DataKit: It's like Parse, just open source. Written in node.js and ObjC. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eaigner/DataKit/

<comment><USER2> Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I can't find this in the docs: Does this handle users and permissions, as, I believe, Parse can? I can't have just any user able to change any data.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not totally thrilled about having a 'secret' key embedded in the app that's distributed publicly.

I had a brief skim over the code and I can't see any access control stuff so I'm guessing this key has full access.

If that's the case, I can't see how this could ever be suitable for use in any real app.

<comment><USER4> What's the difference to the "clientKey" of Parse's SDK? The requests should be served over SSL anyway, so if your point is you don't want to distribute a key you got the same problem with Parse. You can obfuscate the key though.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't matter whether you use SSL or not. If it's in your app, it can be found quite easily.

Parse provides you with a few different keys and also offers ACL functionality. I'm still not too crash hot on expecting the client to setup an ACL on their own objects though...

<comment><USER5> can you propose how an client can authenticate with this type of service without a key?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I originally planned it as a commercial project, but then decided to open source it. Let's see if that was a good idea and people actually need it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice. I had a go at implementing the same thing: <https://github.com/olegp/tokenize>

Here's the discussion that got me thinking about it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3534921>

</comment><comment><USER7> I am interested with all the tools running above Node.js, but what is exactly the purpose of this web app backend? Using a database? Some explanations would be welcomed. I found only a list of classes.

<comment><USER4> You don't need to implement APIs anymore. You can use the DataKit classes to interact with the web/db backend.

<comment><USER8> I too find that a rationale and list of problems it solves is needed. Sell me on the added value of your creation.</comment></comment></comment>


The Boy Whose Brain Could Unlock Autism - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/the-boy-whose-brain-could-unlock-autism-70c3d64ff221

<comment><USER2> In the title the word Could should be replaced with Might or May.

<comment><USER3> Did you understand it? Then it doesn't need to be replaced.

<comment><USER4> I didn't even click the article because, AFAIK, no one has "unlocked" autism yet and thought it was spam.

"May" or "might" would have made the tense clearer.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I Don't Use Promises and Async/Await Abstractions in Node - <AUTHOR> https://guseyn.com/posts/why-i-dont-use-promises-and-async-await?v=1.0.124 <comment><USER2> "Async/await causes you to lose control of your data flow, use my library that completely hides it instead!"

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not sure that it hides it, it just declaratively represents it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What could I do besides programming? - <AUTHOR> I've been a developer for 20 years now, but in recent years I haven't gotten much done and I don't seem to enjoy programming anymore at all. I like the theory, but once it gets to the gruesome details I can hardly muster the willpower to wade through all the documentation and setup boilerplate.
So I wonder if it is time to admit that I am not a developer anymore.
I am just not sure what else I could do. Where can I go from programming? I have a family to support so I can not take a low paying job, unfortunately.
I have plans to do some writing, but I wouldn't count on it earning money in the foreseeable future.
Teaching might be another option, but I worry that it would present the same problem as programming to me. <comment><USER3> Were you involved in the hiring process much? If so, you could definitely do well as a recruiter. Hiring is a difficult process for many companies and having a recruiter with a strong engineering background helps create much better funnels for candidates. You will also have a much easier time getting responses from potential candidates because you will be able to say more interesting things about a company's tech in your cold emails instead of the generic copy/paste templates most engineers get in their inbox.

<comment><AUTHOR> No hiring experience. I would be interested in that, although it seems as if nobody really knows how to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You usually can't go from a lucrative career where you have a lot of experience to an unrelated career where you have no experience without taking a big paycut. If you need to maintain your salary, it'd be much, _much_ easier to figure out how to fix your burnout.

Failing that, you can possibly maintain your salary with a lateral move to a role that deals with developers without doing any development directly - <USER2> likely product management. This move is most likely to be successful at the company you're currently with, because they already know you - it's harder to change companies _and_ functional roles simultaneously without taking that salary reduction.

</comment><comment><USER5> Turns out this is a common problem for programmers long in the tooth.

Former pro-athletes often move into the ranks of coaching or Front Office Management. The same idea applies to programmers, you can either find a way to leverage your expertise-- or get out of the game entirely.

Here's a good read, "In search of the fabled elephants' graveyard of software developers over 40" > [http://www.infoworld.com/article/2617093/it-careers/it- caree...](http://www.infoworld.com/article/2617093/it-careers/it-careers- where-do-all-the-old-programmers-go.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you like the big theoretical approach, you might want to go into an architect or principal engineer roles. These typically involve higher-level considerations of systems design, data flow, etc. without delving into the tedious boilerplate (that's for lowly devs! /s)

Of course if you want to get out of programming altogether, you could try writing a book about your experiences or whatnot and market it as a career advice.

Or you could live my dream and go back to school for chemistry and become the High Priest of LSD

</comment><comment><USER7> It's never to late to reinvent yourself.

What are some of your hobbies? Sports? Art? Gardening?

Your could coach little league sports or produce art or start a landscaping company. Wether it brings enough money to support you and your family is a different issue, but theres no reason you can't plan the transition while your still a programmer.

You could go back to school and get a law degree or teaching degree.

I was saying just yesterday, if I ever left programming for whatever reason, I'd start a small remodeling company. I enjoy it that much and it's so far away from programming, it might rest my mind for a bit.

</comment><comment><USER8> Suppose there is a 50/50 chance that teaching presents "the same problem as programming". That's better than the certainty that programming presents "the same problem as programming". And part of the problem of programming may be that it's "old hat" while teaching would, even in the worst case, be a novelty that sucks.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> True about the odds for myself, but I wouldn't want to be responsible for destroying some kid's enthusiasm for coding.

Still, I might look into it. Salaries are not that great for teachers, but maybe sufficient.

<comment><USER8> My experience around kids is that an adult has to go out to the extremes to destroy a child's enthusiasm. More common is that the child sensibly decides that a subject is not for them all on their own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > ... but in recent years I haven't gotten much done and I don't seem to enjoy > programming anymore at all.

Maybe fix the "haven't gotten much done"? You might need to switch jobs to one where you _can_ get stuff done. That might fix the "don't enjoy programming anymore" part, too.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sales, Training or Recruiting. Doubt you can make the kind of money you do now, but it's definitely different.

</comment><comment><USER11> You can be an consultant as programmer skills like communication, problem solving are transferable.

</comment><comment><USER12> You should take some time off if you can afford it. Like, a few months at least. Try all new things you can think of during this time and you will definitely find something that interests you enough to switch to.

<comment><USER13> that's what i'm about to do for the same problem ... except i have just one year of experience !

<comment><USER14> I caution you to take such a break so early in your career. There are a lot of things to be learned at this stage and you can get valuable knowledge from your experienced colleagues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How about creating a blog about something non-programming that you love and improving your writing skills?

Or how about creating an online course through one of the education platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll definitely try blogging, and I have thought about online courses, too. I expect it would take a while to make an income from that, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Developer advocate/outreach? Project manager?

<comment><AUTHOR> Technically a good idea, but difficult since my enthusiasm for programming has become so low.

<comment><USER16> I think that, viewed the right way, your weariness of programming would be helpful. You know what burns people out and makes them unhappy, and both of those jobs involve preventing those things from happening.

As a developer advocate, you really just need to be a people person. You need to be willing to understand what makes people happy or frustrated and bring that back to decision-makers at your company. You, of all people, should be able to relate fairly easily.

<comment><AUTHOR> Possibly, but somehow I would have to convince somebody to let me try.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why America Loses Every War It Starts - <AUTHOR> http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/11/why-america-loses-every-war-it-starts/142646/ <comment><USER3> Can we first define what winning a war and losing a war mean?

If we're talking about politically, yes we've lost the politic wars. The reasons for that are straightforward. We don't care what the local populace wants or realistically needs.

Militarily, we destroy the people we designate as enemies easily and without a problem. Most wars of attrition are easy to win when you've got the bigger gun and more people.

We need to stop thinking of wars as chess matches and start thinking of them as 4x games where the populace actually matters and gaining hearts and minds is actually important.

</comment><comment><USER4> What exactly counts as "starting a war"? The Korean war is mentioned here as an example, but that war was started by the Korean communists when they invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950. The United States UN-sanctioned involvement was a reaction to that. Does that really count as "starting a war"?

</comment><comment><USER5> The media (and the author of this book) love to portray America as "stumbling" into yet another conflict. Here's a great thread with numerous examples of this: [https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/878006629802713089](https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/878006629802713089)

Oops, we accidentally were forced into invading another country and building another permanent military base. The "enemy" leave us no choice!

The purpose of these wars is not to "win" in the traditional sense, but rather to ensure US business interests are being protected around the world. And by that metric, Vietnam, the "Cold War", both Iraq wars, etc. have been successful.

<comment><USER6> Could you elaborate on how the Vietnam War succeeded in "protecting US business interests around the world"?

In my view, first, the Vietnam War has little to do with "business interest," more with containing the spread of communism.

Second, the Vietnam War did not succeed in containing communism. After the US's withdrawal, North Vietnam took the entire country, and North Vietnam allies came to power in Laos and Cambodia.

So I'd count the Vietnam War as a big loss in terms of containing communism, and a neutral in terms of protecting US business interest.

<comment><USER7> > Second, the Vietnam War did not succeed in containing communism

Sure it did, or at least it helped. As with many conflicts of that era, North and South Vietnam were proxies for the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A.

Note that the U.S.S.R. no longer exists. It's been completely eliminated from the face of the earth. That counts as winning, by most standards.

Vietnam started the process of bleeding them dry, and Afghanistan finished it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Among other dubious things, they seem to be using "lose" to include what most people would see as "win with less speed and/or greater cost and/or less expansive goals than what some armchair generals speculate could have been achieved with an alternative strategy in the same circumstances."

</comment><comment><USER9> Granada? Kosovo? Panama?

Nobody remembers the ones the US won quickly. They "don't count as real wars".

<comment><USER10> Granada and Kosovo were both covered in the article.

<comment><USER9> > The Second Iraq War, launched in 2003, was rightly termed a fiasco. Even far > smaller interventions — Beirut and Grenada in 1983, Libya in 2011 — failed.

And the article is wrong. The Second Iraq war was _not_ a fiasco - <USER2> followed was. We needed to either occupy, in force, for a decade or two (like we did Germany and Japan), or we needed to just say "We got Saddam, bye". We tried to do nation-building on the cheap, and _that_ failed. The war itself was very successful.

Grenada failed? By what standard is that true? That seems completely disconnected from reality. It removed from power a government that was trying to establish itself as a dictatorship, "disappearing" those who were opposed.

And still no mention of Panama.

So I'd say that, yes, the article mentions some of them in a way that tries very hard to find the negatives so it can paint them as failures.

<comment><USER11> Irak war was also a political loss, and the "reconstruction" (almost alone, without inviting former iraki interest holder, like Total, or emerging country like Russia and/or China) was a moral, political and tactical mistake, and made the US loose a lot of cultural influence imo, at least in France and Germany. But i agree that the confirmation bias in the article is obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Defenseone is a good read for this kind of thing. People should also check out Sofrep.com. I don't really always agree with their politics, but they have some great posts/articles from people actually involved in hot spots around the world.

</comment><comment><USER13> >Donald Trump, fortunately, has not suffered a crisis such as 9/11, his strategic judgment and understanding seem as

>poor as or even worse than his predecessors'.

Here is how he can win. Just don't engage at all. Unfortunately his speech on Afghanistan was not reassuring. Just more of the same.

</comment><comment><USER14> The title is the title of an upcoming book, the caveat being _since WWII. The author does not argue that we_ actually* lost the Revolutionary War.</comment>


A Better Unsubscribe - <AUTHOR> http://kdivvela.posterous.com/a-better-unsubscribe <comment><USER2> A business owner might approve of this design, since they will probably get slightly fewer unsubscribes. However, many users will find this mildly annoying. You wouldn't add an extra step in the sign up process, so out of respect you shouldn't on the way out either.</comment>


A Good Night's Sleep - <AUTHOR> https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/good-nights-sleep <comment><AUTHOR> And if you want to learn more about why its important to sleep, you should read the book "why we sleep" [https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking- Dreams/dp/1501...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking- Dreams/dp/1501144316/) which is where I found this list.</comment>


Dropbox Reaches Key Profit Milestone - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-26/dropbox-reaches-key-profit-milestone-ceo-says <comment><USER2> > Dropbox Inc.'s chief executive officer said the company is now generating a > profit excluding interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization

FYI - it's very likely that Dropbox is depreciating a HUGE ($100's of millions) amount of data center cost.[0] Translated into a more common "AWS opex cost", might yield a company that isn't really profitable^. EBITDA can be very misleading (not saying it definitely is in this case) so it's always worth analyzing it with a grain of salt until you have all of the full granular details.

[0] - [http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/colo- cloud/...](http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/colo- cloud/dropbox-drops-aws-cloud/95872.fullarticle)

^EDIT - I should have said, "might not be profitable yet".

<comment><USER3> > _EBITDA can be very misleading_

To illustrate, let's consider a company that buys a $100 data centre every 10 years. (To keep things simple, let's assume the data centre is worthless after 10 years.) The data centre generates $20 in revenues for each of those 10 years.

Instead of showing an $80 loss in year 1 and then a $20 profit in years 2 through 10 (with the expectation of another $80 loss in year 11), accountants smooth the numbers based on expectations. The $100 data centre cost is "depreciated" over the expected lifetime of the asset. So one might account $10 of the data centre's cost to each of its ten years, thereby producing $10 of profit each year. This better reflects economic reality.

Ebitda does not include depreciation. The aforementioned company's Ebitda would be $20 for years 2 through 10. This is a small problem in year 2. But if you're an investor in year 10, ignoring that depreciation is the flip side of capital expenditure, you're in for a nasty shock when year 11's predictable capital expenditure comes down the line.

<comment><USER4> Judging from mbesto's comment, back when they were on AWS, those costs would have been included in EBITDA?

So if AWS cost $10/year, would EBITDA be $10?

<comment><USER2> Sort of.

EBITDA is Earnings _Before_ ITDA. Quick example, with super simple math:

Scenario A (AWS)

\- Over 5 years, you bring in $1M per year in revenue

\- Every year you pay $200k in AWS fees

\- Your earnings (Net Income) are $800k per year, your EBITDA is $800k per year

Scenario B (Buy your own hardware)

\- Over 5 years, you bring in $1M per year in revenue

\- You pay $1M in year one for hardware and depreciate it over the next 10 years at $100k per year

\- Your earnings (Net Income) are $800k per year, your EBITDA is $900k per year

There are a ton of nuances to this, but this is generally how it works. As you can see the depreciation schedule affects this a lot, as well as when you choose to make the investment. Hence why it's feasible that Dropbox took out it's largest operating expense, i.e. AWS storage, which literally overnight increased EBITDA. It just so happens to be that a year ago they switched over to their own data center, and now they are touted "EBITDA profitable".

Long story - these stories are kinda stupid unless you get to see the full income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How come Dropbox wasn't eradicated by Microsoft's and Google's offerings that are integrated with their product suites?

<comment><USER6> Dropbox is just one of the best examples out there of everything that makes a software product solid: do one thing, do it well, don't bother the user, and be profitable.

* It 100% "just works" on _all_ my devices (Mac, Linux, on a server, web, on my phone -- hell, I could stick it on a Raspberry Pi!).

* It integrates seamlessly with my filesystem.

* It has never, not once, failed me or bugged out on me. I've been using this product since it first came out and have not experienced even a minor bug!

* It's not tied to any other platform or service that might have conflicting interests.

* No fancy "smart" features or unexpected behaviour. All options are explicit and behave as expected.

* No fancy UX experiments, just straightforward to setup and use.

* I never have to think about it, it just does its job.

* It's a paid service that makes money (this in itself IS a feature).

It's just better than the competition. The peace of mind and get-out-of-the- wayness is well worth the $10 bucks a month. One of the few products that would be truly painful for me to lose...

<comment><USER7> "Dropbox is just one of the best examples out there of everything that makes a software product solid: do one thing, do it well, don't bother the user, and be profitable."

I hate to be cynical here, but they're EBITDA profitable, not profitable, and they've been in business for 10 years. I think there are thousands of better examples but they might not be at the scale of Dropbox.

<comment><USER8> EBITDA should really be renamed EBMS: Earnings Before Manipulative Shenanigans. A high net profit might be heavily correlated with high EBITDA, but it's relatively easy to show a GAAP profit while being in terrible financial shape, and not so easy to do that with EBITDA.

In this case, I'd consider Dropbox's emergence into slight EBITDA profits as not great, but a definitely welcome sigh of relief for a unicorn market full of bullshit.

<comment><USER9> How about SBBSNAMM? Stopped the Bleeding But Still Not Actually Making Money

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wrote this 448 days ago, on why I moved to Google Drive. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11030171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11030171)

But now I'm back.

Google Drive is unusable. I upgraded to a paid plan so I'd have no storage limits. But the moment I tried to back some large folders, I noticed the upload speeds were capped, and the native client kept crashing. I'd leave it on overnight, just to see it not running in the morning. 100 GB of files is a trivial amount these days, and it's impossible to manage on Drive. And selective sync would attempt to upload the folder before it deletes it locally, so was useless. I couldn't just select which folders to upload first, even though I was there trying it due to Drive's own inability to upload large amounts of files.

Then there are all the sync issues. I had setup 5 or 6 computers to sync files, which is the main use case Drive is sold on. Yet, I'd notice (1) and (2) and (3) duplicate versions of the same file, and at one point I had a folder with (79).

So I'd have to dig through partially synced folders and duplicates just to figure out what to sync first, then sort through computers to see if Drive was actually running. Then remove large folders to outside of Drive, and drop them in in batches just so Drive wouldn't choke itself.

I also had an issue with file name length. I had copied a folder of saved web pages from Dropbox. I'd noticed all the directories were empty in Drive. Turns out, the folder names were too long. I understand the existence of technical constraints, but if I can't move files from Dropbox just by copying them, Drive needs to modify it's feature set.

Insync is the only reason I still have Drive. It doesn't crash, and it doesn't have sync duplication issues. But again, there is some API rate limit that causes it to halt. Drive is simply incapable of handling large amounts of files. I wish they'd just say that.

So I am back on Dropbox because I have no other options. And it just works. I had no idea syncing was such a hard problem.

And now with smart sync, I can see the files locally without having them take up space. Most of the files are for storage purposes anyway, so this is genius. The new online interface is better than google also.

It still locks up Photoshop, and I bet it's still piss slow in Japan, but for now all my large folders are back on Dropbox. Drive is reserved for Sheets and Docs that don't take up any space anyway, because the files are just links.

I use Windows but I don't trust Microsoft.

<comment><USER11> Hey there - I went down a similar road as you about a year back when I looked for a file backup solution.

I started with Dropbox, and attempted a sync of my local files. Within minutes the Windows app crashed.

I switched to Google Drive, same thing. Synced a large number of files and the Windows software crashed.

Even Tried Insync, still had crashing issues.

Researched the issue and found that both clients are limited in the amount of RAM (32bit vs 64bit) and this limit is easily reached when syncing tens-of- thousands of files causing the software to crash.

Neither provider offers a 64 bit version, or a version of their client software that handles syncing jobs this large.

I finally settled on Backblaze which was affordable ($5/month), and "just worked". The files aren't as accessible as Dropbox or Drive, but I still use those for the files I need/touch often, and use Backblaze for my "entire PC" cloud backup solution.

<comment><USER12> I was sold on Backblaze. Until it would continually time out when backing up my 5TB pseudo-server/HTPC. And then it would restart. Just as it reached 5TB. I think I have finally found my solution with rclone (I moved to a Linux system after Backblaze was a no-go) and Amazon Cloud Drive. All my data is encrypted and it is trivially easy to add fresh backup copies. All of this is mostly for my media. All non-media is in my dropbox account and I back up to a physical drive. I used to be high on BackBlaze (I had issues with CrashPlan taking forever too, BackBlaze was faster) but when it would continually just have my backups magically disappear, I left.

<comment><USER13> I've been able to backup close to 1 million files (7.7TB) to CrashPlan, granted I had to manually edit the .ini file multiple times to increase the Java Heap memory allocation to allow that many files. At least the fix is documented on their support page (although I still can't figure out why after however many years this bug exists, they don't just add an option in the software directly). The only problem I have with them is that they have an upload limit, which changes from day to day, but over here in Europe I get between 100-1000 KB/s, which according to support is throttled depending on how many users are currently active. They offered to let me send them a hard- drive... to their US address, haha! It took about 2 years of leaving my PC on 24/7 to finally back everything up, let's hope they don't go the same way as StreamLoad (MediaMax), where I lost ~2TB of time-lapse footage due to being unable to download everything before the service went offline. It's even documented on Wikipedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Linkup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Linkup)).

p.s. I made this comparison of cloud image backup solutions back in 2012 ([https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mWx6wbL6NYbhjY1_ISNa...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mWx6wbL6NYbhjY1_ISNapAgXbi- JuKJJaF2K5RPAZLk/edit?usp=sharing)), it's crazy how many of these services are now defunct.

<comment><USER12> That is a really long time. I was able to back up most of my media in a little over a week and a half...

<comment><USER13> Yeah it was painful. Thankfully ~50% of that time was at the office, where I don't pay the electricity bill. A lot of the latter half was using a very unreliable DSL connection, which, due to rotting copper cables (and multiple chew-throughs from rats), I only get about half of the promised throughput, so upstream is limited to ~120 KB/s at best. I finally caved in and bought an LTE modem last year which gets me ~1 MB/s (on good days).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had no idea that Dropbox had topped $1B in annualized revenue. Their new profitability gives me some measure of confidence that not all of the Unicorns are facing inevitable doom.

<comment><USER15> "Their new profitability gives me some measure of confidence"

"Profitability" can mean whatever you want it to mean at a given moment. In this particular case it's closer than a lot of measures, but it's still a non- GAAP profit. In general these sort of startup announcements are marketing materials.

Every company I've been at has declared themselves "profitable" \-- the devil is in the details of what you choose to ignore.

<comment><USER14> I agree and that's why I used the words "some measure of confidence". However, it IS better than many other unicorn examples, such as Uber losing $800M in Q3 2016 for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > the company is now generating a profit excluding interest, taxes, > depreciation and amortization (positive EBITDA)

EBITDA and cash flow are useful metrics to look at when evaluating whether or not a company can service debt, but I'm wondering why they needed to open a $600M credit line last month if they are gearing up for an IPO?

I guess they need a bit of extra cash on hand to pay off taxes as well as interest on their last 2 loans (funding rounds) from JPMorgan?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's worth noting that they replaced an expiring $500million line of credit that had not been touched. So you may be reading a little much into what may just be prudent financial planning

<comment><USER16> Hadn't known about that, thx for the info, should have been included in the article. New credit line makes sense then, not much to see here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Drew's statement that Dropbox is the fastest SaaS company to $1B in annual revenue is either wrong or basically tied. Salesforce.com did it in just over 9 years, and it has been almost 10 years since Dropbox was founded.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can't help but remember the quintessential (links anyone?) dropbox critique when Drew first talked about it on HN. In particular something like 'why do we need this when you can just use rsync'.

<comment><USER19> here it is: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

my favorite comment is definitely this one:

      1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system
      yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting
      it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the
      mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account
      could be accessed through built-in software.

<comment><USER20> So you perform commits after uploading. How are you going to convince your collaborators to do it too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looks like Dropbox starting popping up recently on the media. Looks like PR push. Maybe preparing for IPO.

<comment><USER22> I'm really starting to appreciate how cynical we've all become about how these corporations operate. They've always "been evil", but now it's just assumed.

<comment><USER23> The company is overtly preparing for a big public sale of its shares. As part of that it is conducting press outreach with the goal of talking up how well it is performing.

Seems roughly comparable to a company that's about to launch, say, a new electric car running a campaign to get people talking about how fun it is to drive electric cars. Other than the clear effort to get coverage from journalists, is there really something nefarious going on here?

<comment><USER24> Interacting with media / marketing seems to be considered evil on HN. Probably because it's easy to abuse.

<comment><USER22> It's probably just a case of too many of us having to deal with the day to day struggles imposed by the friendly office marketing dept ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Dropbox employees will be very pleased reading positive feedbacks from this thread.

<comment><USER26> I wonder how one feels when they receive this feedback, "I never think about you until you fail, and you have failed me the least of your competitors. You have succeeded in making me forget you. Good job. Here are 10 dollars."

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Surprised to see no talk of Paper on this thread. Sure, Dropbox has visibly tried and failed to build other offerings - Carousel and Mailbox - but Paper seems like the most well-reasoned attempt so far, and something a lot of their customers probably need. It reminds me a lot of Quip which Salesforce thought was worth $750M.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm not a dropbox user. A friend send send me a link to dropbox folder with fotos. The web-UI killed me. I could download the fotos one by one. It was not smooth or fast or pleasant, but it was possible. But since it were hunderets of fotos I looked for a big DOWNLOAD_ALL button. After some time I found such button, but it told me that the folder is too big (2 or 3 GB) for download. WHAT? I tried to create an account to download it to 'my' dropbox, but the free space was less than 2 GB, as far as I rememebr. So dropbox asked me to pay 10$ to get fotos from my friend. After cursing for an hour I asked my friend to bring the fotos on a usb stick.

<comment><USER29> I have nearly pulled out of Dropbox by now. The fact that people send me Dropbox links is it's only reason to stay. I find it very convenient to use as a download manager.

My reason to drop it is that I want my data out of the US for privacy. Our local (german) companies can provide the cloud basics by now.

<comment><USER30> > My reason to drop it is that I want my data out of the US for privacy

Given most cloud providers use AWS as a back end, that's probably not possible. Plus, if you send email, it likely will hit a gmail,hotmail,etc. server. It's basically impossible to avoid.

<comment><USER29> I use web.de for email, which is the largest german mail provider in Germany. Their data center is on the other side of my city. Unfortunately, they are somewhat spammy even if you pay. I think about switching to mailbox.org or posteo.de.

Sure, lots of my contacts use gmail, but since email encryption is not really used, email is practically unsuitable for secure communication anyways. Fortunately, we have a few good instant messengers (Signal, Wire, Threema, ...) now. The primary use for email today is authentication, so I should probably get my own domain to maintain control.

My replacement for Dropbox is SyncThing. There is no cloud storage. It does not provide sharing via public link of course.

<comment><USER31> Why not use Protonmail? They even have an IMAP bridge these days..

<comment><USER29> Mailbox.org does E-Mail for over 20 years [0]. ProtonMail only exists for 3 years [1]. Thus, I give Mailbox.org a higher chance to be still around in 10 years.

ProtonMail does PGP via Javascript in the browser, which is ridiculed by security people. Mailbox.org tried that in 2015 and it did not survive their internal pentesting [2]. Maybe ProtonMail has better coders. Maybe not.

Mailbox.org smallest offer is 1€/month. ProtonMail lets you choose between nothing and 5€/month. I like the mailbox.org price point.

If you believe in secure communication via email, you should support ProtonMail. They try to make it hip and easy. In my opinion this is a lost cause. Even if we could educate the masses about PGP, this is still behind the Double Ratchet Algorithm [3].

[0] [https://mailbox.org/en/history/](https://mailbox.org/en/history/) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProtonMail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProtonMail) [2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/3z0ymc/mailboxorg_oder_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/3z0ymc/mailboxorg_oder_posteo/cyidcpf/) (german) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Ratchet_Algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Ratchet_Algorithm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > The measure does include compensation costs, such as stock or options issued > to employees as part of their salary.

</comment><comment><USER33> For anyone curious, the key profit milestone is "any".

>Dropbox Inc.'s chief executive officer said the company is now generating a profit excluding interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, I don't know why HN doesn't change this story to it's proper, correct title.

Current title makes it look like Wall Street it saying it. The real title makes it clear that the CEO is saying it, which, as a result, makes it useless PR drivel.

<comment><USER35> HN doesn't change the title unless either the submitter or the mods are aware that the title should be changed. You can contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer. In my experience they're very responsive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Gah! Maybe it's just me and my lack of understanding of large corporate financing, but my past job history means that just seeing "EBITDA" or having it spelled out makes me twitch.

Probably because both companies where "positive EBITDA" was a relevant phrase no longer exist.

</comment><comment><USER37> Amazing execution to get to $1B in annual revenue.

</comment><comment><USER38> I really wish some Cloud Storage Provider would have online file management solution. Currently I have many 2.5" HDD and USB stick, all with may be slightly different / duplicated Data. I wish I could upload all of them to the Cloud first and then start sorting it. Currently the only solution is to Buy a super large HDD, copy every files on to it and start sorting it.

</comment><comment><USER39> [https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/857662627496906752](https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/857662627496906752)

""EBITDA profitable", n. Technical term used in accounting for companies running at a loss"

<comment><USER40> Does the n stand for noun? Because that's not a noun is it. You can't point to an EBITDA profitable. You can't put one in your pocket. Is an EBITDA profitable dangerous? How about two? I have a million EBITDA profitables.

<comment><USER41> Agreed. Should be "adj." :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> For me, Dropbox is the iTunes of file synchronization; I have to use it, but it's such a pain. It takes minutes to finish indexing on startup, and it occasionally decides to take up all my CPU, which has forced me to disable it on startup on Windows 10.</comment>


Explained Visually is now open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vicapow/explained-visually <comment> daniel-levin I just recently discovered an awesome visual intuition for what a determinant is, and why one cannot solve a linear system with a zero determinant. I'd love to contribute to this!

<comment><USER2> You've piqued my interest.

Would you mind explaining it in a few words?

<comment> daniel-levin In 2 dimensions, the absolute value of a determinant of a matrix is just the area of the parallelogram subtended by the row vectors of the matrix. If this area is zero, it means that the vectors are co-linear. And of course the intersection of co-linear vectors is an infinite set (in R^n anyways). The same idea holds in higher dimensions, with the 3d case being similarly possible to visualise (as a volume). Since the unique solution of a linear system is the point at which a bunch of lines/planes/hyperplanes meet, a zero determinant implies a zero area which means that at least two vectors are coincident and hence there are infinitely many solutions.

[1] [https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~daddel/linear_algebra_appl/App...](https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~daddel/linear_algebra_appl/Applications/Determinant/Determinant/node4.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome site. Great way to fill in some of the gaps in my math education.

</comment><comment><USER4> my opinion, the lack of comments come from that the site isn't very intuitive for knowing what this is all about. maybe just a clean description or use case scenario is in order.

<comment><USER5> Admittedly the first sentence in the README.md points to relevant information ([http://setosa.io/ev/](http://setosa.io/ev/)) However, yes, they should have included the one sentence description on that page it links to in the README.md itself.

Explained Visually (EV) is an experiment in making hard ideas intuitive inspired the work of Bret Victor's Explorable Explanations. See [http://worrydream.com/ExplorableExplanations/](http://worrydream.com/ExplorableExplanations/) to learn more about Explorable Explanations.

See "Media for Thinking the Unthinkable" (Bret Victor, 2013) [https://vimeo.com/67076984](https://vimeo.com/67076984) and videos from [https://vimeo.com/worrydream/videos](https://vimeo.com/worrydream/videos) for more context. Also, [http://explorableexplanations.com](http://explorableexplanations.com) (by Nicky Case) is a.... page that exists.

<comment><USER6> Pull request? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These are awesome and kudos for open sourcing it, this is the kind of material I expected all school kids to be learning from by now (based mostly on sci- fi).

</comment><comment><USER8> 63 points, not a single comment...

Weirdest display of crickets I've seen on the internet in a while.

<comment><USER9> Comment #3</comment></comment>


Britain's Reichstag Fire Moment - <AUTHOR> https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/britain-prorouging-boris-johnson-parliament-suspension-richard-evans-weimar <comment><USER2> It's not that difficult of an intellectual exercise to find parallels between one time and place and Weimar Germany.

Honestly this article is a bit intellectually dishonest by saying things like "It seemed as though nothing could go wrong" in Weimar Germany in 1920. There were outright revolutions going on at that time. Like large groups of revolutionaries and freikorps machine gunning each other in the streets of Berlin within 12 months of that election. Did people back then really feel like "nothing could go wrong?"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssYACBz8gzs&t=17s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssYACBz8gzs&t=17s)

<comment><USER3> Paramilitaries and UK armed forces were fighting in parts of the UK relatively recently and that peace is under threat by a no-deal Brexit so I'm not sure that is the best analogy.

<comment><USER4> 20 years ago... that's as long as the gap between ww2 and the summer of love

<comment><USER3> Well, the chief of the police of Northern Ireland seems to think there is an increased risk of paramilitary activity of there is a hard-Brexit causing a breakdown of the GFA:

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/22/northern- ire...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/22/northern-ireland- police-chief-simon-byrne-warns-brexit-hard-border-could-revive-paramilitary- groups)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A well researched but ultimately rather lazy article there the author posits "Is Trump really a Nazi?" with the answer "No, not really". There are a few items thrown in about the UK just to keep it looking up to date.

In general it is an good article on the political changes in the Weimar Republic but the interesting part is only in he last section where the author discusses the failing in democratic process which lead to the rise of Trump and Farage (Johnson is an opportunist and ultimately irrelevant). Farage should be give much more attention as he is the central character (at least in the press) that dragged British politics further to the right and capitalized on the prejudices of older people who are more motivated to vote that their younger, more liberal or left leaning counterparts.

Farage is deeply inspired by what is happening in the US. The changes in UK politics as it moves to a more presidential style still have a long way to play out. UKIP and the Brexit Party probably have a parallel with the Tea Party. In a sense the UK is about 10-15 years behind what is happening in the US. If there is any comparison to be made in what is happening in the UK with history then it should be made with the US. That would provide an interesting guide to how the whole Brexit mess is going to play out.

</comment><comment><USER6> Parliament is dismissed regularly. The current dismissal is 4 days longer than normal ([https://order-order.com/2019/08/28/boriss-prorogation- will-s...](https://order-order.com/2019/08/28/boriss-prorogation-will-shorter- majors/)). The current length of sitting is the longest in a very long time (it's currently two years, it's normally one).

It's not clear what people who want to overturn the referendum would do in those four days that they couldn't do in the previous three years.

I supported Remain (here's me on HN trying to get support for Stronger In back in 2016) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952724)), but something like a million more people voted leave.

Comparing attempts to implement the referendum outcome to Hitler or Erdogan is bizarre and clickbaity. Flagged.

<comment><USER7> Of course a dismissal of parliament is nothing out of the ordinary, but you are ignoring the context.

The government is dismissing the parliament not because they want to solicit the voters' input in the form of new elections, but rather because they want to shut down the voters' objections against the no-deal Brexit (which arguably wasn't even on the ballot in the first place!) and paralyze the parliament until they can't prevent it anymore.

And expecting journalists or historians not to draw comparisons across successful or attempted end runs around a relatively democratic system is a little strange.

<comment><USER6> > against the no-deal Brexit (which arguably wasn't even on the ballot in the > first place!)

The ballot: "Leave" or "remain". "The government will implement what you decide"

The government must be able to keep all options on the table, including no- deal, to get a good deal.

If you have to take a job, and don't have the option of walking away, your employer will give you the worst deal possible.

<comment><USER7> In practice, though, I suspect the number of leave-voters who didn't think a no-deal Brexit would be possible is a lot larger than the winning margin.

And then the leave voters believed the BS about the NHS too. The Referendum was ill posed and the voters were ill-informed, mostly through the fault of the government, the Leave Campaign, Billionaire donors and even Putin's involvement.

<comment><USER6> > I suspect the number of leave-voters who didn't think a no-deal Brexit would > be possible is a lot larger than the winning margin.

A no deal must be possible to get a deal. Likewise the EU wants to sell its dairy, prosecco, and cars to the UK but wouldn't dream of accepting a terrible deal for the EU. It's possible the a punitive EU might sacrifice the EU and UK economy by refusing to provide a deal for a few months until the pain becomes too much. UK needs to plan for that.

> the BS about the NHS too.

The UK does send 300M to the EU. We get 150M back to spend as the EU desires, the rest is used by the EU outside the UK. Nobody disputes that, it depends whether you think it's OK that we get half it back, or that it's not OK the EU determines how we spend our money.

\---

Edit: rate limited, but to reply to the person below:

> Apparently some people flag/down-vote me because they don't like the facts.

Complaining about moderation should be done via email to thee admins and not comments per the HN guidelines. But OK, let's go through your facts.

> It's a fact that many Leave Voters did not expect a no-deal under any > circumstances.

Yep agreed. It still needs to be on the table, as it does from the EU side.

> Even the excuse that they need that option to get a deal presupposes that > they don't want a no-deal and don't expect it to happen.

Yep agreed. Long term I don't think the EU or the UK wants mutually assured destruction.

> The scenario of the EU trying to "torture" the UK with a few month of third- > country status is even more absurd

It's consistent with some of the angrier statements from Jean Claude Juncker and other EU leaders.

> because that presupposes that the EU has no significant disadvantages from > withholding a deal

Agreed, the EU has significant disadvantages from withholding a deal. That does not mean the EU will behave rationally or put the EUs (the organisation) self interest ahead of EU member states who wish to keep selling their product in one of the world's largest markets.

> rendering the "leverage" of the no-deal option void.

That doesn't follow. The EU wouldn't agree to a deal that harmed the EU, so they'd also prefer WTO if that was all Britain offered. Likewise the opposite.

> And even then this argument is still wrong: There is no requirement for a > no-deal option to have lots of leverage in the negotiation

Why? How can you negotiate a desirable outcome if you cannot walk away and must agree to any deal offered?

> and even with the no-deal on the table the UK didn't get anywhere near the > deal they wanted, proving the leave-campaign to be extremely naive or > outright liers.

Is that determined yet? Negotiation is still ongoing.

> And no, the leave-campaign never acknowledged or promoted, before the > referendum, that the UK is getting half of it back.

Yep agreed.

> They explicitly stated, time and time again "let's put that money into the > NHS". Which was impossible back then and oh, look! it's still not possible > today.

It would be possible to put the entire 300M into to the NHS, as the UK would control how the money is spent. But it would not be desirable to.

> But Putin, who also financed and supported the leave campaign, likes all > those options.

Is this is a fact?

<comment><USER7> It's a fact that many Leave Voters did not expect a no-deal under any circumstances. Even the excuse that they need that option to get a deal presupposes that they don't want a no-deal and don't expect it to happen.

The scenario of the EU trying to "torture" the UK with a few month of third- country status is even more absurd, because that presupposes that the EU has no significant disadvantages from withholding a deal, rendering the "leverage" of the no-deal option void.

And even then this argument is still wrong: There is no requirement for a no- deal option to have lots of leverage in the negotiation, and even with the no- deal on the table the UK didn't get anywhere near the deal they wanted, proving the leave-campaign to be extremely naive or outright liers.

And no, the leave-campaign never acknowledged or promoted, before the referendum, that the UK is getting half of it back. They explicitly stated, time and time again "let's put that money into the NHS". Which was impossible back then and oh, look! it's still not possible today. By my standards that's clearly a lie.

But Putin, who also financed and supported the leave campaign, likes all those options. Total Chaos in No-deal Brexit is probably his favorite option, though.

<comment><USER8> This submission has been flagged killed. I suspect that your multiple replies to several different comments may have contributed towards this automated or manual action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seeing this article taken seriously and comparisons made in the comments between Boris and Hitler are revolting. At worst he's using a legal trick to make sure the peoples will is fulfilled - what a monster.

You want to know about a really undemocratic act in central Europe? The German parlament passed a law they weren't allowed to (because the necessary number of people weren't present). The opposition complained, but were shut down. Yes, that really happened. But it's okay because it was done by the good guys. No turmoil about that.

<comment><USER6> Got a link re: German law?

<comment><USER9> [https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article198531457/Ham...](https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article198531457/Hammelsprung- AfD-zieht-vor-Bundesverfassungsgericht.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's surprising that their constitution allows all of this.

Oh wait, they don't have one!

<comment><USER10> Yes we do. It's uncodified (meaning not all in one document) and in very small part unwritten but we still have one.

This is politically controversial but not in the grand scheme of things a big deal in my view. The anti Brexit groups have been playing hardball with legal and constitutional 'innovations' for some time and now the pro Brexit camp are responding in kind.

It's also worth noting that John Major used this very device in 1997 to avoid scrutiny over the Cash for Questions affair and it's also been used for political purposes recently in Canada.

The rhetoric of the anti Brexit side in the media over this is doing Johnson's work for him - he wants a 'people vs the establishment' election (and he'd likely do very well with that) and people who lost the referendum screaming 'coup' plays right into that narrative.

<comment><USER7> Boris Johnson is the embodiment of establishment and elite himself.

Voters did not have a chance to vote on what he is doing. It's virtually certain that a majority of voters didn't want this at the time of the referendum, nor do they want it right now.

Beginning with the multiple lies from Johnson and his ilk, and not ending with giving false hope on an extremely beneficial and one-sided deal with the EU.

The question of the referendum was ill posed and completely botched, even without mentioning that Russia also "lend" a hand to the Leave campaign.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> talk about moderate, calm-headed journalism

<comment><USER7> The leave-campaign wasn't noted for moderate calm-headed journalism, nor were the boulevard magazines which created the sentiment against immigrants and the EU in the first place ever calm-headed and moderate.

<comment><USER11> Seen from the outside, both sides of this political dialogue sound equally bigoted and ridiculous. This is sad because (as an european who doesn't want the UK to leave), the "remainer" bigotry is a relatively recent phenomenon that seems completely unnecessary, and even contrary to the cause it deems to support.

<comment><USER7> Can you substantiate "bigotry" or are you satisfied with just dropping the insult?

There is no refutation that the current Brexit plans will result at best in temporary Chaos and a recession, at worst a permanent damage to the UK economy. Banks are already leaving. EU Academics are leaving in droves. Companies in the UK are holding back investments.

So the small part of the Remainers' predictions which haven't come true already are quite on track to coming true in the near future.

<comment><USER11> > Can you substantiate "bigotry" or are you satisfied with just dropping the > insult?

The title of this article on Prospect Magazine is a crystal clear example of that. I agree that brexit will probably have bad economic consequences. Yet, openly calling the brexiters "nazis" is an insult to intelligence and an example of bigotry, besides being really counter-productive. Imagine that you are a "moderate" brexiter, not fanatically sure about it. Then you see an army of journalists that call you a nazi because of that. Will this steer you away from wanting the brexit?

<comment><USER7> You may have a read a different article. The one I read does not call the Brexiteers "Nazis" and does not reveal any political bias. It's just that stating the facts makes it look like you are against Brexit, because, well, it is a total mess.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hushme – The World's First Voice Mask for Smartphones - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1322999047/hushme-the-worlds-first-voice-mask-for-smartphones <comment><USER2> That smug look the first actor gets every time he is putting it on makes it look like he's about to burst out laughing.</comment>


More on Ancient Scripts and the History of Writing - <AUTHOR> https://kottke.org/19/02/more-on-ancient-scripts-and-the-history-of-writing <comment> open-source-ux Earlier this year, the British Library in London put on a major exhibition called 'Making Your Mark' about the history of writing. Accompanying the exhibition were online articles exploring the origins of writing; they make for a very readable and informative introduction to this fascinating subject:

[https://www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/themes/the-origins- of-w...](https://www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/themes/the-origins-of-writing)

</comment><comment><USER2> Why does this leave out the Chinese Oracle Bone Script which dates from the ~13th century BC?

<comment><USER3> The image at the top is a screenshot of [http://worldswritingsystems.org/](http://worldswritingsystems.org/) Oracle Bone Script is actually included, but the description is cut off.

Edit: That site was discussed earlier this year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18967333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18967333)</comment></comment>


I am not planning any nuclear attacks - <AUTHOR> http://henrysmith.org/blog/2014/08/04/not-planning-any-nuclear-attacks/ <comment><USER2> Bruce Schneier calls this the "war on the unexpected". If you take average people, who aren't experts at security / investigating / etc, and you tell these people "if you see something, say something", then you're going to get a ridiculous amount of false positives.

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_th...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html)

Everything "unusual" becomes suspicious. See a guy taking photos at an airport? Must be a terrorist! Can't be a photographer and aviation enthusiast, no!

As Bruce says, the CYA angle is also horrific. Landlord sees something, thinks it might be nothing, but just in case, tells the local cops. Cops figure it might be nothing, but just in case, calls the FBI. Branch office figure it might be nothing, but just in case, gets regional / national HQ involved. Somewhere in the chain someone inadvertently gets word to the other 3-letter agencies, and the effect is magnified.

... and every time it's escalated, people figure "well, the people below me wouldn't have escalated unless they had reason to" ... while at the same time thinking, "well, I'm not sure, but I'm also not going to be the scapegoat if I fail to neutralize a potential attack and something does happen."

Everyone in the chain has plenty to lose and little to gain for _not_ escalating to the next level -- _nobody_ wants to be the guy who missed an opportunity to stop / neutralize a threat, especially in the unlikely-but- possible scenario that an attack does occur.

Regarding "if you see something, say something", Rick Moranis had an intelligent take on that at the beginning of his guest column in the NYTimes:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16moranis.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16moranis.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER3> This is exactly the problem, as I have myself experienced firsthand.

The 'problem' is that all of us - _everyone_ \- has a number of ways in which their life is 'unusual'. Aberrant (deviating from the norm) is not inherently suspicious, because _everyone_ is aberrant in some aspects of their life. Nobody is truly 'normal'. In fact, if you thoroughly investigated someone and found nothing that was 'abnormal'[0] in some way, _that_ would be suspicious!

Most people's individual personalities and quirks aren't suspicious if you look at the whole picture, but when someone's entire job is to find evidence of 'abnormal' or 'suspicious' things about someone it means that they can construct a suspicious narrative about _anyone_ , as long as they have the motivation or interest to[1].

In other words, it simply becomes a game of finding evidence that confirms one's own (or an organization's own) cognitive or systemic biases.

[0] More than 1 or 2 standard deviations away from the mean, etc.

[1] CYA is a common 'motivation' in this sense.

<comment><USER2> _In fact, if you thoroughly investigated someone and found nothing that was 'abnormal' in some way, that would be suspicious!_

I've heard spies are sometimes caught this way. Their life-profile is so deliberately normal that, having no quirks, they actually do stand out as such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Devil's Advocate:

You are a nontechnical person and stumble upon what appear to be plans for a terrorist attack. You talk to the person about it and they say "Don't worry. is computer game".

A great exploration of this is the 30 Rock episode where Tina Fey reports her neighbor for what ends up being a plan to get on the show 'The Amazing Race'.

The problem is, not knowing any better, you feel obligated to report the activity just in case. Let someone much smarter than yourself decide what is really going on. If you say nothing and someone gets hurt, can you forgive yourself?

As a hacker, I would understand this is definitely a game. But can I really expect the same from non-technical people?

<comment><USER5> The problem is that _everyone_ in the chain ends up buying into this. The police make a record of it 'just in case.' You end up on a no-fly list 'just in case.' Everyone in the chain is covering their ass 'just in case' this person really is a terrorist.

No one ends up willing to stick their neck out and say, "this person probably isn't a terrorist"... just in case.

<comment><USER6> The extreme example of "everyone in the chain" buying into an extreme form of this thinking came in the form of the "1% doctrine" articulated by then-Vice President Dick Cheney: "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response."

<comment><USER7> Much of the post-9/11 response to terrorism fits it.

"We captured a bunch of people. Some are harmless unfortunate bystanders. Some are dangerous people who are nevertheless not immune to handcuffs. Still, we'd better lock them up in harsh conditions without trial _just in case_."

"Iraq probably has no nuclear weapons and no means to deliver one, but we'd better invade the country _just in case_. We don't want to be wrong and end up with a mushroom cloud over Manhattan."

<comment><USER6> > Much of the post-9/11 response to terrorism fits it.

Naturally; the "1% Doctrine" was formulated very shortly after 9/11 and, while the _quote_ articulating it addresses Pakistani scientists aiding al-Qaeda, the significance is that it was a critical framing mindset from the highest levels for the Bush Administration policy on terrorism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ah, letting agents.

I got evicted from a property years ago because they did a surprise inspection while I was out (which is, of course, totally illegal), and decided they'd found "mountains of cocaine" on the kitchen counters.

It was fucking Ajax kitchen cleaning powder. Still, they didn't care. The police (who they contacted) thought it was laughable, but couldn't do anything about the fact they were evicting me.

<comment><USER9> For the sake of clarity it's worth noting that in England tenant rights are quite good. For an eviction to take place it must be ordered by the courts and a landlord can only apply to the courts for possession after providing a tenant with 2 months notice. A quick eviction in England takes 3 months, an average eviction is closer to 5 and in some cases it can take much _much_ longer. The only situation in which someone can be evicted with no notice is if they are a lodger (renting a room with a resident landlord), which wouldn't involve letting agents or inspections. The confusion over evictions in England comes from tenants not understanding their rights, a notice to quit (Section 21) is NOT an eviction.

A tenant can only be evicted for rent arrears if they have over 2 months rent due (and bringing the arrears under 2 months at any time invalidates any court action), landlords cannot evict if they have not legally protected the tenants deposit and landlords have no rights to enter a tenanted property unless it is an emergency.

<comment><USER10> And then you'll never be able to rent again. At least through a letting agent, which is how most rentals occur.

<comment><USER10> I'd love to know why this is down voted, because it is unequivocally true.

Nearly all letting agents (probably all?) in the UK vet potential tenants and will run various forms of check, including credit checks. They will also ask for previous addresses, and if previously renting, will demand a reference from the previous agency and landlord.

<comment><USER11> (Not legal advice.)

Someone giving you a bad reference, or refusing to give a reference, because you won a legal case against them is generally the kind of thing that could get _another_ legal case started.

<comment><USER12> On what grounds? If the previous landlord gives truthful reference (i.e. no slander and nothing illegal) when asked, including the trouble they had to go through to evict you, there's nothing to sue them over.

But that information alone would be very useful input for my decision on whether to lent to you or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me so much of an awesome 30 Rock episode where Fred Armisen plays the middle eastern neighbor of Tina Fey's character. She ultimately gets him turned in for planning an attack, when he was just preparing for The Amazing Race with his friend.

Its sad how sensationalist and afraid we have become.

<comment><USER14> I think "cautious" is a better word. What aspect of this story was sensationalist?

<comment><USER15> The part where a game design document on a whiteboard resulted in referral to the police?

I think "cautious" is white-washing of the highest caliber.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are the odds that someone leasing a house has control of an ICBM and is making plans to use it on his home whiteboard? People, especially stupid people, that can't mind their own business, are both dangerous and endlessly frustrating. Personally, I hope this guy tries to get the letting agent fired.

</comment><comment><USER17> Henry I'm not sure if you are checking this thread, and I can't find a way to contact you on your site but...

I wanted to see more of your posts, so trimmed the URL down to "[http://henrysmith.org/blog/"](http://henrysmith.org/blog/") and got an error message "Included file 'navbar.html' not found in _includes directory" at the top of your page. Clicking your name in the left directs me to henrysmith.org which doesn't have this problem.

</comment><comment> artumi-richard I'm doing work with a drug testing company, that generates a lot of stuff you wouldn't want taken out of context. This kind of stuff: "How's the meth goin?" \- "Oh great. We're getting loads this week" "And the Steroids" \- " Ah, not so well. Bob's lab is running behind, they're really busy"

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd be livid if something like this happened. I think it's worth this chap getting the details of the police report, and speaking to someone on the force directly. He needs to be assured that he won't end up on any "lists".

I'm not sure whether he has any legal recourse over this. I doubt it, but he has potentially been materially disadvantaged (if indeed, it goes "up the chain" and he finds visas being denied).

At the very least, he needs to enumerate to his landlord the various ways in which this could seriously affect him, and ask for a rent reduction.

</comment><comment><USER10> Par for the course with letting agents in the UK. I'm surprised they didn't begin evicting the renter. Using a property for work is often prohibited in the boilerplate rental agreements they charge £100 a time to change the name on.

<comment> jon-wood You're doing well to be charged £100. We just renewed our tenancy, and got charged £120 by the letting agents to process us signing the same agreement we signed 12 months ago, and update their records to show we're not due to do so again for another year.

<comment><USER19> For anyone else in this situation who is not aware, by default an Assured Shorthold Tenancy (which you probably have if you're renting all of a self- contained dwelling) becomes a statutory periodic tenancy (i.e., usually, rolling monthly on the same terms) at the end of the initial contract period - this requires no action on the part of anyone involved so you can politely tell the agents where to stick their £100+ bill, assuming you don't mind being on a rolling monthly contract. You can of course do this next time you're due to renew even if you've paid for it before.

I've done this in four out of the five places I've rented over the years (the fifth being a special case as the landlord wanted to sell) and had no problems - although I had to argue the point with one agent who initially insisted I had no choice but to cough up. Pays to know your rights :-)

Sources: This guide is great and used to be on the UK government website:

[http://www.leeds.gov.uk/docs/Tenants%27%20Tenancy%20guide.pd...](http://www.leeds.gov.uk/docs/Tenants%27%20Tenancy%20guide.pdf)

Since superseded by:

[https://www.gov.uk/private-renting](https://www.gov.uk/private-renting)

which sadly doesn't seem to cover as much detail.

<comment><USER10> This is interesting. I've always been given, along with an initial rental agreement, a letter dated for the end of the tenancy that asks me to leave the property. It was my understanding that this is enough for the agent to easily eject you at the end of the agreement period unless you follow what they want.

<comment><USER19> Serving you notice before you've even moved in sounds like a pretty shady practise to me, and one that I'd be inclined to challenge before I signed anything.

If they attempt that sorts of trick before you've even paid them a penny, that doesn't bode well for the rest of the tenancy in my opinion!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sadly, if you look carefully at the pictures, it's pretty clear it's for a game...and I didn't even need to read that he mentioned that they were game ideas.

Goes to show how dumb people can be.

<comment><USER21> No it's not. At all. I mean, a rational person might make the assumption that this guy is not actually whiteboarding an ICBM launch from a rented apartment. But there's nothing about it indicating to a non-technical person that it's a game.

<comment><USER22> Uhhh? The "mouse click" was a dead give away. Also, Occam's Razor. Is this guy programming a game in his apartment or is he programming a ICBM with 0 related hardware plus probably no other corroborating evidence. No reason to act like it takes more than a couple minutes of investigation to figure this shit out.

Edit: for the guy below me, since I can't reply directly, find me a nuclear missile guidance system that is destination controlled by a freaking mouse clicking on a map in the Pentagon and I'll concede the point.

<comment><USER23> I don't need to find a nuclear missile guidance system that is destination controlled by a freaking mouse click, because that is not what is being argued.

What is being argued is that it is not out of the question to expect that such a system may or could exist. It's not unreasonable to think that it could.

Occam's Razor. Are all of our nukes controlled solely by systems that do not involve a mouse, or might there be a computer sophisticated enough somewhere in that launch process that it might make use of a mouse?

<comment><USER24> I can't even begin to understand how a rational person would think this.

Someone is going to launch a missile from Russia to the United States.. and this person needs a whiteboard with a crudely drawn line to DC and a blast radius drawing to help him do it?

I don't even have to read any of the text to know this is ridiculous.

<comment><USER25> Plenty of people designing complicated things do crude whiteboard sketches to help them discuss or reason at a high level.

How much you want to bet there are whiteboards at NASA with cartoon squiggles of "Earth" \--> "Mars" on them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Common sense isn't quite as "common" anymore. If you actually read those diagrams it is pretty obvious (to me) that that is a game, and not some missile design or "plan" (although who plans a state missile attack from their apartment?).

<comment><USER27> From his previous blog post, they could tell it was a game:

"Except… the person who did the inspection did have some concerns about one thing. There were some… whiteboards? And some… drawings on them?"

"Ah shit! Yeah I totally forgot about those! You mean the nuclear attack thing, right?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"Yeeeeeah…. Sorry! You see…. It's for this game I was making! It's like, a web thing and it uses Google Maps to simulate a nuclear war."

"Ahhh, okay! We kind of thought it had something to do with gaming!"

Apparently somebody was still worried about the idea of a realistic nuclear attack simulation game. Reminds me of the time some kid was arrested for making a Counterstrike map based on his high school.

<comment><USER28> > Reminds me of the time some kid was arrested for making a Counterstrike map > based on his high school.

Nobody seemed to mention this, and I feel quite old saying its, but "Global Thermonuclear War" was the name of the simulation Matthew Broderick's character played in "War Games", which should have been another clue to the authorities or whoever that it's just a game.

<comment><USER29> That is the exact name an actual terrorist would use to cleverly hide his real purpose and thwart the authorities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This seems relevant:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

Title is "Dont Talk to Police" from 2008. Henry Smith should probably watch it.

<comment><USER31> I love this video so much, a while back I made a Bitly link to make it easy to remember and share to my friends when out-and-about.

bit.ly/dont_talk_to_police

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wow, sounds like 1990 over again i.e. Steve Jackson Games.

<comment> ryan-c For those not familiar, Steve Jackson Games makes RPGs and were nearly driven out of business due to a secret service raid[1] done in response to the "GURPS Cyberpunk" book (described by the secret service as "a manual for computer crime") they were working on.

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

<comment><USER33> "This raid is often wrongly attributed to Operation Sundevil, a nation-wide crackdown on 'illegal computer hacking activities' that was occurring about this time."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS_Cyberpunk#.E2.80.9CThe_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS_Cyberpunk#.E2.80.9CThe_book_that_was_seized_by_the_U.S._Secret_Service.E2.80.9D)

<comment> ryan-c I actually saw that and forgot to update the link to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._United_States_Secret_Service)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Planning a missile strike by drawing a crude world map with an explosion (labeled "explosion") is like planning a killing spree by drawing a stick figure with an uzi in each hand mowing down other stick figures.

<comment><USER29> Funny/Scary. Imagine that instead of the nuclear war map, the landlords encountered the image you described. OP would be in detention/questioning right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wondering if Introversion Software had to deal with this when they made Defcon ([http://www.introversion.co.uk/defcon/](http://www.introversion.co.uk/defcon/))...

</comment><comment><USER36> Shall we play a game? How about Global Thermonuclear War.

<comment><USER37> The only thing missing from those photos was a telephone and and old school desktop modem.[1]

[1] [http://pc-museum.com/046-imsai8080/wargames-02.jpg](http://pc- museum.com/046-imsai8080/wargames-02.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "I am not planning any nuclear attacks as my centrifuges are on the fritz and I have been unable to procure switches accurate enough to get a good implosion out of my C4 detonators. Also, it turns out that my ICBM designs are prohibitively expensive, and the Russians will not let me have access to their launch sites for some reason."

</comment><comment><USER39> That's a hell of a blast radius.

<comment><USER40> Yup it seems off by at least an order of magnitude -- _ie_ even for a theoretical maximum of 100 megatons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> hahahaha, awesome!

</comment><comment><USER42> Law enforcement is full of retarded psycopaths? What's new?

</comment><comment><USER43> Something weird-looking about France and Germany there...

<comment><USER43> Ah, you guys are no fun. Sheesh. HN is no place for lighthearted banter apparently. I wear my downvotes with pride.</comment></comment>


COBOL ON COGS :-) - <AUTHOR> http://www.coboloncogs.org/HOME.HTM <comment><USER2> Thanks. 26 years of therapy down the drain.

</comment><comment><USER3> The flicker is a really nice touch.

<comment><USER4> And a really subtle watermark, too. All around good job.

<comment><USER5> And the "(c) <DATE-OVERFLOW>".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's great, but I'm still holding out for Fortran on Flanges

</comment><comment><USER7> As long as we're doing the april fools thing:

NetHack dev team announces web integration protocol

<http://nethack.org/2008-04-01.html>

<comment><USER8> Dude, this site has been up for months. I know it's hard to keep up with the latest and greatest

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's actually the funniest thing I've seen today.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm writing a framework that writes frameworks.

<comment><USER5> You mean Lisp? ;-)</comment></comment>


Taleb: The Only Man Who Has a Clue - <AUTHOR> https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/04/taleb-the-only-man-who-has-a-clue.html <comment><USER2> The problem I see with Taleb is that people see him as the kid who cries 'wolf' too much, unfortunately. Other people see him as someone, like a stopped clock, is right twice a day.

It's unfortunate, because he probably has valid contributions to make now that we are in the exact scenario he was built for. But he has lost a lot of credibility in the years leading up to it, rightly or wrongly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Taleb has to be one of the most narcissistic people in the world.

I remember reading "The Art of Thinking Clearly" by Rolf Dobelli, and there's a sentence in one of the chapters where says something like "no one could have predicted to 2007 housing crash (except Nassim Taleb)." Well, turns out that Dobelli is a "protege" of Taleb, and I can just see Taleb editing this manuscript and cajoling Dobelli into adding the parenthetical.

As such, I break out in hives whenever Taleb's name comes up. Even if he's right some of the time, I still can't listen to a thing he says.

<comment><USER4> (I don't know Taleb personally.)

One of my parents is narcissistic. I believe that Trump is narcissistic, er, more narcissistic than .97 of the population -- let us say the US population since that is the only country I've lived in. William Shatner is more narcissistic than .99 of the US population.

Taleb strikes me as not particularly narcissistic.

He does strike me as very low (02 percentile or lower) in trait agreeableness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The point about GMO is itself clueless.

Breeding, crop hybrid breeding, other natural recombination techniques, directed evolution and different types of GMO are just generic techniques for the same result.

The risk is in specific organisms and regulating them. How you achieve it does not matter. If you produce harmful organism using natural recombination techniques it's just as scary.

</comment><comment><USER6> TL;DR: "Epidemiologists don't understand epistemology so listen to me instead"</comment>


Licenses Damned Licenses - <AUTHOR> http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2010/6/19/licenses-dammed-licenses

<comment><USER2> Licensing is a real mess, but actually there is a handy compromise in this case - particularly in the case of logos. Armin should try the Mozilla Public License [<http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/mpl.xml>] which exists pretty much to do exactly what he wants to do.

Ever notice how Debian has "Iceweasel" instead of "Firefox?" Same product - different logo and mascot. That's because "Firefox" is a trademark, and the Mozilla Public License says you have to follow the trademark restrictions of the original author.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another story of how "Intellectual Property" (as a general concept, with copyright as the specific problem) keeps things from happening, and wastes innovator's and inventor's time on nonsense.</comment>