrium is that sooner or later expected returns on starting a new distributed pump-and-dump dwarf expected returns of getting in late on bitcoins. And then poof._

Bitcoin is a wonderful engineering achievement: a spontaneously organized, decentralized, peer-to-peer boiler room from which arises a mediocre transaction processing network.

<comment><USER12> I like some of the concepts behind this freicon, it disincentives pump and dump and pyramid schemes. I personally will never put money in bit coins because it is like a pyramid scheme. Again what we really need is probably frictionless digital payments, not another currency.

<comment><USER9> You should never put money in freicoins either. Rather you should use it for buying and selling things, and just keep enough at hand for cash-flow purposes. What we want is a frictionless medium for digital payments, with good economic properties. Bitcoin doesn't offer that.

* Disclaimer: I'm one of the creators of Freicoin.

<comment><USER12> I appreciated the thoughts behind it, the relation between interest rates and incentives for investment is not something I thought about. It makes a lot more sense to me than bitcoins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Funny, just this morning I decided to write a blog post about Gesell and the 'Schwundgeld' and his short usage in the city of Wörgl almost a century ago. The real question, of course, is wether inflation isn't a much more natural way of depriving currency of it's value.

<comment><USER9> What benefit does inflation have over demurrage?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Who does the demurrage fee go to? I couldn't find any information about this on their site. If it is just recirculated through re-mining or something, great (though I don't know how that would work). If it goes to the creators of freicoin then it is a blatant scam. I don't suppose it does, but it's suspicious that they don't mention where the money goes.

<comment><USER15> I don't think it goes anywhere. In theory Freigeld should simply decay into nothing (i.e. tax is collected by government who would depending on financial situation either print more or destroy existing). However I'm unsure where would in Freicoin decay go.

Also what makes me really suspect of it is the fact that Freicoin foundation centralizes the whole thing, so it's a bit pointless. I mean, why have an centralized P2P network? Another worrying thing is that under Silvio Gessel's original idea Freigeld is a local currency NOT a global one.

<comment><USER16> It's not centralized (according to their site). The value of held money just decays. The money doesn't go anywhere; it just disappears.

<comment><USER15>
        >  Q: You said that Freicoin is decentralized. But the   Foundation makes it centralized!
        > A: You are right. But we have no other solution. Initial coins should be distributed to the society.

From FAQ, they say its centralized.

<comment><USER9> No. There is a one-time issuance of currency to get the money out there. Of that, 20% goes to the miners over the next 3 years, and 80% is distributed through community-vetted grant and prize proposals.

Of the demurrage however, it is perpetually destroyed and recycled through the miners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some of the comments in the FAQ don't make any sense.

      Q: Why does Freicoin use demurrage? I'm worried that my coins will just fade away.
      A: Worried? It's a good thing. If the amount of money was stable, people would prefer saving it as opposed to spending it. This would decrease the quantity of money circulated, which in turn would act against the main purpose of money - a medium of exchange. With demurrage in place, you should think about money as it's meant to be, not as a storage medium of wealth.

This is quite an assertion--generally, money is taught to be both a store of value and a medium of exchange. What are you exchanging if there's no value in it?

There are also some really odd grammatical errors:

      Q: With a zero interest rate, investments will be impossible!
      A: It's already possible, for example, in Islam banking...

"Islam banking"?

<comment><USER18> He means Islamic bank, which is basically a bank without riba. If you are interested you should look at wikipedia articles [1] and [2].

Funny thing is in Iran, which considers itself an Islamic country and says it follows Islamic laws in banking, interest rates are as high as 20%.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_bank> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riba>

<comment><USER19> Fun fact: Charging interest used to be against Christian principles aswell. Instead people would borrow from Jews (who did charge interest). The Magna Carta (in England) has sections on what exactly happens if someone ones money to Jews and dies (for example).

<comment><USER17> That's why usury was traditionally a Jewish profession in the Middle Ages-- they were the only ones allowed to do it (and sometimes it was the only thing they were allowed to do).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What tickles me is that the people who criticise Wall Street for the value- less financial engineering of real estate, equities, commodities, etc., i.e. productive assets, turn around and start trying to create value out of thin air in fiat/social financial engineering schemes. I'm not commenting on the value of either activity directly as much as the asymmetry in holding both views simultaneously.

<comment><USER21> I think if you drilled a lot of people you'd end up with them being OK with all the financial engineering stuff, but _not_ OK with Wall Street risking _other_ people's money, not their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In other words, saving money is completely disincentivized in favor of constant spending? Why would anyone adopt this?

<comment><USER23> People are complaining about bitcoin's deflation meaning people are too incentivised to save rather than spend/invest

The fee is really no different from inflation in fiat currencies. Why would anyone save dollars when they are worth 1-2% less every year?

<comment><USER22> True, but in normal economic times, one can usually earn interest that outpaces inflation. Right now we have the federal reserve purposely punishing savers, just as freicoin would do.

I think the issue with bitcoin is that it's very very new. My guess is that it will eventually stabilize. On top of that, I hold the Rothbardian view that competing currencies are a good thing. Freicoin would only work if it had a monopoly on currency adoption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not the solution yet, but closer than anything we have

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Gesell>

<http://geokey.de/literatur/doc/nwo.pdf> (German)

</comment><comment><USER25> Doesn't seem to have a technical paper, or any real details on how it implements its goals. Anyone know if it's out there somewhere?

Edit: I found this: <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=35705>

Looks like demurrage is implemented simply by a rule for block validation: transaction outputs have to subtract from inputs based on the age of the coins. Don't know how they calculate age unambiguously.

There seems to be a lot of centralization in this particular implementation...eg., 80% of new coins go to the foundation for the first three years, which says it will distribute based on ideological motivations.

</comment><comment><USER26> These are similar to concepts North Korea still cannot prove... I'm concerned that in the FAQ the creators think that private banks control money supply. While inflation and deflation are often painful, they're also the reason why cyclic growth is possible. Once upon a time, cycles enabled an American middle class. I'm optimistic we can revive that with historically effective method.

We all agree central banks stink in a recession, they are somewhat limited in what they can do, but during growth they double the fun.

I see the creator is intending income equality, and I think that's definitely just and purposeful. More research required.

</comment><comment><USER27> How is this technically implemented -- is the demurrage subtracted once a year, or when you send a transaction?

Where do the coins taken for this fee go?

How can I apply for a grant from the foundation?

</comment><comment><USER12> Good try at separating transactions from holding currency. The 'killer app' is not a government-less currency. The killer app is frictionless digital transactions. A previous article expanded on it.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd like to hijack the daily Bitcoin thread for a tangential discussion. My dad used to have a stamp collection. Back in the day most people would give you a funny look if you told them you collect stamps, but it was pretty cool to browse the collection and see all those stamps from all over the world. And the really rare stamps could cost quite a lot of money. So here's the question: is Bitcoin more valuable than stamps?

<comment><USER22> Value is subjective. Water is very valuable in the desert, but not so valuable in the middle of the Pacific. Diamonds are valuable in downtown Chicago, not so much to someone surviving in a lifeboat. During the hyperinflation of Germany in the 20's, people were trading furs and antiques for food. It's all subjective.

<comment><USER28> Saying that value is subjective is tautological, it's like saying pretty girls are pretty. What's the base case of the recursion? With stock certificates, you have expectations of future dividends. With stamps, they're nice to look at. What do you have with Bitcoin?

<comment><USER22> Nice to look at, for some people. Many couldn't care less. Of course, it's subjective. Bitcoins have value for some because those people value bitcoins over other things, like US dollars. It's a subjective value judgment why anyone trades one thing (dollars) for anything else (stamps, bitcoins, diamonds).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So why would a reasonable actor choose to store money in this currency when there are easier to get, easier to use, demurrage free currencies available? I get the economic idea (I think) but it seems like something that would need a near monopoly to succeed. Otherwise it will just be a money pit for idealistic enthusiasts.

</comment><comment><USER30> >>>Every Freicoin client is capable of performing these tasks, but in practice mining is the domain of computer enthusiasts and IT professionals with tuned top-level hardware

Given that my PC is obsolete crap, should I even bother getting the client?

</comment><comment><USER31> The IndieGoGo campaign - [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/freicoin-global- community-...](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/freicoin-global-community- currency-from-the-occupy-movement)

</comment><comment><USER32> complete and utter scam

<comment><USER5> Why do you think it is a complete and utter scam rather than just something that won't work?

<comment><USER15> One most of money generated goes to the central reserve to use as they see fit.

Two; Freigeld was advised as local and not global currency. The more its spread over the world the easier it is to manipulate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If anyone is interested in a alternative bitcoin clone that actually tries new things have a look into ppcoin.

</comment><comment><USER34> Being conditioned like this, wouldn't that deter early adopters? I mean, what would incentivize them?

<comment><USER25> The incentive is to mine and spend, instead of buy and hold.</comment></comment>


The Everything Town in the Middle of Nowhere - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20961523/amazon-walmart-target-package-delivery-sales-tax-montana-roundup <comment><USER2> I've had one instance with amazon where they clearly drop shipped the product and didn't even take it out of the box. I purchased a single hang-on-back aquarium filter which came in an absolutely massive amazon box, containing another hugely oversized walmart box, containing an unlabeled/unbranded box which was still too large, and then finally the aquarium filter in it's own box and packaging. It almost seemed like it had been shipped from some supplier, to walmart, to amazon, and they just kept sticking the package in a larger box. The amount of waste for a single small filter was absurd

<comment><USER3> The alternative would be to throw away the two extra packages, which would reduce the waste a bit, but would still be absurd if you think about it...

<comment><USER4> No, the alternative would be to put a new shipping label on the original package.

<comment><USER5> Which they do. I received an office/break room trashcan, from Amazon, in its Walmart box.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks like a retail goods analogy for SWIFT type system for connecting different retail marketplaces to one another.

I always thought the economics of drop shipping would never work but looks like it is profitable even with a processing middleman.

I am curious to know what kind of inefficiency is being exploited here, because this seems to be from one online retailer to another (unlike ebay). I have a couple of guesses but I would like to know if there are others:

* information gap on the customer side (doesn't want to cross shop)

* product won't ship to target market through competitors website

* competitor's website wont accept user's preferred mode of payment

* wants a competitor's house-brand product on amazon

* some kind of customs loophole

<comment><USER2> Back when I originally started using Amazon it got me in the habit of not checking prices elsewhere because Amazon was usually the cheapest, and that was also before I started having to pay my states sales tax. Nowadays, I find the prices are generally not very good, not to mention all the other issues Amazon has, so I do compare prices with other sites before making any purchases. However, I imagine a lot of customers never broke their habit of just purchasing without checking elsewhere which has likely contributed to this.

<comment><USER7> I find that many other sites, surprisingly, don't have anything close to the variety available for many specialty items.

I recently needed some 2 part epoxy glue in larger containers. Amazon has dozens of different brands and quantities, mostly at competitive prices.

I checked walmart.com and only found a few options from 3rd party sellers that was way overpriced. I even tried a few specialty sites. But no one else was even close. Kind of a sad state of affairs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The end result is a bizarre, looping supply chain. Some hair conditioner > might get sent from a Walmart warehouse in Grantsville, Utah, to Roundup, > then from Roundup to an Amazon fulfillment center in Joliet, Illinois. > Finally, Amazon sends it out to a customer.

> Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe another seller buys the item and sends it to > another prep center. The preppers are constantly getting packages from > Amazon, which they unbox and repackage and send back to Amazon.

Ah, the efficiency of capitalism.

More seriously, this is a weirdly _organic_ process. Just as anything edible will be infested with life within a short time, a huge algal bloom of businesses develops to feed off this arbitrage. It shouldn't make sense to do all this, but the endless search for ever-tinier market inefficiencies to live off somehow calls it in to being.

I'm reminded of [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scheme-Full-Employment- reissued/dp/...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scheme-Full-Employment- reissued/dp/1408813742) , a novel in which vans endlessly circulate among a series of depots carrying parts for other vans, until someone discovers that the whole thing has no underlying purpose and the scheme collapses.

<comment><USER9> "Ah, the efficiency of capitalism."

Also...the _Emergent Systems_ that rise up to gain from these efficiencies of capitalism. The companies created to help others get those efficiencies...more efficiently...

<comment><USER10> Emergences: A Talk by Danny Hillis [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20879366](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20879366)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Entirely tangential to the main thrust of the article, but this threw me:

 _a noose dangling from "the hanging tree," which a plaque explains was used to execute three cattle rustlers and two unlucky bystanders, cattle rustling being "considered one of the lowest forms of crime."_

Wait, WHAT? Can anyone with more knowledge about the Old West explain what crime these bystanders would have been committing? Am I interpreting this correctly that these "bystanders" had nothing to do with or to gain from the theft of the cattle but were thought to be in the vicinity and didn't prevent it?

<comment><USER12> The implicit assumption you're making here is that there was a court, trial, or even evidence. "Frontier justice" doesn't always care about those things. Sometimes the "crime" is that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe with the "wrong" skin color...

This part of history contains a _lot_ of ugliness. It's also part of the present. Extrajudicial killings are still very much a thing in the world.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montana_Vigilantes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montana_Vigilantes) contains some leads for this specific history, I'd guess.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the link. I guess I was aware of the general lawlessness of that part of the world at the time, but the part about " _cattle rustling being "considered one of the lowest forms of crime."_ " seemed like a reference to some specific, well-known rule with which I was not familiar.

<comment><USER12> Ah.

So, I am not _super_ educated on this history, but I am the product of at least three generations of beef cattle farming. My understanding is that this phrase is true, and I think it makes some intuitive sense: if your community is based around herding cattle, stealing cattle is literally stealing the your livelihood. Furthermore, there's an "outsider" aspect to this kind of crime; it's not like there's farm A, and farm B, and farmer B steals some of A's cattle and now they have more. It's someone sneaking in from out of town, stealing your stuff, and leaving. In general, people are more likely to be lenient to their neighbors than to strangers.

I _believe_ , if memory serves, there's a sort of racial/settler component to this as well. It ties into the whole "cowboys and indians" thing. Goes along with the whole "insider" vs "outsider" dichotomy.

<comment><USER11> That makes sense, so I suppose the explanation might be that these bystanders were also outsiders, but, as turned out, presumably too late, they merely were in the wrong place at the wrong time as you say and guilty by proximity.

My initial reading was that they were known to be bystanders at the time of execution, which seemed a bit extreme even in that context. But you're right, it's equally possible to read their being bystanders as posthumous exoneration, which is much more likely.

(FWIW, I've been to Montana, and as a middle-class European, it certainly felt by far the most foreign of the 15 or so states I've visited in the US.)

<comment><USER13> FWIW, I grew up in Roundup (and am shocked to see it on HN). I remember the hanging tree being put up downtown sometime in late 80s or early 90s to (I suppose) add some Wild West decor. It's entirely possible the whole hanging cattle rustlers and bystanders tale is apocryphal or loosely based on actual events. That's not to say such things didn't happen in the days of open range cattle ranching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whenever I read 'drop ship', I think of the noun from "Starship Troopers".

<comment><USER15> It is disappointing, isn't it? That such a cool term has been co-opted to mean "forwarding some stuff to another person."

<comment><USER16> Unless that stuff being forwarded is a Morita rifle, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is some genuine late-capitalist dystopian activity: Ordering cheap plastic garbage, having it packed and shipped to low-tax jurisdictions, only to unpack it, cover up the barcodes and re-pack it to ship it again.

It's like if somebody read about drop-shipping and thought "How can we do something like this, but make it even more pointless and wasteful?"

<comment><USER18> "Moderately wasteful middlemen exist" is pretty mild as far as dystopian activity goes.

You can probably find equal or greater waste in the bureaucracies of any economic system you care to name.

<comment><USER19> This is how the government buys computers. The order goes to a Small Disadvantaged Business, who takes a 10% cut, with the computers being drop shipped from the manufacturer.

<comment><USER20> This is how a lot of government contracting works, too. The prime contractor is always some [I'll gently call it] Incentivized-Demographic-Owned company whose only job is to subcontract all their contracts out to a bigger company who actually does the work. The "IDO" company (often one person) does nothing but takes a small cut and passes the rest of the profits to the company doing the work.

<comment><USER21> They do more than that -- the prime contractors are as ridiculous as the government is. It's a sweet deal until it isn't... a black-swan event, usually a fuckup one of the parties means that the reseller is stuck with a bankruptcy-level bag of poo.

As vassals of the big company, they act as a buffer for whatever the goals of the big company are.

When the big co needs to make it's quarterly goals, they'll "ship" a bunch of software to the vassal company (which is at best a piece of paper) to hit their nut. With physical equipment, the same thing happens. Most notoriously, car dealers get stuck with accepting cars they don't want in order to get cars they need. A Ford dealer won't get an extra allocation of $75k F-150 trucks unless they take a load of Ford Focuses. If you get a great deal on a specific printer or something from a reseller, this is why.

On the other side of the transaction, the government sucks in terms of on-time payment. Wall St. doesn't like receivables from the customer, so the bigco will shaft the female-nativeamerican-disabled-veteran owned reseller with a Net-30 payment schedule, and they need to finance that receivable for the Net-180 paying government entity.

The other issue is terms and conditions. The government will demand most- favored nation status for price and impose onerous terms. The subcontractor company accepts that risk, deals with whatever wacky terms need to be dealt with, and enters the contract -- so big company doesn't get sued for fraud when the US Department of Agriculture gets a more expensive price than the Wyoming Department of Health for a product, or when the pallet used to ship a server includes wood sourced from Brazilian hardwood.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PagerDuty Hacks: Alert by Foam Dart Bombardment - <AUTHOR> https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/pagerduty-hacks-alert-foam-dart-bombardment/ <comment><USER2> I want someone to hack our coffee machine to brew a cup before alerting...

"Something went wrong, take this..." :D</comment>


New microsite – Feedback Appreciated - <AUTHOR> https://waterhumidifier.com <comment><USER2> 1st point - I dislike sites where I have to turn on JS to see anything meaningful, and I often back out for safety.

2nd point - a forced delay to get to the meat of the site is very irritating, eg on a second visit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Valid points. Thank you for the feedback!</comment></comment>


Pushing Files to the Browser Using Delivery.js, Socket.IO and Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://liamkaufman.com/blog/2012/02/11/12-pushing-files-to-the-browser-using-deliveryjs-socketio-and-nodejs/

<comment><USER2> This is something we looked into a while ago. There are a number of disadvantages to this approach that were not highlighted.

(1)Base64 encoding files makes them larger, this will eliminate the advantage of smaller headers, almost always. Specifically:

"Very roughly, the final size of Base64-encoded binary data is equal to 1.37 times the original data size + 814 bytes (for headers)."

Source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64#MIME>

If you want to send/get Binary data and manipulate it on the client side, XHR requests can handle binary data, which can be placed into javascript typed arrays.

(2)Concurrency is limited with websocket requests. You can only push one file per socket at a time, and then if you want to start pushing multiple concurrently you'd need to have more websocket connections open. I understand that you can push files one after another through the same socket, but that's not concurrency. On the back end the infrastructure to send different files through different websocket connections and manage the concurreny can get really messy really quickly. With Http requests, you can usually do two requests concurrently from any 1 domain, and then you can load balance across a set of domains.

(3) When Socket.io falls back to HTTP polling, you may end up consuming a lot of bandwidth on headers alone.

(4) If you're working with something that has cross domain issues, i.e. a WebGL application base64 encoded URLs will not work. They cannot be used, you have to have resources coming from the URL of a CORS accepted domain.

In the end it's simpler and more ideal to just push your files through http requests with built in concurrency.

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are all excellent points. I think the fact that it actually increases the file size, is probably it's biggest drawback. However, I wonder if zip.js would reduce the base64 inflation factor?

<comment><USER3> I would argue that the lack of caching is the biggest drawback, though you could workaround that by using offline storage and caching yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The most apparent disadvantage would be the fact that it bipasses traditional caching methods._

And this should be considered a fairly big disadvantage if what you're pushing is publically cacheable. Consider places where a HTTP URI might be cached: client memory, client disk, forward proxy, CDN/reverse proxy, server memory, server disk. A web-sockets delivery mechanism would miss out on half of these caches. Of course, if the files are private and requested infrequently by the client, then a push mechanism might well be preferred.

 _In-browser file zipping could have a positive impact on transfer speeds_

Yes, you really should be compressing your content on the wire (although compressed images, even in base64, might not benefit much), but I'm skeptical that a JS gzip library could compete with the browser's native decompression code. Has anyone done any profiling of JS gzip libraries?

</comment><comment><USER5> Some problems with this approach:

1\. Concurrency. Regular HTTP and pipelining allow the transfer of more than one resource at a time, often times many more. 2\. Caching. The author mentions this, but fails to mention browser-side caching, which is the most significant form of caching, that is, to get a resource without having to go out over the network. This could perhaps be addressed with local storage, but his node module doesn't take that into consideration. 3\. Compression. Regular HTTP requests support gzip; I'm not sure if websockets do or not. An initial google wasn't promising and it seems to be experimental. He mentioned in- browser unzipping, which is interesting but a more standards based approach would probably be via the content-accept header on a websocket connection.

</comment><comment><USER6> "With zip.js files could be deflated, or inflated, within the browser."

That's what gzip is for.

<comment><USER7> I'm not 100%, but I think that WebSockets (for now) do not support compression.

<comment><USER8> What aspect of it _isn't_ regressive?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> base64 encoding binary files is just wrong when you could as well "push" the files' URLs over a websocket connection. that way you can take advantage of gzip compression and caching on the client.

it also looks like the server-side code uses the blocking fs.readFileSync() call to read the entire file into memory... but maybe it could have some uses for small dynamically-generated data. if so, not sure a "file" abstraction is needed :)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is an anti-pattern. The HTTP spec already sends files to web browsers, and it can send many files in parallel.

<comment><USER11> But does it support file _pushing_? I think that's the only special thing about this library.

<comment><USER12> It's not pushing, the browser still has to poll - it's just enqueueing files for transfer, right?

Even if that use case has some utility (of which I'm dubious), it still needlessly breaks the addressability semantics of URLs. It would be much better, in my opinion, to have the backend issue redirect to an unambiguous URL that refers to the static resource, then let the web server do the thing it's good at.

<comment><USER11> It only uses polling if the browser doesn't support WebSockets, in which case socket.io would fall back to another method. Otherwise it is truly pushing.

From looking at the source, it looks like it encodes the file as a DataURL in base64 to send the files.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Designing the Boot Sound for the Original Xbox - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BrianSchmidt/20111117/8911/Designing_the_Boot_Sound_for_the_Original_Xbox.php

<comment><USER2> Very cool in engineering terms, but the boot sound was wayyyyy too loud and in-your-face. After enough unpleasant experiences with turning the machine on without turning the volume down on my TV, I ended up modding my Xbox just to get rid of that bootup sound.</comment>


Quake II, with Real-Time raytracing - <AUTHOR> https://techreport.com/news/34624/quake-ii-rtx-blew-my-mind-this-morning <comment><USER2> It's a pity it is not Quake III or the original Quake.

Quake II was very average when comparing to those.

<comment><USER3> I like the distintive effect combining realistic light behavior with retro fps textures.</comment></comment>


Dropbox Links - Simple, fast sharing - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/links/features

<comment><USER2> What's new about this? You've been able to make and share public links for awhile, right?

Is it just this part: "Beautiful online viewing When you create a link, your photos, videos, and even documents are displayed in a gorgeous full-browser view. Your friends and family can simply follow your links to view photos and instantly watch home videos online. Even your presentations look great without anyone having to download and open them separately."</comment>


Never Be Intimidated - <AUTHOR> http://nancyhua.com/2014/02/19/never-intimidated/ <comment><USER2> That was an interesting read, I can't figure out if she believes it or not.

The people I've met who were easily intimidated by wealth, power, intelligence, or money seem to share a common fear of being judged. Clearly just anecdotal evidence is useless here but the heart of the intimidation on those people (when I asked about it) was fear that they would be judged and found wanting. That fear intimidates them, not the intelligence or the power or the money.

As a random part of my life growing up I spent quite a bit of time in Las Vegas (there is an Air Force base there). And people living there had a really non-chalant view of money, after all you could be down to your last quarter, play it and suddenly be up a few hundred thousand dollars. It didn't "mean" anything, so having it or not having it didn't "mean" anything. But I went to school in LA and in LA it seemed that having money "meant" you were better than people who didn't have it. Which I rejected out of hand, after all I knew people who were complete scumbags who happened have a ton of cash back in Vegas, so clearly there wasn't a correlation here. But for the folks who had grown up believing in that correlation they were out to 'get money' so they could improve their standing in society. And _that_ I found a very crazy notion indeed.

So the author is intelligent and she understands that she had nothing to do with the particular gene mix that brought her particular brand of intelligence out. That's great, some folks aren't so lucky and they fear being judged as "dumb" or simply "not smart." Is that wrong? Well I certainly consider it wrong to judge someone that way. But are they wrong for fearing they will be judged that way? Probably not, there are plenty of people it seems who would be more than happy to point out to them a relative deficit in IQ. Is that healthy? No of course it isn't.

So at the end of the day when I was feeling crappy because I had been teased at school for asking "stupid" questions like how birds fly upside down. My Mom would say "Oh honey, they are just jealous." Which, while I'm sure she meant well, didn't really help me with how these "jealous" kids seem to be looked up to by others and I seemed to be looked down upon by them. Thus I can't see how telling someone who is feeling intimidated to not feel that, really helps all that much.

<comment><USER3> One of the best techniques for reducing the fear of being judged is to 'level the playing field'. You simply do this by finding something you're good at that the other person isn't. No matter how arbitrary it is ("I'm better at chess than you!") there is a still a nature tendency for people who have more power/wealth/intelligence to want to compete. Thus they focus on the one thing that you're better at and judge you less on the million other things that you aren't.

<comment><USER4> Boxing training helps a lot, too. Knowing you can send that 50 pound bag flying can really boost your confidence around anyone, even if you'll never actually use that strength.

She says strength doesn't matter, but try being around a bodybuilder without feeling at least a bit intimidated.

<comment><USER5> >> She says strength doesn't matter, but try being around a bodybuilder without feeling at least a bit intimidated.

A very large muscled man will really distort a social setting. Men will offer to buy him drinks. Women want to touch him. It commands immediate respect from everyone around. It's very strange.

<comment><USER6> "It commands immediate respect from everyone around", certainly not from me, I think a bodybuilder is just someone who spent a lot of time a the gym building muscle for the sake of building muscle, and my gf says they are "gross". My prejudice says I could easily outrun those guys, I'd be more intimidated by a martial arts expert although usually they are on the non-violent side.

<comment><USER4> We're still wired to assess potential danger and the strength/weaknesses of our surroundings, especially people and animals.

The first thing that the brain thinks when seeing a bodybuilder is that it would not win in a fight, nor would it be able to run (no, you can't outrun them - they may have no endurance, but in the first 5 minutes they can outrun and outmatch almost anyone), so instinctively, it's afraid and more careful/respectful in order not to anger that person.

The same goes for martial art experts of course, but it may not be immediately obvious that the person is stronger/faster. If _you_ are the MA expert, you'll be confident that you can take on anyone in the room, which makes you calmer and increases your outwards confidence, as well.

It's all really interesting, indeed...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> OP makes some really smart points, but I can't shake the feeling that they're living in some kind of alternate reality fundamentally different from mine. Yes, if most people around you are very smart, or very wealthy, then intelligence or money are not really defining characteristics anymore. Intelligence and money define you in as much as they are vectors of power, but how much power they bring you over your environment is directly a function of how much _more_ you have than others around you. When everybody possesses these things equally, they don't confer you any power over others anymore.

Yes, it's true that in the science-fiction world described by the OP, which might become a reality in 200 years, or maybe not, intelligence and looks will have been commoditized and won't mean much anymore. In exactly the same way that in the post-scarcity economy (if such a thing is ever to be), money won't matter anymore. But that is not the world we live in. In my world, really smart people are extremely rare, and they hold enormous power over the world due to their understanding, learning and problem-solving abilities. Wealthy people are few (the 1.5%) and possess monstrous power over the 98.5%. Just what kind of fairy tale does OP live in? Is SV really such an alternate reality?

<comment><USER8> It's pretty obvious that she does live in a very rarified world, but the advice is solid.

Why? Because in the 'normal' world, no one has beauty, intelligence nor money. So you have to judge people absent those things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Wait til I get my money right, then you can't tell me nothin, right" \- Kanye West

"Cash rules everything around me" \- Wu-Tang Clan

In America money rules everything. Anyone with an Ivy League education and access to Billionaires obviously is not going to be intimidated by other status symbols.

It's only the people who need access who are intimidated by the gatekeepers.

<comment><USER10> This is just not true. Most Ivy Leaguers maintain their high school level anxieties and fears no matter how much money they make or networks they break into. They are, generally speaking, still intimidated by the same fear of inadequacy that dominated their campus when they were undergrads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Most modern men cannot run a marathon. Physical strength is still quite useful. Based on such principles, it's no wonder the author delves into ridiculous banter about singularity. At least she could have gotten some basic facts straight.

<comment><USER12> I don't think that specific factual inaccuracy undermines her basic point in that part, though. Physical ability isn't really a very big personality differentiator in most cases.

<comment><USER8> It's an odd claim that is way wrong. Was it a typo? A braino? Or just wrong?

I guess that this article got voted up so much is a strong indication as to how young this site really is. Nothing she said was very insightful, and any of the 'gate keeping billionares' could have told her everything she was talking about.

Of course, being told something isnt the same as learning something. Lessons like this are usually pretty hard ones, and not everyone gets the chance to learn them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Honestly I didn't really get this article. It seems to make ad hoc distinctions for traits based on some possible future reality, that may occur after we are dead. And none of it relates to why people get intimidated.

</comment><comment><USER14> tl,dr: future so bright we'll need shades, so let's pretend we care about other things--after all, all us rich people will be unable to signal using our jetpacks and bodymods anymore!

" _Now when I meet someone with intelligence, beauty, or wealth, which is basically everyone in the post-singularity society of Silicon Valley, I automatically delete those qualities from my perception of their Real Identity. I still recognize intelligence, etc. as a property they possess, but I don't define them by it._ "

is this person as insufferable in real life as she is in her writing?

<comment><USER15> From what I can gather, monkishly so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This text is nothing more than an aspirational humblebrag: "Look at me, I am so intelligent and have so much access to intelligent, wealthy, attractive people that I don't have to care about intelligence, wealth and beauty any longer! I have become blind to such superficialities and am now closer to enlightenment than any of you!"

Furthermore, for someone with a "Bachelors [sic] of Science in Writing" her writing is remarkably poor (e.g., "A millennia ago", "Lamborghini's").

<comment><USER14> But she's totally killing it in the Valley, right?

Changing the world through A/B testing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Consider John Wayne's advice in 'The Shootist': It's not always about being fast or accurate, it's about being willing.

Add another quote (from Feynman): you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

Now no one can intimidate you.

</comment><comment><USER18> Didn't see much of the title in the article. Also, while I agree with most of it, this part seems to be the most important:

> _I try to define people by their ambitions, creativity, drive, perspective, > attitude, inspirations… that soft gushy core inside the genius billionaire > playboy. Love, values, interests, goals._

After an article about how intelligence, prestige, and beauty don't matter, what _do_ you define people by? I'm not seeing the pattern here. What ties these things together?

I'm not sure if this is what you're trying to say, but the only message I'm taking away is: the traits people traditionally respect don't matter as much as they think.

<comment><USER19> Presumably, "intelligence, prestige, and beauty" are things people are born into.

Meanwhile, "ambitions, creativity, drive, perspective, attitude, [and] aspirations"... are things people are frequently still be born into, but society doesn't think about it that way. (My riches for a world where "drive" is viewed as biological, rather than a matter of "character"...)

<comment><USER20> 'derefr, meet the head of this nail. I think you'll hit it off.

 _ahem_ , enough terrible puns. You're right on here though, but I think "drive" as a concept is (like most things to do with humans) a mix of biological and "character". I think it leans more towards the former, however. I mean, I have struggled with depression since I was a teenager: there's a nice biological factor that _destroys_ any and all drive I normally have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A response to Jamil Elie Bou Kheir's comment on Facebook (presumably jamilbk on HN), because I do not have Facebook:

> hello from hacker news. thoughtful article! i think it's not the mere > intelligence, beauty, or wealth that defines someone. perhaps it's the > reasons and difficulty through which they are achieved. suppose i endure > years of hardship and suddenly, in a flash of creativity, uncover a specific > life path which i choose to follow. if the journey down that path > necessitates an increase in intelligence, then wouldn't that conscious > pursuit of intelligence qualify as a viable aspect of my identity? similar > points can be raised about beauty and wealth.

> accordingly, i think no real identity is assumed when an individual gets > these things "for free". enthusiastically expressing one's beauty, > intelligence, or wealth that have existed since birth (or a lucky event) is > actually rather distasteful... so yeah delete those qualities kthx.

You've made negation your identity the same way that others define themselves through beauty, intelligence and wealth. This is neither unique nor particularly useful, and I've found it to be generally unhealthy.

Entrench yourself in any region's activist scene and you will be surrounded by this mentality. Despite being a higher level abstraction than beauty, intelligence and wealth, it is equally commoditizable given enough time and positive feedback. For instance, consider the phrase "social capital".

The original post does not strike me as a rejection of one end of an axis in favor of its converse. Rather it is a dismissal of the axis itself, of an entire model of thinking, its conclusion resting in rational, subjective passivity. To ascribe any particular aesthetic about how things "should be" or how people "should act" is to miss the point.

I would summarize the original post's conclusion thus: stop projecting; question abstractions; remove inconsistencies from the bottom, up.

That conclusion invites a plea. We all have a utility function, and it will eventually fail; how do we best extend its (and our) relevance, and do we even want to?

</comment><comment><USER22> The entire article is built around a false premise: that we're all going to be genius supermen, and struggle with what to identify ourselves by.

Another major thing from the article that is false, and destroys the conclusions that rest upon it: intelligence, wealth and beauty _used_ to seem like notable qualities.

It's fitting then that the 2014 SI Swimsuit edition just came out. Remind Kate Upton that beauty isn't a notable quality. I can't figure out how someone like that makes millions of dollars off a non-notable commodity.

The author seems to suffer from an intense privilege bias. Try telling someone in Romania that wealth isn't a notable quality, and they will laugh in your face.

Intelligence has been commoditized? John Carmack, to name one very easy example, proves that isn't true, and isn't going to be true in our lifetimes.

A millennia ago the strongest person was also the richest (because the 'dude' could bop you on the head and steal your cow apparently)? What? That's not even remotely historically accurate. Now strength doesn't even matter! Well yippee, we've all been liberated from our primitive past, apparently. Unless of course you're one of the hundreds of millions in China, or billions globally, that still use physical labor every day to earn a living. Again, intense privilege bias.

The only thing this article has going for it, is an appeal to emotion: it's the type of world the author wishes exists, but in fact does not.

</comment><comment><USER23> > "For me, maturation has been a series of realizing what doesn't matter."

Best part of it, for me! I recently realized that I'd be way ahead of the game if I had a garage full of cans of "Don't give a fuck" and could just open one up whenever I need it. All kinds of things I get hung up on would stop holding me back.

</comment><comment><USER24> Many financially successful people are socially awkward. This gets amplified by people putting up a barrier because of the intimidation. This manifests itself in CEOs who lose contact with new hires in their firm, and famous speakers standing alone before their presentations. In this case, the level setting behavior is being the person willing to make contact, whether it's via small talk or something they care about.

The original article is interesting. I wonder if the author is willing to not just go beyond things like physical appearance and intelligence, but to also ignore them entirely. (Are the first two "necessary but not sufficient" or just "unnecessary"?) My experience in life has been the former, not the latter.

</comment><comment><USER25> Also, get a writing sample from them. If the word "I" dominates the single- word histogram, run like hell. (OP fails magnificently).

</comment><comment><USER26> A good read. This article resonated with me because my Dad is a member of the national academy of science, and I grew up around lots of very well known and successful people. This exposure to famous and gifted people early in life really helped my career since I usually felt comfortable just walking up to people in power and talk with them and potentially increase my network.

BTW, I had never read any of Nancy's stuff before. I also really liked [http://nancyhua.com/2013/02/05/what-to-work-on-when-you- dont...](http://nancyhua.com/2013/02/05/what-to-work-on-when-you-dont-need-to- work/)

</comment><comment><USER27> A rich daddy's "nerdy hehe" girl manifesto on how she goes out with male models and doesn't feel inferior to them? This is just wrong on so many levels. As someone who has developed social anxiety because of spending most of my life in poverty and the stigma that you have to bear with it, especially as a child, I'm rather offended by this.

I know you guys like to upvote pretty much anything done by a girl because of some twisted gender equality quota, but why is this here exactly?

<comment><USER28> Preach it, brother.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > I still recognize intelligence, etc. as a property they possess, but I don't > define them by it.

Why not? I think that what you mean by "define" is that something matters to you. Why wouldn't intelligence matter? Whether intelligence means knowledge, aptitude, or rationality, Don't those things make someone more pleasant to be around? (sorry if I misunderstood what you're saying)

<comment><USER30> Haven't you ever been irritated by someone saying, patronizingly, "you're so smart," when you do something? Where they only see you as someone who can solve problems, or do things they can't do? Alternatively, are there people in your life you have to get along with but you feel like "they don't 'get' it," like you do? Defining people or yourself by how "smart" you or they are can be shallow, open to misinterpretation and stops you from seeing others as worthy to hang out with. If you really can't stand someone or have legitimate need for certain smarts, then by all means judge by what criteria you need to. But don't stop yourself before you start -- don't filter out some prospect or new connection because you can't measure up or think less of them. You may not have seen things they way they have, but you might find more in common/to like after giving them a chance.

<comment><USER29> I think you're talking about the costs of being smart, when the question is whether or not you like interacting with _someone else_ who is smart.

But to the question that you bring up, I think you're right - being smart definitely has it's downsides. Ignorance can be bliss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Very interesting, however i think intelligence is not only related to knowledge but it also resembles how a person thinks and that thinking leads to all the factors you look into a person like ambition, creativity, inspirations etc.

I think intelligence(not only knowledge) as a bigger definition is one important quality i look into a person.

I too agree completely that money, beauty do not matter as they are just attributes

</comment><comment><USER32> Saying that intelligence, fitness or any other quality does not matter is living in the future, in an alternate universe.

Probably it won't matter in the future, but it matters today.

Probably in the future it won't matter, but if the future is 100 years from now it is not a good strategy to live your alternate reality until then.

Just believing that technology alone will solve all the problems looks naive to me. Imagine for example that a dictator, like Castro could modify their genome with very expensive treatment for living young forever. This does not mean the people he forbids earning more than 20$ a month(everybody in Cuba) will.

Of course, if he does it will be because "he cares so much about his people", or the revolution, not because he wants to, like any other dictator or person in power, they will justify maintaining their power over anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER33> Corollary: If you have the chance, be a little intimidating, and note the other person's reaction.

</comment><comment><USER34> What category does HN karma fall into?

<comment><USER14> Hours wasted in life?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > Love, values, interests, goals.

Perhaps names for one's negotiation of:

\- scarcity of imagination and desire

\- scarcity of attention and perspective

\- scarcity of social context

Even in a post-singularity post-material-scarcity society, under the assumption that all direct desires are met, these tensions remain.

<comment><USER36> you just blew my mind wow any further reading you could recommended along similar lines to what you wrote? thanks

</comment></comment><comment> li-ch The premise is false: with all the technologies, she still looks ugly.

<comment><USER14> Attack the ideas, not the person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> ...except there are different kinds of intelligence.

Some kinds are commodities, no doubt.

Then there're the kinds that tell you WHAT you should be studying. That's a horse of a different color.

</comment><comment><USER37> From the FB comments: "Jamil Elie Bou Kheir hello from hacker news. thoughtful article! i think it's not the mere intelligence, beauty, or wealth…"

Caused me to cringe, now not only calling yourself a hacker is a commodity, but if you can't stretch that far, just declaring that you read hacker news gains you status?

Not pretending like this site is an exclusive club, but c'mon.

</comment><comment><USER38> >Intelligence, beauty, and wealth used to seem like notable qualities, but now they're commoditized by technology

Very well put.

</comment><comment><USER39> Excellent read. Perhaps "Intelligence is a commodity" would be a better title for it.

</comment><comment><USER40> I read this several decades back but it has stuck with me:

Attitude, not aptitude, determines altitude.

<comment> FLUX-YOU More like "After aptitude has been canceled out, attitude determines altitude"

Not many folks are hiring based on attitude these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> What makes ambition/creativity/drive/perspective/attitude/inspiration any more intrinsic than intelligence/knowledge?

<comment><USER42> I think the idea would be that those are more complex traits that will be harder to change through new neural technology (compared to simply learning new information) and thus less likely to change in the medium term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> What about the ambitions, creativity, drive, and inspirations of a fat balding unsuccessful guy?

</comment><comment><USER44> So until the point of asteroid harvesting we have a reason to be intimidated?

</comment><comment><USER34> I liked the article.</comment>


Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org

<comment><USER2> I really like the suggestions on how to crowdsource a11y improvements:

-Go Mouseless for an hour -Check Order of Elements -Surf The Web With A Screen Reader For An Hour

[http://www.globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org/participate.h...](http://www.globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org/participate.html)

<comment><USER3> Also try using lynx

[http://lynx.browser.org/](http://lynx.browser.org/)</comment></comment>


A surprisingly witty and slightly caustic take on atheism - <AUTHOR> http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Atheism

<comment><USER2> where is the "witty" and/or "caustic" part of this wall of text?</comment>


Continuous Analytics Over Discontinuous Streams [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~franklin/Papers/sigmod10krishnamurthy.pdf <comment><USER2> PipelineDB (YC W14) has a lot of similarities to the technology described in this paper, and is open-source: [https://github.com/pipelinedb/pipelinedb](https://github.com/pipelinedb/pipelinedb)

Disclaimer: I worked at Truviso; I know the PipelineDB guys but I'm not affiliated with the company.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a SIGMOD 2010 paper, the date should appear in the title.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is based on an older product called Truviso which was acquired by Cisco in 2012.

Shameless plug, but if you want to try a similar product that you can download and play around with today (continuous queries on streams), you can try Striim:

[http://www.striim.com](http://www.striim.com)

Instead of using Postgres for recovery, the streams are backed by Kafka. You can plug it into your existing streaming infrastructure if you use Kafka today or just deploy Striim standalone.</comment>


Bringing VR to Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tojicode.com/2014/07/bringing-vr-to-chrome.html

<comment><USER2> This is pretty exciting stuff. Several months ago I had made a Chrome packaged app that used Chrome's USB API to get Rift orientation data ( [https://github.com/DanAndersen/cupola](https://github.com/DanAndersen/cupola) ), but it's good to see work being done to integrate it into the browser itself instead of the hackish way I had to go about it.

<comment><USER3> I had no idea Chrome offered a USB API! Has there been any work in hardware crypto using this API (ie rolling password generation, hardware keys)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like a good start but I'm a little worried about over-abstraction here, that is to say: baking a lot of design assumptions into the browser that really should rely on user-level libraries. A lot of this can already be done with WebGL and .ondevicemotion events (See some of the cardboard demos).

The most significant idea here, it seems, is rendering DOM to a 3D texture. There are some security issues here (we'd likely have to restrict rendering to resource on the same domain), but man, this would be a huge boon to many applications that are 3D and still need sensible Text layout.

<comment><USER5> Events are useless for this. When you execute a function with requestAnimationFrame, it runs _after_ the frame is drawn so it has enough time to prepare and render everything before the next frame is drawn. You can then calculate and render everything that is not VR-motion dependant, then query the device and finally draw it. From a latency perspective it makes sense that the code can poll the data _and_ the browser can manage the deform (but IMHO it shouldn't be mandatory).

> The most significant idea here, it seems, is rendering DOM to a 3D texture.

Where is that mentioned?

<comment><USER6> He's referring to techniques mentioned by Vlad's blog post about Mozilla's WebVR implementation, which was linked by this post. (Vlad's post is here - [http://blog.bitops.com/blog/2014/06/26/first-steps-for-vr- on...](http://blog.bitops.com/blog/2014/06/26/first-steps-for-vr-on-the-web/))

Chrome is actually going to steer clear of VR+DOM until Mozilla has a working prototype.</comment></comment></comment>


Field Init Shorthand Stabilization Just Landed in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/39761https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/39761 <comment><USER2> I think the URL is wrong. All I see is:

> There isn't anything to compare.

> We couldn't figure out how to compare these references, do they point to > valid commits?</comment>


Present code with step-by-step highlights [slides] - <AUTHOR> https://slides.com/news/code-line-numbers <comment><USER2> I implemented something like this in Python for my LaTeX/beamer presentation recently. For example, see this and the following slides:

[https://speakerdeck.com/mmcloughlin/better-x86-assembly- gene...](https://speakerdeck.com/mmcloughlin/better-x86-assembly-generation- with-go?slide=56)

The sample code is in a file with special comments at the end of each line specifying which slide numbers it should be revealed on as well as inline commentary to show to the right of the line. Syntax highlighting is provided by Pygments.

I was thinking about open sourcing it, it's actually only approx 200 lines of Python but I think it's quite effective.

<comment><USER3> I was just thinking that syntax highlighting plus line colors should be fairly easy to do, and doesn't justify paying for such a service. I would be interested to see your solution if you do decide to open source it, especially as you say it is simple - I like elegance :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not really the same thing, but scrimba is a great way to share interactive code along your voice/video

</comment><comment><USER5> Way too few presentation tools support code in any meaningful way. Try getting coloured code into Google Slides or PowerPoint is extremely difficult.

Nice to see somebody is actually focusing on this!

</comment><comment><USER6> Really nice. Why is there no syntax highlighting in the editor tho ? I mean there is color only on the rendered object.

<comment><USER6> I wish there were the light and dark themes from the google chrome console

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazing software, anyone knows an open source layout editor that works like the slides.com onet?

</comment><comment><USER8> How easy (or not) would it be to embed one of these in a markdown file (e.g., README.md)? Seems to me that might be a significantly better way to do code examples for a given repo.

<comment><USER7> You can embed an iframe on markdown so quite easy actually.</comment></comment>


Upcoming changes to Cortana - <AUTHOR> https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4575625/upcoming-changes-to-cortana <comment><USER2> Love current PR lingo. Just shove self-praise into every piece of communication.

> _Cortana is continuing to redefine the nature of a digital assistant, ... > accelerating productivity to help save you time and focus on the things that > matter most_

> _The first change is to end support for all third-party Cortana skills_

> _Cortana in Surface Headphones will continue pivoting toward its mission to > help customers with productivity throughout their day. We'll be removing > support for the previous version of Cortana in the first version of Surface > Headphones_

So much acceleration, wow.

<comment><USER3> My favorite:

> As we make this shift toward a transformational AI-powered assistant > experience in Microsoft 365...

While I'm sure there's a world of difference, I couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of Clippy making a comeback. "transformational AI-powered assistant experience in Microsoft 365" certainly sounds like a PR-enhanced description of Clippy.

<comment><USER4> Hah, it sounds more like Clippy wrote this PR puff piece!

I can just imagine PR Clippy...

"It looks like you're trying to write spin, can I help you with that?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To clarify, they aren't shutting down Cortana completely - they're ending support for the standalone Cortana apps, which makes sense. What I find more interesting is how they're handling their smart speaker partnership:

 _> ...we've worked closely with Harman Kardon to create a Bluetooth-enabled device transition plan that we hope will help ease the impact of this change. Customers who receive a firmware update from Harman Kardon in early 2021 will still be able to continue listening...on their Invoke via Bluetooth._

If I'm reading this correctly, they're basically saying "very few people really use this as a 'smart' speaker, so we'll just turn it into a normal Bluetooth speaker and move on." I'm not sure whether that says more about Cortana or about the smart speaker market, but it seems like an...ok compromise? Certainly better than just bricking the thing.

<comment><USER6> I think very few use the voice feature, but those who do will hate losing it. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that only a few percent of iPhone users uses Siri.

The hype surrounding digital voice assistants have died out. It's still useful in a few situations, but not having one isn't as huge a defeat as it would have been 5 years ago. Microsoft could drop Cortana completely and be fine.

<comment><USER7> I never bother with such devices, because they hardly ever support European Portuguese properly and I am not going to speak foreign languages at home just to make a device happy.

<comment><USER8> I'm a British English speaker, and about 15 years ago I spent an afternoon experimenting with the basic voice recognition on OSX. I found that I had to mimic a US or Australian accent to get it to work, and I wondered what my next-door neighbours were thinking when they heard me cycle repeatedly through "Give me the phone number for Firstname Lastname" with British, US and Australian accents.

<comment><USER4> Scot here, I have this problem with telephone voice menus. Actually, I've also had this problem in the US as well, particularly while on the telephone. Putting on a fake US accent seems to work, but it's so damn embarrassing and I guess could be construed as offensive by some people (if they thought I was taking the piss).

I had the same issue recently with a BMW voice activation system I was playing with. Mimicking an _English_ accent worked for that one!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While they're at it, why don't they include Windows 10 on that list?

I haven't met a single person that uses Cortana and those who tried are usually not coming back. For me Cortana has basically no useful features (maybe its because of my language settings), its just software bloat and in addition to that, its a privacy nightmare. The only association I have with Cortana is it screaming at me when I do a clean install of Windows 10, which is a thing of the past thanks to my switch to macOS.

<comment><USER10> Worst part is it keeps running in the background hogging memory and cpu even when completely disabled. I've tried gpedit, shutup10 and so many other tools to get rid of it but somehow it comes back every time :/

<comment><USER11> The start menu, that need to index your files in background, or do other stuff, is named "cortana".

I don't think you want to disable this "cortana".

<comment><USER12> Serious question for better programmers than me: Doesn't it violate seperation of concerns that something like the start menu that has a specific function and has been around for decades get smashed into the Cortana code and renamed. Cortana is clearly not core to the functionality of the start menu and if it became so it surely wasn't out of necessity right?

It reminds me of when Microsoft was dead set on conflating the file manager "explorer" and Internet Explorer.

Can someone justify this?

<comment><USER11> It's like monolith and micro services.

From the programming standpoint, a monolith can be splitted in components, but compiled/bundled/linked to a single executable. This doesn't violate the seperation of concern. It's bad taste/marketing/whatever.

I checked on my Windows and they did separate Cortana and the Search/Start menu recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The general problem with all "AI-powered assistants" is that they're not AI- powered assistants. They are voice interfaces atop tiny libraries of utilities.

If I had an AI powered assistant, it's actual data would be on my system, and not out on the internet somewhere. It wouldn't need to send my speech out.

But further, it would actually be an assistant. It would be able to operate all the applications on my computer.

"Cortana, copy the last three Slack messages in the current channel to a new Box document. Call it Requirements and add the date." -> Uses two separate apps for which I have open sessions, can exercise my credentials (where I complete the MFA when needed).

"Cortana, search all my communications for things related to Bob. I need to trace all of his activities that I have record for. Include Sumologic logs for the applications I support." -> Searches chat logs, email, and web application logs out in my log collection.

"Cortana, find out from Mom what groceries she needs today, and place Instacart orders accordingly."

The "assistants" we have today can't combine actions. They are just isolated pools of menu selections. They can't replace hands-on-keyboard for the things I regularly need to do with my computers or devices. They need to become intention-processors, not just language parsers to activate a menu.

<comment><USER14> And not even good ones at that. They never take negative re-enforcement, you can't tell them what they just did was wrong or report a problem. You can't say "Good Bot" and let it know that the response it gave was what you expected and to continue to return results similar. Hell, if it was just 'stupid' you could keep programming new features into it and new ways to get to the same features with slightly different wording. But no. We don't even get that. Just this awful black box that "sometimes does what it's asked" and can barely reference previous incantations. Uhg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Other than for setting timers and turning the lights on and off, all of this "voice assisted" stuff doesn't really work. So providers should either make it work or abandon it if they can't (and yes, they can't), leaving only the scenarios that do work operational. Kudos to Microsoft - they're admitting what was obvious to everyone for quite a while.

This is especially egregious with Siri, which Apple repeatedly tries to gaslight everyone about. Apple does demos every year, yet Siri continues to suck just as it always did. But Apple keeps pretending that it doesn't suck. This goes completely against the ethos of Apple not releasing stuff until it's "insanely great".

<comment><USER16> Yes, other than timers, reminders, delivery notifications, home automation, weather, music/podcast playback, Bluetooth speaker, unit conversion, and grocery items (e.g. OurGroceries), voice assistants are useless.

<comment><USER17> The big hurdle for voice UI is discoverability.

That's probably why it's most successful in a handful of verticals, like timers and music control. There are a finite list of likely commands, and people can probably guess them first time.

When you move much beyond that, you start getting a high miss rate because there's no good way to pull a list of valid commands or options.

Importantly, especially for home automation, "option guessability" is a big thing-- you might know the commands, but the relevant options are specific to each location, and you were likely not there when it was configured. How do you know that the light fixtures are named "Left sconce, right sconce, ceiling fan, and table lamp", and not "north, south, Bob, and Matilda?"

Voice UI is also a terrible situation for error recovery. I can't figure out a voice-only UI that would handle a simple case like "which light do you want to turn on?" well. At best, it could read you a list of all the devices that might be relevant for the question, but that's so low information-density and will feel like a bad telephone IVR service.

The "Siri with a screen" design convention might have been sensible, as that would have provided a way to disambiguate queries quickly, with buttons to show the options, and at idle, a browsable list of supported commands.

Of course, at that point, you're making a more obvious machine with a (voice- based) command-line. That's shatters the illusion they're selling of this being your secretary/concierge, with arbitrary and broad capabilities, who happens to be a robot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you own Microsoft Surface Headphones you can get a $25 gift card from them: [https://www.bing.com/surfaceheadphoneredemption](https://www.bing.com/surfaceheadphoneredemption)

Also a $50 gift card if you own the Harman Kardon Invoke speakers: [https://www.bing.com/cortanainvokeredemption](https://www.bing.com/cortanainvokeredemption)

Pretty crappy that the links to these are buried in the FAQ

</comment><comment><USER19> From today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24013304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24013304)

</comment><comment><USER20> So does that mean if you created a third party action word (skill) it's game over?

</comment><comment><USER21> Cortana worked pretty well--better than Siri, though not as good as Alexa.

</comment><comment><USER22> Will it still work on my Zune?

<comment><USER23> People made fun of the Zune but if you look at it objectively it was actually a good product for its time.

The timing and the marketing was perhaps not as good as the product itself.

<comment><USER24> I agree though. Maybe except the first or maybe second release, these were kinda rushed and really just reskinned Toshiba devices.

Microsoft is surprisingly good at designing hardware and devices, and surprisingly bad at marketing them. Just like with Windows Phone, they were late to the party but acted like they already own the market. (I guess you just can't help yourself if you dominate the desktop OS market that much.) Both times they added unnecessary restrictions to the devices and set the pricing relatively high. You can do this if you're Apple and created the whole market and are generally known as a premium brand, but MS just isn't.

<comment><USER25> Their hardware sucks, just like their software. This is from a person who went from Nokia Symbian, to Microsoft's Nokia and finally the dead Windows Phone.

They somehow managed to take Nokia with their amazing hardware (look at Nokia N9, N900 and Maemo) and turn it into pure garbage (Microsoft Lumia series and their POS Windows Phone 10).

<comment><USER24> Completely different experience for me. Symbian was a confusing mess, so much that I stayed with a feature phone for another while. WP8 felt responsive, the UI consistent and surprisingly clean. Scrolling was smooth in 2013 when on Android it had frequent stuttering except maybe the flagship devices. The problem was that it was missing all the important apps and then some. They made sure to set the bar high for starting to develop apps for it and then wondered why nobody started porting to WP.

<comment><USER25> Nokia was in the process of switching from Symbian to Maemo, but Microsoft installed a Trojan of a Stephen Elop and forced the crap that is Windows Phone down Nokia's throat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One of the assistant's could stand out if they allow 3rd party devs to use it and allow an incognito mode. Otherwise it's just a way for them to collect data^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hbig brother us.

</comment><comment><USER27> Good riddance!!</comment>


Don't be ashamed to ask for business - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2010/06/dont-be-ashamed-to-ask-for-business.html

<comment><USER2> Hmm. Shouldn't it also be relevant be whether your bounce rate increased at all?

I would expect that on a high traffic site, if you put a link to buy something, someone, somewhere is going to buy it.

The analysis I would want to do is whether the visitors lost through an obtrusive link is worth the sales you get from said link? In your case, I can't see it affecting bounce rates etc much at all, but that model of thinking ends up with a page 90% full of google adsense boxes and a tiny blog post in the middle...

<comment><AUTHOR> So, that's a good question. For a quick analysis here's the month by month bounce rate of my site:

      Jan 85.59%
      Feb 87.05%
      Mar 89.24%
      Apr 82.35%
      May 86.19%
      Jun 89.00%

These links were introduced in June.

The problem is this is for a blog. Inevitably people come and read a single blog post and leave. Not sure I'm going to learn much from this analysis.

<comment><USER3> Use a different method of measuring bounce: time spent on site. Getclicky.com uses it as a method and I wholeheartedly agree with that metric.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In that same spirit, why not put the e-book version of "Geek Atlas" for sale on Fifobooks.com? ;)

(disclaimer: I am a co-founder of that site)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't control that, the publisher does. How about writing to O'Reilly?

However, I wouldn't hold it much hope of making a lot of money from it... The Geek Atlas physical book outsells the eBook by miles.

<comment><USER4> _How about writing to O'Reilly?_

Certainly; send me a note via our our contact page (<http://fifobooks.com/Contact>) with the details.

 _The Geek Atlas physical book outsells the eBook by miles._

You would think a travel related book would be better suited for a mobile device such as an e-reader.

Anyway, if not "Geek Atlas", how about a collection of some of your more popular blog posts as an e-book?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't really agree about the travel book better on e-reader thing.

If you are traveling you are unlikely to want to take an expensive electronic device with you, whereas a book is quite acceptable. If you lose a copy of my book, or dunk it in water, etc. it's easy and cheap to replace, not so with an e-reader.

Also, an e-reader is a very attractive device to thieves so you wouldn't want to flash it around. As much as I might like to think my book is that attractive, it's not!

An an e-reader needs to be recharged, which means you have to take recharging devices with you. Again the paper book is better.

Basically, paper rules (and I'm no luddite, I own and use it a Kindle).

<comment><USER4> That makes sense.

I suppose it matters where you're going, and to what extent you're traveling "rough".

I used to hesitate taking out my Nook or Sony on the subway (I'm in NYC), but this morning there were six other people reading from e-readers as well, so it's become less of an oddity or security risk.

If I have the Geek Atlas, the LP guide for general info, a Zagat's for the restaurants, etc. I'd prefer to have them all in digital form rather than lugging around three or more paper books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Prior to reading this post, I did not know about your book, but found it interesting and bought it because of this post.</comment>


Web browsers need to stop. Enough is enough - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2020/08/13/Web-browsers-need-to-stop.html <comment><USER2> This is a vicious cycle of Google pushing new APIs to cement their grip on the Web and the web developers chasing fads to reduce their permanent sense of inferiority compared to native developers.

You can see that this is the case when you look at Safari which tried to limit features. It's arguable whether that's because Apple limits the best APIs to native apps, or those features don't make sense or because of a combination of the two. But it's undeniable that web developers mercilessly criticized Apple and relentlessly put pressure on them to keep adding all sorts of nonsense to the browser. Ironically this is why today Safari has a partially negative reputation, which the author seems to be unaware of.

To put it bluntly, the web as shaped by these two forces is fucked. There is no one that matters which still cares about the idea of a user-focused, privacy-respecting web. There's too much money to be made in an ad and tracking laden, kitchen sink APIs web.

<comment><USER3> > to reduce their permanent sense of inferiority compared to native > developers.

On the contrary, you make it seem like native developers all have a superiority complex.

The world of already filled with people wanting to divide us, can we please not try to ostracize one group of developers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the article/rant:

> Safari is a joke.

Why? I use it daily as my primary browser. I am a software developer.

Anytime I enter a discussion about this, I get a lot of responses that are _completely irrelevant to me_ about plugins or ... rendering? or whatever other stuff I honestly can't even remember. None of that stuff matters to me. Safari is a great browser - it's simple, fast, and the only annoying thing about it is there are sites that will display modals saying I should use a modern browser like Chrome. Get real.

If you dismiss Safari as a 'real' browser, your opinion loses credibility to me. I honestly wonder if you've ever used it, or are hopping on some bandwagon about it.

<comment><USER5> The problem with Safari from the web developer viewpoint is that it constantly doing something different. There was a horrible time back in early 200x years when we needed to check our HTML and CSS in all the browsers. Today this is mostly over: 99% of layout and scrips are behaving the same in Chrome, Mozilla and both Microsoft IE and Edge. Except for Safari. It is especially annoying for devs working on Linux or Windows machines: we need to have a separate Mac machine to debug Safari issues, and it is twice annoying to be forced to deal with MacOS/Apple special ways of implementing UI/UX.

<comment><USER4> You helped illustrate my point though - I don't care at all what you have to do to do your job as a user using a browser. Sort of like how I don't care about how the engine in a Subaru works compared to the engine in a Honda.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The argument that browsers should stop trying to become an OS on top of the OS (e.g. webUSB) deserves better than this overly emotional rant.

The browser that has been holding the line in this respect, Safari, is dismissed without explanation.

<comment><USER7> Mobile safari has intimate links into the OS, intercepting links and sending them to apps, and no real ability to filter content.

(content blockers are opt-out - and you have no ability to even know what is loading)

<comment><USER8> Browsers should be linked to the OS. The problem is that Google is trying to replace your OS with Chrome so they can track everything you do. Apple has resisted implementing a lot of bad stuff Google is trying to push, and made serious, if insufficient, attempts to stop tracking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Enough is enough.

What I don't like about this post is too much emotion, not much action.

> If you're a Google engineer who is still working on AMP, you are a disgrace > to your field.

Really? Career shaming? That's very low of the author to do. Why are they a disgrace?

<comment><USER2> Silicon Valley is a really nice club with zero consequences for those that have been screwing up the internet and online privacy for decades. Therefore I don't think it's appropriate to now complain that somebody's calling these people a disgrace to their field.

Recently we learned on HN of the revolving door between Mozilla and Facebook, straight from the mouths of former Mozilla/current Facebook employees. They were even proud of helping the people that were recently let go by Mozilla with jobs at Facebook, as if it were totally normal to switch from privacy and open web defender to privacy and open web villain. I mean it _is_ totally normal apparently.

And really, I think that the moment of shame those people will feel at being called a disgrace, if they're even capable of feeling that any more will go away latest at the time that their fat paycheck hits their bank accounts. To be fair, they probably don't even read HN, Drew's blog or give a crap about any of this.

<comment><USER10> Speaking of Web Browsers, I won't be surprised if FB introduces their own browser, this could potentially be so much more dystopian than Chrome it's scary that's a possibility. Chrome is already de facto mandated by some government agencies across the globe by virtue of that their authentication doesn't work in other browsers (not even Chromium in some cases).

<comment><USER11> In a way they already have:

[https://www.stateofdigital.com/facebook-browser-biggest- brow...](https://www.stateofdigital.com/facebook-browser-biggest-browser- ignore/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would argue against the comment in the article that Safari is a joke.

It is a fair criticism of Apple that they limit new experimental features to promote native apps, but looking at this a user perspective (OK, just my perspective) is that I want functional web apps that perform a service (good examples our the web interfaces for ProtonMail, FastMail, and Gmail) for use cases that truly need a web app, but for most "content centric" web sites I want great content and pleasant looking layout - things that can be achieved with HTML and CSS.

To continue my little rant, the noise to signal ratio is getting so bad on the web that I now try to find people who really have something useful to say (Ryan Holiday, Azeem Azar, Matt Taibi) and pay for content.

I think tech like WASM is cool, but its proper use cases are few and far between.

</comment><comment><USER13> What I dislike about these rants:

\- the web is technically open but the browsers are the gatekeepers.

\- browsers are FUCKING HARD to build. Very very hard. So many details. And you are the #1 target for malicious hackers.

\- Rewriting the renderer for things like Firefox Quantum takes a lot of work, because every freaken webpage has to work on firefox. Every single one ever. That has been a HUGE challenge.

So at the end, yeah, lots of companies are trying to make money making a browser that everyone else (especially google) is giving away for free. So of course they are gonna try to do anything in their power to make money. Of course Mozilla is gonna start positioning themselves as the "privacy focused" browser and sell a VPN. The list goes on.

The question is: What can we do differently?

</comment><comment><USER14> Chrome and it's bastard stepchildren like Electron is an OS upon themselves using Windows just as a glorified launcher and then sucking up all possible computing resources to render web pages.

Older versions of I.E are nimble and fast compared to it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just curious, why the author thinks that Safari is a joke?

<comment><USER16> Is safari free software? I can't seem to find it in f-droid.

<comment><USER17> Newest Safari is only available for macOS and iOS.

There used to be Windows version of Safari, but it is not updated anymore.

Safari is based on Webkit/KTHML/Konqueror source code, some of the source code is public and has been contributed back from Apple to Webkit. But full source code of Safari is not public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If Microsoft cannot stand up to Google, what do you expect from individual developers?

Google has monopolized the power over the web. And soon they are going to use it to their advantage.

<comment><USER19> What do you mean soon? They have been doing so for years now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is the same rant one said about windows many years ago, one should not bloat and add more and more features. The answer is still the same, things need to evolve if it gives meaning and give improved user experience and value. It is only natural to bundle more and more functionality in a product. Many years ago IE 6 won the browser war and was set in maintenance mode for many years, but no progress made it easy for someone else to take over. First Firefox and then later Chrome. I think the Chrome team have learned their lessons and will continue to improve the product and make everyone else follow as long as there is user demand for the features and it gives strategic sense for Google.

<comment><USER21> _> The answer is still the same, things need to evolve if it gives meaning and give improved user experience and value._

I don't think critics disagree with this notion. Rather they disagree that the bloat gives meaning/improved user experience/value. It admits the existence of incompetence and perverse incentives. The latter seems like a natural consequence of profit-driven development when user satisfaction is only loosely and partially tied to profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> We should start from the foundation and rewrite the specifications for CSS. Once that is made more human, more rendering engines will pop up.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's undeniable that someday chrome will end, and when it dies several Manhattan projects worth of work will die with it, with very few positive side effects besides V8.

But hey I guess serving ads is really important?

</comment><comment><USER24> Thought that name sounded familiar, and sure enough, this is the Drew DeVault behind SourceHut, a project very much in keeping with the ideal of a web that is both usable and technically simple.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Mozilla just fired everyone relevant to focus on crap no one asked for like > Pocket, and fad nonsense like a paid VPN service and virtual reality tech.

Not disagreeing with the rest of this, but I love Pocket.

<comment><USER26> I hate that something which only exists to data mine, or serve ads is enabled (by default) in my web browser.

<comment><USER27> Serious question: would you pay for an equivalent service that doesn't mine your data?

<comment><USER26> If I actually believed that I was the customer, and not the product; yes _.

_ Obviously, that depends on a lot of things, but something that would recommend, cache/archive, catalog things I find interesting/care about. I would be willing to pay for something like it. I already pay for pandora, I'd absolutely pay for something that expanded my knowledge base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This does ring true but stop everything isn't the right answer either. Maybe rather a slowdown and less niche stuff. I mean the whole point of a browser is that it's pretty generic and universal.

The trend to make everything an app annoys me more (ie each news service, Reddit etc). Whole point of a browser is to avoid that.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is definitely something that should be fixed by the vendor, but as a (Firefox) user if you want a quick fix you can use [https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js](https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js)

</comment><comment><USER30> Lets hope that Falcon can serve as a good alternative in the future [https://www.falkon.org/](https://www.falkon.org/)

</comment><comment><USER31> We can stop complaining about them and start creating an interface that abstracts web APIs.

</comment><comment><USER32> Long live gopher space. Gopher://magical.gopher

</comment><comment><USER33> Mozilla fired the XR team.</comment>


How to Explain Zero-Knowledge Protocols to Your Children (1998) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~mkowalcz/628.pdf <comment><USER2> IMO a better introduction to ZKPs is [http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/11/zero- knowled...](http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/11/zero-knowledge- proofs-illustrated-primer.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> The easiest introduction I've seen is the Alice and Bob example in this paper, [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v510/n7506/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v510/n7506/full/nature13457.html) Plus the paper itself was pretty interesting

</comment><comment><USER4> ...can't believe I wasted 5min reading this. Why OP, why?

</comment><comment><USER5> I was just wrote a zero knowledge architecture section of a whitepaper. For a second there I was so excited to learn a new, simple way to explain it... _sigh_

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER7> my son would be asleep after reading this</comment>