Google Fiber Is High-Speed Internet's Most Successful Failure - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2018/09/why-google-fiber-is-high-speed-internets-most-successful-failure <comment><USER3> I see this a bit differently, and I frequently use the history of Google Fiber as evidence for strong net neutrality regulations.

In the areas where it was deployed, Google Fiber was wildly successful. And yet, Google threw in the towel. Why?

It _isn't_ because Google Fiber is was unprofitable. To the contrary, it was profitable _despite_ driving broadband prices way down in its service areas.

It's because the incumbent ISPs simply have too much power. That power comes in many forms:

      1. Excessive industry lobbying power;
      2. Anti-competitive exclusivity agreements;
      3. The ability to stall rollouts indefinitely in the absence of "one touch make ready" policies;
      4. Required cooperation with and permission from governments who feel less pressured to move quickly once their residents have at least one incumbent provider;

etc.

If the incumbents are _so well protected_ that one of the most powerful corporations in America found the barriers to entry too burdensome, then how can _anyone_ argue that there is any semblance of a "free market"? What hope is there for startup ISPs?

The incumbents have received hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, so they already had a government-assisted head start. And, despite prices being so inflated that they _halved overnight_ wherever Google Fiber rolled out, they are _still_ able to effectively stave off meaningful competition.

Would that be possible in a healthy, competitive marketplace? No. So we need to stop treating it like one, when it clearly isn't.

<comment><USER4> Several of your factual assumptions are just wrong. For example, there are no "exclusivity agreements"\--those have been illegal under federal law since 1994. Also, ISPs never received "hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars." That number is a total fabrication: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556).

But leaving the facts aside, this is something you can logic through. Instead of speculating about what problems Google might have faced, look to its actual conduct to see what problems it tried to avoid. If "industry lobbying power" was the problem, you'd expect Google would try to deploy fiber somewhere it had the leg-up lobbying-wise, like Seattle or San Francisco or Mountain View. It never did that. Under your theory, you have to assume that Comcast (based in Philadelphia) has more lobbying muscle in Google's own back yard than Google.

What did Google do instead? It went to medium-sized cities in Red states with overhead utility lines. Atlanta, Austin, Provo, Kansas City, etc. Why? Because those cities waived regulatory requirements they applied to incumbents, including the crucial one of build-out requirements (the requirement to build out to the whole city). Google went places like Kansas City, which fast tracked permitting, gave free leases of public land for fiber huts, and waived the obligation to cover low income neighborhoods. Indeed, the willingness to waive build out requirements (which are routine in the industry), is one thing these disparate Fiber cities have in common.

All of this tells you that the basic problem with Fiber was profitability (not just making a profit, but enough profit compared to what else Google could be doing with that money). Build-out requirements kill profitability, because you're forced to spend a lot of money building to neighborhoods where you can expect few customers. (The major cost of a fiber build is wiring the neighborhood, not hooking up each house.) That's why a cornerstone of Fiber was the idea of "fiberhoods"—neighborhoods with demonstrated demand for fiber. (Of course, remember, the initial fiberhood selection exluded most low income neighborhoods in KC, as you'd expect. Google was forced to back peddle and add a bunch of low income neighborhoods in. But that misstep tells you a lot about the money math that was driving Fiber.)

<comment><USER5> My large apartment building, in downtown Palo Alto, has 2 sets of wiring: one exclusively for the phone company, and one exclusively for the cable company.

Not surprisingly, my 2 choices for fast Internet are the phone company and the cable company.

At one point the FCC was going to issue a rule opening these wires up. My building would be wired with a half-dozen competing ISPs about 5 seconds after that rule was issued.

<comment><USER6> Would all of those service providers be rewiring the building at the same time? Wouldn't it actually take months to install all the additional cabling needed? What happens when a 6th, 7th or 8th provider pops up. That's just one apartment building.

What happens when xyz start up wants to dig up a whole neighborhood to put their data cables in. Then a month later a new startup that promises to give you a better experience comes in and rips up the road. What happens when xyz start up fails and the half finished project just sits there? Do the tax payers pay to fix it?

<comment><USER7> Typically speaking, all of the wiring is done in some central location for the building. The phone/electric/cable companies don't want to make individual drops to each unit. They make one drop to the building and then fan out to the individual units. All that changes when a new provider comes in is that they make a drop to the building and then connect the units wiring to it. They do not need to wire to each individual unit.

The level of complication for making the initial drop to the building will vary depending on the area and how wiring is done in general there, areas where there are pole hung wires making the drops are pretty quick to add areas where the wires are underground are typically a little more complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an ISP: right of way and economics of $ per last mile customer reached are HARD. The incumbents in an area, generally the copper phone line company (ILEC) and cable TV operator (Comcast, RCN, Charter, whatever) were handed the aerial ROW and underground ROW on a silver platter 30+ years ago, when there was no such thing as telecom competition. It was just assumed at that time that those two companies would be installing stuff on the same poles as the power company.

They built wherever they pleased, whenever they pleased, at minimal regulatory cost and with minimal additional costs. Because of course nobody would buy a house with no dialtone phone and/or no cable TV.

Now in a modern era if a FTTH ISP wants to come along and overbuild the same routes as the phone company, it's a lot more difficult, time consuming and expensive.

<comment><USER9> We're in the process of doing that where I live.

[https://marshallfibernet.com/](https://marshallfibernet.com/)

The reasons this is getting off the ground at all is because our city government spent the past 5 years dotting every i and crossing every t to be able to drop the hammer on AT&T and WOW! without retaliation. Also, we own our own electric utility, and on top of their ROW they're also bankrolling most of this operation with a sweetheart loan deal (overpaying for electricity worked out in the end, who knew).

<comment><USER8> Having the electrical utility controlled by the local county can be a huge advantage. The counties in eastern WA where the local PUD (public utility district) owns the last mile AC power distribution networks have been generally quite successful building their own dark fiber networks. Because of course they don't need to ask themselves for permission to build, they already own the poles and ROW, they just do it. They already have linemen and bucket trucks, flaggers, insurance, spool trailers, etc.

Then ISPs can reach end user customers by paying the PUD for L2 transport across their networks.

This new PUD fiber infrastructure exists separately from whatever the local Telco and cable TV operators have built.

<comment><USER10> It also has the benefit where citizens can decide their generation supply (ie renewables) vs shareholders in a for-profit electrical utility or generator deciding based solely on profitability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > But what if the company's goal was never to unleash the disrupter itself so > much as to encourage incumbent broadband providers to do so, helping > Google's expansion in adjacent markets such as video and emerging markets > including smart homes?

Did anyone think anything else WAS the strategy? Google has a history of such "spurring" efforts. Glass, Fiber, Nexus, heck, even a ton of Android support itself.

<comment><USER12> Yeah I don't understand at all why people think that Google wanted to be in this business. They were forced to. ISPs were starting to lag behind on bandwidth that was important to them, and also started to discriminate on traffic. It is not a failure at all in any way because they never intended on completely taking over. They'd much rather be in their business.

The same is true with Android, as they were under threat of locked out of a smartphone boom by Apple. They have stuck with it because it has become more popular than they could have ever imagined. I also think this is their reason behind making Kubernetes. I think they want to commoditize the cloud more to avoid dominance from Amazon.

<comment><USER13> > The same is true with Android, as they were under threat of locked out of a > smartphone boom by Apple.

Nice theory, except that Google bought Android Inc. in 2005, years before the iPhone was announced.

<comment><USER14> The first android designs were more like Blackberry's than an iPhone[1]. The designs ended up being publicized during the Oracle trial. You can clearly see that they were no where near what Apple was doing with the iPhone. After Apple released the iPhone Google decided to not even release that version and decided to re-do the phone[2]. They believed that a touch screen can't completely replace physical buttons[3]. I'm always surprised how reluctant people are to give credit to Apple for completely changing the smartphone industry.

1\. [https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974676/this-was-the- orig...](https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974676/this-was-the-original- google-phone-presented-in-2006) 2\. [https://www.pcworld.com/article/254539/original_android_prot...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/254539/original_android_prototype_revealed_during_google_oracle_trial.html) 3\. [https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974843/google- in-2007-a-...](https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974843/google- in-2007-a-touchscreen-cannot-completely-replace-physical/in/2731667)

<comment><USER15> I have yet to find a single person that doesn't believe that Apple revolutionized the smartphone industry with the iPhone.

<comment><USER16> Are you new around here? There's a vocal set of diehard contrarians that insist LG was the true pioneer and Apple just has better marketing, the iPhone wasn't a better product.

It's the most successful consumer electronics product in history, but some still are in denial.

<comment><USER15> 7 years with an account, and a few before just lurking. This is the first time I hear that, so they must not be many, or not very vocal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > But in 2009, no leading carrier was planning a major upgrade of its existing > physical plant.

That's not true (and the article doesn't cite to any support for that idea or any other). In 2009 ATT and Verizon were in the middle of deploying Uverse and FiOS, which were planned since 2005. By that time, Qwest (later acquired by CenturyLink) had already passed a million households and had service in a dozen cities.

The article credits Google with these deployments, but makes no effort to show that the pace of these projects, which were already in the pipeline, somehow accelerated after Fiber. This would be an easy assertion to prove: show there was a discontinuity in FTTx deployment after 2010. The article states that there is 30% urban FTTx penetration today, but doesn't say whether that's on or off the pre-2010 trend. (The article also gets the cable trajectory wrong. In 2009, everyone was in the middle of deploying DOCSIS 3.0. The pace of DOCSIS upgrades didn't speed up after Fiber. DOCSIS 3.1, and gigabit cable, came when you'd expect.)

What Google does deserve credit for, I think, is making gigabit happen. ISPs likely would've held that as a premium tier for market segmention purposes. After Fiber set the gigabit at $70 price point, everyone had to match (or come close). That was something that wasn't in the road maps before Fiber.

<comment><USER17> >ISPs likely would've held that as a premium tier for market segmention purposes

They still do. I don't think much has changed regarding actual fiber. Comcast, for example, will sell you passable gigabit over cable in the < $150 category (not cheap), but that has some abysmal upload (probably 20 Mbps), and lots of bufferbloat. If you want real fiber from comcast, be prepared to pay $500 in installation, $300 a month, and a 2 year contract. This is in ATL, which is a google fiber market, just that google fiber never really rolled out beyond the google fiber shop.

<comment><USER18> Comcast Business quoted me gigabit symmetrical for $1k install and around $500/month with a 3 year contract at my location. Plus equipment costs. Completely unacceptable.

Seattle, BTW. Where CenturyLink is theoretically rolling out gigabit, but not actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> IMHO this is the fulcrum of the article:

        Though Google appears to have paused future deployments, the broadband business
        has permanently changed. Fiber investments by former telephone companies have
        accelerated or restarted.

As someone who lives in Austin, TX and walk past the Google Fiber office every day, I can testimony that thanks to this mindset now there are at least 3 ISPs serving Fiber to the Home. (Grande, ATT, Google and possibly Spectrum?) Even if you can't get Fiber, most gentrified blocks can get 300Mbps (and with offers you can get it for $50ish a month). That's amazing, just because ISPs were afraid of Google's offering.

All in all Google's Fiber is super limited (very few blocks can get Fiber to their home) but just like a "grimreaper waiting on your doorstep" ISPs competing with Google had to start offering really good deals to everyone.

<comment><USER20> I live in Austin. For two years I waited for my neighborhood to be included in their coverage map. Even after the map showed I was covered, repeated attempts to sign up would get rejected by their automated registration system. For months I watched workmen laying in the orange cables, including right through my front yard.

In October 2017 a Google employee walked door to door in the neighborhood signing people up. We signed up, gave a $15 (?) deposit, and then never heard from him or google again.

On the other hand, in that span of time my Spectrum speed got bumped repeated from 15/5 Mbps to 200/12 Mbps, without changing my price. So, thanks Google for bluffing so well.

<comment><USER21> I lived in Austin and had AT&T and Google Fiber at times. The service, speed, and reliability was exactly the same as was the price. It's amazing what some competition will do. I now live in Minneapolis and actually have 10 Gbps up/down and the option for 1 Gbps up/down for half the price of Google/AT&T in Austin ($35/month), but no Google Fiber (US Internet is the provider here).

<comment><USER22> I also live in Austin, in the one neighborhood where Grande offers FTTH. Before Google it cost $89/mo for 100Mbps. As soon as Google _announced_ Austin, I could get 1Gbps for $59/mo.

I still wish Google would continue the buildout in Austin, as Grande doesn't have a clue about IPv6.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >"The overall goal: to ensure at least 100,000,000 Americans had access to broadband speeds of 100 Mbps by 2020. As it turned out, providers blew past that milestone as early as 2016."

First gripe....why oh why could they not make that goal for a _symmetrical_ 100Mbps and not just focused on the DL speed.

If the push is to 5G, I'd welcome it, if the mobile carriers opened ports on consumer plans. I've cherished my coveted unlimited iPad data plan with att used in my mifi with a yagi that points right at the service tower. It regularly sees over 250Gigs a month (check my twitter for that pic).

</comment><comment><USER24> Gotta give credit to Google here, regardless what you think about their intentions or competence. They moved the needle in a way that only a disruptor can move needles. (They didn't plan it that way ahead of time, you'll just have to trust me on that.)

Remember they've done this before. Usenet.

And for a successful success story, how about gmail? Just like no one remembers alta vista, lycos, etc (or myspace in more recent history), no one remembers that when gmail launched and offered 1GB of mail, that was absurd. The previous free tier was more like 5MB -- 3 orders of magnitude lower! Then when Yahoo finally came around (had to stop the bleeding) and also offered 1GB, gmail went unlimited!

They are going to write this exact same story in 10 years if electric cars take off (I don't think they will, but leave that aside) and Tesla is dead. Tesla's failure will be the industry's success.

<comment><USER25> > Remember they've done this before. Usenet.

Are you implying that Google started usenet? (hint: they didn't.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _The two-tiered market of high-speed cable and lower-speed DSL broadband has given way to a free-for-all, forcing adoption of more disruptive strategies by incumbents and new entrants alike. The result is increased competition between providers and among cities and regions eager for game-changing private investment._

In which alternate universe is this happening? Certainly not in the United States. How many residential locations have a choice of more than two data providers? Yes, there's wireless, with "Unlimited", "Premium Unlimited", and "Extra Premium Unlimited."

</comment><comment><USER27> I have gigabit fiber internet (up and down) in LA for $80/m from AT&T. It's incredible, and I can't believe they offer it. I can't imagine that would be the case today if Google Fiber never existed.

</comment><comment><USER28> From the sounds of it, they had plenty of cities lining up to get Fiber from Google. I would assume that, at least in those cities, they wouldn't face too many regulatory hurdles. So, what's stopping Google from expanding into the willing cities? Is it the expense of digging up all that last mile infrastructure? Is that the limiting factor?

<comment><USER29> I think they underestimated the amount of cash it would take to do the job right.

<comment><USER28> well, they can always come up with a new estimate. If they'r e not doing it, then it means they can't get a good ROI on it. I'm just wondering what they're biggest expense is: I suspect it's last mile digging up all those trenches - <USER2> hear that's really expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One major issue, at least here in Provo, was that their only high-speed offering (at first) was $70/mo. This is a high-proportion college town, and almost no students can afford that (even split amongst themselves). Even if they could, almost nobody wanted to because why pay for that when the free plan works good enough? A speed test at fast.com reveals that Netflix still streams at gigabit speeds even on the free plans. YouTube is similar. (They seem to open the fire hose on those sites!)

Now they have a fifty dollar 100 Mbps plan. But students don't pay for that, either, because they don't know about it.

It was not a well-thought-out business plan.

Their seven-year contract will be expiring soon. Will be interesting to see what happens then.

<comment><USER17> $50 for 100 Mbps is still bordering on expensive. Comcast undercuts that, at least in the promo period. They jack it up after the period, but that's the usual thing with Comcast. You need to renegotiate or change accounts. So the less informed as well as cheapskates would still go with Comcast. What you get with GF is symmetric 100Mbps and better quality, but hardly anyone would know that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "But what if the company's goal was never to unleash the disrupter itself so much as to encourage incumbent broadband providers to do so, helping Google's expansion in adjacent markets such as video and emerging markets including smart homes?"

I don't think it's a what if. If you can think back to the state of broadband (e.g., Verizon, Comcast, and mobile speeds) when Fiber was announced, and the following the subsequent increases, there's definitely a strong correlation to Fiber's influence.

Goggle got what they wanted by pretending to do something it had no interest in doing. That's not a failure. It's damn clever.

</comment><comment><USER32> Fiber is great. But... in my view, the key to omnipresent BB is wireless, yes 5G, sorry to grind this ax but, I do believe that is the key, particularly in a country like the USA where there are large geographic areas, it is simply not economic to cover the entire area with fiber. mm-wave is part of the equation but also, lower frequency bands (sub-6Ghz) are key. FCC opening up more spectrum (all bands) is key to wide spread BB access.

<comment><USER33> Hoping wireless will solve the B.B. problem is laughable. It doesn't matter what technology you use, the airwaves are a single shared medium while wires are essentially private sanctums of bandwidth within their own little environment with essentially the same bandwidth in each wire. Wireless companies are still charging per Gb, while wireline companies charge per 100s of Gb. People use streaming all the time, and that's only increasing. Wireless is not going to be viable for the streaming future of 4K, etc for a very long time, and even when the tech is ready, the providers are still going to charge huge sums for that access. If wireless really is cheaper to build out, then why the huge disparity in price per Gb?

<comment><USER32> One of the keys here that a lot of people miss is that mm-wave alone will not fill the BB need. It is the combination of sub-6ghz and mm-wave. 5Gnr works in high band, mm-wave and low/mid-band. This is the key, using each in the appropriate situation. mm-wave in dense urban, fiber rich areas, sub-6 in more rural and xburbs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > The broadband market was experiencing a classic "prisoner's dilemma," where > neither cable nor DSL providers felt a competitive threat from the other > requiring substantial new investment, trusting in relative peace within > their own market segment. Continued expansion of broadband capacity was on > the verge of stalling.

I don't see how that can be viewed as a Prisoner's Dilemma.

</comment><comment><USER35> Here in Phoenix Google announce Fiber and Cox Communications when crazy rolling out their gigabit offering. Google stopped, Cox pretty much stopped too.

</comment><comment><USER36> There's also the theory that Google will eventually provide the consumer service for SpaceX's internet satellite constellation. Laying cable was way too expensive and won't be used for most of internet traffic in the future, where low latency is not paramount.

If I have the timing correct, Google led a large financing round of Spacex around the same time as they stopped expanding their Fiber service

</comment><comment><USER37> I just signed up for Bell Fiber in Toronto 500mbps upload and download.

$34.95 CAD a month. (Around $27 USD).

Who knew fiber could be this cheap?

<comment><USER38> where'd you get this deal? currently listed on their site is 1GBit for $100 per month (with a 6 month scam discount).

<comment><USER37> Promo code A15173269

No activation fee or any other initial fees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I live in Overland Park, KS where Google Fiber has ground to a halt. About 1/2 the city is wired, but there is no ETA on the rest.

AT&T has been deploying fiber where Google was, but that seems halted too.

Spectrum is just garbage. While they offer 300 Mbps downstream, the upstream is 20.

I at least have 100/5 from CCI, but their infrastructure is going to shit with reliability problems.

Fiber is really the only way, with true symmetrical 1000/1000\. DOCSIS is shit, as well as DSL variants.

I can tell you mmWave is going to be shit too. It's only useful for line-of- sight, which rules out mostly everywhere here due to trees.</comment>


Notes on how systemd's job engine is structured and other related bits - <AUTHOR> https://bl33pbl0p.github.io/systemd.html <comment><USER2> Not trying to start a flamewar over systemd (I'm definitely more of a BSD guy so it doesn't matter much to me other than hoping Linux stays healthy), but just reading through this description of all the stuff systemd does made my eyes water. There's always tension between simplicity and necessary complexity, but a lot of this strikes me as being unnecessary complexity to achieve simplicity in the wrong place.

<comment><USER3> Honestly systemd is large as a project but most of it is separated and doesn't actually impact you if you don't use it. And BSD people really should not complain about managing to much software in a single project.

<comment> village-idiot They just patched _Vim_ to work correctly with systemd, and it now runs its own DHCP daemon and custom log format.

That's not separated.

<comment><USER4> Care to link to any patches? I have not been able to find any. The main repository does not mention systemd except for syntax highlighting and ftplugin: [https://github.com/vim/vim/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=systemd&t...](https://github.com/vim/vim/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=systemd&type=)

<comment> village-idiot Memory failure, they were asking tmux, not Vim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> :/ I was hoping it would clarify why I have to look in so many places.

Process can't fork?

Better check

* sysctl and /etc/sysctl.conf

* ulimit (soft and hard) and /etc/security/limits.conf

* systemd configuration, would could be in /etc/systemd/system, /run/systemd/system, /usr/lib/systemd/system, /usr/local/lib/systemd/system, or a half dozen other places

This isn't across a bunch of distros; this is _all on the same Linux system._

And I guarantee this list isn't even complete.

Somebody is loving recreating what already exists.

<comment><USER6> > * systemd configuration, would could be in /etc/systemd/system, > /run/systemd/system, /usr/lib/systemd/system, /usr/local/lib/systemd/system, > or a half dozen other places

`systemctl status blah.service` will tell you all the systemd unit files that configure the service, and `systemctl show blah.service` will show you the final config that is actually applied.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that save time, if the configuration in question is currently on a running machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does this system of initialization compare to e.g. Windows?</comment>


Ask HN: Need help with closing company in Delaware - <AUTHOR> I am from India. I opened a company in Delaware using Stripe Atlas. I closed my Stripe Atlas account very soon. Didn't use it. Made no money.
Should I really pay a lawyer to pay file taxes and close the company or I can just abandon it. What will be the legal problems if abandon it?
I spoke to a lawyer, he said to abandon it. Will there be any legal problems? <comment><USER2> Please use the "Ask HN: " prefix.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you</comment></comment>


A gallery of interesting IPython Notebooks - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ipython/ipython/wiki/A-gallery-of-interesting-IPython-Notebooks/

<comment><USER2> In case you, like me, did not know what an IPython Notebook is: [http://ipython.org/notebook.html](http://ipython.org/notebook.html)

<comment><USER3> In that case, why would you care for a gallery of notebooks?

I love iPython notebook, any data scientist, CS teacher or python developer should learn how to use them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I saw a talk about IPython notebook the other day. How do you guys view it? As an IDE with an output format? Or a web browser with interactive interpreter?

It seemed sort of cool, but I am not quite sure where to place it. The guy doing the talk didn't sound very experienced, and I think the majority of his plus points for using it I get from an IDE. I would do the same thing using a full blown web app, but that would take a lot longer.

Curious how others view it.

<comment><USER5> I'm using it to write a book right now.

It is a mixed bag, largely because it is still in development. It is wonderful for authoring content - I can freely mix latex, code, output all together - you don't have to wonder how I generated that plot, the code and data is right there. OTOH, no section numbers, not quite WYSISYG, no way to hide code if you only want the output, and other minor things make me wonder if I should just use the tried and true latex workflow.

If I am just programming I prefer an IDE like spyder (I do mostly math-y type stuff).

A big annoyance is it's interaction with git. If you regenerate the output, git interprets that as a big file change, and the repository gets polluted with nonsense commits. There are workarounds, but none are perfect.

In general it is really great where you want to mix text, images, html, and python. So, great for presentations {audience: 'what if you change X==3', you: 'here you go'}, for paper writing, maybe less than great for full on book authorship or general programming.

But these are nitpicks. I love IPython Notebook. Even if I end up in the traditional Latex workflow at the end, it is so easy to keep code, text, and output all synced up with the notebook compared to the alternatives.

You can also run more than Python in it. IJulia supports running Julia in the notebook, for example.

<comment><USER6> >A big annoyance is it's interaction with git. If you regenerate the output, git interprets that as a big file change, and the repository gets polluted with nonsense commits. There are workarounds, but none are perfect.

This is probably one of the workarounds you're thinking of, but I clear the output and use a precommit hook to make sure I haven't missed any cells. It's a bit annoying, but it works. I'm waiting for the day VCS integration is built-in. For now, I enjoy having my notes and code together and versioned.

<comment><USER5> I should have said "a tiny annoyance", not "a big annoyance". The fix is, of course, to clear output.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rather disappointed with IPython 2.0. They appear to have taken steps back in usability in the push to make notebooks wizzy and interactive.

I eventually downgraded to 1.2 because it was hampering my productivity. You'd be surprised how annoying removing the 'add cell above' button is, or not switching focus when a new cell is inserted. I don't care about showing my notebooks to the world. I want a convenient way to test out scripts, time functions and play with data visualisation.

Most annoying is the frankly poor change documentation and trying to figure out what's been deprecated or what happened to shortcuts. Many of the changes are subtle and you're simply expected to know where to look.

/Rant

<comment><USER8> Just as a counter point, I was a huge fan of the changes in version two. "Wizzy and interactive" can be incredibly important for a wide range of applications. Half the reason interpreters are wonderful is that they drastically reduce the "idea to running" time, and having interactive widgets can do even more for that. (Not to mention things like animations and UIs, which are just useful sometimes.) Similarly, notebooks are a _great_ way for me to publish content, and a very large portion of the things I write are written as IPython notebooks.

As an aside, everything in IPython 2 is available from the keyboard and all shortcuts can be viewed by pressing the Help menu or 'h'. 'Add cell above' is now just 'a' (and below is 'b') when in command-mode. I expect that learning to use the new modal interface can be a bit of a hassle, but for me it turned out to ultimately be really awesome.

<comment><USER7> I think it's mostly getting used to the fact there's an edit mode and a browse mode. To me it seems that if you create a cell, 99% of the time you want to jump into it and start typing code - not adding another cell or selecting whether it's in Markdown/Python/Raw format or whatever.

I suppose my biggest gripe is that I had to search for what changed (rather than simply what's new), given how much is different from a UI perspective it would have saved me a lot of time to skim a document.

It's probably awesome who want that kind of functionality, and it makes the IPython platform so much more powerful for content delivery, but I wish it had a simple "Code and execute" mode. I always wondered why people complained about extra keystrokes in applications and now I know why :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great collection, I especially like the machine learning/data science notebooks.</comment>


The Pint-Sized Supercomputer That Companies Are Scrambling to Get - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603075/the-pint-sized-supercomputer-that-companies-are-scrambling-to-get/ <comment><USER2> This is not a supercomputer, it is a power-dense workstation. A supercomputer is what you get when you network enough of these to fill at least one large room.

This article is, I hope, a native ad.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, a single rack of these would get you into the Top500 list. "Supercomputer" might be hyperbole, but not by a huge degree. The DGX-1 is a serious bit of kit that achieves completely unprecedented efficiency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Better technology through content marketing.

</comment><comment><USER5> coördinating << author might be typing on a german or turkish layout

<comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)#English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_\(diacritic\)#English)</comment></comment>


All Kindle Fires sold to US customers will have home screen ads - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/09/all-kindle-fires-sold-to-us-customers-will-have-home-screen-ads/ <comment><USER2> _We've asked Amazon why the ads are US-only, and whether customers can pay to turn them off. If there is such an option, it doesn't seem to be mentioned in the Kindle Fire announcements or the Amazon sales pages. The prices are quite good, though, beating or matching the prices of tablets of comparable sizes._

...and pretty soon, before you know it in fact, we won't be able to power them down, either. Or disconnect the cameras or mikes.

"But hey, they're only $40 now, and the retina displays are just fantastic..."</comment>


Ask HN: Becoming a programmer again - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN<p>I started my career as a programmer and did quite well at that. I never wanted to get into management but in due course of time, I was forced to. Now I am out of touch with programming for almost 4 years. I wanted to get into hardcore development again - like I want to build frameworks and such stuff. I am faced with enormous inertia and dont know where to start. I am basically a Java programmer. Any tips and suggestions how to go about this ? <comment><USER2> I have been thru the same a few months ago. Let me tell you what worked for me.

Start by picking a language. Which one you choose will depend on why you want to be a programmer. My goal is to develop a web app for a startup so I looked at popular languages with popular frameworks. I chose Django/Python over Ruby on Rails.

Playing with a framework gave me some quick returns for minimal effort. So the rewards kept me going.

Quickly though you realize that you need language expertise. That's when I hit the books, sought assignments and problems (e.g. Project Euler).

One last tip, set some mini-projects with limited scope as goals - one after the other. Make sure their complexity increases. This will serve as a ramp up, but also the sense of completing a project becomes a sort of self-reward. The projects may also server as a portfolio.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pick up clojure and scratch small itches with it. Clojure is still fairly obscure and it doesn't have that many libraries; this will force you to write your own. Tool-making is the most fun kind of programming, and fun will keep you going.

</comment><comment><USER4> Programming is like riding a bicycle, you never really forget it, but you need to warm-up a bit if you haven't used one for a long time. There are some good suggestions above. I would go with Ruby on Rails.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, you could grab a book and work through it. Or, alternatively and even better, find a personal project to do and do it.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I continue a side project after abandoning? - <AUTHOR> I abandoned a side project/blog[1] about 1.25 years ago.
Weekly, I would publish short fiction stories written by people hired on UpWork. It was a relatively cheap venture, costing ~$75 per story after paying the writer and my sister-in-law to edit. And each story took about 3 hours of my time between managing writers, following up, managing sister-in-law, and publishing.
I never found a good way for it to make money or build an audience. And without either, the effort and cost weren't really worth it. It hasn't been updated since December of 2017. I had a few stories come in after that, but I never got around to put in the time to publish them.
Any advice, words of encouragement, or criticism?
1: https://fictorio.us/ <comment><USER2> If it was neither engaging for you nor commercially viable, what's the point of restarting it? Some things just don't work out. It's OK to let them go and move on to something better.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did get good stories out of it, but the amount of work involved in getting those stories just became cumbersome.</comment></comment>


Howto: Block Amazon and any site using Amazon Web Services - <AUTHOR> https://bigboy.us/other/aws/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of about three years ago, a buddy who does Cybersecurity for a very large military base was tasked with blocking AWS from their network due to porn.

He found it quite humorous, warned them of the consequences, got everything in writing(including his warnings), and executed his orders.

The base commander was not amused and the blocks were removed in about 12 hours. Unfortunately, the responsible party never suffered more than egg on their face for the stupidity.

They tried to shift blame to my buddy, but he had dotted his i's and crossed his t's. He did get a nice one-on-one with the Base Commander, where he was able to lay everything out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mmmkay. Have fun with that.

The attempt is also incomplete. I suspect this would miss ranges advertised through AWS's BYOIP ([https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-byoi...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-byoip.html)) option. It would definitely miss ranges advertised through companies' own datacenters and serviced in the backend by AWS.

<comment><USER4> 33.5 million IP addresses is no small drop in the bucket though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This doesn't block any site using AWS, only sites which are fronted by a server hosted within AWS.

<comment><USER6> I've toyed with the idea of setting up a no-FAANG VPN that implements these restrictions based on the ip networks advertised by the relevant ASNs. This would provide more complete coverage, and be useful as a testing tool, allowing you to verify that your own web properties still function without assets being loaded from a global active adversary.

<comment><USER7> It still doesn't actually block everything on those clouds. I can go get my own ASN, run my own edge server (or use a small CDN company not on your list) and use whatever I want on the back end for database, queue, backup, storage, compute, etc. All you'll know my IP is where the edge node is.

<comment><USER6> A VPN would still be effective at suppressing the tracking effects of all the "like buttons" while also revealing issues such as jquery being loaded off a CDN that also directly hosts content for 40% of the web.

For users wanting to thwart pervasive CDNs from receiving packets every time they visit almost any site on the web, it's matters less if a service they visit is using an amazon resource on the back end; as long as all services aren't using the same database backend, this puts e.g. AWS back in the position of only having a little of your consumer/browsing information instead of nearly all of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a large community of people here in the US who block every company that does bad things.

Yes I'm talking about the Amish. But even in Amish society, there is politics and people who do Bad Things. Fortunately there are plenty of uninhabited mountaintops left that one can go and live on to maintain a clean conscience. But if we do that, then aren't we turning our backs on the world by not helping it? So now we'd need to come back to civilization and live amongst the unwashed masses once more.

There's no way to live a perfectly good and blameless life.

</comment><comment><USER9> I find the initiative interesting, at least to realise how much of our daily browsing is hosted on AWS. I will give a go for sure!

</comment><comment><USER10> Wouldn't it be easier to just turn off wifi and unplug the ethernet cable?

<comment><USER11> _ding ding ding_ ⬆

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Counter-intuitively, AWS makes it very easy to do this! They publish and > continuously update a list of IP ranges

It's not like any legitimate company could keep their IP address ranges private (other than by using seemingly unrelated shell companies) :)

<comment><USER13> I have found their list to be out-dated. I have to use bgp lookup sites to fill in the blanks. There are many ranges and small blocks they leave out that are not hosted in their datacenter directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wouldn't blocking stuff using AWS block like, a significant chunk of the internet?

<comment><USER15> Yes

<comment><USER13> As an experiment, you could always put their ranges into your IDP / IDP / firewalls and just get summary data for how many packets / flows / bytes are transferred to/from AWS. (Rather than outright blocking)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd rather do this with Cloudflare. Amazon may be naughty but CF is just evil: trying to normalize a MITM-as-a-service protection-racket as a business model is bad for everyone involved.

</comment><comment><USER17> And to get around this, simply route all your traffic through Cloudflare...

</comment><comment><USER18> I mean I get the idea and all, but considering half the internet runs on AWS is this even feasible? Your day-to-day internet use would be crippled. Wouldn't it be better to spend the effort on writing letters to politicians or better yet campaigning yourself? (I'm assuming this is being posted because of the prime day walkouts today)

<comment><USER19> Indeed, there is nothing inherently wrong with AWS.

On the broader topic, what's wrong with people spending money on things they want? We live in a free country. If you have money, and want to buy junk with it, more power to you. It's your money. Do whatever you want with it. As far as vices are concerned, I would rather someone derived satisfaction from binge shopping than the alternatives (gambling, alcoholism, drugs, etc. etc.), since those have far more deleterious effects on society.

<comment><USER20> _" what's wrong with people spending money on things they want?"_

It depends on what they're buying. Many people would consider unethical the buying of children or child pornography, for instance. Bans on ivory, whaling, and trading in endangered species have gained ground in recent years.

Some arguments for what's wrong with those are that the former exploit people who are unable to defend themselves or even realize they're being exploited, while the latter cost the lives of sentient creatures and reduce biodiversity by causing extinctions. Now, whether you find any of those arguments persuasive depends on your own values. Some people see nothing wrong with exploitation or species extinction. It's really difficult to argue against them. Either you share certain fundamental values with the rest of us or you don't.

Philosophers study such ethical issues in nauseating detail, but I've yet to see how any of their arguments would be persuasive to someone who doesn't already share their core values.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I imagine the guys building AWS are treated pretty well, compared to their warehouse guys.

<comment><USER22> I wonder about the low level labor in data centers. Swapping disks and servers. I imagine they have a lot of the same tracked-time-pressure that retail pickers do? But I've never read about it one way or the other either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This tutorial's of limited use to 30% of users, who have IPv6.

</comment><comment><USER24> Half the internet would be unusable, lol.

</comment><comment><USER25> Another of 2-3 stories about the Amazon strike deleted from the front page of Hacker news, it's hard to not be conspiratorial about this.

</comment><comment> e-m-p Do you realize how many companies run on AWS?

</comment><comment><USER26> loll, good luck.

</comment><comment><USER27> Oh boy, another one of the daily anti-FAANG posts. Amazon is evil and should be boycotted - usually coming from people who shop at WalMart and invest in companies like BP (i.e. my in-laws).

Good luck blocking AWS - and whatever percentage of the internet running on it.

<comment><USER28> >usually coming from people who shop at WalMart and invest in companies like BP

What weird mental gymnastics are you trying to pull here? You know someone who hates Amazon and invests in Walmart/BP? So what? That doesn't mean there isn't a legitimate reason to hate Amazon.

"ugh, another one of the daily anti-violent crimes posts. Rape is evil and should be boycotted - usually coming from people who jaywalk and overcook their steaks."

<comment><USER29> They know someone who hates Amazon but shops at Wal-Mart and invests in BP, and is projecting all of that only everyone who has a negative view of Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> We could start by shunning AWS content when their $200k+ salaried employees are posting their latest announcements on HN while their unsalaried, not- employed coworkers in the warehouses are sprinting to and from a piss break trying not to be fired.

<comment><USER31> Any of the warehouse workers has or had the chance to obtain the skills of an AWS employee... Or are you advocating communism?

<comment><USER32> I'm not entirely sure what you're arguing. Are you saying it's ok to treat nonskilled workers badly because they have the opportunity to gain skills?</comment></comment></comment>


7 Billionaires Who Got Undergraduate Business Degrees - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessschooljournal.com/7-billionaires-who-got-undergraduate-business-degrees/ <comment><USER2> That's it? Just 7? How many billionaires didn't study business?

</comment><comment><USER3> Go Babson! I'm graduating this year :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Mark Cuban is a billionaire because Yahoo is stupid.</comment>


Federal Circuit Decides Software No Longer Patentable - <AUTHOR> http://www.pli.edu/patentcenter/blog.asp?view=plink&id=368 <comment><USER2> Yeah, but you could still go bankrupt defending the patent case to test the ruling!</comment>


Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash - <AUTHOR> http://www.byte.com/abrash/ <comment><USER2> Clearly it is going to take finite time to read all of this book and thus comment intelligently on the whole.

Sampling chapter one tells me that this is very well written and pertinent - if you don't get bogged down in the immediate issues of DOS calls. Performance is always going to be crucial for all but the most trivial (or unrepeated) tasks.

I quote from the chapter's conclusion

"This chapter has presented a quick step-by-step overview of the design process. I'm not claiming that this is the only way to create high-performance code; it's just an approach that works for me. Create code however you want, but never forget that design matters more than detailed optimization. Never stop looking for inventive ways to boost performance-and never waste time speeding up code that doesn't need to be sped up."

Spot On!

</comment><comment><USER3> I ate this book up like candy when I had my first gig at a game development shop. It's absolutely fantastic. Especially enjoyable is the stuff about his work on Quake - which, IMHO, was one of the greatest technical achievements in software, ever. (Do you think _you_ could render a 3D environment at 25 fps, all in software, on a Pentium 75?? Unbelievable...)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a great book - outdated for sure, but I learned a lot just reading how he approached the problems.

A nice throwback to when CPUs were simpler/more deterministic with respect to optimization.

</comment><comment><USER5> Book has been sitting on my shelf forever since I found it in a clearance bin. Now I'll actually (try to) read it!

</comment><comment><USER6> Trying to go to their website using Camino (I realize that its working for Firefox and other more popular browsers, was just kind of surprised):

javax.servlet.ServletException: agent.filename property not set in config file at com.cmp.nucleus.servlet.NucleusServlet.init(NucleusServlet.java:895) at com.caucho.server.http.Application.createServlet(Application.java:3114) at com.caucho.server.http.Application.loadServlet(Application.java:3065) at com.caucho.server.http.QServletConfig.loadServlet(QServletConfig.java:435) at com.caucho.server.http.Application.getFilterChainServlet(Application.java:2809) at com.caucho.server.http.Application.buildFilterChain(Application.java:2765) at com.caucho.server.http.Invocation.service(Invocation.java:313) at com.caucho.server.http.RunnerRequest.handleRequest(RunnerRequest.java:346) at com.caucho.server.http.RunnerRequest.handleConnection(RunnerRequest.java:274) at com.caucho.server.TcpConnection.run(TcpConnection.java:139) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)

<comment><USER2> Well spotted - I just assumed that the server was having traffic problems as this link has been posted by Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror. It opens just fine in a FireFox IE tab of course.

<comment><USER7> Server load has nothing to do with what browser you're using.

<comment><USER2> Sorry - I did not make it clear. It was not a server issue but a browser issue. The site seems to respond best to Internet Explorer so I opened it in FireFox using the IE tab "addin".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Backbone.js Tutorial - by noob for noobs - <AUTHOR> http://thomasdavis.github.com/

<comment><USER2> His model (Friends Collection) is doing view duty. Shouldnt the addFriendLi method be apart of the controller binding the Friend(s) model and AppView view?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that ought to be in the controller or provided in a helper method outside the model.

<comment><AUTHOR> Backbone Views and standard MVC controllers are synonymous so I placed it in the Backbone View.

<comment><USER3> Ah! Thanks for clearing that up. I haven't gotten around to dabbling in Backbone yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought it would be interesting to create a comparable example of this mini- app with basic YUI 3 code: <http://jsfiddle.net/ericf/wpuCm/>

backbone.js seems like a great library, and MVC is on the YUI 3 roadmap ( <http://yuilibrary.com/projects/yui3/roadmap> ), hopefully some of the concepts from backbone get implemented in the YUI's MVC layer.

</comment><comment><USER5> A very minor suggestion, but I think the last line (var appview = new AppView) is a little bit confusing on first reading - it's not immediately obvious that you're setting the variable to initiate the view... I've seen it written elsewhere like so:

      window.App = new AppView

which I think is a good idiom.

<comment><USER6> fwiw these are not the same thing in this context. the example doesn't actually declare appview in the window namespace, possibly intentionally. i agree it's a bit unclear though.

<comment><USER5> Of course you're right, they're not identical, but I don't think there's any practical difference between them here - they both initiate the view; but using the window namespace seems more readable, and is an established idiom. Maybe it is intentional, but I don't think so?

<comment><USER7> but that would assume a browser, right?

<comment><USER5> It does, but as catshirt says, that's probably reasonable. Especially as jQuery assumes a browser (and relies on the window namespace) too - so it wouldn't be suitable for a browserless environment anyway...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a good library in theory... but it could and should be condensed to a fraction of its size. Maybe I'm just being too critical and OCD but I feel like there's too much code for what it actually does.

Off topic but... what in the world is up with the lowercase b's, d's, and u's on that site? Haha :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Could I possibly get a screen shot lol

I will have to disagree.

By condensed do you mean the code could be implemented better? Or do you think there are too many useless methods?

Just some things I have noticedl

Backbones Controller/History beats most jQuery plugins and generally Backbone.js will still be smaller then the plugins for example jQuery BBQ or Baluptons implementation.

The Backbone.sync method forces you to route all ajax calls through one gateway which means you have no code redundancy.

Backbone is built to work along side of underscore.js which is also super light weight. Also very fast at manipulating the DOM and includes a default templating system which works great.

<comment><USER9> I think what Timothy is saying is that in order to just add some <li> items to a <ul> tag, there's too much code happening in the tutorial.

... Which is totally true. You only get to the point where something like Backbone would be an advantage when you have rich models with editable state.

<comment><USER8> Along those lines is exactly what I'm saying... in addition to shortening the function names and other small (yet important size-wise) optimizations that would really help out in the long run. If I had the time I'd specifically address each optimization, but I don't.

It's cool that my comment is at -1 points. Thanks HN! You make me want to return here more and more every day with your unbiased contributions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For a community built off of a word that is almost always misunderstood by "normal people" you guys sure do misuse the word noob an awful lot. noob is negative, the word you want is "newb" or "newbie".

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=noob>

<comment><USER11> You could think of it like the 'for Dummies' or 'for Total Idiots' series of how-to books. They're for beginners, but of course the title isn't intended to insult the target audience.</comment></comment>


128 WiFi devices ought to be enough for anyone - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/08/128-wifi-devices-ought-to-be-enough-for-anyone/ <comment><USER2> I get the point that this article is getting at, however OnHub says it supports 128 _simultaneous_ devices. Not _total devices ever_.

I have my doubts that the author will find himself using the active Wifi on his Ebook, laptop, Xbox360, Wii, 3DS, Google Glass, and 122 other devices at the exact same time anytime in the near future. Even if he did, I really doubt that many other household routers could handle that load either.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Most of the home WiFi's are configured in the 192.168.n.0/24 subnet, so the max number of devices (excluding the router) is ¿253? Not much bigger than 128.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, I think today there is too much emphasis on wireless and a sense almost that using wires is ritually unclean.

4G is NOT a wireless technology, 5G is about more optic fiber so that you can be closer to the infrastructure.

As much as possible I get ethernet out to security cameras, game consoles and things like that and leave the WiFi to things that are truly mobile.</comment>


Ask HN: Jerked Around or Par for the course? - <AUTHOR>

I've been looking for bit of a career change. The ideal case would be doing something with consultative sales that leverages my strong IT background. I've had success selling when I was freelancing and if I could get them on the phone, in person, or on Skype I had almost 100% success rate.
I went in for an interview, he said he'd put together an offer that afternoon. I've never had a job title with 'sales' in it, so during the interview we talked about compensation being a balance, and I said I'm willing to accept a lower base pay and more commission to take some of the risk out of the equation for him.
I followed up a couple times and nothing came of it. I moved on and then I get an e-mail that basically said, "I was just waiting to see how much do you push to get this done, sorry" I really liked the guy and I feel like we'd get along.
Then he suggests I set up a time to see the offer he put together. I suggested thursday afternoon or friday afternoon. I'm pretty sure it won't happen today. I also feel like this might also be a test.
Is this par for the course in sales? I'm not sure I even want this job, if I feel like he's the type of guy that sets up 'tests' all the time. Two tests before I'm even hired?
Is my spider sense trying to tell me something? <comment><USER2> Everything in interviews is "par for the course". You're dealing with other humans and their own odd expectations of what is "normal".

Getting interviewed for a sales position adds another layer of absurdities because some people expect sales interviewees to over-sell themselves and be overly diligent in followup, negotiating salaries, etc. I personally don't subscribe to that line of thinking, but know many people who do.

In ANY case, if they made a commitment to you and missed the agreed-upon deadline, you should give them a small grace period (maybe 24 hours) and then followup. This would be true even if you were interviewing to be the backup- tape swapper guy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I left the interview and he said, "I'll have an offer for you by this afternoon" and then he said, "We'd like to hire you on the first (of december).

So he clearly missed both of those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That sounds to me like he failed at something (putting the offer together, getting your hire approved, getting back to you, etc) but wanted the shift the blame over to your side. I've never seen (good) salespeople to sell themselves into a job-they have people competing for them. I think you're being jerked around.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure this is the case as he is the owner. He has a business partner but I think talking with him was as much about having time to digest the interview as seeking permission.

In any case, I think I'm going to decline even seeing the offer.</comment></comment>


Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/belarus-internet-outage-election/ <comment><USER2> I have some close acquaintances in BY, so this has been hard.

We saw that (at least as of 8 PM UTC) outbound connections to HTTP servers wasn't really a problem. A fresh ec2 box with a basic web server wasn't effected.

So, early yesterday I set up an OpenVPN server on ec2 (eu-west-1) to try to get some slow but functional internet access. What we saw was that about 15-30 seconds after the TLS handshake the connection would stall and drop out. To me this says they're doing some deep packet inspection to find TLS and dropping those firewall states. I also noticed while running `tcpdump` that almost every tcp segment from a BY address had incorrect CRC's after the IDS kicked in.

Tonight we're going to try using an xor tcp proxy to obfuscate the VPN traffic. The system we're using has a name, but I'm not going to say it to risk KGB (yes it's still called that there) creating IDS signatures and killing our VPN. I'm sure that after a few hours it will start dropping these connections as well, but if we can buy some time that's worth while.

This, really, is the real problem with the internet. In many small countries there's only one IX, often under government ownership or supervision. You might think that they know better than to do stuff like this, but push comes to shove they'll all lock it down as soon as there's a threat to their authority.

<comment><USER3> What are the odds this is some western commercially packaged product that lets them do all this? Like some Sandvine stuff or whatever.

<comment><USER4> The Chinese are also rather good at shutting down the internet as well. why not blame all possible parties?

<comment><USER5> "why not blame all possible parties?"

10 years ago I would have said 'it's probably Western companies helping them'.

Now, I would say probably it's Chinese. Frankly, because it's going to be so, so much cheaper, let alone it probably doesn't come with any potential political headaches, and, they are developing a 'core competency' in this.

That said, Putin has serious geopolitical interest in Belarus, and himself is supportive of the regime. Since the Russian state is also 'good at that stuff' it could very well be a state-sponsored initiative.

Finally, Belarus is not Venezuela, wherein they might have difficulty recruiting all the talent necessary to do this. Belarus has enough native talent to contemplate the task.

But it'd be interesting to know 'who' is helping them do this.

<comment><USER6> Frankly, I don't see why it matters who is selling or managing the equipment. It's a pointless debate that misses the forest for the trees. Only children thought refusing to produce and export this kind of expertise would stop it from from proliferating. The demand and the money aren't going to go away because anyone in particular took the high road. Refusing to participate just means someone else gets the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yesterday and day before editors of Telegram channel nexta_live [0] managed to report events in Minsk and other cities in Belarus. They are now seeng subscribers count boost from 300k to 1.1m in 2 days. The entire country connection was badly shaped but still alive. Telegram is famous for it's ability to work on a very thin bandwith, and also anti-blocking techniques.

Today all mobile data is switched off, but there are still small streams of information, I think using sat connections.

[0] [https://t.me/nexta_live](https://t.me/nexta_live)

<comment><USER8> To put this into context, population of Belarus is below 9.5m: [https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/belarus- popul...](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/belarus-population/)

<comment><USER7> I think lots of subscribers there are from Russia (myself included), Ukraine or other ex-USSR republics. But still.

BTW, it's 1.25m already. Gotta be 1.5m tomorrow. And those users are extremely engaged - view counts on post from just an hour before is north of 0.5m.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> caleb-allen I have coworkers in Belarus who have been cut off from our (US based) company since the weekend. I've been able to hear from one of them intermittently, but it's a scary thing, I can't imagine what they're going through.

<comment><USER9> FYI - we have been able to get regular SMS and voice calls through (using Google Fi as our carrier). It was great to go from "absolute zero communication" to "we know you're currently OK"

<comment><USER10> Surely if there are telephone communications then someone can modem out? Or are they scanning for non-human communication over telephony?

<comment><USER11> The number of people with the hardware and know how to send data over a telephone line is probably very small.

<comment><USER12> Slightly ironic since this was once the only way. Brb investing in a modem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's really simple and sad: he has been in power since 1995. God knows what he has done as an absolute dictator. Also, to stay in power, tens or hundreds of thousands of others have helped him and they have their own fiefdoms.

Losing that and risking jail, isn't going to happen because people want change. So people better be lucky, because if they lose this revolt, they will be crushed mercilessly. Not sure EU /USA has any say over him, after all staying in power is his goal.

</comment><comment><USER14> wondering what / if any impact "the space internet" (or like networks) will have on national government's ability to disrupt comms. or if it just shifts the goalposts to a different network operator

<comment><USER15> I don't see Starlink shutting down subscribers if the Belarussian government asks them to, at least not very quickly. If the terminals are available, this is going to make all of the national internet projects (Russia, China, Iran) much more difficult to pull off.

<comment><USER16> My guess is Starlink isn't going to turn off subscribers for small countries, but large countries like Russia and China may have more influence.

The real question is if there's going to be enough receivers to make a difference.

<comment><USER17> Any country which has the capability of shooting down satellites has more influence than countries which can't do it. But even a country with like 100 million residents, if it doesn't have a space program (or someone protecting it with a space program), it doesn't have much of a say.

<comment><USER15> Countries that have that capability can't shoot down 40000 of them.

<comment><USER18> A few hits would provide enough junk for runaway process

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

<comment><USER19> I don't think a country with space capability is seriously considering making orbit useless over censorship. That'd be like shooting yourself in the foot right after you've trained for a marathon, in order to ingratiate yourself with firearms manufacturers.

<comment><USER18> And private company would not consider such risk either. Like with nuclear weapon ability to shoot is enough. Funny how it works with

s/country/private company/

s/space/nuclear/, s/orbit/land/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I believe Briar can help the people if they believe in democracy. However, I don't know how best to share knowledge of the Briar project to people in Belarus.

[https://briarproject.org/](https://briarproject.org/)

<comment><USER21> Only available for android, so it's kind of useless.

<comment> m-p-3 If the authorities forces Apple to block the hypothetical Briar app on iOS from showing in that country then you're SOL, while you could sideload it without any problem on Android.

This walled garden has its risks when dealing with freedom.

An alternative would be Bridgefy, but that's a closed-source product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> #KeepItOn.

Internet shutdowns are disastrous economically and the countries that need to resort to them are just feeding fuel to the fire. There are countries that simply shutdown access to certain social media platforms (not that that's better) but shutting down the entire internet is the very definition of desperate to me.

</comment><comment><USER23> One feed here: [https://news.liga.net/world/chronicle/vybory-prezidenta- bela...](https://news.liga.net/world/chronicle/vybory-prezidenta-belarusi-vse- glavnye-novosti---live)

Those fascists are really getting more and more brutal against people. And population will soon start treating them as they treated fascists during WW2.

</comment><comment><USER24> Almost 10 years ago I was working on a freelance contract job over Skype with another contractor who lived in Belarus. One day he told me his country was undergoing revolution and he had to go join. Hope that guy is OK out there. News like this always makes me grateful for what I have.

Can these internet shutoff valves intercept dialup? Could be useful for at least text based communication.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've noticed this in other countries where there are accusations of rigging the results that the ratios always super high, in this case 80%.

If you're going to fake an election result that had some legitimate measurable opposition, why make it so extremely high? Does that mean nearly every vote counting place is rigged and it's so bad they don't even bother hiding it?

Just like when Crimea voted to join Russia it was 97% [1]. People use it as justification pretty widely but it's also hard to tell what's true in such an environment. It's nearly impossible to trust such a number, even if a majority potentially existed.

Note: I'm not suggesting it's at all accurate but it makes it all the more outrageous and suspicious. The protests are then predictable.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum)

<comment><USER26> >Just like when Crimea voted to join Russia it was 97% [1].

In Crimea's case the majority of the population being ethnically russian, the neglect from Ukraine, anger over the maidan, russia promising pension payments and infrastructure investment and the opposition boycotting the vote probably all contributed to this result.

As far as I know the main thrust of the argument against this vote from the EU and Ukraine was that having the vote was illegal and/or unconstitutional and thus null and void.

All Russia cared about was maintaining access to warm water ports.

<comment><USER27> Also, let's not forget, the Ukrainian government was just over thrown by a western-backed coup. Of course, you won't know that from the Wikipedia cliff notes, but that's what happened.

<comment><USER24> Exactly, reminds me of when Asst. Sec. of State Victoria Nuland went and handed out sandwiches to supporters of the coup in the Maidan! And we have the nerve to be upset when other countries meddle in our affairs? How would we feel if a high-level Russian diplomat went out on the streets in the DC protests and handed out food to members of antifa or the alt-right?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztt72mpTPXA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztt72mpTPXA)

<comment><USER25> I inherently don't like these sorts whataboutism used in your comment, it's a poor approach to questioning the morality/strategy of any country and but-the- US-did-x-minor-thing has long been used by dictators and the like to justify horrible things. Especially when it's not even top-down but a single phone call of some mid-tier diplomat.

That said, after reading Nuland's Wikipedia her brazenness is something I'd expect more from the old CIA than the modern state dept. It's rich hearing her protest against Russian interference in the sovereignty of another country while trying to play the cocky puppet-master role in the background over the future leadership of Ukraine.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland?oldformat=true...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland?oldformat=true#Leaked_private_phone_conversation)

But the main forgiving grace is that she was only assistant for Europe which isn't top tier and in other cases has demonstrated a maverick streak, not a person receptive to operating under authority or established norms. She's also super pro-intervention in general which is less popular these days.

Most importantly this is not anywhere near the level of intervention shown by Russia. Really, it's extremely insignificant by comparison.

Russia has long been grasping at straws to build the western intervention is just as bad conspiracy. If all Russia has is some heavy-handed backroom phone call by a minor diplomat then the US doesn't have much to worry about.

<comment><USER26> >Most importantly this is not anywhere near the level of intervention shown by Russia.

A country that borders it and has been repeatedly invaded via it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So hacker news, what's the tech solution to this? P2P mesh networks? Encrypted DNS?

How do we build a network today in peaceful countries that is resilient to state actors?

<comment><USER29> Spread information via Bluetooth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think it's going to be the same during the next elections in Russia. It's really sad to see the declaration of the main opponent (Tikhanovskaya) (1)

Protesters are in jail (more than 2000 people), a guy has been killed by a truck, etc.

1: [https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1293127604330016769](https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1293127604330016769)

<comment><USER31> The first video in the twitter thread you link to was _extorted_ from the winning opposition candidate by senior Belarusian officials in the office of the Central Electoral Commission.

The declaration she made after arriving in Lithuania is here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DzisJ388Xs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DzisJ388Xs)

In it, she roughly says "I thought I've been hardened by this campaign and that I will handle it. But I am still the weak woman that I was initially. I made a difficult decision. God save you from the kind of choice I had to make. Take care of yourself. Kids are the most important thing that you have in life."

And indeed, the internet is __completely __down in Belarus. Phone network still works.

<comment><USER32> Ah, so they threatened her kids. Sickening.

<comment><USER31> At some point in the past, she said that her kids were safe abroad, but it does not take a big country to successfully track and extort people anywhere in the world.

<comment><USER33> I believe her husband, who she has been running in the stead of after he was (unjustly) disqualified, is currently imprisoned in Belarus. That is probably one of her concerns.

<comment><USER31> This is true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is incredibly sad. I spent a few weeks in Belarus last summer (2019) and everyone seemed incredibly hopeful and positive. It's a beautiful country and Minsk is a gorgeous city.

I've been able to contact a few of my friends there sporadically over the past few days, but have heard nothing from them for 24 hours. Initially it seemed like a block on communication apps like WhatsApp and they could get around it with a VPN but now it seems that it's turned into a full internet shutdown.

<comment><USER35> I was there in '17 - and nobody, _nobody_ I met had a good word to say about the government. The main theme was "it's going to change, soon" - which makes the credibility of this result all the less probable.

Sure, it's apocryphal, but after a month there travelling all over, the only person I met who thought lukashenko was good for the country was a multimillionaire from "business".

<comment><USER34> Yeah I got the impression that people really believed things would change next election when I was there. And similar experience regarding general opinion of the government. Though I always take that with a grain of salt because the people I talk to are generally not a good random sampling of the population, definitely selection bias at work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can we call this the "Kashmir playbook"? Or is there a better earlier example of a temporary-induced communications blackout vs what e.g. the PRC does.

<comment><USER37> yes. This is more like the kashmir playbook. stopping internet to prevent people from communicating, to prevent an uprising where external agencies can provide information, assistance, attacks and such. This same thing is happening in kashmir the moment i write this so its hardly surprising more countries havent done it yet because it is a kill switch and governments are willing to push it if it threatens them

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I presume the ISPs had shut it down on the Govt. orders. But how does VSAT providers act in such situations? e.g. if Starlink had subscribers there, would it need to comply with Govt. orders or would Govt.(except U.S.) have no control over it and has to physically cease the devices(and ban it from selling it further).

Anyways, VSAT + WiFi nodes for non-cellular mobile Internet[1] seems to be a good case for protecting the freedom of Internet.

[1][https://needgap.com/problems/51-non-cellular-network- mobile-...](https://needgap.com/problems/51-non-cellular-network-mobile- internet-telecom-internet)

</comment><comment><USER39> A case where I feel amateur (ham) radio would be a potential lifeline to the outside world.

<comment><USER40> By international treaty, hams cannot discuss politics (like chaos following dubious elections) over the air. In fact, in many countries it is the custom for hams to avoid any topics that might be seen as "serious", instead they limit their remarks to general technical matters or the weather.

<comment><USER41> I'm not really sure where you've gotten that from. Can you post an actual citation?

Here in the US, communications just need to be "of a personal nature." Part 97 prohibits (with some exceptions) commercial communications, encrypted communications, music, and things which are otherwise illegal. It's also not the licensing test.

It's not unusual for the US to ignore a treaty, of course, but I can't find anything about this online either.

I've always heard "don't discuss politics" as a sort of unspoken agreement.

(KG7TUJ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> US foreign policy on telecoms, freedom of speech, ect is full on clown car right now.

Special interests are so cram packed we cant even see the windshield of the car we're driving.

Im starting to agree that US should or potentially could have a larger share on the legwork for telecoms, fiber, and community servicing. I'm not sure how long starlink ect will be competitive with the bandwith, total information speeds in the future.

</comment><comment><USER43> We have an office there and people were able to use normal internet services on Monday (albeit over VPN in some cases). Some people did have home network service interrupted.

I haven't heard of any escalations today, but obviously my sample size is limited (70 people in Minsk).

</comment><comment><USER44> "Controversial Election"? Now that's an understatement if I've ever seen one...

I don't think elections in Belarus have _ever_ been seen to be free and fair.

<comment><USER45> So-called "elections" after 5th-6th term are a bad joke. Face it, ex-Soviet republics Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan never seazed to be totalitarian regimes with pathetic tries to convince the world they adopted some democracy.

<comment><USER46> I don't think it's impossible for elected officials to be liked for 5 or 6 terms. In Germany Merkel is so well liked that most people (>70% according to polls) are actually sad that she doesn't want to run for a 5th term.

<comment><USER47> I think it's worth pointing out that a German chancellor has very limited power when compared to the Belorussian president.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> About 20 years ago there was this optimism that Internet is this new unstoppable thing that will liberate the world to have free communication and knowledge sharing. Unfortunate that turned out to be such a false idea. Probably the infrastructure of it all simply wouldn't allow it...maybe that's what needs to change.

<comment><USER49> Peer to peer internet is what is missing I suppose.

<comment><USER50> The Internet is peer to peer by design, even if the most popular user-facing applications do not take full advantage of peer to peer architecture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I wonder how satellite links and p2p devices could circumvent state-controlled ISPs. For instance I saw some interesting work on how to make HAM radio into packet radio. On the other hand, there was a dark time in Norway when you could be sentenced to death for owning the wrong type of radio.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is a full blown dictatorship imprisoning innocent people, beating up protesters, blackmailing opposition candidate to escape the country by imprisoning her husband.

There are already dead protesters.

Calling these elections "controversial" is like calling WW2 "a disagreement".

<comment><USER53> The husband was the original candidate, who was arrested and his wife ran in his place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I had already commented this 7 months ago when Russia did the same thing.

"In the interest of the people everywhere in the world, there should always be dial-up access points available, in different countries.

The "national interest", for whichever country, should always be the people's interest; and restricted information has never been of any benefit except for those restricting it"

Someone had raised the point that with the current technology, modems might not work internationally anymore.

Is that the case? Can such a system still be put in place?

<comment><USER55> Of course ISPs can stop modems from working. But nothing to stop a directed, tracking satellite system like Starlink (except somewhat triangulate senders).

<comment><USER54> The problem with relying on a single private company like SpaceX is that it still is a single point of failure.

Who's to say that Musk, or whoever will own Starlink next, won't side with an authoritarian regime, and do the same?

<comment><USER56> That is not even an if. He like most humans would do anything to secure his profits. He has been mum on anything related to HK but wouldn't hesitate to drop statements like this.[1]

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-china- ro...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-china-rocks-us- full-of-entitlement.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Good example of why decentralized power is important

</comment><comment><USER58> This is why I'm excited about Starlink.

<comment><USER59> Starlink is not the solution. A private entity then decides who gets what and the US government will also meddle in what is allowed.

Do you think Starlink would be allowed to route TikTok traffic if it got banned?

<comment><USER58> I think people in China would be able to use Starlink without the great firewall being in the way. Just having access not be routed through ground based, hardwired facilities will go a long way toward preventing this type of thing.

There's no reason to ban TikTok or other apps if people in China have unrestricted access to US companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> this is nothing. shameless plug. I am a kashmiri typing this from 2G internet which apprently is the only acceptable thing for the indian government to allow me. 4G access has been stopped since 5 AUGUST 2019. a freaking year has passed and no high speed internet. I didnt have 2G for like 7 months. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revocation_of_the_special_stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revocation_of_the_special_status_of_Jammu_and_Kashmir) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Kashmir#Censorsh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Kashmir#Censorship_on_internet) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Jammu_and_Ka...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Jammu_and_Kashmir_lockdown) belarus can stop internet for all they want, as long as they want. they have the legal precedent to do so aka india via kashmir

<comment><USER60> I'm typing this from Jammu. Since 370 abrogation last year, number of terror incidents in J&K is down by 40%. Every story has two sides. While I hope the govt brings back full 4G connectivity soon, I am grateful to them for taking the terror situation seriously.

<comment><USER61> Do you have any evidence limited speeds are the reason for a reduction in terrorist incidents?

Unless you have some hard evidence that's a weak-sauce claim. Correlation _at best_.

<comment><USER37> children havent gone to school since 5 august 2019 in kashmir. while the world is enjoying the benefits of zoom and stuff, everyone is stuck with 2G. that means no zoom parties, no conference calls, recorded classes are sent via voice notes on whatsapp groups for each class and children write simple exams on paper and photo a picture. things are THAT DEPLORABLE and the narrative "stopping terrorism" is given as an excuse to prevent 8 million people from internet? what gives?

<comment><USER60> My friend, although I feel the same as you about the 2G connectivity issue, I should remind you that just 3 years before 370 abrogation, schools in Kashmir were shut for 8 Months [1] after the killing of Terrorist by security forces. This is the J&K I have grown up in. "Stopping terrorism" sounds like just another narrative, but not to those who have lived with its consequences.

[1] [https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/kashmir-schools- reopen...](https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/kashmir-schools-reopen- burhan-wani-encounter-winter-vacations-963272-2017-03-01)

<comment><USER37> what is your point? that its okay to actively prevent schoolchildren from studying? how does it matter schools were shut for 8 months 3 years ago. the point is, with the current pandemic, schoolchildren are stuck at home anyways and denying them high speed internet is denying them access to education. plain and simple. you argue because its been done before so everyone is used to it and thats somehow okay? its not

<comment><USER56> Although a very unfair comparison, and I don't agree with it. But I think his point was three years back people were more than willing to protest for an "armed millitant"[1] and a lot of that was organized through social media.

But this doesn't mean it is right, internet is a fundamental right at this point. You can't just deprive people from it with a blanket ban.

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

<comment><USER37> your words, "people were more than willing to protest for an "armed millitant" "

where do you say terrorism in that sentence? did hongkong stop internet when there were protests? or BLM which were protests organised on social media, telegram, whatsapp, facebook? or do rules apply differently when protests are against injustices in usa and kashmir?

<comment><USER56> As I said, I support restoring internet access but giving the HK example wrt Kashmir is more like a strawman argument. HK situation is nowhere what Kashmir's is. HKers are fighting for democratically elected government. Look at what the guy in question was fighting for, here is a statement from his Wikipedia page. [1]

> He oft-elaborated about the idea of India being entirely incompatible with > Islam thus mandating a destruction at any cost, and aimed of unfurling the > flag of Islam on Delhi's Red Fort.

This is the exact sort of sentiment that have been used by the current Indian government and many others around the world to stoke fear and champion for their ideology.

I honestly think you do disservice to your genuine concerns when you defend people like him and this makes it easy for your real concerns to be muddled with such bigotry. Same with the protests. This will not help your cause and I honestly believe whether it is Xinjiang or Kashmir, armed separatism is not the answer and is never going to succeed. Both the countries do really need to find a better way to deal with it though.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burhan_Wani#Biography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burhan_Wani#Biography)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I just posted a link[0] with some of Friedman's response to what's going on. TLDR: aside from Belarus' geopolitical importance and predicament, it sounds like what's going on is largely a matter of speculation, though the events of the last decade read in light of geopolitical realities seem to suggest Russian involvement.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24121275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24121275)

<comment><USER63> It looks plausible that Russia is trying to follow the US playbook in Ukraine, i.e. a controllable quasi-chaotic removal of a person in power that goes against their interests and outlived his usefulness (this time enlarging Russia), while getting a popular support for it and making sure the other party (US) can't do the same. I don't think Russia can afford losing another buffer separating it from EU, so anything is possible.

<comment><USER64> You say the US re Ukraine. It's actually Western European powers, which have dramatically more influence over the situation in Ukraine - they always have, and they always will - than the US does.

It's hilarious that people think the US controls every aspect of planet Earth, such that it can just point its finger at things and make them the way it wants them to be. The bipolar response to US capabilities is the amusing part, the US is either a god toppling governments at will or entirely incompetent, depending on whatever narrative the anti-US contingent needs to push.

<comment><USER63> I still remember the leaked Nuland's call saying "F __* the EU " implying that US was the main change agent and the other caller expressing views that EU was too weak to do anything and they had to act. It looks like Russia has learned from that, manufactured consent to get rid of Lukashenko utilizing his weaknesses and expected actions (i.e. unable to resist corrupting the elections, suppressing protests by force) and had trained people in the background ready to take over. I guess Russia decided to preempt any potential US/EU action by simply replaying the same scenario they saw in Ukraine, Georgia etc. with the ability to steer its outcome at a time that is favorable to them (COVID-19, economy down).

<comment><USER65> Russian state-controlled TV channels are portraying protesters in a very negative light.

<comment><USER63> I might have overestimated how smart they were or they managed to strike an agreement with Lukashenko after a live demo of a color revolution.

<comment><USER65> Or maybe they just don't do that kind of thing. Color revolution are American specialty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> wow that headline/article really hedges like there are somehow other possibilities and they are supposed to be inclusive? I mean he's an authoritarian in power since 1991, it's a tyrants lifelong dream

I wonder how the USA's 2020 is going to be written by outsiders hedging how it all could have been somehow legitimate.

</comment><comment><USER27> Shutting down the internet is more or less as the major online platforms colluding to shutdown one side of the political spectrum.

Sometimes it's the government, sometimes it's people that aspire to be in the government and aren't yet. It's all about control.

</comment><comment><USER67> Context: Russian Mercs in Belarus: [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/belarus-arrests- dozen...](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/belarus-arrests-dozens- russian-mercenaries-state-media-200729143155990.html)

<comment><USER68> There's no context in the above link.

<comment><USER67> It's background to the situation. Direct background.</comment></comment></comment>


Remember this stuff is supposed to be fun - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/remember-this-stuff-is-supposed-to-be-fun.html

<comment><USER2> I think this will resonate with a lot of developers. We all start out tinkering with computers on our own and the idea of getting paid to do it sounds like a dream. Then you realize the reality, that it is far far from it.

You have to strike it out on your own and build the dream workplace for yourself. It's not easy but you can take pride in accomplishing it.</comment>