"The 'use asm' pragma is not necessary to opt into optimizations in V8" - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/v8/issues/detail?id=2599#c16 <comment><USER2> Sadly V8's dev team has yet to address the other problem that "use asm" solves - falling out of JIT sweet spots due to broken heuristics. If you maintain a large machine-generated JS codebase (like I do by proxy, with my compiler), it is a regular occurrence that new releases of Chrome (and Firefox, to be fair) will knock parts of your code out of the JIT sweet spot and suddenly start optimizing other parts. Sometimes code that was fast becomes slow for no reason, other times some slow code becomes fast and now you look at profiles and realize you need to remove caching logic or that your code will be faster if you remove an optimization.

The arms race never ends, and keeping up with it is a full-time job. asm.js fixes this, by precisely specifying the 'sweet spot' and giving you a guarantee that if you satisfy its requirements, _all_ your code will be optimized, unless the VM is broken. This lets you build a compiler that outputs valid asm.js code, verify it, and leave it alone.

These days I don't even have time to keep up with the constant performance failures introduced by new releases, but JSIL is a nearly two-year-old project now and they cropped up regularly the whole time. Ignoring the performance failures isn't an option because customers don't want slow applications (and neither do I).

<comment><USER3> > The arms race never ends, and keeping up with it is a full-time job. asm.js > fixes this, by precisely specifying the 'sweet spot' and giving you a > guarantee that if you satisfy its requirements, all your code will be > optimized, unless the VM is broken.

I'm not convinced that 'use asm' helps with that at all. Static compilation of the sort that asm.js gives you is _also_ full of heuristics. Even in C, you've got that sort of effect.

Tweak the inlining cost model, and suddenly your frequently called accessor function now has function call overhead, slowing everything down. Or maybe it decides that the cost of padding vectors is too high, and autovectorization shouldn't be applied now. Or other dozens of similar heuristics.

It doesn't matter if you have a 'use asm'; tweaking the compiler will change the heuristics and boot you out of the sweet spot.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but that isn't changing continuously.

You get one build that is targeted to a specific compiler. Sure, upgrading the compiler might change what you need to optimize, but that happens when you, the developer, decides to do that, as opposed to when the user decides to upgrade their browser.

You can say "the JS sitting on the server, being served to clients, is fast with asm.js" That won't change until you re-compile it. With the JS jit, you can't know that.

<comment><USER3> > "the JS sitting on the server, being served to clients, is fast with asm.js"

Which asm.js compiler? The one in Firefox today? The one tomorrow with different inlining heuristics? The one that Opera decides to put in? The one for ARM or for x86?

<comment><USER2> A broken inlining heuristic is not going to have the kind of performance consequences for an asm.js app that you get when you get dropped into the interpreter/baseline JIT in a javascript app today.

A function not getting inlined means the addition of function call overhead, and that's it, in most cases. Dropping into an interpreter or baseline jit can literally produce a 100x slowdown, or worse.

Any conforming asm.js implementation that does AOT compilation will produce predictable performance. Yes, individual implementations will differ, but the same is true when you compile applications against MSVC, Clang, and GCC. You don't see anyone arguing that Clang and MSVC should have standardized inlining heuristics, do you?

It's important to remember, also, that when we say things like 'JIT sweet spot' we're not just referring to what code you wrote. It also matters what code you run, in which order, with which arguments. Something as simple as changing the order in which you call some functions (without changing the actual code in those functions) can cause them to deopt in modern runtimes because the heuristics are so sensitive to minor changes in data. Those kind of variances can be caused by something as simple as a HTTP request taking a bit longer to complete and changing the startup behavior of your app.

<comment><USER3> Does that happen measurably often on hot paths in reality, or is it just a theoretical worry? Because it sounds like you're describing a JIT with broken heuristics.

<comment><USER2> Yes, it happens measurably often on hot paths in reality. I have test cases that produce it against modern builds of v8 and spidermonkey. Naturally, they are not all real-world examples, but they're based on problems from real apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From what I understand writing fast javascript is hard because the engines are improving so fast no one knows what is fast yet. Thus asm.js is a promise to developers: "Stay within the subset and your javascript will be fast".

Yet it never was "use asm" which made asm.js fast. It was the js engine. "use asm" carries symantical knowledge so a browser can warn if you break out of the subset. It also serves as a strong hint that should make the optimizer's easier.

This is why I think asm.js is the future. Mozila does not need buy in from Google, or Apple, or MS. Instead developers can compile to asm.js and their code will run, and in time it will run faster.

So in effect Chrome supports arm.js but they are not making a promise. I think it would be better for the internet if they made this promise.

<comment><USER6> I want "use asm" as a way of getting extra 'compile time' checking.

If I say "use asm" and do something that isn't optimizable by mistake, it should give me an error rather than silently falling back to slow code.

<comment><USER7> That's all very nice, but it ain't gonna happen because of backwards compatibility. One of the main points of asm.js is that it runs everywhere the same as plain JS, whether the platform knows about asm.js or not.

<comment><USER8> What? It already happened. That's exactly what happens when you do something that is not part of the asm.js subset in "use asm" code.

<comment><USER7> I don't use Firefox but if that's the case then asm.js can no longer claim to be "just javascript". I wasn't expecting that one.

Interestingly enough, this makes the V8 approach all the more welcome since it doesn't break backwards compatibility.

<comment><USER9> It sounds like you missed the distinction between a) displays an error _and_ falls back to slower code and b) does not display an error and _silently_ falls back to slower code. Neither of these options break any compatibility with Javascript proper (and yet one of them is highly more desirable than the other).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Getting the Citadel demo to run at 60fps is impressive. It means that V8 is "fast enough" to keep up with the video card on that application.

However, the benchmarks at [0] clearly show that this is not the end of the story. The "workload0" runs measure startup time. All the other workloads show runtime performance, and V8 is still quite a ways behind.

[0] [http://arewefastyet.com/#machine=11&view=breakdown&suite=asm...](http://arewefastyet.com/#machine=11&view=breakdown&suite=asmjs- apps)

<comment><USER11> It's interesting to see how Firefox in these benchmarks is way, way faster than Chrome - quite a turn of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A point some people seem to be missing in this thread which I would like to emphasize is the value of _predictable_ performance.

It is true that a JIT is in principle, capable of all the same things as an AOT compiler. It is true, that improving the speed of a JIT is valuable. However, that all glosses over the fact that a JIT is a black box. If I am working on an application _today_ that has a mysterious slowdown after running for about 80 seconds, the promise that won't happen in _next year 's_ browser release is of no use to me whatsoever.

In fact, I would prefer the jit run at the same constant slow speed instead of starting out fast, giving a false sense of performance. I can OPTIMISE for that. I can work with that. I can't work with a JIT that can't decide how fast it's going to run, and why from release to release, from second to second. It's fine for most applications, but if I absolutely positively need to generate a frame at a constant fixed rate, an unpredictable JIT is a huge liability no matter how theoretically fast it can go on benchmarks. Stability trumps raw performance.

</comment><comment><USER13> [http://mrale.ph/blog/2013/03/28/why-asmjs-bothers- me.html](http://mrale.ph/blog/2013/03/28/why-asmjs-bothers-me.html) suggested that this would happen:

> When I sit down and think about performance gains that asm.js-implementation > OdinMonkey-style brings to the table I don't see anything that would not be > possible to achieve within a normal JIT compilation framework and thus > simultaneously make human written and compiler generated output faster.

<comment><USER14> But would they have done this without Mozilla pushing the performance with asm.js, or that fast? Competition is great, and it also makes me wonder, if they keep this up - maybe NaCl won't be needed either?

<comment><USER15> 64 bit integers are one small example of something you can't do no matter how fast you make JavaScript.

<comment><USER16> JavaScript needs 64-bit integers no matter what; the Node folks have been clamoring for it for a long time. We need to add them. Same with SIMD.

JavaScript is not some immutable thing. It needs enhancing, not replacing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> s-macke I made the same experience with my hand optimized asm.js code. [http://s-macke.github.io/jor1k/](http://s-macke.github.io/jor1k/) It runs as fast as asm.js in Firefox. Chrome is optimizing it really well.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think this only states that asm.js or it's tests are far from perfect now.</comment>


Google+ Find my Face Feature - <AUTHOR> http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&p=name_suggest_promo&answer=2370300

<comment><USER2> Once this feature gets extended to "search the Internet for photos and videos that match this face", this feature will completely kill any sense of privacy whatsoever.

<comment><USER3> It seems like a very useful extension. Why do you think that just because you've never seen a civilian implementation of this extension that it doesn't exist? Perhaps privacy is more dead than you think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > We are sorry but the information that you have requested cannot be found. > Please try searching or browsing the Help Centre.

Either there's something temporarily wrong there, or the page got removed. Whichever it is, that's the error I get. Searching for "find my face" gives me a link back to the page you linked (same link, so page still doesn't work).

<comment><USER5> I personally am not having the same issue. Perhaps you have to be logged in to your Google account?

<comment><USER4> Am logged in and still experiencing it. Not sure what causes it. O well.</comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Ford's Mobility Solutions for 21st Century Cities - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@markfields/introducing-fords-mobility-solutions-for-21st-century-cities-f4f54883c97a#.w18fn5bar <comment><AUTHOR> The announcement of Ford's acquisition of Chariot was posted earlier:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12464129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12464129)

This piece by the CEO of Ford outlines their transportation vision for the future, which includes bikes and Chariot.</comment>


Generic Auto-Updater - igor-ruivo https://github.com/igor-ruivo/generic-auto-updater <comment> igor-ruivo A robust, user-friendly, clean and efficient Auto-Updater for any client.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: this is for Windows only.

<comment> igor-ruivo exactly. thank you!</comment></comment>


Software is for neckbeards. No wonder we have a gender gap - <AUTHOR> http://unsolicited.consulting/article/software-is-for-neckbeards-20150106

<comment><USER2> Great piece.</comment>


Turning a MacBook into a Touchscreen with $1 of Hardware - <AUTHOR> https://www.anishathalye.com/2018/04/03/macbook-touchscreen/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! This blog post is about Project Sistine, a hack that I worked on with @antimatter15, @bijection, and @logane. We turned a MacBook into a touchscreen using only $1 of hardware (a small mirror, some pieces of a rigid paper plate, and a door hinge).

We built this prototype some time ago, but we never wrote up the details of how we did it, and so we thought we should share. We're happy to answer any questions you might have about the project!

<comment><USER2> Fantastic project. Well done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Would love to replicate this, any chance of publishing the source?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's public now: [https://github.com/bijection/sistine](https://github.com/bijection/sistine)

It's currently lacking detailed instructions and stuff, but you can expect to see more in the coming week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i dont get impressed easily but this is impressive!

</comment><comment><USER5> I want something like this on my MacBook and not the stupid touch bar.

<comment><USER6> "Something like this" \- you mean a touchscreen? There are plenty of laptops with them on the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very very clever - good job and I certainly see a market for this!

</comment><comment><USER8> This is cool. Thanks for sharing. Its always fun to see such interesting applications of basic ideas coming together to do something one wouldn't think is possible.

</comment><comment><USER9> So cool. I hope you release some DIY instructions (and code?). I'd love to build this.

<comment><AUTHOR> We just made the source code public: [https://github.com/bijection/sistine](https://github.com/bijection/sistine)

We're planning on adding more instructions to the GitHub repo over the coming week, to make it easier for people to replicate our hardware setup. Among other things, Kevin's developed a slightly easier-to-manufacture version that doesn't require a door hinge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Https://www.playosmo.com/en/shopping

Osmo iPad reflector, fits well on Mac circa 2017.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is very clever, kudos.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ingenious!

</comment><comment><USER13> Brilliant execution!

</comment><comment><USER14> Very impressive..</comment>


A bot using state-of-the-art ML models to summarize news articles on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/bot_tldr <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR: @bot_tldr uses BART to summarize news articles from major news accounts as soon as they are tweeted.</comment>


"173 ideas" – WeTransfer CEO Offers $10,000 to every ex-SoundCloud employee - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@djbradfield/173-ideas-302b7acaa43e <comment><USER2> I like the idea behind this, letting people who got laid off, have a chance at making something new, even if only one of them make something great, it will at least be interesting to see what happens down the road</comment>


Ask HN: How do you decide between startup ideas? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I used Steve Blank's formula he described in "The Startup Owner's Manual". Steve is a legend and the process works. I spent 12 months working on a variety of startup ideas, testing them in the market, pivoting and moving on to the next one. Eventually we found one that got traction (paying customers). Two years later, we just closed $13M in series A funding and have dozens of happy customers.

[http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/Leading- Busin...](http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/Leading-Business- Analytics-Platform-Numetric-Raises-Nearly-13M-to-Bring-Better-Faster-Business- Analytics-to-the-Masses-1002995750)

<comment><USER3> So, how do you like enterprise sales?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For my part, I think the partners are much more important than the idea. Good companies can pivot to find a good market. Bad partners will sink you, or never get off the ground to begin with.

Select for team, not for idea. The best idea is the one that can attract and motivate a great team, or one put forward by people you want to work with.

FWIW, I recall Paul Graham writing something that explains how he screens YC applicants. The upshot is that he doesn't devote consideration the idea unless he's first intrigued by the team. Whether you're a spectacularly successful investor in many startups or the potential co-founder of just one, that's probably a good place to start.

<comment><USER5> Except there's a great caveat with this approach. People that are highly productive and self-motivated often don't give a pleasant impression because they are fascinated with the idea and don't care for the looks. And vice versa, those who will look like a great friendly team, will be passionate about, well, looking great and friendly. They will spend time getting together, having endless pleasant talks about the latest news and their favorite TV show and couldn't be bothered to get out of the comfort zone and actually deliver something measurable.

<comment><USER4> I think this is fine for excusing the social quirks of individual contributors. If you're talking co-founders, though, I'd consider this "caveat" a red flag. If a person can't bring himself to make a positive impression to other human beings because he's too enamored of the "idea and doesn't care for the looks," he probably doesn't have the requisite maturity to co-found a business that will employ people.

Of course, some people really are all talk and no action. But I suspect you're assuming too strong a correlation with social skills. The fact is that there are plenty of brilliantly social people who can and do execute, and plenty of smart introverts who can't. I'm not saying, "go into business with your friends!" I'm saying go into business with people you trust and respect.

The corollary is to become someone who is trusted and respected by people who don't share the same skills and biases you have. Good places to start: seriously consider whether "the looks" have merit, and practice carrying friendly conversations.

<comment><USER5> I agree with your point, that a certain level of social skills is a must, although in my experience, when people start competing over making the best impression, many choices that improve it would be disadvantageous when it comes to execution.

The simplest example I could think of is typically being relaxed and simply agreeing with everything that your opponent says gives better surface impression than being focused on understanding your opponent and actually trying to defend your point (the classical salesperson vs engineer case). Except that approach would deadlock your execution, but nonetheless I see many people successfully using it to gain one's trust and get preferred over someone who pushed back too much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> (1) Annual revenue if successful. So, it's number of users/customers times average revenue for each.

(2) Ease of getting first users/customers before virality, a marketing/sales effort, etc. can work.

(3) Some form of _lock-in._ E.g., once a company has all their important data in database manager X, they will be reluctant to change to Y. E.g., once all the office is good with office suite software X, they will be reluctant to change to Y. Once all your friends are on Facebook, you want to join Facebook and won't want to leave all your friends. And there are more cases.

(4) Various barriers to entry to keep out competitors. Technological _secret sauce_ can be one such. Also some proprietary data. Sure, have to count some forms of lock-in as possible barriers to entry.

(5) Ease of developing the product or service to get to good profits, e.g., your wife is pregnant, your three year old needs braces on her legs, your nine year old needs braces on her teeth and wants to ride horses, your 11 year old wants to be an Olympic figure skater, your 16 year old wants his own car and to go to a private high school that will let him race ahead in computing, and your 18 year old has done really well in violin, e.g., much as in

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

[October 27, 2017 will be exactly 100 years since he did that, fresh off the boat, at Carnegie Hall and got a remark from a violinist in the audience "Isn't a little hot in here?" and a remark "Not for pianists!"]

has been accepted to Julliard, and wants a $500,000 violin (down from th $15 million he really wanted). And, by the way, you need a larger house and want an enclosed, Olympic pool. So, you want profitiability. Oh, yes, everyone in your family over the age of 5 wants the new iPhone for Christmas. Your wife needs a new SUV, bigger than the last one. You want a Corvette, e.g., just to save time driving to work you understand. Oh, yes, the new house needs a four car garage.

(6) Technology is your friend that helps you make money and not your enemy that threatens to run you out of business.

</comment><comment><USER7> People don't like to say it because they're afraid of sounding lazy, but you should do whichever is easier. Is building one of them going to be easier than the other? Is marketing/selling one of them going to be easier? Does one of the ideas require raising money?

Building a sustainable business is hard enough in and of itself. If you can avoid having to woo investors, or dealing with Chinese factories, or months long sales cycles, do it.

In addition, this will force you to think realistically about the skills and deficiencies on your founding team.

<comment><USER8> There's a natural tradeoff here though: the easier a business is for you to build, the easier it is for others to copy it. If you're a skilled practitioner doing something near the limits of your abilities, it in no way guarantees that you'll find product-market fit, but when you do, the market is more likely to be yours for awhile. There will be fewer people out there who are capable of competing with you and it will take them longer to get up and running.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. If something is too easy it gets too competitive and you're working for scraps. But if one is a skilled practitioner, pushing the limits of that skill will be "easier" than learning a completely tangential skill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Don't want to hijack the thread, but even more basically, how do you _get_ startup ideas? I've read what PG has to say and others, but nothing is clicking.

<comment><USER10> Find a domain expert and ask them to walk you through their day or shadow them. Also, ask them what sucks. I could literally throw ten ideas at you right now of fixable things of various complexity in my domain (academic bioengineering).

Another strategy is to look for large problems in your industry that have been solved and then try to find analogous problems in other industries where the same or a similar solution could work.

For our startup, my co-founder and I went and talked to friends and contacts of mine in medicine and generated a list of 15 or so things we thought were everyday pain points for many individuals. We then shelled out some money and went to an industry conference to field test them. It turns out that all of them were being actively worked on, but while we were exploring them we stumbled upon another idea which is now the basis for our startup.

<comment><USER11> I always hear about this abstract guidance to get ideas but haven't had a chance to find a domain expert willing to spend time on sharing the thoughts. What are good examples of when ideas generated this way formed a startup in the past?

<comment><USER12> For me, this started with some broad knowledge about a few industries. E.g. I have experience building connected devices and visualizing / analyzing data from those devices. I tried to meet as many senior managers as I could (think execs or experts) in my network. I knew I was interested in life sciences, energy management and robotics, so I sought out people in those industries.

I described what I was working on, what research I did on those industries and that I was looking to better understand the existing problems that might fit what I was interested in.

Some conversations did not lead anywhere, other times I got excellent, tactical, advice. That gave me more information and ideas, until I landed on my current project.

The reason this approach worked for me this time (as opposed to the other times I've tried this) is that I had a direction I was presenting and I did a bunch of research to get educated about some of these industries. I don't mean I studied it for some long time, but reading related subreddits, searching for conferences and looking up sponsor companies from that, learning some terms specific to those industries, etc. helped to have a better conversation.

While YMMV, getting warm intros to smart and successful people for a 15-20 minute phone conversation will expose you to what you don't know yet. This will result in you asking better questions, which can lead to more ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another aspect besides the field which others gave great insight about, one aspect is costs and access to capital.

When I decided to go the startup route I had a strong idea, validation from potential customers, high barrier to entry for competitors, very small amount of software dev to do, etc.

Only problem I needed between 500k-1M€ of starting capital to get the idea rolling. I only had less than 50k€ in my name. I found potential investors but obviously a very large dilution factor.

I switched to another idea, which required considerable amount of software work that I could do before creating the company but needed about 50k€ of starting capital. I went that route, found cofounders, a team, etc...and so far, 6 years and a few small rounds, we raised about 1M€ and are one of the only players in our field to be profitable, despite competitors having raised significantly more.

Recently I had a look at another problem I could solve in an entirely different field (which I know little about). I estimated startup capital at about 5M€ to reach MVP. Guess what? A few weeks ago a joint venture between major players in this field announced a 3 year R&D programme and 25M€ investment. There is no way I could beat them.

<comment><USER14> This guy does Lean

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Look at the team first. Ideas usually need experts in their fields, so the teams are usually different. Now imagine you're trapped on an island with cannibals. Who would you take?

Your idea is wrong. The market could be off, the solution is not a good fit, the product night be too expensive, the partners might not be receptive.

What are the consequences of that? It's like trying to shoot a small target at a distance. Your first bullet will miss. That's fine. But how will you hit it?

If you only have one bullet, very limited resources, are you accurate enough to not miss? Do you have a high firing rate? Can you do 3 prototypes/day? What are the odds of hitting other targets in the field even if you don't get yours?

But there's more.. most of your targets will actually be hidden. Now how well do you know your space? If you are building something for millennials, a partner be a millennial. If you build something for city councils, ideally one partner has managed a city council. The more you know your space, the easier it is in everything.

</comment><comment><USER16> 1\. scan online forums for common problems if one exists. This is a manual effort, but it can pay off as you will be building something that is already in need.

2\. do some customer development, but be very careful about introducing bias into your questions. This would give you bad data if you ask the wrong types of questions. See the book The Mom Test

3\. listen to a few podcasts where founders are interviewed. The older YC podcasts are really good. If your going for a two sided market, I would caution you. This is more challenging than other types of ideas.

</comment><comment><USER17> Talk to potential customers, and pursue whatever seems to have the most traction.

</comment><comment><USER18> This year I experimented focusing on partner first - I went through a list of good friends and bug them one by one with a different idea, tried to motivate them, and see which one kept the work going. So far I have 4 projects that survived (meaning are still worth investing time) out of a 10th or more.

I'm not interested in building a new startup now, though, that's why I did this specific experiment.

Experiments aside, in general I think you should focus on problems and how quickly you can get the first $ with your idea/solution.

So you list 10 ideas, you look at the core problem each tries to solve, think if you like to work on that problem/space (not the current solution, because you may change solution down the road), try to figure out who could pay you first, and estimate how quickly you can get something working which is worth your first users to pay for.

</comment><comment><USER19> I faced this problem, and face it on a regular basis. I get just too many ideas, I used to note them down, and the list grows bigger and bigger. The only way to resolve the issue is knowing that finding ideas is easy, but execution is king. You need to work out and analyze their potential. You need to sit down, brood over every idea and look at every angle \- problem you are solving \- target market (size, barriers to entry) \- competitors \- do you have a team which can solve this problem efficiently etc. etc.

This will definitely prune your list of ideas.

Next, you will need to discuss the chosen few ideas with prospective customers, and see if they "really" need this, are ready for this. You will need to develop prototypes, get some early customers, see how they like it.

Basically, start executing.

</comment><comment><USER20> 1\. A _technology_ (or _technology_ -backed phenomenon)

2\. You're _sincerely_ excited about (i.e. love working on it in your personal time)

3\. You _bet_ is going to change the world in a positive and significant way.

</comment><comment><USER21> Suggested reading: Zero to One by Peter Thiel. It's a great book and it goes over this topic.

</comment><comment><USER22> \- Which company do you see yourself working crazy hours in?

\- Which company pays you the better base salary?

\- Which company has a business model that you can get behind.

\- Which company will let you achieve personal goals (perhaps you'd like to get fit, or travel, or date and settle down).

</comment><comment><USER23> The one that I most cannot stop thinking about. I'd rather work passionately on an idea with questionable room for success than less enthusiastically on one that just offers greater commercial viability.

</comment><comment><USER24> Tell us right now. We'll give you feedback. Don't worry about the competition: anything big enough worth pursuing is not going to be hurt by writing a few sentences online.

</comment><comment><USER25> for mass/consumer market - the idea must be usable to me before I expect others to use it, making money is not easy thing due to long waiting time. recently hybrid platforms (digital + physical) got good success than purely digital one's. I think, passionately working on by 'watching' what customers do with the product is key to success. Usually people have passion in the idea stage, deciding based on hype is always leads to failure. mass market is a marathon race, luck plays critical role.

for enterprise - may be able to make money earlier than consumer market. I think reading "startup" books provides good insights, process to follow.

for niche: domain knowledge, few early customer are critical for success. may be able to reach customers easily, may not be able to scale.

Generally, speed and assumptions decide fate for any idea. particularly "assumptions" are the #1 enemy of every idea/startup.

</comment><comment><USER26> I used to have a complex formula, but now that I'm older I realize how much of an investment starting any business is. Now it just boils down to the question of if I want to spend the next 10 years of my life on an "idea".

</comment><comment><USER27> Intuition</comment>


What does it feel like to be stupid? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-stupid

<comment><USER2> Wow ... that's an amazing answer! And it somehow validates my practice of looking at everything as though I've never seen it before (try it - you'll find it's fun).</comment>


4 – An Easier Version of 2048 - <AUTHOR> http://www.crazygames.com/game/4

<comment><USER2> What is crazygames and why is nothing happening on that page?</comment>


Visualizing Galois Fields  - <AUTHOR> http://nklein.com/2012/05/visualizing-galois-fields/ <comment><USER2> Wolfram demo visualization of finite fields: <http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/FiniteFieldTables/>

(requires the Wolfram CDF player)

</comment><comment><USER3> _Just before the above-mentioned article hit reddit, I got to wondering if the structure of the Galois field was affected at all by the choice of polynomial you used as the modulus._

Not really -- regardless of a choice of an irreducible polynomial for a modulus, all the fields you'll obtain are isomorphic, meaning that for two fields K, L with 2^n elements there a one-to-one correspondence f: K -> L, such that f(a+b) = f(a) + f(b) and f(ab) = f(a)f(b). This means that while K and L may be different as sets, they have essentially the same structure.

</comment><comment><USER4> that first image looks like the old munching square effect <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munching_square>

<comment><USER5> It also reminds me of <http://www.jasondavies.com/hamming-quilt/> where the Hamming distance is used.

<comment><USER6> Yes, the munching square picture is the same because the hamming distance of two binary numbers is their XOR.

As to why it looks similar to the visualization in the article, your hamming distance picture is essentially the multiplication table for a galois ring GF(2^n), where n is width of the bits of the binary numbers you were using.

Note that I say galois ring, not field; assuming that an n (for n even) bit unsigned binary number overflows as such: 0x00..01 + 0xFF..FF = 0x00..00, then your chart is the multiplication table of the ring formed by taking Z_2 modulo the ideal generated by the polynomial <x^n-1 + x^n-2 + ... + x^3 + x^2 + x + 1>, which is a ring since this polynomial is reducible (it has a root of 1).

<comment><USER7> A quibble of terminology: fields are rings too, so what you want to say is that it's _not a field_ (or that it's 'only a ring') because the polynomial is reducible, rather than that it's a _ring_ because the polynomial is reducible. It's a ring because it satisfies all the necessary properties--whether the polynomial is reducible or not has no bearing at all on whether the object under discussion is a ring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool article overall, especially since it was an actual CS related application of the abstract algebra class I took this semester. Also, is there any reason in particular why that particular polynomial was chosen for AES?

<comment><USER8> I think it was chosen because the addition of two elements in GF(2^8) with their binary representation is a XOR. Which is a really efficient operation.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but this is true regardless of the irreducible polynomial used to form the field. My question is why that specific polynomial was chosen; was it an arbitrary choice or was there some reason?

<comment><USER9> As the article mentions:

"That first one that worked (100011011) is the one used in AES"

i.e., the polynomial that was chosen for AES (x^8 + x^4 + x^3 + x + 1) is the minimal irreducible polynomial of degree 8 (minimal in the sense of the natural ordering of polynomials). I guess that could be a good reason (but I'm not sure it's _the_ reason).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oddly, the first set of images looks like the visual 'aura' effect that I get when I get a migraine. I immediately had to stop read the article unfortunately, the association was quite strong.

</comment><comment><USER11> i think the title of the article is misleading, it should have been something like "quick Galois Field overview". 3 or 4 images of GFs is not "visualizing" them.

take a commutative ring, mod out by a prime ideal and you've got a field. congratulations.

<comment> t-ob Modulo a prime ideal you're only guaranteed an integral domain. The residue ring is only a field when the ideal you're taking as a modulus is maximal. All maximal ideals are prime, but the converse is not true - for example in the ring Z[x] of polynomials with integral coefficients the ideal (p) generated by a rational prime p is prime but not maximal.

There are of course many rings in which all prime ideals are maximal. The integers, for example, and more generally the integer ring of any number field (which are not always principal ideal domains, but are examples of Dedekind domains).</comment></comment>


Mike Tyson, App Maker: "I Don't Want To Be A Dinosaur" - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1753219/mike-tyson-app-maker-i-dont-want-to-be-a-dinosaur

<comment><USER2> I like it (excerpt):

 _"I never hung around geeks much," Mike Tyson tells Fast Company. But when Tyson met John and Sam Shahidi, founders of RockLive, and they flew him out to South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, to meet a herd of techies, many of whom grew up playing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, the champ was smitten. "Afterward, when I dropped him off at the airport, he was literally teary eyed," John Shahidi says. The heavyweight champion of the world had just been surrounded by enthusiastic gamers, programmers, and nerds. "He looked at me and said, 'John, I've never done anything like this in my life.'"_</comment>


Top Senate Democrat Endorses Decriminalizing Marijuana at the Federal Level - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-19/schumer-backs-decriminalizing-marijuana-at-the-federal-level <comment><USER2> Isn't this where the "states rights" Republicans should be piping up?

To cite an ongoing example of legalization: what Canada is doing is allowing the provinces to set up their own systems under a federal framework, of sorts. This looks like it will result in an array of different outcomes, ranging from a fairly liberal system where privately-owned retail can exist (like what Alberta is doing), to monopolies on par with what already exists for alcohol in many provinces (like Ontario and Quebec). Of course there are already disagreements over whether some provinces are already butting heads with the federal government over their respective implementations. For instance, the federal provision calls for allowing some home grow, while some provinces seem keen to ban that outright.

But it seems that there should be room for such a compromise in the US, where the federal government mostly gets out of the way and lets each state decide what they want to do.

<comment><USER3> Most Republicans on the federal level want to stay out of the way when it comes to decriminalizing marijuana.

Except for the far right....

[https://reason.com/archives/2018/02/02/renewed-war-on- mariju...](https://reason.com/archives/2018/02/02/renewed-war-on-marijuana- spurs-congress)

<comment><USER4> Republican Attorney General Jeff Sessions is also a vocal opponent (unless you consider him "far right").

<comment><USER3> Very much so. He's the last of a dying breed who still believed in the "tough on crime" narrative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's nice dear. I'm assuming he has no concrete plans to do this?

Just like Obama alluded to decriminalizing Marijuana for 9 years* along with Universal Healthcare and/or single payer?

There's a recent track record of making big promises in the Democratic Party, prior to selling out to corporate interests.

Obama's great explanation was "It just wouldn't work in our system"

So, if I'm skeptical and cynical, as I remember Obama also complaining about (not to make this all about him, it's just where it led as I finished writing this) it's because I just don't believe him.

*(1 being the election year prior)

<comment><USER6> The President has the power to decide what gets prosecuted or not, and Obama directed his Attorney General to not prosecute minor drug cases. Only congress can change laws, though.

Are you blaming Obama for failing to enact single-payer healthcare? After the years he spent just trying to get the AcA through Congress?

Congress makes laws, not the President.

<comment><USER5> Wow talk about drinking the kool-aid.

Dispensaries legalized in their respective states continued to be raided and robbed throughout the Obama administration, one has only to witness such a scene, where local police and sometimes even elected officials look on, as the federal government marches in and destroys a legal business.

Marijuana law up in smoke as agents raid dispensaries

[https://mg.co.za/article/2008-08-11-marijuana-law-up-in- smok...](https://mg.co.za/article/2008-08-11-marijuana-law-up-in-smoke-as- agents-raid-dispensaries)

there was no 'resistance' back then because Obama was the chosen one, who would lead us all into a golden age. Well, Obama's gone, and he didn't change shit in regards to drug laws, or at the very least neutering the DEA.

However, aside from my arguments from very limited first hand experience, there is also, oh right, all those pesky facts. Poor, powerless Obama, he's a victim!

Obama's War on Pot | The Nation

[https://www.thenation.com/article/obamas-war- pot/](https://www.thenation.com/article/obamas-war-pot/)

(you can google search statistics yourself. i'm not going to list out links to someone who is clearly stuck on "talking points" from some publicist.)

However, he loved using the DEA as tool when it suited him:

The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook

[https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama- hezbollah-d...](https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah- drug-trafficking-investigation/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly they need to do more of this to make a compelling reason to vote for them.

Just some key points I think they need to seriously try to enact

-legalize it

-universal healthcare

-New Deal style infrastructure programs

-re-negotiate cap and trade

Got any others?

<comment><USER8> They try all of that and are blocked at every turn.

The better question is: what are the compelling reasons to vote for the other side?

<comment><USER9> The only people I know who vote red are effectively single-issue voters. That issue? Abortion.

<comment><USER10> This says more about you than about people who vote "red".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anything that lessens the power of the criminal "justice" system, I'm all for it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well of course if there was a citizens referendum on the issue tomorrow morning it would be legalized nationwide. But we live in times where the body politic is miles away from where the public is on pretty much every major issue. That's not really supposed to happen in a democracy. But that's the USA for you.

</comment><comment><USER12> _De_ criminalize implies that there is some intrinsic immorality to self- affective substances. The term should really be _un_ criminalize, as it was only recently these meddling authoritarian shitheads conjured up the problem in the first place.

<comment><USER13> Tomato tomato

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are boatloads of studies that show heavy marijuana use is tied to brain damage.

Caution is warranted.

<comment><USER15> Heavy alcohol use is tied to all kinds of problems, yet when alcohol was outlawed, it was a disaster.</comment></comment>


Tuning Canabalt (explaining all the basic systems) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.semisecretsoftware.com/tuning-canabalt

<comment><USER2> Interesting how the game "cheats" in the players favor in order to give a better/more forgiving experience.

This reminds me of the mobile UI recommendations of making the hit boxes for buttons be larger than the button graphic, to forgive sloppy gestures.

<comment><USER3> It's not a rare thing for games to cheat in your favour, what was the last shooter where you had the same health as the hundreds of grunts and monsters you slew?

<comment><USER4> That's not the same; not enforcing "realism" (for want of a better word) isn't the same as cheating. A more appropriate example would be something like "when was the last time you played a shooter where your crosshair didn't stick to or gravitate towards enemy targets?".

<comment><USER5> That's rather common, too, among less-than-absolutely-hardcore-fps games which are still shooters and played in first person or over-the-shoulder. There's quite a few games in the genre that give enemies more health and weaponry than you have, but grant you superior tactical options.

<comment><USER6> Especially in console shooters. It's frowned upon in PC games somewhat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Articles like this only make me grumpy. I tried this game last year, but I gave up on it in disgust for being too hard. And now the developer is telling me that he made it easier than it could have been? Bah humbug!

Still, these details may explain why games like this are dime-a-dozen now. This one gave people the confidence to make their own, not realizing the details sweated by the original developer. Hence, all the knockoffs (especially on iOS) play worse; which initially surprised me, but now makes sense in retrospect.

</comment><comment><USER8> how well has canabalt sold?

totally different genre but i'm curious after reading about minecrafts success.

<comment><USER9> 115,000 copies as of March 2010 according to [http://www.next- gen.biz/features/gdc-semi-secret-talk-canaba...](http://www.next- gen.biz/features/gdc-semi-secret-talk-canabalt-flixel)

<comment><USER10> $2.99 * 115,000 copies = $343,850

That was over the course of 5 months = $68,770 per month

Impressive for a game that took 5 days to develop.

<comment><USER8> is app store their only sales vector? seems like it.

<comment><USER6> You could also play it online via flash. But that's free.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Looking for programming projects during summer-vacation - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for project-ideas to practice coding JavaScript during summer, when I'm on vacation. Do you guys have any ideas? Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Not concrete ideas, but some principles:

1\. Pick something you will find useful, or

2\. Have a hard deadline: "I must build X in 3 days."

This will help you actually finish your project. (Long version here: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/09/09/side- projects/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/09/09/side-projects/))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Build something that will help you.

Pick up some throwaway projects.

I did something like this - [https://100dayz.js.org/](https://100dayz.js.org/)

Now I look back at them & I say 'God did I write this' but it might help u with some of ur own ideas

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a big fan of looking at open data sets published by towns and cities, and then coming up with creative ways to make that information easily accessible online.

I've seen towns and cities that aren't big enough to have the budget to make a great website that makes all of the city's data easy discoverable. But many of them publish open data sets, and you can use the data to create an interesting project that is also useful to the city's residents.

Many large cities publish lots of open data, too. In general, there are already lots of apps built with the data sets from large cities, so I prefer to focus on the smaller ones because doing so offers a chance to create something that hasn't been done before. You might find that the data published by larger cities is more interesting, though.

Here are a few links to get started:

[https://opendata.cityofnewyork.us/](https://opendata.cityofnewyork.us/) [https://data.boston.gov/](https://data.boston.gov/) [https://data.ny.gov/](https://data.ny.gov/) [http://data.ottawa.ca/](http://data.ottawa.ca/) [https://data.albanyny.gov/](https://data.albanyny.gov/) [http://www.a2gov.org/services/data/Pages/default.aspx](http://www.a2gov.org/services/data/Pages/default.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER5> If you want something that doesn't require any other distractions (HTML, CSS etc) then Node.js is a good choice. How about writing a RESTful API or something else self-contained? A while ago I wrote a thing which tweets train delays in a few days [https://github.com/dcrichards/gordon](https://github.com/dcrichards/gordon) to try out some recent Node.js features and libraries.

</comment><comment><USER6> Read lots of science fiction. Find something awesome that no one thinks computers can do yet. Pare it down or limit its focus to the point where it might be practical. Don't worry about how much memory it uses or how slow it would run. Then, try to program it. You will push your limits and if it's awesome enough, people will be deeply impressed with your ability.

</comment><comment><USER7> Create an inverse of Tupper's self-referential formula where you can, given a drawing, find the corresponding value of K that draws that image.

===

SQL practice tool

I find that online tools for practicing SQL queries are inadequate, they suffer from numerous problems that should be addressed by any (new) alternative.

Specific question sets, i.e. a decent collection of division problems A website that looks like it was rendered this century Insight into the dataset being tested against. If I was to build this I could imagine doing it using a Python back-end and I would build in a roll-back feature if the tool ever was to be extended to such a degree that one may practice directives such as UPDATE.

Nice to have the opportunity to load in one's own dataset.

Inspiration [http://sqlfiddle.com/](http://sqlfiddle.com/) [http://sqlzoo.net/](http://sqlzoo.net/)

===

The developer app

Get a message (Tip of the day) each day with, for instance, hotkeys for your favorite editor/editors/programming languages.

Let users skip certain tips: "I already know this" so that it doesn't appear again. Use a Bloom-filter.

Let users select "Emacs", "Vim", "Git", etc.

===

Create a Boolean Algebra interpreter in Common Lisp

===

Implement an HTTP server with persistent connections in Haskell (look at STM)

===

Use Markov chains to create lolcats

===

Implement a Shell in Rust (posix grammar is here = [http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3...](http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html\)))

===

Implement various algorithms and data structures,

A-star Actor Model AVL Tree Binary Search Binary Search Tree Bloom-filter Breath-first iterative search Bucket/Radix sort Circular queue Closest pair HashMap In-place quicksort K-way merge Murmurhash Priority Queue Set Stack Union Find Vector (dynamic array)

</comment><comment><USER8> This might be a good place to start: [https://javascript30.com/](https://javascript30.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


The Times to host political polling site FiveThirtyEight - <AUTHOR> http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/the-new-york-times-to-host-political-polling-site-fivethirtyeight/

<comment><USER2> Interesting to see how/if this will change anything over there. Nate does a great job with his models, here's hoping he maintains editorial control.</comment>


CB Insights Sells List of Dying Tech Startups for $4,895 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbinsights.com/datastore/product/dying-tech-startups/

<comment><USER2> Hi - Anand from CB Insights here.

Couple of clarifications/answers based on comments below:

1\. We look at cash-on-hand along with scores from a technology we've built called Mosaic which looks for signals of strength or stress at private companies (a bit more on Mosaic here - <http://www.cbinsights.com/mosaic/>). So while cash remaining is an important input, we look at other measures (industry health, investor quality, HR activity, etc) to ultimately create the list.

2\. Startups are not the intended customer for the list. However, corporate M&A teams, corporate HR teams/recruiters/VCs looking to recruit talent and IP buyers are the customers. The list is a shortcut for their efforts.

3\. We're seeing a lot of the above folks buy the report which is a function of (a) it's not easy to find info as we've got the most seed data out there and (b) it is cheaper than alternatives, i.e. recruiters, consultants, trying to do in-house

4\. 0% of the data is from Crunchbase. We started a company initially called ChubbyBrain and the CB in our name is a tribute to our humble roots.

If any other questions, don't hesitate to reach out or ask in the comments. Happy to help.

<comment><USER3> Is CB considering Bitcoin as a payment method?

<comment><USER2> We're waiting for Stripe to integrate Bitcoin and then we will. Until then, we are happy to take the more old-school American dollar :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any discounts for those on the list?

</comment><comment><USER5> Your startup might find itself on that list pretty quick if it's in the habit of shelling out $5k for dubious data products...

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess the only way for a startup not to die is to raise funding, I mean it's not like it's going to make tangible profits or anything over 13 months.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I found this notion amusing too. The only way not to die is to raise money?

<comment><USER8> I think you have a process patent in there somewhere. Let me know when I need to license it when I get money to buy food.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So someone should take Crunchbase and sort for startups that raised a seed without a follow-on round within 13 months.

Would that not be the same info?

<comment><USER10> I assume they are pulling from Crunchbase, but it's not like people have any incentive to keep Crunchbase updated (in a lot of cases, you don't _want_ people to know you just raised $1.5mm a year or two after your initial seed money).

<comment><USER11> > (in a lot of cases, you don't want people to know you just raised $1.5mm a > year or two after your initial seed money).

Why? What kinds of signals does that send?

<comment><USER10> To channel Biggie Smalls via Ben Horowitz, "don't you know Bad Boys move in silence and violence?". If competitors don't know you're well funded, they're more likely to ignore you. On a more practical level, it keeps the bottom feeder companies which troll crunchbase/techcrunch/etc and spam you with recruiting/etc. offers for months away. There's not a lot of upside in letting people know you're funded before a product is launched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem I have with this list is you might not need to raise further capital. Capital for equity is the most expensive form of money compared to say a bond or loan from a bank.

</comment><comment><USER13> That's a bit expensive to see if I'm on the list.

</comment><comment><USER14> The return of FuckedCompany is upon us... sorta

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anybody know where to get something similar to this, but not focused on startups? That is, a more general "dying companies" list? That seems like something that could be useful... are there services that generate that sort of thing, or are you limited to just "the rumor mill" and what-have-you?

</comment><comment><USER16> Why not sell for an even $5,000?

<comment><USER17> The same reason that things sell for $1.95 instead of $2.00.

<comment><USER18> Convention? 99cent pricing is a hotly debated topic. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: KeepAndPlay.com Here is my 5 days side project - <AUTHOR> 	I was wondering whether it's possible to successfully create a weekend project and if so, with which quality. Here at HN I've read many stories of random people (to me they are like teachers) creating "Show HN" projects in 48 hrs which are amazingly awesome and also hit the top site of HN. So here I'm presenting mine: http://keepandplay.com. This is actually not a weekend project, I tried for it to be, but I failed. It actually took me 5 days to have it as it is right now. So I'm still profoundly skeptic on how to realize a 48 hrs side project with the look and feel and quality I would be satisfied with.
Here is how I spent most of the time. I worked between 8 and 14 hrs a day (I'm on vacation) - Searching and choosing a keepandplay.com domain - 2 hrs.
- Keepandplay backend - 1 day
- Logo design 6 hrs. I created 18 different prototypes
- Frontend design - 3 days. Even though this site looks really simple, designing it was really hard for me. Sometimes I found myself spending more time on design than on code. I basically took screenshots from similar sites (youtube, courser, onreplaytv, soundcloud, vimeo, vine, itunes, vevo) put them on an Omnigraffle page and compared all of them. Keepandplay is a combination of Soundcloud, Vine and OnreplayTV.
- Dealing with not required but necessary settings - 6 hrs
+ It's hard to believe, but developing a "simple" (48 hrs) website has a lot of stuff going on:

	    - Responsive design from 320x480 to 1920x1080, not forgetting portrait and landscape

	    - Favicons - which sometimes requires different logo design since the image is not big

	    - Setting some analytics tracker. i.e. register, generate code…

	    - Register site on Google SEO site
 I'm glad I'm finished now and I hope you guys like the outcome. If you do like it, do find it awesomely handy, then share it with all your friends and after that come back here and give some feedback. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Great job. Very polished for a quick project!</comment>


Best Places to Work in Federal Government - <AUTHOR> https://bestplacestowork.org/ <comment><USER2> International Space Station, the Moon, Mars?</comment>


Microsoft's Failed Attempt on Debian Packaging - <AUTHOR> https://www.preining.info/blog/2018/06/microsofts-failed-attempt-on-debian-packaging/ <comment><USER2> What are the advantages of "Open" R over R Studio?</comment>


How we got the unusual symbol used for the Mac menu command key - <AUTHOR> http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Swedish_Campground.txt <comment><USER2> It's actually interesting, because Job's complaint about "wearing out" the Apple logo with over-exposure is a well known problem in design… and, well, propaganda, too.

The Nazis had a similar problem towards the end of the war: absolutely everything they produced was adorned with a swastika. They called that phenomenon "Hakenkreutzkitsch" (swastika kitsch)

Just to be correct, because fanbois are easily upset: I'm in no way comparing Apple's marketing to 3rd Reich propaganda, instead I'm trying to show that Jobs made a _very good_ call here: it's a well-known problem, an old one at that. You lose the power of your symbol, its special meaning, and recognizability.

<comment><USER3> That, and it got tiring to explain to customers to "press Command+C to copy" only to hear back "Command? Oh, the Apple key?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is not just used in Northern Europe it is sometimes used on American maps to indicate places of interests when there is already a heavy amount of key symbols used. This is a great read and its no surprise Susan Kare referenced a international symbol dictionary, a mark of a true designer using a recognizable and readable symbol for a very important command, a true genius. If you swap out historic with place of interest to "copy" it makes a lot more sense. I wish people would take this care in designing symbols today, I've seen some freakish ones as of late on mobile phones, and especially touch devices. Have we forgotten a touch button is still a command button?

</comment><comment><USER5> I can see how you would connect it to a campground, but actually, in danish and swedish, its the sign for a Historic site.

Thats also the reason why ppl find it very very wierd in scandinavia.. why to copy a file, do i press "historic site" + c???

evidence [http://www.kulturarv.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/kulturarv/fort...](http://www.kulturarv.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/kulturarv/fortidsminder/storstensgrave/Kjephoej_Skilt.jpg)

<comment><USER6> Officially "Sevärdhet" ("Place of interest") in Swedish, doesn't have to be a historic site.

<comment><USER7> Same in Norway, and I assume this is how these signs are used throughout the Nordic countries. "Severdighet" could also be roughly translated into "tourist attractions", as they are mostly used for that.

<http://i.imgur.com/0jdn2.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now in Unicode: ⌘ 'PLACE OF INTEREST SIGN' (U+2318)

<http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2318/index.htm>

</comment><comment><USER9> We had these symbols in our coins before which to EURO

[http://www.treasurerealm.com/coinpapers/countrycoins/coins/F...](http://www.treasurerealm.com/coinpapers/countrycoins/coins/F/finland01.html)

<comment><USER10> Did they mean something?

<comment><USER6> The symbol is used in Finnish traffic signs as well, with the same meaning as in Sweden - place of interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting history!

Although I question whether a special symbol is even needed. The key in question already has the word "Command" written on it. Adding the symbol seems redundant and confusing, especially since it is not a universally known symbol. And the drop down menus could easily use an abbreviation, for example, "Cmd+Q" instead of ⌘Q.

Especially when used in combinations, I certainly find it a lot easier to read something like "Cmd+Alt+C" instead of all the little symbols jammed together.

</comment><comment><USER12> This story also explains something else for me:

I use the same keyboard, monitor and mouse with my Mac and my Windows machine. To make it easy to switch between them, I have a KVM switch. My keyboard is a Windows keyboard. Until now, I had wondered why my KVM switch maps the Windows key to the Mac's command key. Now I know: The Mac commmand key used to be an apple... the Microsoft logo maps to the Apple logo (historically).

<comment><USER13> Small technicality: It isn't your KVM that's doing the mapping, but the OS that's interpreting the key this way. I believe the keyboards send the same signal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Kinda neat to realise that the Mac is part-Swedish. :D

</comment><comment><USER15> Exactly what I thought before reading :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I guess this means we actually have three ways to describe a keyboard shortcut: Command + C, Open-Apple + C, Campground + C.</comment>


Found: a 90s chatroom for horses on a bunch of old floppy disks - <AUTHOR> http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/265340/horsechat-horsechat-horsechat-horsechat/ <comment><USER2> Great bit of history, now providing a valuable service for all the Internet dwelling horses</comment>


Websites blocking out adblock-users by detecting with a script may be illegal - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/04/18/publishers-snooping-ad-blockers-are-breaking-law-claims-privacy-consultant <comment><USER2> "He went on to explain that the Guardian's social media management software provided by Tribal Fusion enables tracking and data mining of users "without the consent of the user to allow that tracking of data" in order to feed back to advertisers."

Don't you have to agree to the website's terms to use that website in the first place? If you're already breaking those terms by blocking their ads (and thus their revenue), do you really have a legal leg to stand on here?

Isn't saying "whether or not you use an ad-blocker" is private information like saying you should be able to stand on a street corner in a bright pink shirt and people shouldn't look at you because it's your business what color shirt you wear?

I can't see this as anything but a ridiculous attempt to use a legal loophole.

If you want to see their content, enable their ads. If you really don't want to see their ads, don't use their site. It's not really that hard. You aren't entitled to their content.

<comment><USER3> > You aren't entitled to their content.

I am entitled to whatever their server sends my browser when I make a request. I am also entitled to alter that content in the browser in any way I see fit, including blocking their advertising. They may _want_ to be compensated for their content and server costs through advertising, but unfortunately for them the web has been designed in such a way as to allow the rest of the world not to care about what they want.

The advertising model on the web is just fundamentally flawed and doomed to failure. It's essentially an honor system, but as long as people _can_ block ads and still get content, they will. Trying to detect that is an understandable reaction on the part of businesses, but the ad blockers will only be redesigned to compensate, and people would probably much rather go elsewhere than even be slightly annoyed by advertising.

Companies need to accept that the ability to block ads is an intrinsic part of the web, just as the ability to turn the channel is an intrinsic part of a television. They just can't _make_ us look at their ads if we don't want to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like a lot of work to stop users who will probably simply not view the site anyways. It would be interesting to know if having these anti-adblocker techniques makes people turn off their adblockers to use the site.

<comment><USER5> It would be interesting, it could probably be done with browser fingerprinting. I would wager that some of the larger companies have done this.

Personally, it's a question of what the content is. If it's a summary of objective facts, I'm not disabling my blocker. I can probably find the same facts elsewhere that doesn't require me to disable my blocker. If it's an intriguing analysis by someone respected, it's higher value content to me and I likely won't be able to find the same content elsewhere unless it's been stolen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I cannot read with animation & distracting colours next to text - so, for me, adverts are equivalent to blocking a site.

Non distracting ads are fine, reddit ads for instance.

Bad ads are not acceptable.

Executives who punish fans seem shortsighted.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://i.imgur.com/sNQNJNd.png](http://i.imgur.com/sNQNJNd.png)

</comment><comment><USER8> Sniffing for ad-blockers fits the description of malware.</comment>


Ask HN:  What is the difference between TNW plagiarism, and the other blogs - <AUTHOR>

They all do the same thing - someone writes an interesting article and one of the popular blogs comes along, compresses all the important parts into a summary, tucks the attribution out of the way where it won't leak much traffic, and then hits the social news sites.
AOL famously pioneered this model and today most major tech blogs we see on HN have adopted it at least partially.
Yesterday TNW got called out for doing it, their CEO mentioned that it was 'normal' and he's pretty much right ... plagiarism is normal for modern blogging, unless somehow it's different when Engadget, TheVerge, Gizmodo, CNet, TorrentFreak, everyone related to Apple rumors etc do it.
What is the difference between The Verge rewriting FastCompany's article [1] and the TNW [2] event?
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/15/3021574/google-plus-study-weak-public-activity-engagement
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972651 <comment><USER2> 1\. TNW originally did not credit the source blog at all. And it wasn't a summary — the piece was literally just a short intro and then his exact words taken without any acknowledgement.

2\. After this was brought to TNW's attention, they silently slipped in a link to the source blog, but still copied his post almost word-for-word without indicating that it was a quote. They also refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing and basically told the guy whose copyright they infringed to stop being a drama queen.

That is way beyond the standard rewriting that most big blogs and newspapers do. Look at the Verge and Fast Company articles you linked and see how much of the text outside quotes is copied verbatim from one to the other — in TNW's article, aside from the intro paragraph, it was pretty close to 100%.

</comment><comment><USER3> The same difference between: 1) A well known company violating Google guidelines, saying I'm sorry, and getting by with a slap in the wrist. and 2) A not as well known webmaster violating Google guidelines, saying I'm sorry with no response from Google.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just wondering out loud and not exactly on topic:

I wonder if the gist of the problem is that those folks who do real original blog writing spend "too much" time on that and not enough on promoting it, then folks who are focused on making money do what you are complaining about by basically reversing their priorities and investing their time in packaging and promoting.

I kind of wonder that because I write original content, fairly regularly in recent months, but that has not resulted in an uptick in traffic nor an uptick in revenue. So I am now also trying to figure out how to promote my work, do SEO...blah blah blah in addition to doing the writing. I'm pretty frustrated at my situation generally and it is all the more frustrating to see you basically promoting TNW yet again by calling them out on something you disapprove of while I can't get any mention anywhere by anyone.

Which is to say that like it or not, it works -- even you are driving traffic to their site by bitching about it instead of finding actual original content to submit to HN, which would be a small step in the right direction and the antidote to the problem if more widely adopted.</comment>


Another $1K App on the App Store - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-fleas/id519800737?mt=8 <comment><USER2> My guess is that is to manipulate all of the app discount sites that scan the app store and report on apps that have recently been discounted. If the developers drop the app to $0.99 then all of those sites will report this as a huge saving, and possibly feature it more prominently as a result (I'm assuming those sites are all automated - and there are a lot of them!)

<comment><USER3> I am the developer of one of those "discount sites". Well I do not have a site but apps for iOS and OS X that show you the discounts. I filter those things out on the server side in extreme cases and my Mac app allows you to specify your own filter criteria like in iTunes where you can have smart playlists. So for example you could ignore apps where the old price is $999 and the new price is $0.99 or something like that.

<http://store-news-app.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wanted to say this must be an April Fool's thing, but looking at the past price points <http://appshopper.com/games/the-fleas-2>

</comment><comment><USER5> That's fine. If they lower their price quickly back to $.99 Apple can ban them (and has stated they will ban developers engaging in blatant price manipulations). If they don't, no one will buy it, and if some poor schmuck does he will get a refund on an accidental purchase.

<comment><USER6> Why would apple want to ban people from dropping the price of an app from $999 to $0.99? Are they just trying to make sure that people who buy at high prices don't feel bad about their purchases?

<comment><USER7> Why would you want your customers to feel cheated? It also leads to more refund requests, which have a processing overhead.

<comment><USER8> Right, and Apple debits your account for the purchase price (not the net 70% amount) when a user demands a refund. So a lot of this and you can actually run negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its usually done to trick the top grossing apps rankings. Developer will raise the price to $1k then buy himself some copies using different fake accounts, thus raising the ranking. Once ranking is achieved, they will reduce the price in hope to get more sales.

<comment><USER10> I'm no expert in App Store rankings but isn't that quite expensive way of doing so? Assuming you pay it 10 times, you end up with burning 3000 dollars in Apple transaction cuts.

And I doubt 10 sales, will get you into top-grossing

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand -- why would they do this? Trying to trick someone into dropping $1k on their app? Or is there some way you can game the app store by messing with prices?

<comment><USER5> They do it so that when they lower the price to $.99 3 days later, the robots pick up on the 10000% lower price.

<comment><USER12> It would only be 99.9% lower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> this seems like a brilliant online ordering system for heroin

<comment><USER14> ... with built-in money laundering.

<comment><USER15> at a cost of only 30$!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you have an AppAnnie account you can see the grossing ranks. Looks like someone in India bought a copy. It's the #6 best-grossing iPhone/iPod app in India right now. It also peaked at #21 in Malaysia on the 29th. So it looks like 2 sales at that price.

[http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/519800737/ranking/#view=gros...](http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/519800737/ranking/#view=grossing- ranks&date=2013-04-01)

<comment><USER17> Almost makes me wonder if they're trying to trick people - e.g. this just see a price starting with 99 and assume 99 cents

How does Apple handle things like this? Does it immediately auth the CC for purchases over a certain amount?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> You can see the erratic pricing activity here: <http://appshopper.com/games/the-fleas-2>

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm one of the developers of this app and I can say that you shouldn't expect a price drop on this app soon. It's been 100$ for several months and now it's 1000$. It's not a special type of promotion, not a way to trick app review sites, it's just 999$ for an app and that's it. Some people can afford buying an app for 1k$ and you know what? We are not one of them so we just can't afford buying our own app for promotion purposes :) Those people who don't like our app are always able to receive their money back. Some do, but some don't and it helps us continue the development of our new project. You can continue discussing "how scum we are" but the truth is no one is trying to fool anybody. It's absolutely legal to sell an app for 999$, and those who bought it for 99$ or 999$ don't write reviews that spill dirt on us or our game, they just play it and make some effort to entertain themselves, and those who got it for free very often are too lazy to read 5 words in the training mode just to understand how to play. I'm done.

<comment><USER20> This must be trolling.

> Those people who don't like our app are always able to receive their money > back.

Can you explain the refund process?

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure about the customer loses but when he requests a refund, we don't receive a cent of it. For us it's 100% money back. People do that quite often. And it's not trolling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> When price changes from say free to 1K and people have to update do you have to pay for the update?

<comment><USER5> No

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Are there legit apps over $100 ?

<comment><USER23> I recall one that helped you study for the bar exam and was really expensive. I assumed it was legitimate.

<comment><USER24> This one I think: <https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/barmax-ca/id345722008?mt=8>

Called BarMax. They even call it "cheaper" on their official web-site. Which just raises the question: cheaper than /what/?

<comment><USER25> $999 is cheap for a bar review. Prices do vary from state to state, but BarMax, Barbri, and Kaplan all offer programs for the CA bar.

Barbri for California: $4,135 [http://www.barbri.com/courseInfo/barReviewCourse/pricing.htm...](http://www.barbri.com/courseInfo/barReviewCourse/pricing.html)

Kaplan for California $2,190 [http://www.kaptest.com/Bar-Exam/Bar-Review- Courses/General-B...](http://www.kaptest.com/Bar-Exam/Bar-Review- Courses/General-Bar-Review/complete-california-bar-review-course.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I ignored this initially, thinking it had be an April Fools' joke. Then I saw the comments piling up and thought I should check it out. I will continue to treat it as an April Fools' joke.

</comment><comment><USER27> It seem to be a good way to have free marketing. They will probably drop it back tomorow to free or 0.99$

</comment><comment><USER28> free marketing? I'll take it!</comment>


Movie2K Disappears Without Warning - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/movie2k-disappears-without-warning-130529/

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://movie2kmovies.blogspot.de/> is still up, but not telling, why the main site is down.</comment>


The betrayal of Bntr - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/15/the-betrayal-of-bnter/

<comment><USER2> \- "Bnter was so star-struck by Spark"? I've never heard of entrepreneurs being star-struck by investors.

\- 4 months of due diligence? Many rounds are dead if they drag out past 2 months.

\- "Only then did it occur to the Spark team to check with Tumblr founder David Karp to make sure he wouldn't view this as a competing company"? This is usually step 1 of the due-diligence process. Things like this don't just randomly "occur" to professional VC companies.

There are so many odd things in this article, I'm not sure if it's just Sarah Lacy embellishing with her writing, or what...

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why you'd be star struck if you'd already raised funding from Chris Dixon and Ron Conway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm usually a big TechCrunch fan, but I really dislike this article.

From the last paragraph:

"It remains unclear exactly why Spark– a firm known for treating entrepreneurs well– acted this way, and there's enough he-said-he-said behind the scenes that we may be missing some details."

A VC that is known to be entrepreneur friendly, they know they probably don't have all the details, and yet they still write an article that portrays Spark in a terrible light? I would really rather have all the facts first.

<comment><USER5> Sarah is a very thoughtful and serious journalists, she wouldn't write this story if there wasn't something here. She is pretty open about the fact that she obviously doesn't have all the details - that is good reporting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> To me , the classless one is the Tumblr guy getting incensed with a barely- related-possibly-in-the-near-future-if-they-dont-pivot startup that was getting funded.

<comment><USER7> Bntr is essentially just Tumblr chat posts, no?

<comment><USER8> Perfect if BNTR it is buitlt on top of Tumblr

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Spark is actually one of the VCs I like best. In general they are pretty upstanding.

This shows how careful VCs have to be nowadays though.

<comment><USER10> _This shows how careful VCs have to be nowadays though._

... and startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've known Bijan for a few years now. He's consistently been forthright, honest and remarkably generous with his time. He's also not one to badmouth a company that he and Spark chose not to invest in -- he's classy enough to not take part in a mudslinging match.

I don't know what happened -- nor do I expect to find out -- but I'm certain that there's more to this story. And that Bijan navigated what may have been a bad situation with as well as he could.

Happily mixing metaphors, I believe that is sour grapes blown out of proportion and then fanned by a TC article.

<comment><USER12> i second everything sanj says. there is always two sides to a story and sarah only told one side in her post

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Bnter was so star-struck by Spark, the company hadn't widely pitched itself to other investors, but told the ones that it had talked to it'd be going with Spark"

Two things,

1.) I never heard of anyone getting star-struck by investors, but If you do get "star-struck" by investors you'll have a hard time getting their money.

2.)Another lesson: If you can bootstrap than bootstrap. You're better off thinking about how you're going to monetize your business. If you don't understand this please read getting real and rework by 37signals.

</comment><comment><USER14> Weird and classless that they refused to pay a break-up fee.

<comment><USER15> One that wasn't contractually obligated? I'd be shocked if they got it.

<comment><USER16> The VC and angel world are tiny and it all revolves around reputation and trust. The negative perception is going to cost Spark a lot more than the breakup fee. I'm shocked that they DIDN'T get it.

<comment><USER17> Though, $200,000 on a $2 million raise is a bit high for break up fee I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> With regards to the startup in question: it's not actually a messaging product as stated in TFA, is it? It seems just like something where you paste in an IM conversation and the app formats it nicely.

<comment><USER19> Tumblr has the same thing.

<comment><USER20> Bntr looks to do to Tumblr what Twitter did to Facebook and OKCupid did to Craigslist: Build a service around a feature of a larger platform that does lots of stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Bnter was so star-struck by Spark, the company hadn't widely pitched itself to other investors, but told the ones that it had talked to it'd be going with Spark."

That seems like a pretty big mistake. It sounds like Bnter could have probably still come away from this with VC backing.

</comment><comment><USER22> The good news is that having this article written about them in Techcrunch would probably be to their advantage. They _do_ have several things going for them - investment from Dixon and Conway, for instance.

I'm fairly confident that they'll bounce back.

</comment><comment><USER8> This case buttresses the point that if it is not signed, it does not exist. I hope they bounce back strong.

<comment><USER17> Not that much. Term sheets aren't binding, so the fact that it wasn't signed is pretty much just decoration in this story.

<comment><USER23> All agreements are binding, term sheets as well if they are formulated as agreements. But what you agree upon in a termsheet is formulated as "if we do a deal, these are the terms". According to the story, in this case there was also a substantial break-up fee written into the agreement. It might be the case that the signature is all that is missing to make it enforcable.

However, there is without a doubt more to the story than revealed in the article. The missing signature might as well be a red herring, but not because "term sheets aren't binding".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > _The deal isn't done until the money is in the bank._

Is this not commonsense? No offense implied, but I, a just-another-software- developer, have said "Thanks, but No thanks" or "Lets get over with the formalities first" on few occasions myself, when due-diligence was not done yet or the other party was hesitant to do it.

Its upto each individual/entity to secure one's interests, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER25> _"... when Spark– investors in such rock star companies as Twitter and Tumblr– came after Bnter, she and her partner were flattered. At the encouragement of existing investors and mentors, they took the train to Boston to pitch the partnership. Spark loved it and negotiations continued for months. ..."_

How do you tactfully say to yourselves, entourage & VC's _"not at the moment"_?

</comment><comment><USER24> This is journalism at its absolute worst. When an article/story/incident/conflict essentially just shows one side of the story, it is ALWAYS, without exception biased.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very surprised they didn't pay the breakup fee, simply to avoid articles and threads like these. Reputation is all you have in this business.

</comment><comment><USER26> _> >Spark refused to pay a $200,000 break up fee to help cover the expenses the lean company had started to take on .. _

So this "lean" company spent around $200,000 on expenses relating to the _possibility_ of getting VC investment that they apparently didn't need (and didn't originally plan for)

In the VC/angel funded world, I guess this passes as "lean".

</comment><comment><USER27> $200k. I don't know what the legal cost is but 200k seem a little too much for a $2m round.

<comment><USER28> I didn't read that as 200k for legal fees, but as a break up fee. Something akin to: sorry it isn't going to work. It's not you, it's us. We know we caused a major disruption for you, so here's something for your trouble

<comment><USER27> I read that 200k was the cost that bnter had incurred because of the deal. I don't know what else there could be other than legal fees. Maybe a lease for a much bigger space that they had needed.

<comment><USER29> Wasn't there the salary of a new employee who would not have been hired at that stage?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple's Latest iPad Release Is Big on Privacy for Education - <AUTHOR> https://choosetoencrypt.com/news/apples-latest-ipad-release-is-big-on-privacy-for-education/ <comment><USER2> Apple gets it. They really have no choice if they're dealing with kids though. I don't know how Google manages to control the majority of the education market for tablets (60%)...because of the immense tracking that they do.</comment>


South Korea NIS admits to "packet tapping" Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/496473.html <comment><USER2> South Korea does not "possess the technology to decrypt the packets transmitted over Internet lines after intercepting them", no matter what this credulous article says.

The list of things law enforcement can do to capture GMail messages without secretly having compromised the most important encrypted protocol in the world includes:

* Having owned up the target's box and installed malware

* Having owned up the target's box and installed a bogus certificate

* Redirecting the target to a bogus GMail and assuming the target doesn't care about cert warnings

* Posing as a man in the middle and assuming the target doesn't care about cert warnings

and on and on.

Is it outside the realm of possibility that a nation state actor might have figured out a flaw in the SSL/TLS protocol that would allow them to decrypt traffic? No.

Is it outside the realm of possibility that such an actor could have a bogus root certificate, or a bogus Google certificate? No.

Is it outside the realm of possibility that an actor possessing one of those things would then proceed to use that capability in the course of mundane law enforcement activity, on the record, exposed to public court proceedings? Yes. It is unpossible that that happened.

<comment><USER3> The most probable situation here (if it actually occurred) is that South Korea owns a certificate authority that is accepted by browsers and did a MITM attack with their own google cert.

<comment><USER2> I don't know how probable it is that South Korea has the capability to mint bogus Google certificates.

I do think it's highly _improbable_ that they would use that capability for run-of-the-mill law enforcement cases.

<comment><USER4> What makes you think that? Have you read the Soghoian,Stamm Certified Lies paper? <http://files.cloudprivacy.net/ssl-mitm.pdf>

They're not obvious attacker certs, but Ralph Holtz has found some very strange certs in S. Korea with SN:"Government of Korea" and CA:TRUE. [http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg01...](http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg01443.html)

Also, it's not clear that this is "run of the mill law enforcement". This is NIS, the S. Korean state intelligence service, which is admitting to having done this.

<comment><USER2> In public court proceedings. Come on.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps they didn't get the memo. :-) You know, the one that says:

"First rule of State-run CA Club is...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Odds that NIS is actually decoding SSL packets: 00.1%

Odds that this was before Gmail instituted HTTPS or that there is some other explanation that the reporter missed: 99.9%

However, importance if the former is the case: World changing news. But extremely unlikely.

<comment><USER6> Seems to me pretty clear that SSL is kind of a joke as far as security goes, a little like WEP wireless security. Yes, unlike WEP if everything is working properly SSL is in theory safe. But there are so many gotchas, from the byzantine CA system to the fact that most of the time when a browser warns you that a certificate is bad there's nothing wrong, SSL just doesn't hold up to a determined attacker (especially a government.)

<comment><USER7> WEP is completely broken. Even if you do everything right, it's trivial for an attacker to access a WEP-protected network.

      most of the time when a browser warns you that a certificate is bad there's nothing wrong

I've never had a false-positive browser warning. I assume you're complaining about Firefox's and Chrome's treatment of self-signed certificates, which is completely appropriate. Self-signed certificates should always be rejected, unless the user has manually added them to the keystore.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that to the average user, a self-signed certificate that they should accept appears EXACTLY THE SAME as a bad SSL certificate.

<comment><USER7> Users should not accept self-signed certificates. IMO, browsers shouldn't even offer them the option. If someone is smart enough to verify the certificate fingerprint, they can add it to their certificate store manually.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. SSL is meant to do 2 things: prove identity and provide encryption. Self-signed certificates do just the latter. While, yes, they might provide a false sense of security in that they can't prevent MITM attacks, at least you're not sending out data in the open.

<comment><USER4> Ever since the first released version SSLv2, [http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/ssl/draft02...](http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/ssl/draft02.html) it has had the stated goal of defending against MitM attack.

Still, if protection from completely passive eavesdropping is all you care about, you can use anonymous Diffie-Hellman to negotiate an ephemeral key. The protocol supports it. Heck a lot of home-grown client software doesn't even check the name on the cert and ends up with effectively just that by accident.

Feel free to add your own self-signed exceptions. I find it useful myself.

But that's not what HTTPS is and it's not how web browsers work. By definition, the lock icon in the user's browser means that the server (as displayed in the URL) has been authenticated to the user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One would assume they forced a CA to sign a false google.com certificate and substituted that for the real one, MitM style, in order to do the decryption. Governments are obviously capable of this.

Firefox's Cert Patrol or Chrome's certificate pinning are really the best defenses against this kind of thing. If you're on Chrome 13 or later, you're mostly guaranteed that gmail.com is the real deal.

</comment><comment><USER11> Tapping is a mistranslation of "sniffing".

(At least according to Reddit's discussion on this event).

<comment><USER12> Link?

<comment><USER13> Discussion: [http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/kj25j/south_korea_ad...](http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/kj25j/south_korea_admits_to_packet_tapping_gmail/)

Specific comment: [http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/kj25j/south_korea_ad...](http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/kj25j/south_korea_admits_to_packet_tapping_gmail/c2knx71)

To corin_ : perhaps he wanted a link to see the discussion rather than a source.

<comment><USER12> This was what I was interested in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is probably an old pre-default HTTPS Gmail, man in the middle attack and the original article is badly written as others have posted. However, the man in the middle based packet inspection and injection is widely used. From what I can tell this is how the censorship banner (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KCSC-Warning.png>) gets pasted over JS and html partials within sites the government takes issue to. Packet inspection is almost certainly being widely used.

</comment><comment><USER15> Every country in the world is "packet tapping" (whatever this means) Gmail.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you squeeze in enough time for book reading? - <AUTHOR> Work is busy: dev, meeting, troubleshooting, various pings, email, chats, ...
Life is busy: kids, wife/husband, house, car, shopping, eating, fun, ...
Are you able to read books, not on vacation, but during weekdays? If yes, how do you get time? <comment><USER2> I had this problem. Super busy during the day at work, I drive to work so I can't read during my commute, etc.

I ended up buying a kindle with a backlit screen and started reading in bed for 15-30 minutes right before going to bed. I picked up a library card that gives me access to a bunch of kindle books for free and my amazon prime also gives me access to quite a few books I can read for free. I buy books for the kindle every now and then

</comment><comment><USER3> I take public transport to work so that I can get a 1 1/2 hours to read everyday. And sometimes while I'm doing my laundry.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to figure this out also. I'm stuck ready stuff for work during the entire commute just to (barely) stay on top of the latest news. I can't find time to read a real book, and it is frustrating as hell.

</comment><comment><USER5> For me it's during my commute. I take public transport and read on it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Audio books are great way to read esp. while commute/driving and evening/morning threadmill sessions (double benefit of improving health + knowledge).

</comment><comment><USER7> One trick is I try not to bring my phone to bed with me. Then last thing at night, first thing in the morning I have time to read

</comment><comment><USER8> I stop using my computer and phone at 9pm every evening, and plan to go to bed by 10:30pm.

So I have at least 1 hour and a half for reading.

</comment><comment><USER9> Read in bed instead of going on your phone.

</comment><comment><USER10> Audio books whenever I'm cooking, cleaning, driving, or exercising

<comment><USER11> I can no longer fall asleep without listening to an audiobook. Currently listening to HPatMoR.</comment></comment>


5 Creepy Things Your ISP Could Do If Congress Repeals FCC's Privacy Protections - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/five-creepy-things-your-isp-could-do-if-congress-repeals-fccs-privacy-protections <comment><USER2> All of these creepy things and more _could have been done all along_ , including the entire Obama administration through right now.

Why did the EFF not care about it until now?</comment>