Better Off Deadbeat: Getting Bill Collectors Off His Back. He Sues Them. - <AUTHOR> http://www.dallasobserver.com/2010-01-21/news/better-off-deadbeat-craig-cunningham-has-a-simple-solution-for-getting-bill-collectors-off-his-back-he-sues-them/

<comment><USER2> This fellow's quest for "justice" against debt collection agencies has brought him to a point where he is suing the latest agency "and twenty-seven (27) of its employees in their individual capacities" for $200K.

I have dealt professionally in one way or another (mostly incidentally) with debt collection agencies, and they truly are revolting in the tactics they routinely use to pressure debtors for collection. Indeed, the _whole industry_ is set up to win through psychological intimidation and to avoid the court process. That is the only way this industry makes economic sense. Need to collect an $80 bill? It is impossible to do this realistically through a convoluted court system with its costs and delays. If you have thousands of such bills, however, and hire extremely cheap labor to harass the debtors to the point where such debtors see it as easier to pay than to put up with the continual harassment, and, viola, an industry is born that lets vendors sell their otherwise uncollectable receivables wholesale for a fraction on the dollar rather than simply writing them off while giving the participants in that industry a (sordid) method of realizing value from the receivables so purchased. It was always something of a devil's bargain but it worked in practice so long as the harassment techniques could be used without penalty.

For a couple of decades, at least, various laws have existed to enable consumers to defend themselves against sleazy collection techniques. As long as the mass of consumers were ignorant of such laws, however, and had to hire attorneys to pursue claims based on violations of such laws, there was still no effective recourse for consumers - it simply was too expensive and complicated to try to fight back with lawyers for any given violation.

It now seems that the web has supplied the final piece to enable those who are sufficiently motivated, such as Mr. Cunnigham, to both educate themselves and to have the wherewithal to file _pro se_ lawsuits seeking recourse. Ironically, this has exposed the soft underbelly of this particular industry, to wit, if you hire exceedingly cheap workers and pay them to harass debtors into paying, you are dealing with a class of employees who are perhaps the least trainable you could imagine for avoiding the traps that the law now imposes upon those who overstep its highly technical bounds. Thus, for debtors who are sufficiently motivated, it is a bit like shooting ducks in a gallery: little downside, and little upside for that matter (at least for anyone who wants to have a life), but a fairly high percentage of hits.

That said, Mr. Cunningham seems to be about as unscrupulous as the industry he is challenging. At best, he seems to be a vexatious litigant (what else does it mean to sue 27 undoubtedly minimum-wage employees of the agencies in their individual capacities for technical violations of laws just because he has a gripe with their employer and, not only sue, but also bombard them with endless oppressive discovery requests?); at worst, he appears to be someone who has no scruples whatever about stiffing anyone and everyone who has had the misfortune ever to deal with him. It reminds me of a matter years ago where a franchisor had cheated so many innocent franchisees through fraud and misrepresentation that the franchisor bolted up its headquarters and armed it with second-floor security cameras trained at the front entrance as a full- time means of dodging process servers. That particular scammer had it all rationalized and in the end got slammed - a fate which may ultimately await Mr. Cunningham as well as he becomes increasingly reckless and sordid in his conduct.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have really mixed feelings about this article.

I really feel like this guy, Craig, who is suing the debt collectors is a hacker for finding the information about possible violations and pursing it legally.

I am also all for punishing debt collectors for actions that abuse debtors.

However, there are several things that rub me the wrong way.

1) The fact that it is easier (less expensive) for a company to settle a case for $1K, rather than fight and win a case while costing themselves $10k gives the companies no incentive to fight back. Also, The plaintiff is already in debt and is having trouble paying, so what would a company get out of counter suing?

2) Statements like - "Katz doesn't believe that people are morally obligated to pay back their debts." and "People are brainwashed to think that paying a credit card is more important than paying for the necessities of life." - Maybe if people spent more time worrying about the necessities of life and less about luxury they wouldn't be in debt in the first place.

<comment><USER4> _Statements like - "Katz doesn't believe that people are morally obligated to pay back their debts."_

I'm not sure I disagree -- "Usuary" used to be thoroughly illegal/immoral/etc didn't it?

 _... and "People are brainwashed to think that paying a credit card is more important than paying for the necessities of life." - Maybe if people spent more time worrying about the necessities of life and less about luxury they wouldn't be in debt in the first place._

I definitely believe credit cards are less important than basic necessities.

<comment><USER5> Usury was forbidden by the Bible, if memory serves. Still, that doesn't make accepting the loan moral and offering the loan immoral. Presumably both sides are breaking the old Biblical prohibition.

<comment><USER6> The bible prohibits any interest, not just excessive interest. A loan is supposed to be charity, not a money making opportunity.

If someone needs money to open a business or the like, then the lender is supposed to partner/go into business with him, not just lend at interest.

You can get around the prohibition by structuring the partnership into something that acts like interest, but the intent of that is for business, it's not intended to replace charity loans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Given that collectors have called me repeatedly looking for someone else and refused to listen when I told them it was a wrong number, I have no trouble believing they are violating laws in dealing with people that actually have debts. If suing them will get them to change, I'm all for it.

<comment><USER8> I've had that problem alot with my last phone number. And now it started happening with my new number. I dunno what to do other than change the damn number. It's stupid, and I had a guy call twice just to make sure. And I have to keep this phone on for emergency calls (I'm a sysadmin). I put this number on the no-call list which didn't do anything. They can probably get away with by saying they had no clue the number was reassigned and that they already had dealing with the person. This is a loophole of the no call list.

<comment><USER9> Use Google VOice or a similar service and only calls you allow will get through. ALl others could go to a voicemail that's the sound of a disconnected phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who is financially conservative, I frown upon people intent to avoid debt they willingly incurred.

On the other hand: "Usually it's settled because the agency says, Uh, we didn't intend to do that. Our collector said the wrong thing and we fess up and say, 'I didn't mean to do it but I did it..."

Really? That's the collection agency's defense? I didn't mean to do it?

If it's your business to get debtors to pay their debts, you deserve to get busted when the debtor knows the law better than you. It's your _business_ for Pete's sake.

Add to that the complaints about all the technicalities and about individuals filing lawsuits without the need for a lawyer, and it's pretty clear that collections agencies thrive on and exploit the ignorance of debtors, which is ashame.

<comment><USER8> Their defense seems to me like a lie. By the sheer amount of occurrence of these lawsuit, you'd think they would make sure their employees don't break the law. Except they probably don't think their business could work without breaking the law. This business is as scrupulous as the mafia. They have no way of making money without breaking the law. How many people would pay if you told them all we can do is wreck you credit that is already wrecked.

On the other hand, they do bring in a balance that allows us all to have cheap unsecured debt. So.. these evil guys are necessary for the system to exist the way it is today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can see both sides of this story, and I'm quite sure collection agencies break the rules, and they deserve to get called on it.

But... "I don't have to do anything but stay black and die." That sort of behavior is where I draw the line. You made the bad calls, you got into debt, pay your damn debts. And sue the collectors too if you like, but that they are doing wrong things doesn't obviate your responsibilities.

<comment><USER12> At the scale of a small-time investor, you must pay your damn debts. But do you feel that holds true going up the food chain? GM will never have to repay all of it's debts that were coerced out of the american public against our will. The bankers at the large banks who coerced almost ONE TRILLION DOLLARS worth of debts are getting their fattest bonuses ever, and will likely not fully repay those debts.

But the little guy has a moral obligation? Yeah, his only mistake was only borrowing $100k. If he had been a slick stanford or harvard MBA he would have borrowed $250million, and gotten a congressional pat on the back when he defaulted.

<comment><USER11> I'm...not sure where you're going here other than possibly using my comment as a springboard for your soapbox, but since you asked; I never implied in any way I feel that just the little guy has a moral obligation. I think GM and your "slick Stanford or Harvard MBA" toting strawman should have to pay their debts too. <shrug> Now if doing that would cause even greater grief, say to the hundreds (of thousands?) of employees who'd lose their jobs? It's a tough call, and one I'm glad I'm not making.

The correct response to elected officials not doing what you want is to vote someone in who will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article is about a FatWallet member named codename47. If you want to read a more complete discussion about the article you can at <http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/984518/>

</comment><comment><USER14> What a great hack. Nobody should feel any unease at using perfectly legal methods to fight back against a system that is designed to screw people over. Who exactly deserves our sympathy in this article? Verizon? Time Warner? Bank of America? They would steal candy from a baby and charge the parents a service fee.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have mixed feelings about this guy, but it's telling that a lot of the objections are to this guy _acting_ like a lawyer. I mean, how dare he! What does it mean when they object more, as if morally, to the people who are filing pro se---and winning anyway? Hmm.

</comment><comment><USER16> The fact is, credit needs to be tightened up. People like Cunningham get in over their heads. That's on them. The onus of extending risk to such borrowers is on the lenders. These lawsuits are just going to be another factor in calculating risk, which will ultimately, one would hope, tighten up credit.

Rampant, aggressive debt collection is just the flipside of loose credit and lending.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm fine with legit collections calls as long as a human collector has to waste equal or more time trying to reach me.

This recent invention of automated collections calls seems to shift an enormous amount of abusive power to the collector. Now I can receive random calls at almost any hour of the day, nearly every two or three days, only to have a recording spew a number I need to call back to talk to a collector.

The worst part is, I'm not the one they are looking for, it's whoever (had my phone number previously | gave my phone number as a fake).

I wonder if Craig from this article will take my case for a referral fee :P

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, this guy epitomizes the concept of defeating your enemy by becoming them. He's just as nasty as the collection agencies. The fact that he's attacking them, instead of a defaulter is a mere technicality.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Investors like Cunningham fell the fastest.

One man's investor is another man's parasite.</comment>


If only "Friendster's testimonial" evolve on its own, it would be testee.me - <AUTHOR> http://testee.me/

<comment><AUTHOR> Pardon the title if it looks deceiving, that actually sums up what the app does.</comment>


145$ million funds frozen after death of cryptocurrency exchange admin - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/145-million-funds-frozen-after-death-of-cryptocurrency-exchange-admin/ <comment><USER2> It boggles my mind that an exchange's entire value could be dependent on the life of its CEO. How could he not have made arrangements to have the cold wallet keys accessible by a trusted partner in the event of his death? This seems criminally negligent.

</comment><comment><USER3> Still not so good user experience in the crypto world</comment>


'We're Really Screwed Now': NSA's Best Friend Just Shivved The Spies - <AUTHOR> http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/10/28/were_really_screwed_now_nsas_best_friend_just_shivved_the_spies

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the National Security Agency's biggest defenders in Congress is suddenly at odds with the agency and calling for a top-to-bottom review of U.S. spy programs. And her long-time friends and allies are completely mystified by the switch.

"We're really screwed now," one NSA official told The Cable. "You know things are bad when the few friends you've got disappear without a trace in the dead of night and leave no forwarding address."

In a pointed statement issued today, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein said she was "totally opposed" to gathering intelligence on foreign leaders and said it was "a big problem" if President Obama didn't know the NSA was monitoring the phone calls of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She said the United States should only be spying on foreign leaders with hostile countries, or in an emergency, and even then the president should personally approve the surveillance.</comment>


The digressive, prescient brilliance of DH Lawrence's essays - <AUTHOR> https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2019/01/our-perpetual-contemporary-digressive-prescient-brilliance-dh-lawrence-s <comment><USER2> Basically all I know of him is a short poem of his called "Self-Pity":

 _I never saw a wild thing

sorry for itself.

A small bird will drop frozen dead

from a bough

without ever having felt sorry for

itself._

<comment><USER3> Sometimes in life you need to feel sorry for yourself and allow yourself to acknowledge that your circumstances are bad, especially if you don't have a support network around you to offer that external acknowledgement or validation.

Just like you have to forgive yourself for mistakes and challenge yourself to do better or motivate yourself to achieve goals. A human mind needs all these types of things, and when you can't get them elsewhere you have to get them internally, as a basic measure of self-care. This applies to self pity just like anything else.

Widespread criticism or derision of feeling sorry for one's self is like victim-blaming, societal defense mechanisms built up in more primitive times, denying psychological realities of human consciousness in favor of tough man caricatures derived from a type of Puritan ethic hangover.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Advice that you "can't feel sorry for yourself" feels a lot like much of the other broad, emotional advice out there: aimed at an assumption that most people are trending too far in one direction, and the greatest good is in correcting that direction.</comment></comment></comment>


Canada Passes Their Own DMCA - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080613.COPYRIGHT13/TPStory/Front <comment><USER2> The title here ("Canada Passes Their Own DMCA") is completely wrong. The Canadian government has _introduced_ legislation into parliament -- legislation which may be completely rewritten in committee, which may not get voted on before the end of the legislative session, or which may simply get voted down (this isn't a confidence bill, so the opposition parties don't need to worry about accidentally provoking an election).

Canada has not passed its own DMCA, and I think it's highly unlikely that it will.</comment>


Incremental Regular Expressions (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://jkff.info/articles/ire/ <comment><USER2> Similarly, I wish Regex engines had built in "partial match" support — i.e. is there some suffix that can be added to this string that results in a match?

I wrote something like this in Haskell for doing path traversal (descend into directory, or skip?). But it seems like a straightforward API addition to expose valid/non-valid states.

<comment><USER3> The regex engine used by musl libc, TRE ([https://github.com/laurikari/tre](https://github.com/laurikari/tre)), supports approximate matching. musl doesn't seem to expose that capability, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On a tangentially related note, more and more I find myself wishing regex syntax wasn't such a hodgepodge of literal/non-literal characters. It always seems to end up in a mess of what is and isn't escaped and knowing what needs to be in which context. And I keep thinking we really only need one special character, namely '\', to prefix all non-literals. So \\\ produces '\', \\. is dot match, \\* is star match, etc. So instead of: .foo* we have \\.foo\\*, which admittedly is going to end up more verbose in most situations, but still strikes me as clearer as to what's intended.

<comment><USER5> The Oil shell fixes that, and it compiles back to the old syntax so it seamlessly works with 'grep', etc.

[http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/eggex.html](http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/eggex.html)

Point 2: _Their syntax is vastly simpler because literal characters are quoted, and operators are not. For example, ^ no longer means three totally different things. See the critique at the end of this doc._

(In other words, it's similar to lex or re2c syntax)

\----

Another example:

[http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2019/12/22.html](http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2019/12/22.html)

The Eggex syntax is independent of Oil, so you can implement as a library in another language. I'm interested in help too:

[https://github.com/oilshell/oil/issues?q=eggex+label%3Aeggex](https://github.com/oilshell/oil/issues?q=eggex+label%3Aeggex)

One easy contribution is to to translate it back to PCRE syntax, because that's a very common syntax that people care about. Right now it translates to ERE, which works with egrep, awk, and GNU sed --regexp-extended.

It should be a trivial change to print the eggex AST in a hundred lines of code or so (really the hard part is testing).

<comment><USER6> Interesting idea. What are the benefits of defining a fancy new regex-like DSL instead of just using context-free grammars specified in EBNF?

<comment><USER5> Eggex gives you a more EBNF-like syntax for regexes. CFGs are basically regular languages with recursion, so there's no reason for them to have a wildly different Perl-like syntax. That's basically a historical accident.

If you've written CFGs, then eggex will be very familiar. See the example: [http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2019/12/22.html](http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2019/12/22.html)

\-----

Also, regular languages are straightforward and tractable, and you should use them where possible (aside from bad syntax, which Eggex is fixing).

In contrast, CFGs are useful, but if you start using them a lot, you will see they're not really "one thing" as far as programming/engineering is concerned. They sort of explode into a fractal of complexity -- there are many different subsets of CFGs, some of which can be parsed efficiently with particular algorithms.

And some people reject CFG in favor of PEG, etc.

[https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Parsing-Models- Cheatshe...](https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Parsing-Models-Cheatsheet)

\----

That is, the recursive grammar issue is not "settled". Whereas regular expressions have well known algorithms and are "settled" (except for syntax).

[https://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/](https://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/)

So basically regexes have bad syntax but relatively good semantics (libc BRE/ERE doesn't have the Perl backtracking issue). CFGs don't have a consistently bad syntax, but the semantics are much more complex when you're talking recognizing vs. generating. And of course in programming (rather than math), we want to recognize, not generate.

Related:

[https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Why-Lexing-and- Parsing-...](https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Why-Lexing-and-Parsing- Should-Be-Separate) (Do the easy thing with the fast algorithm, and the hard thing with the slow algorithm. Don't do the easy thing with the slow algorithm.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4964496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4964496)</comment>


Pegleg: a Meteor app that crowd-sources full-length movies from YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://pegleg.it/

<comment><USER2> This website is considered aiding and abetting copyright infringement which is a serious crime. They will DMCA your hosting to take you down, and then sue you regardless of the fact that you live in canada...should've made this site anonymously with a prepaid credit card at a coffee shop...not very smart bro. I suggest hosting in norway since they don't bother with DMCA. In addition you don't have a DMCA agent which means you are not protected under DMCA. It is very easy to register a DMCA agent but most people that do something illegal knowingly such as yourself have a lawyer register for them. If i were you, i would probably shut down this site since it's not worth the trouble it will cause you and your friends. Relaunch it anonymously with another domain...it's your best protection.

Also remember that when you buy a new domain, make up your contact information and never ever use your real info even for a second because there are many whois data providers that scrape and save whois info changes. You can buy historical whois data for $10 bucks.

Another tip is never respond to DMCA emails from your hosting provider if they forward you one and won't turn your site back up until your reply. They will ask you state your name and declare under perjury that you will remove the infringing content from your website. In most cases, they will share this information with the person that filed the DMCA request and that will blow your cover. When something like that happens, just move your hosting. Never buy hosting for more than 3 months at a time.

Take it from someone who has been in the porn business for a long time.

Relevant link <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_liability> <http://www.chillingeffects.org/linking/faq.cgi>

</comment><comment><USER3> You and I see a single site where you can go and find movies people have uploaded to YouTube. The MPAA sees a single site where they can go and make their DMCA requests to YouTube. I question how long this will be useful.

<comment><USER4> I'm the creator of Pegleg and there have been enough people who've had that concern that I wrote a post addressing it a few days ago, actually:

[http://latest.pegleg.it/post/46983349526/pegleg-and- copyrigh...](http://latest.pegleg.it/post/46983349526/pegleg-and-copyright)

Also, it's up to individual rightsholders to submit DMCA requests not the MPAA (as far as my experience goes). If you look into how fragmented rights ownership is in the film industry, you'll soon realise how unlikely it is that the site dies because of DMCA requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is one movie/tv site I have come across where the time between finding a movie you like and watching said movie is short enough that I don't get frustrated.

</comment><comment><USER6> there's always: <http://www.reddit.com/r/fullmoviesonyoutube/>

</comment><comment><USER7> I can't seem to get anything to load when I visit the site.

<comment><USER8> Same here. Chrome on a Nexus 7.

<comment><USER9> and here we all thought meteor was web-scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very specific, but surprisingly useful. Thanks for sharing!</comment>


Video surveillance recorders RIDDLED with 0-days - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/07/nuuo_netgear_surveillance_recorders_riddled_with_0days/ <comment><USER2> At what point is code so bad that it no longer has zero days and security failures are within the realm of intended/expected behavior?

Pretty much every networked camera software that's been tested turns out to be crap with little if any thought put into security and at this point nobody is surprised, in fact it's pretty much expected.

<comment><USER3> Particularly lousy work considering their product is specifically used for security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did the headline have to have `RIDDLED` capitalized? Feels sensationalist.

<comment><USER5> It's the register. So yes, it was capitalized, of course :)

<comment><USER6> With the sale of most of Yahoo!, I'm going to miss the Register's "Yahoo! Exclamation! Headlines!" style...};-)</comment></comment></comment>


Solar or Coal? The Energy India Picks May Decide Earth's Fate - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/11/climate-change-in-india/ <comment><USER2> [http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060026477](http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060026477)

"Greenpeace installed a solar microgrid system in Dharnai, but villagers soon learned that it couldn't handle the load for basic household chores like cooking and ironing."

</comment><comment><USER2> I hope they choose the technology that will lift millions of people out of crushing poverty by providing cheap, reliable energy for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER3> some areas in many places have high cloud levels for all or part of the year. Thus they are less suitable for solar. That said, large areas of India and many coutries are suitable for solar, build it, maintain it and get 50 years out of it</comment>


Mexico and the Failed State Revisited - <AUTHOR> http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2010/04/06/mexico_and_the_failed_state_revisited_98903.html

<comment><USER2> I welcome a dialog about Mexico; however, I'll be the first to admit that, as a topic, it's a stretch for HN. Relevant it is, though, so here goes.

The author lost me quickly though by simply echoing the new, trendy "root cause" of Mexico's problems. No, it's not America's drug appetite. A little too convenient, and recent, to be a root cause.

The questions should be: why has Mexico _always_ been a failed state? They've never been able to erect a functional and thriving economy. With all their natural resources, why have they been so mismanaged and squandered? Why have their citizens, for decades now, sought the U.S. for livelihood and opportunity? Show me the list of technological, medical, agricultural -- any invention or advancement that has come from Mexico. Anyone? Tell me then, why is this list so empty?

If anyone thinks that Mexico's problems are recent, and/or caused solely via the drug trade -- they have not been observing and analyzing. Go back 40 years...no drug problem to point to then, yet these same facts held true then, just like they do now.

I don't know the answers to the above questions. They have bothered me for years, for I don't believe there is anything inherently wrong with the Mexican people. They've been led poorly, and governed poorly, for sure. It's just painfully clear that their problems are not as recent as the Drug Years of the past 2-3 decades.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't feel like it's a stretch for HN because it actually discusses in detail what's going on in Mexico. Previously all I could understand from various major media sources was that there was a lot of drug-related violence in Mexico and that the gov't was having trouble keeping it under control.

Similar articles about geopolitical events are occasionally successful on HN - for example, the Atlantic's 6 or 7 page long article on health care, and also the article PG submitted on how JP Morgan provided one of the first major financial bailouts in the US. The issue, I believe, is not subject matter but quality of content.</comment></comment>


Show HN: JackDB Cloud - Database development in the cloud. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jackdb.com/post/44578267321/introducing-jackdb-cloud

<comment><USER2> It's not clear what kind of visualizations you support. You should add a few screenshots.

It looks like <http://chartio.com/>

You seem to do the exact same thing but you worded it differently.

<comment><AUTHOR> For version one, JackDB Cloud is more focused on database development, not visualizations or business intelligence. Future releases will have more visualization and reporting features (we're testing out some cool stuff with D3 right now).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi founder here - Let me know if anyone has questions about JackDB Cloud.

Clickable: <http://www.jackdb.com/>

<comment><USER3> Been reading around your site but I'm sorry that I don't quite get it, is it functionally similar to phpmyadmin? Or is it something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's more of a development environment similar to pgAdmin or Sequel Pro but for multiple types of data sources.</comment></comment></comment>


Review of Square Cash: The Money Is in the Email - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303376904579137512381777756

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a cool idea, but he needs to stop referring to it as "sending cash"

<comment><USER3> Why is that? That seems like a reasonable phrase to describe what the service offers.

<comment><USER4> Sounds more like some sort of ACH or credit-card transfer to me.

Not as cash-like as Bitcoin.</comment></comment></comment>


Darpa wants to refactor US manufacturing - <AUTHOR> http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/01/darpa-works-on-reinventing-all-of.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fadvancednano+%28nextbigfuture%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER2> I'm consistently surprised that people are still arguing against progress in favor of jobs protectionism. It's never worked. All we accomplished through the 80s was propping up our unhealthy Steel and Auto industries and compounding the pain.

If we aren't ready for the design-centric, automated-manufacturing future, then not only will the linesmen be out of jobs but the designers, engineers and roboticists that we _didn't_ train and lay the ground work for, will be out of jobs.

<comment><USER3> 1\. Designers, engineers, and roboticists aren't usually the types taking manufacturing jobs except to find ways to improve the process.

2\. Many and dare I say most people in manufacturing are people without the inclination or talen to be designers, engineers, and roboticists. The more we automate, the more we will struggle to find productive roles for these people.

3\. That said, it's still cheaper to stick a third world body on a project than a robot, and until we've raised the world's standard of living this is going to continue.

<comment><USER4> Your point #3 is incorrect if in a lot of situations, especially ones in which transportation and time play a factor -- for on demand production with minimal inventories.

And second, he was saying by not automating and improving we would never have the jobs (develop the talent and abilitiy) to have the roboticists when we need them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the article:"When you lower the barrier for people to prototype, and for people to become part of the manufacturing and design process, you go from tens or hundreds of people to tens of thousands of people who can take part" A way to further decentralize manufacturing and encourage cheap prototyping would be to embrace 3d printer technology advances and reductions in cost.

</comment><comment><USER6> It was always a dream of mine to have a little company that designed small gadgets, party favor type toys, doodads and so on. The problem comes down to tooling. It would be much more fun to just send off a cad file to some place and set up a contract with some logistics company, and bam! New product.

A similar idea, and its ramifications, is the central theme of Cory Doctrow's newest work: Makers.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this really any of DARPA's business? Aren't they supposed to be a defence research agency? When did they start feeling responsible for the US manufacturing economy. And why do they think they have the sufficient knowledge and ability to reform the US economy?

I mean if those manufacturing methods were more efficient, then wouldn't the economy change by itself then?

<comment><USER8> GTFO my ARPAnet, then. Seriously, DARPA has always invested blue-sky technology with the aim of securing a long-term strategic advantage for the US.

Just think of the impact (ie cost savings) that a general-purpose manufacturing infrastructure could have for defense procurement, never mind the wider world of business. I see significant strategic value in this, and think DARPA has more than justified its existence as an incubator for new technology rather than being a subsidy dump.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tax rates and government interventionism are major forces driving business overseas. A government "five year plan" to "refactor" the manufacturing industry is the poison not the medicine.

<comment><USER7> Nope, labor costs are the major forces. As long as somebody sells the stuff in america they will probably pay very similar taxes based on profit regardless of where they made it. They will probably pay more taxes if they outsource actually because that would bring them more profit.

<comment><USER9> Labor costs are lower in much of Asia, but it's not that simple. Shipping costs, risks to IP, loss of flexibility and accessibility to the manufacturing operation all factor into the picture. There are plenty of examples of manufacturing operations returning to the US for these reasons. Germany is a higher cost labor market than the US yet you don't see much of this simplistic scenario where physical operations inevitably flee high wages.

The big issue driving away these operations on net is the regulatory nightmare of employing Americans and running a plant. You have OSHA, the EPA, and an ever growing body of employer mandates to contend with. Also, the US is now a high tax country from a business perspective.

<comment><USER7> Germany has their own versions of the EPA and OSHA and they are much more powerful than the US ones.

<comment><USER10> which is tax money and they tax the society enormously , e.g. sales tax alone 19%. DARPA called in the past for some great technical innovations, but this one bringing manufacturing back to US is questionable. Not that I don't like to see it, but it is an open worldwide market and may the best business model win. I see this initiate more a reaction from the government, because they are scared loosing the access to the companies who run the semi fab process.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I lost my domain and everything that goes with it - <AUTHOR> https://tenebris.uber.space/article/i-fucked-up <comment><USER3> It should be pointed out and understood that when a domain enters Redemption period, in every TLD, the inflated cost to redeem it is imposed by the registry itself, not the registrar.

So the point where the normal cost is $6.95 but it cost over $100 or $200 is not because the registrar is gouging you, but because the registry is charging the registrar minimum $100 or so, and then the registrar would also apply their own markup, which is pretty standard.

Also - all registrars are contractually obligated to send out multiple notifications to the admin contact email, and even though this wouldn't necessarily apply to .DE (because it's overseen by DENIC, not ICANN) - <USER2> registrars use the same notifcation workflow across all TLDs. Usually something like 90, 60, 30, 10 days and -5 days.

I will say that the rule in .DE that you can't renew past T-5 is pretty weird though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out, it wasn't clear to me who's responsible for that price. I added your comment as a footnote to the relevant sentence. [1]

But no matter who's responsible I think it's not right to ask someone to pay more than 19 times the price of the normal renewal just because they might have forgotton to renew. I'd have paid maybe €50 but €185 is borderline extortion in my opinion.

I can assure you, I have not gotten any kind of notification from Namecheap. I don't know why some people here are so insistent that I must have gotten them. I triple checked my email address at Namecheap and don't do spam filtering. If some mail isn't in my inbox it hasn't been sent.

[1] - [https://tenebris.uber.space/article/i-fucked- up#price](https://tenebris.uber.space/article/i-fucked-up#price)

<comment><USER3> I am told that the registry's logic around the exorbitant cost to pull a domain out of redemption is to teach the registrant to be more mindful of expiries ...and not to be predatory because they have you over a barrel.

I can't speak to whether the registrar sent you renewals or not. I did mention in another comment below that for some unfathomable reason my company (easyDNS) is the only one I know of that offers the functionality to setup an iCal feed with your domain expires.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Happened the same exact thing to me, with Namecheap too. They didn't send me any reminders about my .li domain. I couldn't renew from 2 weeks before expiry. I wouldn't pay $200 to recover it in grace period, now they are selling it for $5k.

Switched to Cloudflare, never touching Namecheap again.

<comment><USER5> Cloudflare is a registrar? I had no idea.

[https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A similar thing happened to me, and I was lucky enough to get help from Namecheap's support (they actually escalated it fairly high in the command chain).

After that incident, I decided to move my critical email communication with just the barebones provider's domain to either Apple's iCloud (you get a free account when using iCloud) or Fastmail (paid but worth every $).

This way I don't need to worry about my own domain for critical stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't like when someone else has access to my emails. In my case only my hoster, whom I trust, has access to my server and thus mails.

<comment><USER7> You might also check other articles about registrars sending to 3rd party companies who pay a lot money to get information about domains that recently expired and being bought by them. I think there was an article about it here on HN not a long time ago.

Every domain that I had expired was immediately bought by a company and this makes it hard

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> First: kudos for having the guts to share a mistake.

Second: kinda cool that you didn't completely bash Namecheap, though the negative stuff you've described about them is well-deserved I think this may be (unfortunate) typical behavior for most registrars.

So a couple of follow up questions:

1\. What was the motivation for self-hosting your email? I'm genuinely curious. Proton sounds good. A year ago I switched from Google Apps to Fastmail (with a custom domain) & still feel like this was a great decision. Especially, because I have aliases for email addresses that use the same username but a fallback domain. If I ever forget about my domain renewal email will still get through to the 2nd domain. (That doesn't help with logins though.)

2\. Your name seems pretty unique, if .de isn't available have you considered other TLDs? I'm kinda dumb in that regard and have gone overboard with my domain name + almost every TLD … although slightly proud not to have gotten sucked in to the .dev phenomenon.

—

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Mistakes are what we learn from!

1) I like to have things in my own hand. On one hand It's about having control over who could possibly have access to my mails. If I were using Gmail for example I'd have to put up with data mining and the entirety of Google and their advertising partners possibly reading my mail. In my case only my Hoster, whom I trust, has access to my server. On the other hand it's about flexibility. It's my mail server and I can adjust whatever settings I like. I haven't been using any spam filtering for example but It'd be trivial to set it up and tune it to my exact needs. I can also use other domains without much setting up. I'd just have to register the domain and point it to my server and all my addresses would work with that domain. I've unlimited addresses, some just forwarding via .qmail some running a full virtual IMAP/SMTP account with separate credentials. Those .qmail forwarding addresses are super useful btw! I'm using a unique address for every service I use which makes it trivial to find out who's selling my data/where spam comes from. Delete the virtual address and voila, no more spam from them. Running my own mail server also makes backups easier I'd like to think. I just backup the right directory with cron from time to time.

2) Sure, there are hundreds of TLD's to choose from. I'm sure I'd find one that'd be alright but I've used kevingrahl.de for as long as I can remember and all my friends and customers are accustomed to it. Using a .de address has the added benefit that in theory my government should drop all captured packages intended for surveillance (Germany can't legally spy on its own citizens, it is known that they filter by TLD as a first step).

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> After reading this, I'm rethinking using my own domain email as an ID on websites.

I trust that Gmail will be around a lot longer than me paying my own domain. I've been paying for my own domain for years but at some time I'll stop and someone else will own it; this gives them ownership of my email address.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's certainly something to keep in mind.

But there are problems with a similar outcome that could arise by using a third party provider like Gmail. They could suspend your account for example which is far more unlikely to happen with a domain.

As long as you pay for both it and your server/email provider you should be good. I personally would rather risk what happened here than dealing with Google in case my account got suspended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's hard to have a lot of sympathy here.

1) Namecheap sends out renewal notices, if he wasn't getting them it's likely he didn't keep is email with them up to date.

2) Auto-Renew

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not asking for sympathy!

I just checked to be sure and my email address on Namecheap is correct. I did not receive a notification email however.

<comment><USER11> This just boggles my mind. I have been getting emails for 60 days before a domain expiry.

Are you sure somehow a weird account isn't your namecheap contact email?

<comment><USER12> Conspiracy alert: Perhaps a NameCheap employee has been bribed to covertly suppress notification emails?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are you sure that price is not set by DENIC or any other organization responsible for .de TLD? Never had issues with Namecheap and their support has always been very helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> No I'm not, as I said in the article:

> Please note that I do not know if Namecheap or DENIC is responsible for > setting this price.

<comment><USER13> Well, in the beginning you were pretty clear about blaming Namecheap for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now I'm starting to doubt your reading comprehension..

I explicitly said I don't blame Namecheap except for not sending me some notification and for that one service agent who told me he wasn't authorized to answer my question. That's were they fucked up. But as I said in that article "clearly it was my fault not renewing the domain in time".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are you sure it is a good idea to publish this _before_ you got your domain back? A malicious reader could try to battle you and get the domain before you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought about that before posting but I see no reason why anyone would want to even try. I didn't want to pay Namecheap's fee so it's quite clear I wouldn't buy it from someone else either. Worst case I have to get a new domain..

<comment><USER15> You would probably buy it from a squatter for a less outrageous price, such as 20-30 EUR for the next year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > But from €9.6 to €185 is an increase of 1827% or 19.27 times more. To me > that's usury.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

<comment><USER17> Not literally, but the intended meaning seems clear to me here?

Though ripoff would also have worked.

<comment><USER16> I mean, it's a minor quibble, but ripoff would make sense. Usury does not, in any way. It's simply a misuse of usury.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If someone has a suggestion for some reliable registrar that isn't Namecheap I'd be happy to hear about them!

<comment><USER18> Most of the registrars have been acquired by other companies and are only the previous name for marketing purposes. I am not happy with any of the US or EU registrars beyond Mark Monitor, and MM are not meant for hobby domains/users.

Do you prefer US or EU? For US, you might try out Cloudflare or Amazon route53. I don't care for either of them, but others I know have been happy using them.

When you get your domains back and if you can afford it, you can pay for up to 10 years. Most registrars will give a discount. If they offer more than 10 years, don't do it. 10 years is the hard limit, which means you would have to trust that registrar stays in business more than 10 years and most will not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input! I heard good things about MM and would love to use them but I'm not exactly their target audience.

I'd prefer an EU based registrar, any suggestions there?

As soon as I have my domain back (or a new one) I'll definitely pay some years in advance from now on.

<comment><USER19> Gandi. Fairly low pricing, very FOSS friendly, often actually knowledgeable support that you don't have to hit with a baseball bat before they get a clue (unlike OVH).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am using Gandi. You pay full price, but you get privacy inclunded</comment>


Removing Your Site from the Wayback Machine - <AUTHOR> https://nixnet.xyz/blog/excluding-your-site-from-the-wayback-machine-keybase-only/ <comment><USER2> I'm having the opposite problem. I want a site I admin added back to the Wayback Machine, the previous owner of the domain got it removed. It seems really hard to get anyones attention, I've tried email and twitter...

<comment><USER3> Have you tried [https://twitter.com/textfiles/](https://twitter.com/textfiles/) ?

<comment><USER4> Jason also frequents here under the same username.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For every copy of your site made by archive.org, there are thousands from webcrawlers that don't respect robottxt.

A tasteful way to go about this would be to give context to past posts with a note at the same url.

To the people who want to be forgotten, you will be, but the internet is too valuable to the future for retroactive censorship.

<comment><USER6> > but the internet is too valuable to the future for retroactive censorship

If I don't allow you to copy and publish my content, I'm not censoring you. Using that term in this context makes no sense.

As for webcrawlers: sure, they are out there. And when their makers publish your content, they are infringing your rights and (in many countries) commit a crime.

<comment><USER5> I'm not a lawyer, but I'd argue you've published your content by making it available in your index. An archive or library doesn't publish content, but offers access to content having been published.

If you made a reasonable effort to control access to your works that might be a different story.

<comment><USER6> That's true for books (and public libraries, a status which the Internet Archive holds in the US, if I'm not mistaken; that doesn't change their status w.r.t. the rest of the world, however), but I don't believe you can directly transfer rules regarding books to websites.

The Internet Archive publishes the content, they don't use a robots.txt, canonical-tag (they do set a link-header) or robots meta-tag asking search engines not to index their version. For all intents and purposes, it's just a copy of your content published on their website.

I understand their goal, I'm not opposed to it on a fundamental level, but I do believe that the choice of participation should rest with the content creator.

<comment><USER7> "...but I don't believe you can directly transfer rules regarding books to websites."

The rules for copyright do apply to websites. Here is what the US Copyright Office says:

"What does copyright protect? Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section 'What Works Are Protected.' ... When is my work protected? Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device."

Source URL = [https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq- general.html](https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html)

More FAQs: [https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/](https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/)

'Circular 1' URL = [https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf](https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf)

<comment><USER8> The difference is that, while the contents of a book are covered by copyright in the same way that a website, a handwritten letter, or a photograph is, the physical artifact that is the book itself can be loaned, sold, etc. because of first sale doctrine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "archive.org" obeys "robots.txt". Over-obeys, in fact. If you add a robots.txt file that locks them out, old archives disappear, too. Even if the domain name has changed hands.

<comment><USER10> > A few months ago we stopped referring to robots.txt files on U.S. government > and military web sites for both crawling and displaying web pages (though we > respond to removal requests sent to email@example.com). As we have moved > towards broader access it has not caused problems, which we take as a good > sign. We are now looking to do this more broadly.

It might not be true forever. Unfortunately.

[https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for- sea...](https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-search- engines-dont-work-well-for-web-archives/)

<comment><USER11> This is an important and useful improvement. Many domain parkers/squatters/etc who snap up dead domains have robots.txt files that block everything or almost everything, breaking the ability to see the previous site via archive.org.

(Side note: domain name expiration was a mistake.)

<comment><USER12> A fun thing to do before your website expires is set up HSTS with "includeSubDomains" and enroll your website in HSTS preload. Many of the bots that backorder domains in order to put ad pages on them don't use SSL at all (not even LetsEncrypt) and the domain ends up becoming useless for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Don't do this. Please don't do this. The Wayback Machine is one of the only records of history we have on the internet, often the only way to look back and see what has been. It's invaluable for that—and if your site is to be any part of the internet's history, it should be available there too.

<comment><USER14> This fundamentalism is unhelpful.

What if people don't want to be part of internet history? It's hard enough to be anonymous, or even to move on from mistakes, as it is.

<comment><USER15> Then why make a site? That's like saying you don't want any photos of you to exist but you've been outside for years while people where making photos and now you're telling them to delete those.

<comment><USER14> So, what you're saying is that a decision you make as, say, a 17 year old is one that you must stand by for the rest of your life?

And, yes, I get it, there's more than the IA but it's a point of principle for me. I'm not talking about erasing newspaper articles but rather the blog a kid posts when they are naive.

<comment><USER16> > So, what you're saying is that a decision you make as, say, a 17 year old is > one that you must stand by for the rest of your life?

That's basically the way it is anyway. If you go out in public (physically or virtually), you've lost some control over how long-reaching your actions might be. If you do something stupid in public, you can't prevent people from posting their videos/photos of it, or just talking about you. The internet is no different. While you can get your stuff removed from some places, you have no control over it generally speaking. Somebody might have screenshots for example.

<comment><USER17> In most parts of the world you are entitled to privacy even if you are outside, and you can demand photos/videos taken of you without your consent to be deleted.

Plus, just because I have a website, that doesn't make it's content open domain, for some business to copy all it's contents and publish them without my knowledge.

<comment><USER18> >you can demand photos/videos taken of you without your consent to be deleted. //

Can you name maybe five large countries where that's true? It's not true in USA, nor UK AFAIK. I understand it's not true in Germany either.

So, I only know contradictions, interested to hear. China and Russia, don't seem likely to have such laws - maybe they're common in South America, Africa?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does Archive.org make any judgment calls when it comes to honoring requests to remove content? For example, I can see people trying to scrub evidence of their own lies or promises or other damaging misdeeds asking for their content to be removed.

<comment><USER20> It feels like burning old newspapers if a subject of an old story doesn't like the story. Or a book author forcing a library to remove her books from the shelves. There is something Orwellian about letting people purge history of they don't like it. When something is published and public, the bell has already been rung. Should we force people who saw the original content to never speak of it? Can we sue them to prevent them from talking about the "bad" content? Erasing sites from Wayback, to me, feels like the sanctioning of censorship, or erasing history. The so-called "right" to be forgotten is a strange right in free societies. Does the right to be forgotten give people the right to destroy old newspapers than someone has saved? Can people go into someone's home and seize books that depict the claimant in a negative light? Wayback is like a photo gallery of the past. We shouldn't be allowing people to rewrite history.

<comment><USER21> I personally find a "right ro be forgotten" as such laughable, but I understand it was specifically introduced not to expose something stupid you did or said, or a non-advantageous photo taken from you or similar as your only public record in times of clickbait and staged polarizing crap. Then there's the problem of copyrighted material, and of publishing stuff on your site with the intent of making money off your user's attention via ads, one of the very few avenues of financing content creation. All these concerns have to be balanced against another, which creates a difficult legal environment for archival sites.

<comment><USER22> Think of all the things you did as teenager or child. Now think of all these things as being documented on the internet. Do we really want to be haunted by our past in such a way?

<comment><USER23> Yes, we all agree children and teenagers do stupid shit. Since we all acknowledge it, can we be mature about it and not "haunt" people with it?

<comment><USER22> Easy to say as a bystander. What if its you kid who's being bullied or who got bullied? What are you gonna do about it? My other post in this thread addresses that point [1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20162590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20162590)

<comment><USER23> I'm sorry, but these kind of straw men are making discussions on the subject impossible. I argued that we shouldn't judge adults based on the stupid things they did as children.

> Do we really want to be haunted by our past in such a way?

To which my reply was: let's be mature about it and not care about trivialities from someone's past.

Now you change the subject to: "What if its you kid who's being bullied or who got bullied?". My kid being bullied "right now" is not the same as "my kid did some stupid shit 10 years ago and people are making fun of him now because of it". This is another problem with another solution, and it's not something I argued about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Since the question of why removal might be sensible has been raised, I thought I'd offer a historical perspective.

From a 1966 BBC documentary:

 _" Well, he who has access to information controls the game. This is very dangerous. I think both your country and mine have never trusted the government completely. We do so for good reason. Here we have a mechanism that could be abused. Here we have a mechanism that would allow the creation of a dictator. . ._

 _I 've yet to see an expression by anyone in Congress about this new type of danger. In fact, we see proposals for centralizing information, we see proposals for rushing ahead into new, more efficient computer information systems, and very little thought is being given to the dangers of the misuse of these systems. . . I ask a lot of people about privacy, why they valued it, and I was surprised by the number of people who said "Well, I don't do anything wrong. Why should I worry about privacy?" And then, on the other hand, I think there's a more wise group that says, 'Privacy is really the right to be wrong, then go on and live the rest of your life, without having it mark you forever.' I tend to think this latter view is the view we should hold."_

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=FwaDvJYZTVk&t=29m31s](https://youtube.com/watch?v=FwaDvJYZTVk&t=29m31s)

The speaker is Paul Baran, of RAND Corporation, and the inventor of packet- based switching -- the technology which makes the Internet possible.

If you want to know who could possibly have forseen the negative consequences of universal information networks might have been: their creator did.

Baran's full archive of RAND publications are now freely downloadable from RAND, after I'd requested access in July of 2018, for which I'm immensely grateful.

Backstory:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180725104347/https://plus.goog...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180725104347/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/J7oL5ZwuTzY)

Archive:

[https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/b/baran_paul.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/b/baran_paul.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> The comments here bring to mind this: Attorney to witness: What did you see? Witness: It looked like he was saying "XYZ." Opposing attorney: Objection. Judge: Sustained. The jury will disregard the previous question and answer. —Except: the jury has heard it — too late.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's good that the only place where people still cannot remove information is a library.</comment>


$100K in Google Cloud Credits - <AUTHOR>

Earlier this year while attempted to grow my own startup I received $100K in google cloud credits (https://cloud.google.com).<p>Well my startup is now defunct and I was wondering what to do with these credits. It's more than I'll ever need. If anyone has some ideas they'd like to test. I'd love to hear it. This is basically unlimited access to cloud computing. <comment><USER2> Possible donate the credits to an open source project? I suggest contacting @williamstein [0] who has been actively seeking help to fund Sage Math Cloud [1]. See post here [2] and here [3] for reference.

I'm living on credit cards -- I have no NSF grant support anymore, and SageMathCloud is still losing a lot of money every month, and I'm unhappy about this situation. It was either completely quit working on SMC and instead teach or consult a lot, or lose tens of thousands of dollars. I am doing the latter right now. I was very caught off guard, since this is my first summer ever to not have NSF support since I got my Ph.D. in 2000, and I didn't expect to have my grant proposals all denied (which happened in June). [3]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=williamstein](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=williamstein) [1] [https://cloud.sagemath.com/](https://cloud.sagemath.com/) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10175563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10175563) [3] [http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2015/08/react-flux-rethinkdb- an...](http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2015/08/react-flux-rethinkdb-and- sagemathcloud.html)

<comment><USER3> I (author of above mentioned post) would certainly be very interested if this is possible.... Feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@example.com Edit: I don't know if google cloud credits at all transferable or what though. They likely have stringent terms of usage??

<comment><USER3> It has pointed out to me: "Hi, I like your spirit but I don't think you can transfer those google cloud credits: 'Eligibility' [https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/"](https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes! This is something we need at [http://panda.network](http://panda.network). We're doing many projects like [http://usepanda.com](http://usepanda.com) and [http://geniushub.com](http://geniushub.com), all without funding and anything that can help keep the costs down is a bonus! Can you hit me up on twitter [http://twitter.com/williamchanner](http://twitter.com/williamchanner) or firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


Ask HN: Test coverage in side projects - <AUTHOR> Have you guys noticed a difference in the number of tests you are inclined to write for your side project stuff as opposed to at work?<p>I have noticed that I write significantly fewer for my side projects. Is this normal or am I being lazy/reckless? <comment><USER2> It's probably worth it if you work on the side project regularly enough for it to occasionally regress in known faulty ways. Otherwise I wouldn't worry about a more low-maintenance approach.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't feel alone. I usually have much less time to work on my side projects than on customers projects so I tend to bang things together quickly. And so I write much less tests.</comment>


NZBMatrix closed due to massive takedown request - <AUTHOR> https://nzbmatrix.com/the_end.html

<comment><USER2> Already discussed here : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4894401></comment>


Show HN: AmbitionTrek – create a visual trail showing your entrepreneur journey - <AUTHOR> https://www.ambitiontrek.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the founder of AmbitionTrek. just wanted to say that the site is in its prototype phase & I'm just looking for feedback/opinions. Don't forget to click the "view our journey" tab as well to see the journey of AmbitionTrek. Thanks in advance!</comment>


I took "abusing the HTML5 History" to the next level. - <AUTHOR> http://probablyinteractive.com/url-hunter It's technically not using the HTML5 History, but that post inspired this idea. <comment><USER2> Feels like we're back in the days of the Apple ][, only with a much, much smaller monitor. Things I'd like to see done in the URL bar using the History API:

      • Rogue-like text adventure game
      • Hitchhiker's Guide
      • A reading app with page-turning animation
      • Color

Whoever cracks that last one, mega kudos. Woz, you around? Feel like doing some magic?

It's also tempting to ask for a text-editor, but then, we sort of already have that!

<comment><USER3> _Woz, you around?_

That gave me a good laugh! If it is of any interest, in the following video which was posted a while back on HN, Steve Wozniak tells how he co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, and amongst other things, how he hackishly brought color computing to the Apple 2:

<http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/400/>

(You'll have to forgive me since I don't have time to search exactly where in the video he talks about adding color.)

<comment><USER4> I think i've heard that speech at four different conferences. Woz needs a new story.

<comment><USER5> Have you heard the one about the $2 bills?

<comment><USER6> I haven't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After playing for 10 minutes I thought "this is EXACTLY the kind of insane time-waster that I would like to read more content from..." So I tried to remove the # from the title bar as to navigate to your home page.

Turns out that that's harder than the actual game. I won in the end though.

<comment><USER8> On Safari, Cmd-click the title bar to get a hierarchal listing of the URL structure.

<comment><USER9> I was playing this on IE9. It took me 2 minutes to realize that there was a O and an a in the url bar somewhere. Damn you half width address bar!

At least it worked when I resized the address bar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Around the launch of IE9 beta I asked Dean Hachamovitch (IE honcho at MSFT) what he thought about people typing random things (besides URLs) into the navigation bar. I'd noticed not entirely tech-savvy people in my life using the navigation bar as sort of a launch bar for their whole browsing experience, using it for new searches, history exploration, etc.

Hachamovitch reminded me that this was not really a new thing, as people have been using the command line since the dawn of time. Never did this really sink in until I saw this demo: The URL bar is a command line for the people. Behold its power.

<comment><USER11> Aza Raskin (and about half of Humanized who had come with him) was working on getting this into Firefox. He worked on some other stuff and then left for another company, but you can get the idea from here: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_User_Tut...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_User_Tutorial) and a very impressive video: <http://vimeo.com/1561578>

The architecture was pretty far along, completely extensible with new verbs and parsers in JS. They'd got rid of the ugly hyphens from that demo video with a better parser. [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/0.2_Design:_UI_and_Se...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/0.2_Design:_UI_and_Security_Extensibility) They'd even solved most of the localization problems, like verb-subject-object or subject-verb-object, and pronouns, and stuff. I really would like to see this revisited sometime.

<comment><USER12> It's still being worked on by the community, there is a build from 2011-01-27.

[https://mozillalabs.com/ubiquity/2010/03/10/community- mainta...](https://mozillalabs.com/ubiquity/2010/03/10/community-maintained- version-of-ubiquity-for-firefox-3-6/)

I still use and love this tool every day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I look forward to dealing with this on shady sites that want to disable the back button.

<comment><USER14> Yup. It's kinda shocking that there doesn't appear to be some limit on the number of history entries you can push, in Firefox at least.

<comment><USER15> chrome as well. i imagine it will be dealt with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cool concept, just make sure you open it in a new window or you'll never make it back to HN!

<comment><USER17> It's actually not using HTML5 history like the links before. It's just doing hash manipulation.

It it used history.replaceState it could not only manipulate the URL completely but also it wouldn't make history events so the back button would work!

<comment><USER18> You don't need the HTML5 history API for that either.

        location.replace("#...");

<comment><USER19> I agree with you guys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Took me a while to come back here to comment. :)

Very fun, very creative. Abuse is most definitely the correct word.

</comment><comment><USER21> Thanks to your work my browser history in firefox have hundreds - if not thousands - of lines more just for your site.

<comment><USER22> Argh, you're right. I should've used private browsing for this. Fortunately on FF there's a "Clear Recent History" feature.

<comment><USER21> Alternatively you enter the base url into the search box and Ctrl+A Del (or Option+A, Del or C+a, del)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wish I'd thought of this. And that I'd made it.

And that it doesn't catch on.

</comment><comment><USER24> I like the game.

I also played with browser history to create something more useful <http://bsearch.heroku.com/> i.e. access other search engines by clicking back button while on Google.

</comment><comment><USER25> So now we can play games in both the address bar and the favicon: <http://www.p01.org/releases/DEFENDER_of_the_favicon/>

</comment><comment><USER26> Well, after viewing my history from going to this page, I think that browsers are going to have to come up with a way to group history into collapsible groups. Most likely by a combination of tab and host.

Definitely not looking for to companies using the URL page as the new scrolling status bar...

</comment><comment><USER27> Thanks for completely fucking up my browsing history. Kudos.

(Horrible hack though, how is that possible without the browser saying no?)

</comment><comment><USER28> Ouch, my history! Seriously, this was an experience. I might go as far as calling it art.

</comment><comment><USER29> That's pretty clever. I could see using location.hash for posting scrolling banner messages in the URL bar, ads ... all kinds of stuff that I'm really not looking forward to.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is it possible in javascript to make a customisable auto-complete for the address bar? Similar to the way browsers use auto-complete based on your history, this would use auto-complete based on the site's hierarchy. It's different to this site because the input events (user controls) are not triggered when typing in the address bar.

For example, a user wanting to find the elephants page on this web site would be typing <http://coolstuff.com/things/elep> (and it would suggest) hants by having hants appear after elep as selected text.

Or is there a good reason why address bar events are not part of the dom?

</comment><comment><USER31> 30 seconds later, my laptop fan is full throttle. I think you win the watts- per-byte medal.

</comment><comment><USER32> Fun bug: press escape tons and watch the animals move faster and your browser freeze.

</comment><comment><USER33> <Khhaaannn!!!> My back button! MY HISTORY!!!! </Khhaaannn!!!>

</comment><comment><USER34> similar to this via twitter: by @paulrouget

<http://grack.com/blog/>

</comment><comment><USER35> I killed 4 in 23 seconds. Getting back to this post wasn't easy, though I can't say I wasn't warned!

</comment><comment><USER36> One of the most creative things I've seen in a while. This wrinkles my brain and the best way.

</comment><comment><USER37> What, no 8-bit sound effects?

</comment><comment><USER38> "Look up at the url bar!"

I'm using Conkeror, so I had to look down.

</comment><comment><USER39> Very creative. Actually a somewhat addicting game as well!

</comment><comment><USER40> Does anyone else think this could be used as a captcha?

</comment><comment><USER41> This game is even better on firefox with vimperator.

</comment><comment><USER42> Wow, so much for back-nav'ing on _that_ tab.

</comment><comment><USER43> It seems to work in IE6 too.

</comment><comment><USER44> probably interactive is in my history hundreds of times now :)

"Points 4"

</comment><comment><USER45> No fun on the iPad :(

</comment><comment><USER46> Nice idea.</comment>


Tizen - new Android competitor - <AUTHOR> https://www.tizen.org/ <comment><USER3> I had the misfortune of being tasked with developing a tech demo for an embedded version of Tizen for one of the Tizen stakeholders. Despite the insistence by the client that Tizen 2.0 was demo-ready, it quickly became clear that it was in extremely early alpha stages and nowhere near ready for even a tech demo. The networking stack was extremely buggy and would fail with too many concurrent connections. The web runtime was dog slow and doing a simple DOM insertion would cause the system to lock up for up to 20 seconds. All the while we were promised that a better version was "coming soon" and would be ready for the scheduled demonstration. Of course, this never happened, the demo was called off, some business people lost their jobs and I quit the company. Overall, it was a massive embarrassment for everyone involved.

</comment><comment><USER4> Because OEMs like Samsung have done such an incredible job modifying and skinning Android that I'm sure we can expect great things when they're responsible for the entire experience from the ground up?

<comment><USER5> You say that but I was playing with a (older) Nexus running vanilla ICS "as it was meant to be" the other day and moaning about something (I was attempting to add something to the home screen I think). A couple of the Android users in the office came over to see what I was moaning about.

After 60 seconds of looking at it they both admitted that the thing I was moaning about was horrible but that it wasn't something they had to deal with on their Galaxy S3s. When they showed me the S3 it's mechanism was definitely more intuitive (at least to the three of us).

While I'm not defending the skinning efforts of OEMs generally, I don't think the historical position of "it's all awful" is necessarily true any more. Sure there are bad things in there but there were plenty of bad things in early versions of Android. Just as Google learned there are signs that the OEMs are learning too.

<comment><USER6> I second this. I've gone back and forth between the vanilla CM9 build and the Samsung touchwiz on my Galazy S2. While the CM9 feels faster and cleaner, it's all lacks some key features. For example the vanilla music player doesn't support displaying ID3 MP3 lyrics, a feature my windows mobile phone could do back in 2003. This feature is critical for podcast courses with embedded lecture notes. And yes, the widgets work better in touchwiz too. In the end, I always go back to the more feature complete touchwiz.

<comment><USER7> Touchwiz is definitely the 'last worst' of the Androids and some of the feature tweaks are/were definite improvements.

Having said that I've got a fairly close to vanilla Jelly Bean on my SGSII now and I can't think of anything I miss from stock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I want it to succeed so badly because I was a huge fan of the Nokia N900 and the N9. But it won't. They haven't released the OS yet and it already feels dead in the water.

The first video I can find of "Tizen 2.0" on YouTube is from 3 months ago and shows a very slow interface. It resembles Android a lot, but Android is much faster as of 4.0+, so why would anyone use Tizen? There are no apps to showcase as well; if you're gonna make a new smartphone platform, get people to make apps.

There's nothing on the Tizen page that makes me think that developers will find any interest here. Combined with BBX OS and WP8 in addition to the already vibrant Android and iOS ecosystems, why would anyone make a Tizen app?

And so this is doomed to fail like Maemo/Meego, it seems. Maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe some company will once again adopt it and merge the code making it even more of a mongrel.

<comment><USER9> Tizen suffers from the same problem as Meego did - too much corporate control and no open development whatsoever.

If you liked N900/N9 and Maemo/Meego - you'll better like Mer and derivatives. They have more chances to succeed, since they don't suffer from the risk of some company pulling the plug from the whole project.

<comment><USER10> _Tizen suffers from the same problem as Meego did - too much corporate control and no open development whatsoever._

Whoa hang on there .. compared to what? Android?

<comment><USER9> I compared Tizen and Meego. Meego development and direction was too tightly controlled by Nokia (and Intel). When they quit - the project fell apart. Community forked it as Mer (Meego Relaunched), which has open development. Mer however is only the core. End user distributions are based on it. So far there are Nemo, Plasma Active and Sailfish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fortunately, I have touched the early version of Tizen and the prototype base on Tizen. On the prototype machine I saw real "multi-tasks" like we have on laptop, and terminal application ran sweetly.

I asked one of their consultant a question:"Meego replaces Symbian, then Tizen replaced Meego, then who will be the next to replace Tizen?" At that time, Tizen had Cooperation with Samsung. Then, Windows replaced Tizen, to Nokia, big thanks, Elop!

Now we have Jolla, Ubuntu, Firefox, and so on. Along with iOS and Android, make me think of PC desktop, there we have Windows, Mac OS, huge amount of Linux Distros. Could the circumstances on mobile os platform as well as desktop os platform?

Again. Why Apple showing off their amount of apps? Apps is the key. Apps bring possibility to achieve any tasks, not the _OS_ , especially for a mobile os who has not prepared for its UI guideline. I imagine that some apps have back buttons, some don't; some back buttons on the left-top and others on the bottom. When you want to do some operation you have to locate first where the right button was placed.

All it did is just provide a opportunity, that out of control of Android and iOS, the region there people hate close and love openness. I really hope Tizen will be successful, that's also means Linux's success, the openness's success.

<comment><USER12> I think you're missing one point. The PC market is open to OS developers and users, there's a well known spec and the user can install any OS he wants, but that's not possible (with some minor exceptions, and you may depend on Android) in the mobile market.

Until the OS is reasonably independent of the device, I can't see how Ubuntu, FirefoxOS, or Tizen could compete if they can't access to users (even if some, like Mozilla, have deals with phone companies; do I need to buy a specific phone to run their OS?).

<comment><USER11> Sorry I do't catch up your opinion very clearly.

You can't legally install Mac OS on PC's. You can install Some Linux on, maybe almost PCs but still have some troubles. PCs have restrict hardware standards. But Mobile devices have not explicitly.

Users can also install other mobile OS on their mobile devices, for example HTC's HD2, it not only can install Windows mobile/XP/7, Linux, Android, also can install dual-OS. As well as Samsung's Nexus, HTC G1...

Firefox OS at first showed us on a Samsung's Galaxy III (?) device. Ubuntu on Galaxy Nexus. They just don't expect to use pre-installed Android devices to run their OS, OS doesn't make money without hardware devices and apps.

They have their own markets. Like Firefox, they promise to provide cheap devices, the main market may depend on South America I don't know.

<comment><USER12> Well, if you can't install Mac OS on a PC is because the software vendor doesn't want you to do so.

But get any PC and you can install several OSes without being too picky on the hardware. It's accepted that the hardware and the software are different things.

If I want to try FirefoxOS I don't wont to buy a FirefoxOS mobile phone, and it looks like that's going to be the only way.

<comment><USER11> Completely, NO.

Not the software vendor, it is Apple who does not allow all but Apple's own machines to run Mac OS. It's ilegal but NOT impossible, we see a lot of Hackintosh.

So, you can taste Firefox OS now, it is difficulty as installing Mac OS on PCs, maybe more difficulty. If Firefox OS is popular, I believe you can see more and more devices runs Firefox OS who have pre-installed other OS.

What they did just promise that theoretically speaking, you can run Firefox OS on any devices running Android, whatever Tizen, Ubuntu, Firefox OS. Linux means run anywhere, any platform, impossible. And anyway, Android based on Linux.

<comment><USER12> > Not the software vendor, it is Apple who does not allow all but Apple's own > machines to run Mac OS.

I'm confused here. I thought Apple is Mac OS' vendor. So, yes... as I said it's because Apple. If the OS vendor wants it to be run on a PC, there's no special requirement.

Anyway, that's not the relevant part of my original comment. I can't see how FirefoxOS will be popular if installing it is difficult (even hacky) or if it only works on some specific devices.

We need a market were you buy a phone (that comes with an OS), but you're free to install anything else because hardware != software.

EDIT: typo

<comment><USER11> Install anything easily? Never mind. If you install various OSes on your mobile device, you are not _using_ it, you are _playing_ with it.

Users don't mind the OS, users don't pay for operating system, users pay for tools, pay for resolutions. They need highly integrated user experience to complete their tasks, so hardware is very important to software.

Who needs a market with free and easy OS installing? Who needs to switch his/her phone's OS? Geeks, or who wants to act like a geek.

<comment><USER12> You could argue the same about Linux. I installed my first distro back in 1998. I wasn't forced to buy a PC with Linux installed in order to start using it, and it was easier than it is today to install _any OS_ in your mobile phone.

How many Linux users are out there? Are all of them "geeks"?

EDIT: with _anything_ I meant _any OS_

<comment><USER11> So what your conclusion?

Install Linux on PC is easier than on Mobile devices? Phone and MID and Tablet and Pad?

I tried hackintosh on my HP laptop(R.I.P), I failed. I tried

I tried to install FreeBSD and Fedora from USB sitck, I failed, my colleagues failed as well.

I tried to burn OpenSUSE...iso, I failed

I am using ubuntu and fedora on my thinkpad, occasionally using OpenSUSE, all upgraded to the newest stable versions, they never run smoothly and productively like Mac OS on my Mac.

I tried arch, I gave up cause the endless options confused me and made me agony.

You don't need to be forced buy mobile devices to use another os, as I mentioned before, ubuntu showed off their mobile os on Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Firefox used Galaxy II of III I'm not sure, if they can why you can't?

mobile devices using different CPU structures,

My point:

Linux was, is and will be for "geeks", not for people who use computer as assistance/tool for completing tasks, just like note, pen, phone, ... Linux is always falling behind the hardware evolution. So it has to adapt hardware drivers. Linux never does things like Mac or Windows does.

You even can't simply complete a task, such as customize desktop theme, listen music and watch video you download from internet on just online, your favorite services like google drive, evernote, Cisco IPsec VPN, without tricking or hacking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This website really tells me nothing about what Tizen is, what it looks like, what hardware it runs on, or really any sort of practical information whatsoever. But hey, at least I can get the SDK?

<comment><USER11> They just did not know exactly how to describe that correctly. I have to say they do not see very clearly what they are doing and where they are going. They want follow Android's route, catch up then surpass?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> <https://www.tizen.org/about/devices>

that's about all you need to know right there. support is planned for smartphones, tablets, netbooks, in-vehicle infotainment, and smart tvs, and it's not even released yet?

<comment><USER12> Well, archive.org has a version of the "about" page from Oct 2011 that reads almost the same. According to the Wikipedia the Tizen project was created back in Sep 2011 (renamed from LiMO, that was founded in 2007 and had released several version of their platform).

So it looks like they've been in the business for some time, I guess they're aiming to a market that is a moving target.

<comment><USER14> exactly, my point is that they need to start by focusing on something smaller and nailing it, then they can move on to expanding and nailing those areas too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm really not excited about this new OS. What I'm looking for is an open hardware standard like the PC AT was in its time. What I'm also looking for is a development framework which makes the hardware differences transparent and makes my code fully portable across all the different devices. As a user I don't want to be locked in.

Android development tutorials and using Eclipse give me head aches. I'm using QtCreator for years, even for pure C/C++ programs, and it really rocks.

<comment><USER16> Might want to check out Ubuntu for Phones due out in a month or so for the GSM Galaxy Nexus. Its recommended method of app development is using Qt + QML and QtCreator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It doesn't need to be anything new, radical, or anything of the sort. All it aims to be is an Android-alike that Google doesn't control. (ideally one that also enables easy porting of Android code and assets)

With this fixed goal and with Samsung's money, it'll succeed.

<comment><USER18> It might succeed in distribution because they have market share in a portion of the market largely unconcerned about user experience.

Has any software produced by Samsung ever made you say "I wish I could use more of this"? Touchwiz?

<comment><USER19> Samsung tried that with Bada, too. It didn't work. I think people are really underestimating the power of an ecosystem. Look at WP8 how much it's struggling in low single digits even after billions invested in deals and promotions, and money paid to developers to make apps.

Samsung has nothing. It doesn't even have the content Amazon has, which only got popular with Kindle Fire because people were looking for a "hero" against the iPad, and their very affordable $200 "Android-based" tablet seemed to be that one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it a competitor to Android in terms of being able to run n the same hardware? Or is it that it's just another smartphone platform, like 'Droid, Apple, BlackBerry, etc? All I see listed is that it is a phone platform.

<comment><USER18> It's a Samsung platform, Linux-based. Like Windows 8, many of the services are HTML5-based; the bundled browser is Webkit and actually tops HTML5 test benchmarks among mobile browsers: <http://html5test.com/results/mobile.html>

I worked with a company that was halfheartedly pitched a couple of demo hardware units last year running Tizen 1.0 for evaluation purposes - <USER2> wanted HTML5-based games and apps to bundle with the system or feature prominently on what I assume is an upcoming app store. I wasn't impressed with its broken JS support at the time and didn't look into what it would have taken to rewrite the games to run properly on the platform, but maybe they've come a long way since then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It looks like Tizen, Ubuntu Mobile and Firefox OS are all going down the HTML5 apps running on Linux kernel route. I really hope applications built for any of these will run on the other 2 seamlessly.

Are there any technical reasons why one of these OSs will be more successful than the others or is it all down to marketing and the budgets behind them?

I'm hoping 2013 or 2014 will be the year I can `sudo apt-get install vim`.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is great. More fragmentation means FirefoxOS is going to have more time to build a compelling open experience for the netcitizenry.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's already at 2.0? Maybe they started at version 2.0 just so they don't seem so far behind everyone else (Android 4, iOS 6, Windows Phone 8)

</comment><comment><USER24> Here is a Tizen family tree, tracing the merges and splits of various mobile Linux platforms back to 2005:

[https://github.com/kumadasu/tizen- history/blob/master/tizen-...](https://github.com/kumadasu/tizen- history/blob/master/tizen-history.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER25> It sounds trivial, but I don't know how to pronounce Tizen. Nor will many others without hearing it first. Is it TieZin, Tizzen, Tie Zen? Android, iOS and Windows are all easy to read and pronounce, so we can and do so. But this silly little thing slows the word of mouth spread - as few want to commit the social faux pas of saying something the wrong way. Something to consider for your own startup.

<comment><USER26> This doesn't matter. I hear people say "I os" and "I O S". No one cares. Most people will pronounce this one "Samsung" or "Nokia" or whatever company ships it.

<comment><USER27> In Scandinavia (and other places with strongly Germanic-based languages) "Eeeh Oh Ess" is probably just as common. Haven't seemed to hurt Apple at all.

Android is Android everywhere though.

<comment><USER28> I've heard plenty of "Yava" for Java in Germany and the Netherlands, too. Java still seems to be holding its head above the water, nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So what are the weak points of android that this things removes?

Also why no executive ever took Disrupting 102 - make cost of switching zero.

</comment><comment><USER30> Tizen is primarily for phones that straddle the line between dumbphones and smartphones -- not quite direct competition.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sceptical about running everything on top of HTML5. Even a specially tailored JVM has proven challenging to optimise, rendering 512MiB mobile devices into laggy paging machines.

Apple got something right: compiling to the metal is not obsolete and it won't be in the foreseeable future. Batteries are not going to last "too long to matter" and devices are not going to be exceedingly quick for the task, not any time soon if ever.

It would have been a lot more effective to provide hardware support to executable code sandboxing than running a sandbox on top of virtualised hardware. Being Google almost exclusively software people at the time the Android project was devised, I think they missed big time in the performance front. But they still made up for it in open fronts and they're leading the market.

</comment><comment><USER32> Really funny that in the logo guidelines, they don't use their logo correctly: <https://www.tizen.org/about/tizen-brand-guidelines>

<comment><USER32> Nice ! They fix that !

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Would any vendor except Samsung ever ship a Tizen device? If being under the influence of a company like Google bothers them, can you imagine how they would feel about being under Samsung's control?

<comment><USER34> I think it's intended as Samsung's plan B if their relationship with Google sours

<comment><USER33> That's how I would interpret it as well. But then I wonder what are they hoping to achieve by pitching it as open source. If nobody else is going to get on board then it's just them playing in their own sand pit.

I'd actually really love for a "true" linux based OS without the limitations of Android to gain traction, but a single-vendor ecosystem doesn't attract me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you happen to plan on making yet another mobile OS, make sure it runs Android apps. Anything that is a burden to the developers will not fly easily.

Bada OS? It's fast, so what? People slowly get that "smart phone with touch screen and facebook" is not really a selling point and start to look for Google if not iPhone.

</comment><comment> ezequiel-garzon Can any of these alternatives prosper if Google provides little or no integration of its services? Even new iPhone users had to wait quite a bit for an updated Maps app, which seemed strategically sound... Why would the story be any better for these unproven alternatives?

</comment><comment><USER36> Yet another one. It depends on hardware manufactures how they're going to use and market the products. Though android is open source, it's heavily driven by Google. It's hard to leave their clutches.

</comment><comment><USER37> Web site doesn't really say what it is and why I should care.

<comment><USER38> Doesn't seem to do anything that Android and/or Firefox OS doesn't already deliver. To me it looks like yet another corporate trying to play innovator.

AND ... where are the app developers going to come from? The good ones are already flat out with IOS & Android and if they have any free bandwidth, then they'll look at Firefox OS which at least Mozilla behind it and with that considerable credibility for being able to deliver.

You only need to look at Nokia and HP efforts and how they fizzled to see that Tizen's chances are limited before it even gets out of the starting gate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I am expecting a clean linux mobile OS. Android's performance seems worse than iOS with its java implementation.

</comment><comment><USER40> Does anyone know offhand what kind of minimum system requirements this thing has? Is it similar to Firefox OS?

</comment><comment><USER41> I'd like something as good as Android JellyBean but for notebooks. I hate Windows 8, not big on OS X either.

<comment><USER42> Android runs on x86 too. In theory, at least :|

<comment><USER43> Check out <http://www.android-x86.org/>

From the site :

This is a project to port Android open source project to x86 platform, formerly known as "patch hosting for android x86 support".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 4 years old account, and this is the only submission and comment from the OP. Samsung employee I assume?

</comment><comment><USER19> It would've been interesting if Samsung went with Ubuntu, but this has no chance. It's just Bada 3.0.

<comment><USER43> But this does not mean they won't launch an Ubuntu phone.

I am guessing if there is some market interest in Ubuntu (Phone OS), Samsung will launch a phone to test waters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why can't they base Tizen on Mer?

</comment><comment><USER44> I can't necessarily say why, but I'm way more interested in Firefox OS (boot2gecko) than this.

edit: Actually, Tizen looks to support Firefox OS as first-rate (though Firefox OS apps should run in any browser anyway if it supports the emerging device apis). Tizen might wind up being the more hacker-targeted device if it runs Linux and Firefox OS apps. I know it would have my interest as someone who is pretty much 100% happy with my Galaxy Nexus.

</comment><comment><USER45> Makes perfect sense! Everything in Samsung is riding on Google's good graces and a company making tens of billions a year needs to have plan B, C and D.</comment>


Wooden Combination Lock - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ8WRDVgKrk&feature=related

<comment><USER2> I watched all of the guy's videos, he's the hacker of woodwork. No doubts about it.

It's nice to see how other professions besides computer programming have masterful hackers.

The most intriguing video was this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTGO_NR6YiA> where showed his computerized saw that he had built himself.

<comment><USER3> What's cool is that it looked like he improved it by creating a manually- operated geared system instead!

<http://woodgears.ca/box_joint/jig.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The science museum in London has a really beautiful stainless-steel model of a combination lock similar to his wooden one. The first time I played with it and saw the bar fall into the slots was one of those wonderful "holy cow!" moments when something you always thought of as deep magic is revealed as having a simple principle behind it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, I just did that right 10/left 10 trick on my Master lock here, and it opened right up! That's messed up.

Being somewhat security conscious, whenever I lock it (at the gym), I always set the dial to zero so that I'm not giving out the 3rd number of the combination to any passer-by. This also thwarts the right10/left10 attack, which is nice. Cool video!

<comment><USER6> I tried it with a 25 year old master lock and it didn't work.</comment></comment>