Californians Learning That Solar Panels Don't Work in Blackouts - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-10/californians-learning-that-solar-panels-don-t-work-in-blackouts <comment><USER2> What a load of utter NONSENSE. Solar panels work FINE during a blackout (daylight hours, of course)

Merely buying the most basic "grid tie" inverter with no DC-DC charging capability and no batteries will not provide you with autonomy, nor does it purport to.

I live off-grid and precisely DO have power during the frequent blackouts in the villages further down the mountain from me. (electrical lines on wooden poles that falling trees take out.)

I additionally don't find the headline to be very productive: It is untrue. It is sensationalist. It causes doubt in solar panels, of all things. (some of the most reliable devices I can think of...)

All of this at a time when (socially irresponsible) Bloomberg could be part of the push away from fossil fuels...

Mr. Bloomberg himself, as Bezos and Gates, could also probably pitch-in a bit more in helping get the general American machine to realize it's duties with- regards-to the survival of large mammalian life on earth circa 2019, but I digress...

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/13/firms- ig...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/13/firms-ignoring- climate-crisis-bankrupt-mark-carney-bank-england-governor)

<comment><USER2> To make it worse, this horrid article has been syndicated all over the place, so there's some money and interest behind it.

How wrongful and immoral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What a completely useless article. Anyone who gets solar installed learns that the power is piped back into the grid and used as a credit towards your bill.

"...many are learning the hard way" Are they? The article doesn't quote or link to anyone discovering this for the first time.

A better title is, "A reporter outside of California learns how solar works and writes a click-bait, information free article about it."

<comment><USER4> It's not at all unreasonable for people to think that power flows back when the grid is operating, and when the grid isn't, they'll still be able to use their solar panels.

Yes, you and I know this requires extra equipment and introduces some safety issues, but the first blush assumption is not unreasonable here.

<comment><USER2> It is ridiculous to propose that a homeowner invests tens of thousands of dollars or more into their home solar kit and has no notion of it's capabilities.

As I outlined above, a simple "autonomy" function provided by the already- contained DC-DC charge controller will suffice to charge a battery bank. Sans battery bank, no reasonable person could assume autonomy.

<comment><USER5> I spent more than that on a house that I've mostly learned about through things breaking, because homeownership is a deeply humbling experience.

Things are complex and people are busy.

But would be nice if there was some qualification about how many solar owners are actually confused. "Many homeowners are learning the hard way" are epic weasel words.

Maybe they're right and battery sales will spike, maybe commenters are right and no one who lacks a battery system will be surprised or change their decision.

I'd guess 1-3% of battery-less eligible solar owners get inspired by the blackout to buy a battery. More than zero but definitely below one in twenty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also applies to plugging in a generator. Have known people who sourced a gen during an outage, didn't know they couldn't just plug it into an outlet and get power (I mean, your house will have power, but so will the grid and you won't have any breakers).

Clickbait but it's Bloomberg so not surprised.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://web.archive.org/web/20191012011551/https://www.bloom...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191012011551/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-10/californians- learning-that-solar-panels-don-t-work-in-blackouts)

</comment><comment><USER8> > And no, trying to run appliances off the power in a Tesla Inc. electric car > won't work, at least without special equipment.

Are they not aware Tesla sells a separate solution for this very problem, and it isn't a car? Or are they just spewing anti-solar misinformation?

<comment><USER9> Tesla tells you about this when you order the system (battery option), and must configure the inverter to only charge the battery from solar for the battery storage system to be eligible for the 30% federal tax credit. You might see the value now if you're in California in PG&E territory.

To answer your question, didn't Bloomberg run their "The Big Hack" story without proof and no retraction when questioned about the veracity of the information? Inflammatory articles get more clicks, simple as that.</comment></comment>


The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/inside-san-francisos-fire-department-where-ladders-are-1552279252 <comment><USER3> The Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs"[0] show made a segment involving the SFFD's ladder construction/maintenance crew. In it, they explained that wooden ladders are cheaper to maintain than aluminum ones and I _think_ also discount fiberglass ladders as well.

It's worth a watch if one is interested in this topic.

0 - [http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/dirty-jobs/about-this- show...](http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/dirty-jobs/about-this-show/dirty- jobs-about/)

<comment><USER4> LOL at SFFD giving any shits about costs. This is the same department that power grabbed emergency medical response away from dedicated paramedics in ambulances. Responding in full ladder trucks to take care of drunk homeless people...yeah, they do that, costing millions every year in added expenses and road repairs. But good for them for saving a few bucks on ladders, that must make a huge difference.

<comment><USER5> Coming from NYC, it is somewhat surprising to see such anger directed at fire departments. Here, the FDNY seems universally loved.

<comment><USER6> The LAFD might be the most admired municipal organization in the city. They have a very difficult range of environments and handle them very well.

<comment><USER7> From afar it seems the LAPD has a horrible reputation. So the LAFD must seem like saints by comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Americans seem to take a lot of pride in their fire brigades - their fire engines are still shiny and polished with more traditional signage and the fire fighters still wear helmets with their traditional shape.

In the United Kingdom they wear more simple uniforms and the engines are just a box shape with no bells any more - seems a shame.

Usually it's UK the has more ceremony in these kind of things.

<comment><USER9> One of the biggest differences between Europe and North America in this regard is that in European cities, emergency vehicles have to be designed to fit a 1000-year-old city in terms of width, turning radius, maximum weight, etc. This leads to a much more compact shape and shorter wheelbase.

In North America streets are designed to fit emergency vehicles. You're not allowed to build a street so narrow that a fire engine couldn't turn around there, for example.

<comment><USER10> You should see some streets in San Francisco. No way that a fire engine is fitting on those.

<comment><USER11> The narrowest street in San Francisco is roughly a regular European street. This[1] is par for the course on most European cities, while San Francisco has very few streets narrower than this[2] (and the average is probably wider, if you look anywhere westwards of Park Presidio where theoretically two way streets are wide enough for traffic to continue flowing in both direction even with double parked trucks.

I would also point out that I'd prefer narrower streets in SF[3].

[1]: [https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-narrow-san- francisco-...](https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-narrow-san-francisco- street-image7772310)

[2]: [https://email@example.com,-122.4141133,3a,75y,...](https://email@example.com,-122.4141133,3a,75y,259.45h,91.52t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipOPfUtW2v0nV3jvk1PMMnZY0AzEeig-R8tcM04F!2e10!3e11!7i11000!8i5500)

[3]: [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/08/san- francisco...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/08/san-francisco- narrow-streets-european-style)

<comment><USER12> Just as a side point... A lot of architects like this idea from an aesthetic or architectural-sociological reasons.

Living in em.. these as houses don't give you a lot of privacy. People walk by, less than a meter from where you're sitting. They sometimes stop to look at your TV.

You get used to it, but it's not the kind of thing people go looking for on purpose.

<comment><USER13> Put stores or offices in the ground floor. Or have a raised ground floor.

<comment><USER11> Or just embrace it, like the Dutch do[0].

[0]: [https://stuffdutchpeoplelike.com/2010/11/24/no-8-not- owning-...](https://stuffdutchpeoplelike.com/2010/11/24/no-8-not-owning- curtains/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't think of any reason to acclimatize them this way instead of kiln drying/vaporizing them (depending) to roughly the right moisture content and waiting for 1% change (instead of kiln drying them to 0, or waiting forever for completely green wood)

There are studies going back to the 70's by the forestry service (and others) showing there is no change in mechanical properties of pine/fir from these drying schedules.

(This is _not_ true of a lot of hardwoods, but is true of these softwoods)

Waiting years seems like a pointless waste of time.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure how many degrees of separation this knowledge is from programming, but it's got to be one of the highest values I've ever seen on HN.

Bravo.

<comment><USER16> It's funny how well this kind of lowbrow snark works here until exactly the moment it totally doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you get a chance to visit a Smokejumper base, I highly recommend it. One of the things you learn is that everyone on the team is required to make all of their own equipment by hand. So all of these highly trained, ex-military guys spend days on end doing nothing but sewing clothes and packing parachutes. The reasons described:

\- Cheaper than contracting out everything

\- They have a better idea of the exact specifications they need for everything

\- It instills a strong culture of self-reliance and trust (anyone has to be able to pack your parachute)

\- It fills a lot of offseason downtime

My takeaway is that it makes a lot of sense to in-house your own tools - <USER2> lesson from outside of the software industry.

<comment><USER18> It makes sense _for a job where 95% of the time is spent waiting for an emergency to react to_.

<comment><USER19> > a job where 95% of the time is spent waiting for an emergency to react to.

this describes quite accurately the work of many people maintaining computer systems

<comment><USER20> I must be maintaining the wrong systems, because over here 95% of the time is reacting to emergencies (some technical, but most fabricated by management)

<comment><USER21> First thing that came to my mind too!

I've had two "Please call me, it's broke" calls just this morning!

<comment><USER22> Why does your manager know this before you do though?

<comment><USER23> I would never in a million years, as a developer, give my personal phone number to a client. That's probably why.

I get the same issue where I work. The client states that "everything is broken," but it often turns out that their own servers are down (or sometimes our API guys made a breaking change and I wasn't informed, but that's not common anymore). I find this stuff out when I get to work in the morning, because they certainly aren't calling me directly.

<comment><USER24> I think the implication is that the system should alert you directly. Though if you are building systems for clients to run, you obviously would want the system alerting them, not you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There's an old saying among firefighters: "The fire service is 200+ years of tradition, unimpeded by progress". Now obviously that isn't _strictly_ true, and SF does have some good reasons for sticking with their wooden ladders... but one can't help but suspect that sheer tradition is a somewhat significant factor.

Of course some departments adopt change faster than others, and some kinds of change are adopted more readily, so it's hard to make any sweeping generalizations.

<comment><AUTHOR> > one can't help but suspect that sheer tradition is a somewhat significant > factor

Only if you didn't read the article.

"There's a city-specific reason why San Francisco has stuck with wood rather than swap over to metals, and the answer lies in looking up. The high-voltage cables and wires that guide the city's (oft-maligned) public transport system Muni, and trolley cars crisscross above nearly every street, mean that ladders made of conductive elements are generally just too dangerous to use."

<comment><USER26> And only if you're also about 40 years behind ladder tech - notice the stepladders in the "A view of the main repair facility" photo?

They're nonconductive fiberglass.

They're stronger than wood, lighter than wood, don't need to be oiled/varnished, don't require cutting down old-growth trees, and aren't susceptible to moisture damage.

You can buy them exhaustively tested, mass produced, in whatever quantities you require for a couple hundred dollars - probably an order of magnitude less than these artisanal wooden ladders.

<comment><USER27> _> They're nonconductive fiberglass_

They're also not being used right next to flames.

Yes, fiberglass can be made that won't buckle under both weight and heat, but not at the same price point as wood.

<comment><USER28> Because wood reacts so well to fires?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Oddly, yes. Sufficiently dense wood takes a lot to ignite and burns quite slowly, and I assume they coated it to make it even harder to get started.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Favorite excerpt:

"We had one ladder here that was fully involved in a fire for 25 minutes, and the whole tip of it—six feet—was crispy. It looked like a log you pull out of a campfire," Braun says. "That can't go back in service but we were curious, so we put a new halyard [rope used to hoist ladders] on it for a load test. Even in that condition, it passed."

<comment><USER30> Wood is a surprisingly good building material for surviving fires. A nice thick wooden beam can take days to burn through in a house fire where e.g. a metal support would yield as soon as it gets hot enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Great read, but loved the end -

 _" "Pete has collected all these different donuts over the years. They're all real, and covered with lacquer so they won't go bad. Some of these are ten years old.""_

<comment><USER32> Impressive collection but I only see a waste of a good donut!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I never knew we had so many experts on firefighting among us to tell us why this makes no sense.

</comment><comment><USER34> > There's a city-specific reason why San Francisco has stuck with wood rather > than swap over to metals, and the answer lies in looking up. The high- > voltage cables and wires that guide the city's (oft-maligned) public > transport system Muni, and trolley cars crisscross above nearly every > street, mean that ladders made of conductive elements are generally just too > dangerous to use.

I wonder how it's done in European cities with their trams (the ones which don't use APS).

<comment><USER35> Fiberglass, probably. Which is what SF should be doing.

<comment><USER36> Most ladders are fiber glass - which makes me wonder why any off the shelf ladder wouldn't suffice.

<comment> 52-6F-62 The film industry uses almost exclusively fiberglass as well. There's no shortage. They're swimming in those things. I would bet their lifespan is shorter than the wooden ladders, however. At least from what I've seen.

<comment><USER37> Fiberglass is reinforced plastic, though, so that might explain why it isn't used in FDs even if it's heavily used in other domains. How well does it hold up to heat? How does that exposure effect it structural properties? I honestly don't know and don't have time to look it up, but I could see thermal plastic deformation over such a long run as potentially hazardous.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Could be. I know film shoots can end up occurring in all kinds of weather (especially here in Canada), and often the ladders will be sidled up to large sun lamps (which I can assure you get very hot), and in electrically- compromising situations, but all of those are very different from an actual fire.

<comment><USER37> Wow. I wish I had time in the day to look at NFPA (Nat'l FIre Protection Assn) standards. 1931, 1914, and 1911 seem pertinent - this is clearly something that many people have devoted a lot of time and energy to.

edit: [http://tkolb.net/safety/LadderSafety/LadderSafety.html](http://tkolb.net/safety/LadderSafety/LadderSafety.html) ... can't vouch for site but interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> ive spent most of my last 10 years on a ladder due to my job. This is absurd. Aluminum ladders require practically no maintenance and are far far lighter. Weight of a ladder being a significant factor in set up speed, required manpower for set up, and ease of handling. A wood ladder is completely impractical. Fiberglass however is another great option.

<comment><USER39> From the article:

> Wood is resilient in ways which aluminum—now standard for fire department > ladders—can't even compare. "You know if you take an empty coke can and bend > it three or four times and it tears really easy? That's what aluminum > ladders will do," Braun says. "They have a seven to eight year lifespan, > after which they need to be replaced."

> Wooden ladders, on the other hand, can last indefinitely. "You can stress > wood right up to its failure point a million times; as long as you don't go > beyond that, it will come right back to where it was. They can be involved > in a fire for a pretty long time; after that, it's just a matter of sanding > off the top coat of material then inspecting the wood. If it's good we'll > re-oil it, revarnish it, and put it back in service."

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> [2014]

Dirty Jobs did an episode there in 2012 (which is probably where Gizmodo got their inspiration from)

[http://www.tv.com/shows/dirty-jobs/onion- processor-2392294/](http://www.tv.com/shows/dirty-jobs/onion- processor-2392294/)

</comment><comment><USER41> I would love to read about that big ladder with the multi-part, triangulated side rails.

</comment><comment><USER42> Loved reading this! I just finished restored a 1912 house in Oakland made out of the same old growth west coast douglas fir - from the framing to the copious clear vertical grain and quarter sawn wainscoting, all stripped, sanded and refinished in a natural varnish. Great to see this kind of craftsmanship alive and well!

</comment><comment><USER43> I love this. Fire is a mutual threat. I will very gladly pay for great, capable people taking pride in what is so often tough, dangerous work.

They can and should own as much as they think makes sense.

Economically, the potential cost is trivial. Not a concern to me at all.

</comment><comment><USER44> This site has an interesting detail:

[https://sf-fire.org/wooden-ladders](https://sf-fire.org/wooden-ladders)

> The largest ladder made by the artisans is 50 feet, weighs 350 pounds and > takes six firefighters to lift.

<comment><USER45> I live near a fire station in SF, and see them practicing raising a huge 20+ foot ladder monthly out front of the station. They're pretty impressive ladders, and it looks like it takes quite a lot of coordination to raise them up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'd really like to learn some woodworking and make some stuff some day. I recently found myself admiring the grain on the wooden train track my kids were playing with...

<comment><USER47> I started with this book, which is a furniture book that uses a technique involving cutting slots in plywood. It's good practices measuring, cutting, sanding, and finishing.

[https://www.amazon.com/Fast-Furniture-Forgotten-Building- Bea...](https://www.amazon.com/Fast-Furniture-Forgotten-Building- Beautiful/dp/0894710281/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531342036&sr=1-9&keywords=fast+furniture)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Previous post on the topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1852400](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1852400)

</comment><comment><USER49> Interesting to see that this headline typo (copied from the Gizmodo article) has lasted on the front page of HN for 9+ hours!

Chalk it up to only reading the beginnings and endings of words?

</comment><comment><USER50> I like the mindset but...

Wooden ladders are heavy as hell compared to alu ladders. Really not what I'd want to be schlepping across the place under pressure.

<comment><USER51> They also conduct heat, electricity and lose their structural integrity faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Is there a good supply of bamboo in SF? If there is, they make really good ladders. Very light and very strong.

<comment><USER53> But would they withstand fire ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Great article, ruined by Gizmodo's disrespect for its readers by including animated junk on the page.

</comment><comment><USER55> In related news, San Francisco is now the most expensive place to live in the whole world.

</comment><comment><USER56> Reminds me of the supposedly dying art of scientific glasswork.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm surprised they don't use an ablative coating

</comment><comment><USER58> Hipster ladders :)

</comment><comment><USER59> Guess you would too if you were paid for all that overtime.

</comment><comment><USER60> L

</comment><comment><USER61> Of course they do, that is the hipster capital of the world and hipsters need everything to be retro.

<comment><USER62> I would pay money to watch you tell a SFFD firefighter they were a hipster.

<comment><USER63> That was really funny. Thanks & kudos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> But, are these approved by the American Ladder Institute? [https://www.americanladderinstitute.org](https://www.americanladderinstitute.org)

<comment><USER65> I think the better question is: do they do the job the SFFD requires them to do?

Given one of the ladders talked about in the article was over 60 years old and still in service, I think the safe answer is: yeah, they do the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Yep, just like a Jedi warrior should build his own light saber and a programmer should build her own editor and a Tesla driver should build his own car, a firefighter should build her own ladder.

</comment><comment><USER67> This is super cool but I'm positive this is also super wasteful

<comment><USER68> You should try reading the article. They specifically state that they re-use components whenever possible, and they regularly service their ladders to keep them in good condition. Aluminum ladders only have a 7-8 year lifespan vs some of the ladders they use going on 60 years before being taken out of commission.

<comment><USER67> I don't just mean wasteful in terms of materials, but also in terms of man- hours, equipment needing to be owned and maintained. Once all factors for the total cost of ownership are taken in to account I highly doesn't it's efficient. It's like everyone growing their own vegetables.</comment></comment></comment>


How "dongle" jokes got two people fired—and led to DDoS attacks - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/how-dongle-jokes-got-two-people-fired-and-led-to-ddos-attacks/ <comment><USER2> The most stupid b * tch ever. Seriously. Freedom of speech much? If you're not comfortable, speak up, and move your *ss to different seat. I'm not sexist, but I don't want to tolerate crap like this. "Oh you have a potty mouth, let me snap a photo of your mugshot and post on Twitter". Childish.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothing like being politically correct to strangers.</comment>


Optimizing Images on Alexa's Top 100 Global Sites - rast-a https://blog.kraken.io/optimizing-images-on-alexa-top-100-global-sites/

<comment><AUTHOR> A third of Google's image size is this thing: [https://ssl.gstatic.com/s2/oz/images/notifications/spinner_3...](https://ssl.gstatic.com/s2/oz/images/notifications/spinner_32_041dcfce66a2d43215abb96b38313ba0.gif) which is basically a loading icon that is rarely seen.

How does HTTP compression factor into image optimization? Is it possible to optimize an image but the HTTP compressed size ends up being greater?

You should release a monthly report with this same algorithm. You should also put in a column for competitors algorithm (not the just ones you beat, all of them).

Don't forget that some images are loaded after the page and content load, so they have very little impact on user experience (and all these sites make heavy use of CDNs).

<comment><USER2> At first I assumed Google's reduction was so high because they'd scraped the site on a day when the logo was a doodle. But I just manually checked Google's main logo and was surprised to see a 40% lossless reduction. I would assume they dogfood PageSpeed (or at least use some internal version of it) which does image optimisation automatically for them. So is Kraken just better or is it just an oversight from Google?

<comment><AUTHOR> There might be a browser support issue that prevents doing it.

The bandwidth and mobile loading might not be an issue because of their massive amount of data-centers to serve content from.

It seems like it to would be easy to test the new image to see if anyone reports any issues, but there might just not be any benefits to reducing the homepage image by 40%. Make sure you consider that the homepage image is being scaled smaller than the actually image is, some optimizers take this into account and will give you a scaled image.

<comment><USER3> > but there might just not be any benefits to reducing the homepage image by > 40%

There would be advantages to people on limited bandwidth mobile data plans?

I'm gently curious about the amount of CO2 it takes to push that extra 40% through the Internet.

(Off topic: Seeing the Daily Mail on the Alexa list is profoundly depressing.)

<comment><AUTHOR> CO2 from extra bandwidth? Probably less than a text-message.

According to this "Club Penguins" are a major source of CO2, I'm not sure why. [http://visualization.geblogs.com/visualization/co2/#/club_pe...](http://visualization.geblogs.com/visualization/co2/#/club_penguin)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hm, tested the field/mountain comparison from kraken.io first page on JPEGmini - 184kb on jpegmini vs 242kb on Kraken.io

Seems their solution is both cheaper and better?

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

<comment><USER5> Well the server version start at $199. So i dont think that is cheap.

<comment><USER4> Considering you are not limited to any amount of images, yes it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know much about the technical side of things, but as someone studying SEO and UX this seems like a huge win. Not only by cutting down on page load size / speed but so much better fo rUX.

<comment><USER7> > I don't know much about the technical side of things, but as someone > studying SEO and UX.

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of developers suddenly cried out in terror...

Joking aside it is usually a win to reduce page load sizes from a speed and bandwidth point of view (which on a heavily tracked site can add significantly to costs) occasionally you have to be careful as some of the compression methods result in non-standard or "technically standard but the client doesn't really do it that way" files which can render corrupted or more slowly.</comment></comment>


How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy - <AUTHOR> https://pspdfkit.com/blog/2018/how-to-use-slack-and-not-go-crazy/ <comment><USER2> The most useful thing about Slack is you can press Shift+ESC (sometimes you have to press it twice) to mark all conversations as read.

Inbox zero with two keystrokes. Whoever implemented that, I'd like to buy a coffee someday.

(Also, I discovered this because I use Ctrl+Shift+ESC instead of Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the Windows Task Manager immediately without going through the intermediary screen that pops up, and one day, I missed Ctrl.)

<comment><USER3> And I'd like to buy you a coffee someday for teaching me about the Ctrl+Shift+ESC shortcut.

<comment><USER4> Make that two coffees!

<comment><USER5> At least three.

Or other beverages, really!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It amazes me how popular Slack is. Terrible performance, constant interruptions, horrible threads.

Here's an exercise. You and your coworker discussed plans for a project in a large channel 3 weeks ago. You need to get all that information and give it to someone else. How do you do it? You can't. It will be interspersed with a bunch of other nonsense from other people and isn't grouped or organized in any sane manner.

This whole "chat" in workplace thing does nothing to actually get work done.

<comment><USER7> What's the alternative though? I really don't like Slack but I don't see another great way of doing it.

\- Face to Face: No record, even harder to give to someone

\- Wiki: Goes stale pretty quickly

\- E-Mail: Same problem, slower, as distracting as Slack

<comment><USER8> IRC gateway from Slack. But they closed it down because <insert random bullshit PR message here>.

<comment><USER7> I also prefer IRC but in this case it doesn't really improve anything. The opposite really, no build-in search, no easy onboarding, no central logs,...

(Yes, I know I can build all this with ZNC, ELK or by using IRC cloud but that doesn't solve the issue about chat vs. some other system)

<comment><USER8> But in Slacks case, that would all be there. With IRC.

But that's in the past. Slack is now a company with a single purpose (chat) and they can't even do that right. Just look at the bloated "application" (browser).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems every "how to do Slack right" post emphasizes that you shouldn't use Slack as a chat service. Well that's what it is. Why not use email for the beefier conversations that don't need to take place right away, and use chat for what it was intended?

Chat is great for the occasional situation where you want to have a conversation about something, you'll have a bunch of short messages back and forth, and you want to keep a record of the conversation. Putting other stuff in there just clutters things up. Slack is a great replacement for Reply All with 20 email addresses. It's not so good as a replacement for other things.

<comment><USER10> _> It seems every "how to do Slack right" post emphasizes that you shouldn't use Slack as a chat service._

Maybe other posts devolve to that but this post is different. The common repeating pattern he's pointing out is _others_ misusing it for low-quality communication and suggesting some settings to get some sanity back.

It's similar to previous advice about old technologies that others misuse where you had to counteract it with tactics to gain productivty. E.g. Phones - turn off ringer and manage voice mail. Email - set automatic category/priority/junk filters.

<comment><USER9> The author says:

"It's very easy to overuse DMs and see Slack as a real-time chat."

"We encourage people to be mindful about notifications. No DM is so important that it can't wait half an hour. In fact, I see this still underused. Slack has a Do Not Disturb feature and Atlassian's HipChat successor, Stride, made this one of its cornerstones, which they refer to a "Focus Mode." If something is really urgent, people will call you on your phone. Everything else can wait a bit. Uninterrupted time is important — don't let Slack take that away from you because someone is bored and asks you how your day is."

To be clear, the author does say that you should sometimes consider sending an email. My point is that the emphasis is on using Slack as something other than chat, but that's really its main use case.

<comment><USER10> _> My point is that the emphasis is on using Slack as something other than chat, but that's really its main use case._

I see what you mean. I think of 2 styles of "chat" ... (1) a vacuous AOL AIM or Facebook Messenger style chat or (2) a business-related channel chat.

The (1) is replicated in Slack by abuse of DMs. However, the author didn't seem to be discouraging (2). (Author wrote at the top, _" but ultimately, we decided we want to keep using Slack."_)

What happens is many workers bring a casual "Facebook chat" etiquette to Slack which negates how _meaningful_ business chat can work. That's why I didn't think the author wrote contradictory advice. (Similar to how the advice to turn off the phone ringer is not contradictory to the power of voice calls -- because sometimes one needs uninterrupted time.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I literally mute every channel except my direct team's channel. If you need me, @ me baby.

<comment><USER12> Not really sufficient, unfortunately. People will always abuse this and mention you whenever they feel like it, without thinking if it really needs immediate attention. The only solution is disabling notifications entirely.

<comment><USER13> If it were email, those same people would abuse email. I don't think what you're saying is really a problem with Slack. Those people you're referring to are disrespectful morons.

<comment><USER14> I think the issue is that people already learned how to avoid going crazy with email. A large part of that is reading it in batches and not getting any notification when messages arrive. Some other people are bothered by this and seem to forever seek a way to worm their way back into your foreground attention.

Slack conflates mentioning someone with notifying someone. Some of my coworkers use mentions like metadata. They think they are creating a better informatics resource by mentioning people by their Slack id instead of their name. They had no intention of it actually sending an immediate notification to interrupt anybody.

They see Slack more like some kind of wiki and not like a chat system. I see Slack as a chat system and an even more worthless wiki than all the other wikis everyone creates and then abandons due to editorial debt. Unfortunately, we don't get to join different Slack systems with entrance exams to filter out the wrong sort of user...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And yet there are many of us that use Slack in a way that is not intrusive, doesn't stress us out and adds incredible value. (I am unaffiliated with Slack, the company.)

I recently started paying for it, after having used it free at my company for several years. We wanted full comment history. I will say, the bonus of video calls doesn't work at all, and I still pay zoom.us for that. (Yes, did a customer support interaction, told them my problems, they thanked me. They have a lot of work to do. Or, they should just purchase or merge with zoom.us.)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm reminded of this Agile Bits blog post about "curing" themselves of Slack.

[https://blog.agilebits.com/2016/04/19/curing-our-slack- addic...](https://blog.agilebits.com/2016/04/19/curing-our-slack-addiction/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link - it's linked in the post as well, certainly interesting to know. We also have someone working at our company who previously worked at 1Password and is really happy that he can use Slack again.

<comment><USER16> Slack is the epicenter of all manner of communication problems where I work, and sadly, we have not yet figured out how to solve the problems. We have no remote employees, yet the 30 of us, who all sit right near each other, spend all day Slacking. I believe about 85% of messages are Direct Messages. It's extremely frustrating.

<comment><USER17> This x 1000. I constantly remind my team to favor face to face communication where possible. We have peopl hipchat each other sometimes literally sitting across the desk from each other. It creates such a frustrating "i spend half my day in chat" culture i just cant imagine the productivity drain.

<comment><USER10> _> to favor face to face communication where possible. We have peopl hipchat each other sometimes literally sitting across the desk from each other_

I understand your preference for face-to-face but one reason some prefer text chat is to minimize the ambient noise level in the office so as to not disturb others.

For me, one problem with face-to-face (and voice calls) is I often end up having to take notes and _transcribe_ what the person is saying to me. Instead, if you just send me a text chat or email, it saves me the step of being your secretary to type in what you just told me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> No one should be using slack at all. I understand that it fills use cases that email and irc don't, but that is no excuse for letting all of your communications be owned by some other company. What if slack accidentally or deliberately denies access to your data? What if they choose to use it for their own purposes or disclose it to some third party? What if they get hacked by Russia?

<comment><USER19> I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. But it could be.

It's actually worse than what you described. By default, users can install integrations and applications that extend legal contract of your company to fly-by-night third parties that can obtain access to all public channels that any user of their integration is a member of. We locked this down, but most companies don't realize the legal, privacy and security risks they are accepting.

So Slack itself does not need to get hacked by anyone. The framework by design facilitates this and removes Slack from legal responsibility. Your organization takes on this legal risk and the users in your org decide your legal fate (unless you lock down integration / third party apps). I mention legal fate, as many companies are using Slack for ChatOps, automation, discussing customer issues and much more.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure how is this different from an employee copy/pasting confidential data in an email and sending it off to a third-party. Will you also blame email clients for making it "too easy" to leak data to third parties?

<comment><USER19> This is not about me blaming anyone. This is about educating folks that the shiny new "app" they installed is relaying data to a 3rd party and it may not be clear to people the legal and privacy ramifications of doing so. They must also be made aware that the 3rd party has no legal agreement with them so they are dealing with 3rd party data processors. I can assure you that most legal and HR departments have no idea that Slack does this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In two companies where we had piloted Slack, I led successful campaigns to transition away from it.

Combining your choice of Email / IM client (Gmail / Hangouts or Outlook / Skype) satisfies 99% of use cases for Slack.

Overall we were less stressed and didn't miss a beat. I'm sure there are industries / companies working in areas that it makes sense - but I don't think it just works for everyone by default in the same way that IM and Email do.

<comment><USER15> I refuse to use Skype because of this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security#Eavesdropping_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security#Eavesdropping_by_design)

I also remember a ToS change that allowed MS to listen in for _quality control purposes_.

<comment><USER8> The same problem exists in Slack, there is no E2E-encryption. And you can't self host it.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. Hopefully they will add this. I'm currently betting on the fact that Slack is small and it's less likely that the NSA has a direct backdoor into their systems. I would bet a lot of money that the NSA has a backdoor directly into MS Skype servers. I even hypothesized that they paid MS to purchase Skype from Ebay, because right after the sale MS changed from peer-to-peer to client-server.

Didn't the Snowden leaks say that Skype had been used to track terrorists?

<comment><USER8> The official reason is that "search would not work", but I don't know if this argument holds. Others can do search too. There is no need to search serverside when you have all messages on the client too.

By judging their client application, I doubt the serverside looks much better, so a direct backdoor might not even be needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My team recently started using slack again and I'm finding it extremely lacking.

Whoever made the decision to use it cheaped out and didn't pay for it, so our history on channels is just getting lost, while I can still search for useful info or tips from 2 years ago on Gchat.

You can argue that this is the business model, but that is a shitty business model then. Sell features that further empower a team, don't intentionally remove one of the largest benefits of communicating in writing.

But what really pissed me for the past few months is the fact that you are unable to mute specific people. I recently had to coach a junior person, who despite being bright, fun etc. just failed to take to heart that they shouldn't interrupt someone to ask for something they could figure out themselves by looking around some, or that smiling emojis a minute after they got their answer was an additional interruption. This lack of a basic feature caused me weeks if not months of agony, making me more angry than I should be towards a person that didn't really deserve it, making me worried about my performance etc.

<comment><USER23> >our history on channels is just getting lost

my company actually pays for slack but had to enable limited history, since developers kept on writing stuff that should be in wiki's or documentation in slack and relying on the search.

<comment> yoz-y This kind of shows that people just want to write stuff and search for it later, rather than spend time organizing it. Gmail and Google Drive encourage this behavior too.

Of course for somebody who just comes in, this is pretty suboptimal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> dont use it ... if a production is actually not making your life better why tie yourself down to it.

just use what works, force slack to innovate

<comment><USER21> Not sure why you're getting downvotes - it's a reasonable question to ask: "why use something that makes you crazy / stressed out?

Not to set up a straw-man, but I'd imagine a similar reaction if someone wrote a post titled "How to use Facebook and not get depressed," the gut-reaction is "why use it if it's making you feel bad?"

<comment><USER25> A good question. The most powerful answer (for both examples) is because other-people-using-it makes its use by you necessary to get things done.

<comment><USER24> and thats where my quesiton is not for the employees but for the employers. Why are you choosing to use a product in your company that has no use.

If it had use then it wouldnt make people "crazy". It would make them happy. This inherently leads me to believe it has no use.

Personal experience, there is no golden rule to these things. Email , slack , google calendar. You eventually need to build your own relationship with these things and be adult enough to maintain that relationship (inbox at 0), seperate it from your emotions and be prepared to toss it to the side for in person conversation.

Its not slack that is making people crazy its the policies of using it at the company (or usually the lack there of) that make its benefit inconsistent. But it seems slack has not improved the situation but only exacerbated it.

<comment><USER25> Ah, I see. I agree with you in that case, but in my experience the true-but- rubbish answer is generally that the decision makers had need to use a tool and "common sense" made them force it on everyone else without any consideration (a common problem whenever the justification is "common sense").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Slack eliminating the irc gateway has made it completely useless via low bandwidth internet connections. It's awful, and seriously alienating when I'm off grid for extended periods with a weak cell signal capable of ~14KiB/s. I hate that nearly everyone has adopted this proprietary hosted garbage that gives zero fucks for users outside the meat of their target market.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've used slack. Worked at a small web shop of 10 people (one remote) which used slack. Wanna know what it was used for, and still to this day? Posting memes, cat and cute animal pictures, political news articles, funny articles, food related stuff, youtube, gifs, ad nauseum.

The project dev channels were all dead as the shop was small enough where people didn't need a bloated chat app for the few projects they managed. The one remote worker was paired with a local dev and they did all their communication via direct chat. Plus they still left access to the main random channel to ex employees so everyone could keep in touch. So there was an additional dozen people posting crap all day.

Slack was used for entertainment and distraction. I think the "modern" web chat idea is more of a distraction than help. IRC might be primitive but it does what it was made for without the distraction of gifs, memes, videos and other nonsense.

<comment><USER28> Large shop, checking in. We pay for it and have around 1500 technical people on ours, all spread out in a dozen locations. It lets us work as if we're all in the same office.

One misconception is that slack is not "chat", it's not like IRC. It's more like groupware when used as intended. It handles things like files or code samples, extensibility like webhooks and bots, fine grained notification preferences, decent search across channels or by other criteria. Screen sharing and conference calling is decent if immature. We have a channel for each team, a channel for any big issues that pop up (they get archived), a channel for each product, etc. and yes channels for screwing around. Corporate version has search and archive for Sarbox/HR reqs.

There are other products. IRC can only do a few of these things, with many requiring expert scripting to accomplish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> At work we have an enterprise contract with Slack, but the implementation is really strange.

Before the contract, there were a lot of teams/departments using Slack, so naturally an assortment of team workspaces started to accrue.

Once the enterprise contract came into place, those workspaces were integrated under one company banner so you can sign up with one login and join any company 'workspace'.

This means that if you need to talk to a team in a different workspace, you have to open a new tab in your browser and then join that. This is annoying, and is even worse when 'global' channels were introduced, because ANY notification gets broadcast across all the workspaces you have open.

Even DMs, if someone DMs me my Firefox tab bar lights up red across 5 different tabs.

This is partly an organisational problem in the company, but I think Slack should take some of the blame too to reduce these niggles

</comment><comment><USER30> I cannot wait for the day where slack will just die.

Or better, the day where people realize that Slack-style communication is most of the time completely useless and actually hurst productivity.

I now see that people start to realize this more and more. Slack was so much hyped a couple years ago that everyone had to use it to be cool. Now, people reflect on it and they realize that it mainly brings constant buzz and unneeded notifications. There is a use case for it, but for 99% of any serious discussion, email is usually way better.

</comment><comment><USER31> The author addresses how to reduce the amount of notification spam in slack, but doesn't really get to the root of why there are so many notifications in the first place.

At Rendevu ([https://rendevu.co](https://rendevu.co)), we think that's because people are attempting to use slack for more than it is -- mainly, using it to broadcast team information (documents / decisions / faqs), that then get pushed above the fold in channels by memes / gifs / other chatter, and then have to be reposted again and again.

We're building an intelligent feed that aggregates information from the tools you already use (Gsuite / Trello / Slack), and gives your team one place to stay on top of things. It's in alpha right now, but feel free to sign in and try it at [https://rendevu.co](https://rendevu.co). Any feedback is much appreciated :)

</comment><comment><USER32> There's no mention in TFA or here about Compact mode. Get into Preferences, in "Messages & Media", in section "Theme" switch to "Compact". Now your slack is more Lego and less Duplo.

</comment><comment><USER33> Better workflow:

Star every individual you talk to

Star channels you talk to often

Mute channels you only read occasionally

Occasionally close messages to people to clear the list.

Important things stay on the top, everything else moves to the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER34> Use glip.com. Is slack on steroids.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for someone to help create a trusted CA - <AUTHOR> Hello, This may be a long shot. but no harm in asking right? Does anyone have any experience in create a trusted certificate authority. Creating all the need Infrastructure, guidelines and submissions to get the root certificate included in all major browsers, OSs, devices etc.. And would they be interested in a new project. If so please message me. <comment><USER2> Shitpost: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647959](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647959)

Running a CA is not easy, and getting your root certificates included in trusted roots is even harder.

For the technical aspects of it, you will need an HSM for the root certificates generated, OCSP servers, a CRL mechanism, and the signing server. Many enterprises already run their own private CA, and there are plenty of free and open source software.

The difficult part is convincing root CA programs. Mozilla, Google, and Apple would be the start, but I suppose Curl/Java/Debian (which sync with Mozilla) will take some time to catch-up too. You need to be audited (by firms like KPMG and they don't come cheap), and they expect a certain level of transparency.

Why would you want to become a CA in the first place? Amazon and cpanel are root CAs that issue certificate for free. LetsEncrypt is free and issues certificates to everyone. I don't think there's any financial profit to be made anymore.

<comment><USER3> > LetsEncrypt is free and issues certificates to everyone

When using free providers, you will notice that the issued to -> organization field will be empty. Free providers do not compete with company validating trust authorities. They are just developer tools.

<comment><USER4> What nonsense. Extended validation schemes are snake oil peddled by CAs to make more money.

<comment><USER3> It is all nonsense until money is involved and customers want to know that the advertised website actually belongs to your legal entity.

<comment><USER5> Does not help in any real way. See [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/12/nope-...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/12/nope-this-isnt-the-https-validated-stripe-website-you- think-it-is/) for an example.

<comment><USER6> There's a huge difference between "it isn't impossible to bypass" and "does not help in any real way".

<comment><USER5> The only reason to get EV certs is the supposedly "safe" green organization field. As demonstrated it can be circumvented by anyone with minimal monetary motivation. Why even bother in that case? I rate that as "does not help in any real way".

<comment><USER6> > As demonstrated it can be circumvented by anyone with minimal monetary > motivation. Why even bother in that case?

Same goes for the lock on your door. Why do you bother? Just take it off.

<comment><USER5> I never said that. The alternative isn't no lock of course. It's the free lock that's equally safe to the one with the green "this is safe" sticker that you pay a premium for.

<comment><USER6> You do realize the "lock" in this analogy that you claimed "does not help in any real way" is the EV, not the encryption?

<comment><USER5> I'm not going to continue this argument as it seems pointless. There's a reason Chrome and others moved away from prominently showing EV properties:

[https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/s...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/security/ev- to-page-info.md)

<comment><USER6> There most certainly was a reason, just not _your_ reason (circumvention). Read the page you linked to. It literally says "users did not notice it", "users do not notice their absence", "users do not react as intended to positive or neutral security UI". It was user-focused. Not attacker-focused.

But I do agree it's pointless to keep continuing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Two things:

1) You have no contact info in your profile.

2) As throwaway pointed out, this is an expensive task to undertake and, at least based on your post, it's not clear what you hope to gain from building another CA that's sufficiently trustworthy to be accepted into the Web PKI root stores. Beyond free certs (Let's Encrypt), your needs might also be satisfied by something like Digicert's Dedicated Intermediate program [1] where they will build and manage a "sub-CA" (subordinate CA) for you that chains up to their widely trusted roots. This allows you to control certificates issued under that sub-CA (as long your requests also fall within the baseline requirements) but saves you from the management and compliance overhead of a truly new CA.

[1] [https://www.digicert.com/dedicated- intermediate/](https://www.digicert.com/dedicated-intermediate/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the DigiCert link. Are there other CAs that offer the same service that you know of? As DigiCert is very very very expensive as they target the top end enterprise.

<comment><USER8> You haven't told us why you want to be a CA?

What is it that you want to do, that you think you can do as a CA, but not as a customer/reseller of a CA?

In my experience as a CA customer, DigiCert is certainly expensive, but with that expense comes quite a bit of flexibility. Flexibility that might be able to meet your needs. Anyway, I would be amazed if the sub CA from Digicert program is more expensive than running a full blown CA, including the time and effort to get the CA into trust stores.

Plus, you're going to need to get a CA to sign your root / your intermediates while you wait for all the trust stores your customers care about to get updated; and by get updated, I really mean for your customers' customers to throw away their old devices. Your average Android device gets zero software updates, and lasts up to 7 years in your customers' customers hands, and who knows how many years behind upstream the manufacturer was when they built the thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Considering all of the, uh, _interesting_ goings-on that have happened in the CA world over the past few years, the first thing you need is trust and transparency. Buckets of it. Preferably your own personal waterfall.

I get the impression you may not be aware of the fairly unbounded levels of paranoia and suspicion that make up the bulk of public (personal and corporate) opinion about CA trustworthiness.

You very obviously have a motivation and agenda to post here, and for the sake of simplicity I trust that this is benign. But not actually documenting that rationale, let alone adding some reassuring arguments, kind of comes across to me as Step #1 in How To Successfully Not Succeed At Being A CA.

</comment><comment><USER10> The technology side is super easy if you know what you are doing. Getting your cert into the browsers is the problem. It's a political / sales & marketing type of problem. Why should they? You need a pretty convincing answer. Because it's pretty hard to motivate Google or Microsoft with the offer of a cash payment. It depends on what you mean but getting a cert into OSs / devices should be a lot easier.

<comment><USER11> > The technology side is super easy if you know what you are doing.

There are some nontrivial technical aspects which will be required if you want any certificate stores (browsers, operating systems, etc) to take you seriously.

Running `openssl ca` a few times won't cut it. You'll need a honest-to-god HSM to store your root keys in, a witnessed procedure for generating those keys, and some ironclad policies on access to those keys. This isn't something you can half-ass and fix later; if there's any doubt about who might have access to the root keys, the CA will never be trusted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Relevant [https://letsencrypt.org/2016/09/20/what-it-costs-to-run- lets...](https://letsencrypt.org/2016/09/20/what-it-costs-to-run-lets- encrypt.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd be more optimistic if you had included a note that you know the history of CAcert ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAcert.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAcert.org)) and have a plan on how to tackle the issues that prevented its roots from getting into the common trust stores.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's something only a handful of people have done, and realistically you'll need a certain amount of business cred to be seen as a plausible CA. And it's hard to compete with Let's Encrypt ..

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm no expert on creating a CA. The changelog recently has an episode on Let's Encrypt. It covered a lot about how Let's Encrypt got started. Quiet an amazing job, I think you should listen to it or at least read the transcript.

[https://changelog.com/podcast/389](https://changelog.com/podcast/389)

</comment><comment><USER16> What's your plan? Creating something in the style of Let's Encrypt (all free, all open source) or in the style of Comodo/Verisign/etc. (Paid, closed source)?

You might start using software like PrimeKey Ejbca (Enterprise Edition), Microsoft Server 2019 with Certification Authority or some wrappers around openssl that are available online.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wait - you're asking random strangers to help you create one of the cornerstones of trust on the internet?

</comment><comment><USER18> Other commenters have already covered the political/financial difficulties of this, so I won't mention those.

However, the journey of CertSimple may be marginally relevant to what you're proposing.

They were a small CA focusing entirely on the easy issuance of Extended Validation certs.

Disregarding the fact that EV never actually had any proven value (except for some code signing use cases), they did have a nice little business.

As far as I know it was a one-person company at first, and they were able to piggyback off the infrastructure of an existing CA. I can't remember whether it was an intermediate cert or simply reselling.

I was going to link to them but they seem to have shut down or been absorbed into another company.

<comment><USER9> Yup, absorbed into [https://expeditedsecurity.com/certsimple/](https://expeditedsecurity.com/certsimple/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Start by being a reseller.

[https://www.namecheap.com/resellers/ssl-certificates/how- it-...](https://www.namecheap.com/resellers/ssl-certificates/how-it-works/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not exactly what I asked or what is wanted sorry. Plus namecheap are terrible as a reseller

<comment><USER20> Being a reseller puts you in the path to being a trusted CA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You'll probably want to read the Mozilla Root Store Policy [0], if you haven't already.

Oh, and be prepared to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next few years while this process plays out and your CA certificate actually gets added to the root store in the various browsers.

\---

[0]: [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/about/governance/policies/secu...](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/about/governance/policies/security-group/certs/policy/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Like everyone else is saying, this is something that will cost you millions of dollars in startup costs in order to compete with a product (Let's Encrypt) that's free of charge.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ignore anyone telling you that what you propose is technically difficult. It is not.

The code for what you want to do has been baked into Windows Server since 2008. It also exists in OpenSSL.

The CA part is easy. The "getting the world to trust your CA" is the part most would call "difficult".

If you can do the latter, ALOT of people here can do the former, and you will likely succeed.

If you cannot do the latter, you will likely fail in the effort.

<comment><USER24> The CA part is incredibly easy if you don't need to consider security.

The difficulty then ramps up the more secure you want (or need) it to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> You'll want to study the Baseline Requirements and join the various forums such as MozDevSecurityPolicy (MDSP). Do you have a business plan for this month, year, next year, 2 years out? Are you ready to not sleep and hate yourself for an undetermined time as you get this thing bootstrapped?

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm not a pro, but I researched this topic a while ago. Would love to help as best as I can. Email is in my HN profile.</comment>


Eclipse IP Casts a Shadow Over Innovation - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/stupid-patent-month-eclipse-ip-casts-shadow-over-innovation

<comment><USER2> Example of the potential impact outside the US. 1\. "Normally", this kind of patent would not have been validated in France. Which is a good thing. 2\. But, as soon as this patent is validated in the US, the patent owner can ask for internationalisation and then... (talala...), it starts to be applicable in France. 3\. Finally, French laws should ask local consumers and enterprises to respect this patent that would not have been validated in a first place... Here, you have a "niche" market for patent trolls?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not about IP in the Eclipse IDE, like I was thinking.

<comment><USER4> First thing I thought as well. Especially since you hear so little about Eclipse these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why the Patent office continues to award patents of "apply computer to otherwise not patentable ideas" is beyond me. In my last job we constantly fought people who claimed that using a computer to do something with travel required them to be massively paid off.

</comment><comment><USER6> The patent expressly states a "notification system". I'd question whether that covers a bi-directional communication platform like SMS messaging. A notification system should be in one direction only - sending notifications to a user and nothing more (like a pager). The fact that you can use SMSs to notify people is irrelevant. You can use _any_ communication system to notify people. A patent that claimed innovation on "telling people changes in quantity regardless of how they're communicated" would be far too broad to get approval.

<comment><USER7> Except that reading the claims... it _really is_ that broad. Stupid Patent of the Month is going far too easy on this one.

The patent is rooted in a provisional dated 2003. Even in 1953 it would be a stretch to call this novel. Filing a patent like this should be considered defrauding the patent office and should carry criminal penalties.

<comment><USER8> > Filing a patent like this should be considered defrauding the patent office > and should carry criminal penalties.

I couldn't agree more. I wonder if this doesn't fall into any existing criminal charge already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From what I understand, the patent office essentially is not empowered to say "no" to a patent request. The most they can do is keep sending it back for revisions, but if you have enough money and lawyers, you get to basically wear the examiner down or get a different examiner more willing to let it go.

An outright rejection process would go a long way to fixing some of this crap.

<comment><USER10> How would a rejection differ from sending it back for revisions? Are you imagining a blackout period for that submitter?

<comment><USER11> The first review can be binding, so a peer reviewer is forbidden from overriding any findings of prior art. Appeals could require litigation or.exponentially increasing fees .

<comment><USER10> Please answer these two questions:

1\. What is wrong with revising a patent based on Patent Office feedback? "P.O.:This is objectionable for reasons x, y, z" , "Applicant: Ok, thanks, I'll change x, y, z so as not to be objectionable". This seems like a reasonable exchange on the face of it.

2\. How will you distinguish 'revisions' from 'new' patents that are substantially similar to previous patent applications?

Remember that some companies (MSFT/Google/IBM) file for many, many patents every year.

<comment><USER9> Revisions can keep coming back. No one in the patent office can stop the patent outright and prevent it from coming back. If someone file a patent for something obvious, the examiner cannot completely reject it.

Ideally, the rejection should go in a searchable database/knowledgebase and prevent from anyone else, including the original filer from filling again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Heh... I made it more than halfway through the article before I realized that it has nothing to do with the Eclipse open source software foundation.

</comment><comment><USER13> It is kind of shocking somebody actually got a patent for something that obvious.

I thought one requirement for getting a patent is that the invention has to be non-obvious. Is this the result of cleverly wording the patent application, or did someone at the patent office neglect their job to actually review a patent application before accepting it?

</comment><comment><USER14> One can only hope that these assholes eventually try to squeeze the wrong "legitimate businessmen" somewhere, and end up at the bottom of a river somewhere.

Yeah, I know: they're really good at avoiding large enough companies that have the resources to silence their bullshit.</comment>


English or German? - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/12cu2gi

<comment><AUTHOR> Taken from The Design and Implementation of Speech Recognition Systems. See [http://asr.cs.cmu.edu/spring2014/lectures/class4.DP.pdf](http://asr.cs.cmu.edu/spring2014/lectures/class4.DP.pdf) Slide 2.</comment>


EA Killing Rock Band For iPhone, Game Will Be Unplayable For Current Owners - <AUTHOR> http://toucharcade.com/2012/05/02/original-ios-rock-band-shutting-down-at-the-end-of-may/

<comment><USER2> The really inexcusable part is that the game is still available for purchase, with no indication in the description that it's about to self-destruct.

Hopefully Apple nails them to the wall on this.

<comment><USER3> I had to see it with my own eyes:

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rock-band/id333307161?mt=8>

<comment><USER4> Even better, it hasn't been updated since 2010. That implies EA planned to pull the plug when they shipped it.

<comment><USER5> Not necessarily. They could have a messaging thing built in that just pulled a message from a server.

<comment><USER6> Sure, thats true for the message their popping. But it also means the kill switch was in there since then. I guess it doesn't necessarily mean they intended to cancel it from the start though, if this is standard practice for all their apps.

<comment><USER7> I think the "kill switch" is that the server that it connects to when it boots up will be gone. It's not like it'll self destruct on the phone--you'll still be able to launch the app, it just won't connect to the server. Therefore, you won't be able to play.

The same thing would happen with, say, Draw Something, if a tornado came through and wiped out their data center. They wouldn't have built a purposeful "kill switch," it's just a de facto one because the server would then be embedded into a tree somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As apps move to the cloud, record albums turn into subscriptions, and books become bits on a Kindle, I fear this sort of thing will become more commonplace.

Sometimes intentionally, like this example, sometimes you'll lose access to things you thought you had bought as companies merge or expire, or through good old-fashioned screw-ups.

I can run a program on my thirty-year-old Apple computer today just as I could when I bought it, even though the company who made the software may have disappeared in the '90s. Records I bought as a kid are still here, and no one can edit or "deauthorize" the books on my shelf.

I wonder if kids born now will grow up without any expectation that buying any form of software or media entitles them to keep and use what they've bought anytime they want?

<comment><USER9> What's crazy is that kids today won't have music passed down to them per this trend. The license to your iTunes music collection ends with your life as per the Apple ToS (seriously).

I don't want to buy licenses. Can we please buy things that are real (like bits, real).

<comment><USER10> Nobody gives a shit what the tos say. People will share their music.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, that's pretty insane. Wonder how Apple will treat EA's iOS developer license if they keep doing it like that.

Otherwise you could dodge the whole "apps that are 'trial' versions" are prohibited... Release the app for a small sum, pull it after a while and release a sequel!

Or will this be another case of "some developers are more equal than others"?

<comment><USER12> Apple's taking a 30% cut of $a-lot-of-money that passes through their App Store because of EA's games, I don't think they're going to rescind their ability to develop for iOS.

<comment><USER13> Yes, but Apple is always willing to prioritize users over developers, which is why Apple is constantly pissing off developers by making them jump through extra hoops. Apple is not going to yank EA's apps, but it's likely that EA is going to get a call from Apple.

<comment><USER14> However Apple doesn't put users before dollars in the case of the kindle app and the recent dropbox debacle, regarding the whole in app purchase crap.

<comment><USER15> I think what he means is that Apple has no qualms about calling a company's bluff when they're breaking appstore policies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> EA apparently just retracted: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57426660-93/ea-not- killing-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57426660-93/ea-not-killing-rock- band-for-ios-after-all/)

<comment><USER17> Doesn't really work when it is posted in the FAQ. This appears to be a poor cover-up or a pretty big internal misunderstanding.

<http://i.imgur.com/eTwHH.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you owned it, you can go to your transactions page and issue a refund. It takes around 4 hours, and it comes out of EA's pockets!

<comment><USER19> Is this on iOS? If so, how does one get to the transactions page?

<comment><USER20> It's in iTunes IIRC. Sorry, don't know exactly where, but it's in there. It won't be anywhere logical, I'm guessing.

<comment><USER21> <http://www.ehow.com/how_5590751_refund-itunes.html>

It only works for transactions made in the last 90 days though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I tried to find out more from their Support pages but only found this FAQ: [https://help.ea.com/article/will-rock-band-no-longer-be- avai...](https://help.ea.com/article/will-rock-band-no-longer-be-available-on- mobile-devices)

From the page:

Will ROCK BAND no longer be available on mobile devices?

Updated: 5/2/2012

I've heard ROCK BAND will not be available after May 31. Is this true?

Yes, we will be suspending support of ROCK BAND after May 31 and focusing resources on other EA titles. We thank everyone for playing ROCK BAND, and we encourage you to explore some of the other exciting titles in our mobile line- up.

Can I still play ROCK BAND if I've already downloaded it?

The ROCK BAND servers will be live through May 31, 2012. If you have already downloaded the game, you can continue to play until then.

<comment><USER23> They've now memory-holed this page.

<comment><USER24> No surprise. Their official story is that it was an error.

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57426660-93/ea-not- killing-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57426660-93/ea-not-killing-rock- band-for-ios-after-all/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can only guess this is because of 2 reasons (which come down to cost):

      - Song licensing deals expire with unfavorable renewal costs
      - Server and other costs outweigh incoming revenue

Either way live by the content, die by the content.

<comment><USER11> Soo... does that mean other platforms also expire when they can't be bothered to support a game? For example, a playstation version? What about guitar hero?

(Why would the servers be required anyways? To stream content? Couldn't content be downloaded on first run (which means you only need to fund a server&pipe big enough for new purchases))

<comment><USER25> There been instances where games re-released on new platforms have been modified because the creators were unable or unwilling to re-license certain content again. One example that comes to mind is Sega removing songs from The Offspring from Crazy Taxi when they released a version of the game for Xbox Live Arcade. The original arcade version also featured real branded destinations, like KFC, and these have been turned into generic versions.

<comment><USER4> I can't say I've ever heard of /existing/ copies of games disabled when a license expires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm sure a blanket refund issued to all the current owners of the game will quickly explain to EA why this is a terrible idea. They'll survive, but they'll be wiser.

</comment><comment><USER27> Apple and EA didn't need more PR drama. Welcome to the yet another battle in the war of (signed) 'Apps' vs our old notions of software.

Plus, EA certainly doesn't need any more bad publicity after Mass Effect 3 and all their release day DLC drama.

</comment><comment><USER28> Someone brought-up an interesting point: The thought of your entire iBooks or Kindle book library evaporating is a sobering one.

Will all of this be around in twenty or thirty years? I have physical books that are nearly 100 years old in my library. They don't require a third party to exist in order to be usable.

These kinds of things make you re-think some of these ideas.

Another place where this happens much faster is power tools. I still have a number of excellent power tools that are easily 15 to 20 years old. Sawzall, drill, router, biscuit joiner, circular saw, etc.

All of them have a chord and are AC powered.

None of the battery powered tools I bought long ago are around. In some cases the battery packs have been discontinued. In other cases the batteries went bad and the replacement cost for the obsolete packs is just too high.

So, if you want to leave tools and books to your kids, you might want to rethink what you are buying. It is possible to imagine that iBooks and Kindle will not be around in 40 to 50 years.

Anyone know what the TOS say about this for both Apple and Amazon? Do you own your books or have they become licenses that can go poof overnight?

<comment><USER29> In the case of Amazon at least, the DRM on Kindle ebooks is ludicrously easy to crack. Every book I purchase, I crack - both for self-preservation (the removal of 1984 from every device it was installed on was worrying), and because not being able to share frustrates me.

More than games, music, etc., not being able to share books drives me _crazy_. Everyone in my flat has a small library; we share our books between eachother. When we started getting Kindles, that was stymied: after reading the first book in the Void trilogy on paper, I was unable to let my flatmate (who read the first book after me) read the second book - because I bought it on Kindle. That was... well, lame.

So now, I manage my Kindle with Calibre. Every book I buy gets cracked.

<comment><USER30> Either you are buying off a different Amazon store or there's some new Topaz DRM decryption scheme. As far as I know, most current Kindle books aren't crackable.

<comment><USER31> I've had one Kindle book recently that Calibre wasn't able to crack automatically. It was a Kindle print replica textbook which I bought to read on my Touchpad in class. Turns out when they say "PC/Mac/iPad Compatible", they really mean ONLY PC/Mac/iPad. Android Kindle apps can't read them. I spent the entire weekend cracking their various obfuscation methods to find out it was a DRM'd PDF wrapped in a Palm Database format container. When I got it completely stripped, it was a straight PDF with no loss of functionality.

Could they have sold it as a PDF with their normal Kindle DRM? Yes. Would this have been sufficient enough to keep piracy to acceptable levels? Yes. Any miniscule amount of DRM is enough. It's like putting WEP on your router. It will keep out the riff raff (which is good enough for most cases) but anyone who is determined to break your encryption will figure out how to do it. With something like an ebook, I would imagine that 9:1 sales to piracy rate would be realistic, and that's well within acceptable range in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Doesn't this violate Apple's policy? If not, has this happened in the past?

<comment><USER33> Practically, it doesn't seem like there is any way to force a company to keep their servers running to support a game forever, no matter what the policy is.

<comment><USER2> They could threaten EA's other apps, though, or perhaps refund all purchases for the game.

<comment><USER34> I think if you have an abusive app developer, its within reason to ban them from the platform.

<comment><USER35> Of course, if that app developer is a major player like EA, I would imagine the definition of "abusive" suddenly becomes much more liberal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If I had to put a valid reason to this instead of simply declaring that EA are dicks (which is still true but...), I'd guess that the rights on the songs expired and they are no longer legally allowed to distribute them.

Think about it. It would be even more scummy of them to leave the app up for download with no way to pull the songs required to play the game down from the cloud.

It's shitty either way, especially if you just bought the app but, I don't see a good way out of it.

<comment><USER33> There is a middle ground. They can pull the app from the store, but it is still playable on people devices. It's not great, but it's a lot better than "you can't play this game anymore even though it's installed."

And it seems fairly ridiculous that EA would not get rights that last for the life of a single product. They've been doing song licensing for 10+ years now.

<comment><USER36> If the songs are in the cloud that middle ground doesn't work.

<comment><USER37> The songs aren't on the cloud, as the game works perfectly on an ipod touch when wifi is disabled.

The problem is games requiring "authentication servers" to do anything. The general thought has been when these servers were removed the last act of the company would be to release an update that disabled the requirement of the servers... however this has never really happened.

It frustrates me as thanks to tools like DosBox I am still playing games on my Mac that I first played years ago (Master of Orion 2 specifically). There is a distinct possibility that every game you purchase will no longer work in 5 years between DRM'd executable, proprietary platforms and authentication servers.

<comment><USER15> Don't you have to pull the songs down at least once though?

<comment><USER38> That's not a problem for existing users. I don't think anybody would criticize EA for stopping sales of the game — it's the idea of killing off already purchased copies that's so galling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Remember some years back Belkin sold a router that would randomly replace web page requests with redirects to ads for their products? I haven't purchased any Belkin products since. I may not purchase any more EA products for similar reasons.

</comment><comment><USER40> Quick, buy it now so you can get in on the class action.

<comment><USER39> Why, so you can get credit toward a future EA game purchase equal or lesser than the purchase price of this game?

Or [squints suspiciously] are you a class-action lawyer?</comment></comment>


Show HN: AI tool to automatically extract data from images and scanned documents - <AUTHOR> https://www.impira.com/mango/overview <comment><USER2> Blog post has some more detail [https://www.impira.com/blog/introducing-mango- beta](https://www.impira.com/blog/introducing-mango-beta)</comment>


New Patentable Idea: A Way to Invalidate Vague Patents - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/new-patentable-idea-a-way-to-invalidate-vague-patents/ <comment><USER2> There's recursion in there somewhere...</comment>


Help save HackerNews - <AUTHOR> http://peterdevlin.com/?p=19

<comment><AUTHOR> reposted as server went down last time.</comment>


Ask HN: How is your New Year's Resolution going? - <AUTHOR> At the beginning of the year we shared our aspirations for 2018. How are you holding up?
> Ask HN: 2018 resolutions? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16044255
> Ask HN: What Are Your New Years Resolutions or 2018 Goals? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16022339 <comment><USER2> I lost all the weight and then regained some celebrating :(</comment>


GitLab security updates related to CVE-2016-4340 have been released - <AUTHOR> GitLab has released the planned security updates related to CVE-2016-4340 (https://about.gitlab.com/2016/04/28/gitlab-major-security-update-for-cve-2016-4340/). I can't speak for all versions but I was able to update my v8.7.0 installation to v8.7.1 by following the instructions at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/doc/update/patch_versions.md. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable update instructions: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/blob/master/doc/upda...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/blob/master/doc/update/patch_versions.md)</comment>


Best place for gig or contract work for web dev? - <AUTHOR> Or, can you give a previous thread to reference? <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)

This is a good place to look. If you are interested in something more stable, and you have solid full stack experience, something like surge or toptal is good (I do contract work full time for surge).</comment>


The Encrypted Homelab - <AUTHOR> https://blog.haschek.at/2020/the-encrypted-homelab.html <comment><USER2> From the article:

      Also if I had encrypted all my computers in 2014 when I was raided by the police because they followed a wrong lead, I would have gotten my computers much sooner than the 1 year it took them to look through all my files of all my harddrives.

I have a hard time imagining this being the way it would work in the US.</comment>