We've developed an automated Bitcoin arbitrage platform - <AUTHOR> http://bit.do/bitllama

<comment><USER2> This simply doesn't make sense, and buyers beware.

If you can make money with 0% risk, you will save the money for yourself. You'll invest all your money (it's 0% risk, right?) and then re-invest your earnings.

<comment><USER3> I suspect that this approach gets far more scalable with larger reserves due to transaction fees. It's probably also safer/easier to risk clients' capital than your own.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. Due to large trading traffic, we get to save a lot on costs on transaction fees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting.

Any historical trading data available?

Also, does each user operate under the same settings?

Seems like more users = less arbitrage opportunity because we're competing against each other.

Who gets priority when trading? Or is it more like we're pooling our money for arbitrage, and then each node gets a proportional split based on their deposit amount (like a mining pool)?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't want to get into too much detail as we are aware of few competitors (though they don't offer their platforms to public but to selected clients instead) but we can tell you that your thinking is on the right track. Historically we've been able to make up to 8 % profit a month. This is reasonable arbitrage profit - anyone claiming to make more is probably fraudulent, so beware. I can't answer the pooling question but will tell you that we make sure it's 100% fair for all users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> People beware, this is nonsense:

* if there was a profit to be made for free, why wouldn't they invest their own money and take the profit themselves?

* as soon as enough people are arbitraging, the market prices will tend to the same equilibrium price. Buying in the cheapest place will push the price up and selling in the most expensive, down.. until equilibrium (same price)! There will be no profit to be made, but to the ones providing the arbitrage service

*also you need to take into account friction costs (fees) of moving your capital (non-bitcoin) from exchange to exchange. Those cost must be taken into account of the arbitraging price.

bottom line: not worth it

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey vgrocha, we're realists and sceptics ourselves, so we appreciate the feedback and we'll try to answer your concerns.

1.) The reason for this is very simple. You need bitcoins to make arbitrage happen. Bitcoin fluctuates so much that it carries a large currency risk. This is why none of us has more than a few bitcoins on their accounts - we're not wealthy or reckless people. In order to exploit arbitrage opportunities ourselves, we'd have to buy large quantities of bitcoins to arbitrage them and make profit. Some people on the other hand already have large amounts of bitcoins and don't have much to do with them except watch the price fluctuate. We offer them a better use of it ;)

2\. Profit is not made for free - there are risks involved. One simple risk is that one of the bitcoin markets we trade on goes bust. We list all risks on our website.

3.) This is true - there are plenty of people arbitraging the market which is why price differences among markets are already minimal. However when you have a large enough volume of users you get lower fees. It also depends on how good the algorithm you use is. You can check arbitrage opportunities currently out there right here: [http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/arbitrage](http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/arbitrage)

4.) Yes, we of course do that. Our profits are calculated by subtracting all the fees associated with trading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Bitllama Ltd" does not exist according to Companies House. Are you aware of the legal risks that entails?

</comment><comment><USER7> Still in beta ? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8377114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8377114) [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=361560](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=361560)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, still in beta. We've actually shifted how platform works since then. At first we were holding profits in bitcoins which was was fine as price was either going up or was holding a steady value. Now, with a 70% price drop in the past 6 months we've actually switched algorithms around so our profits are maximised in dollars. This way users make real profit (dollar-wise) regardless of where bitcoin is headed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess if you spam /newest enough, you do eventually get traction!

</comment><comment><USER9> The site is down.</comment>


Cruise Sheet: Find cruise deals - <AUTHOR> http://cruisesheet.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Since some comments are accusing me of nefarious motives, I thought I'll explain: (thanks though, it gave me a good laugh)

1\. I saw the link on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416) where plainOldText was kind enough to post [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6698086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6698086)

2\. I thought, well, more people need to see this awesome app, so let me post the link as a story.

The only profit I got was in karma points. I checked xe.com and it says 1.000 HN = 0.000 USD.

(ps: Thanks dangrossman, plainOldText and bradly)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the link-- I'm the creator of the site and I appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great. I want to use this. Some improvements are needed:

\- When searching Florida to Florida (so as to find roundtrip cruises) the cruises just says Miami Round Trip w/o giving any ideas of where it is going to stop, what region, etc. (see: [http://cruisesheet.com/?from=Florida&to=Florida](http://cruisesheet.com/?from=Florida&to=Florida))

\- No way to search within a time frame. Say I want to leave after November 18th but before December 12th. There is no way to do this search and sort by price.

\- Clicking custom search goes nowhere

\- I have not once been able to get the low price you list

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback. This was just a weekend project, so I have a lot of improvements to make, but not a ton of spare time to dedicate to them. I'll get there, though.

The low price is double occupancy-- a few people have gotten stuck on that, so I have to make it clearer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Umm: ERROR WITH QUERY: SELECT * FROM deal WHERE added_date >= '2013-11-08' \- INTERVAL 30 MINUTE AND from_id IN(19) AND ship_id = ORDER BY cpd ASC LIMIT 0, 100 You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'ORDER BY cpd ASC LIMIT 0, 100' at line 1

[http://cruisesheet.com/?from=Bayonne%2C+New+Jersey&ship=Expl...](http://cruisesheet.com/?from=Bayonne%2C+New+Jersey&ship=Explorer+of+the+Seas)

</comment><comment><USER5> I had no idea cruises were so cheap. Wow - it is literally cheaper than rent alone to live on a cruise ship.

<comment><USER6> Well, there's more besides the 'rooms are 2p'. It doesn't include food for example... You have to buy that, and it can be pretty expensive because the restaurants on the boat have a monopoly. The other thing is that cruise ships usually have mandatory gratuities that can be pretty expensive.

<comment><USER7> No. Every US based cruise I've ever been on or heard about has free meals. Its common to hear people talk about gaining 10 lbs on a cruise because they ate so much.

<comment><USER6> Seriously? On European cruises (at least the ones I've been with) the food cost money (and lots of it).

<comment><USER7> Yes. At the sit down dinners I often couldn't decide on an entree -- so I would just order both.

Drinks (including soda, coffee, and of course alcohol) are very much not free though. You are also not allowed to bring any alcohol on board.

Some cruises have begun charging "charging extra for new premium amenities such as fancy alternative restaurants" [1] -- but the run of the mill buffets are all you can eat and free.

[1] [http://www.aarp.org/travel/cruises/info-08-2012/cruise- ships...](http://www.aarp.org/travel/cruises/info-08-2012/cruise-ships-food- excursions.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there a way to line these up so you can get back to your starting destination fairly easily? If we could line them up back to back I'd love to do this for like 6 months, I think.

<comment><USER2> I'm the creator of this site... I tried some algorithms to build something like this. The problem is that there are peak seasons that make the price crazy expensive. To be on contiguous ships all year, the best price seemed to be around $30k... if you don't care that the ports line up (which probably makes it impossible to actually do) it was around $20k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool site! I am just curious, where do you get the data from? Is it scraping? I've had a few ideas for cruise-related sites, but have been consistently stifled by the lack of affordable data about cruise itineraries.

<comment><USER2> Scraping from a few sources and coallating the data. Hoping I make some money of commissions to fund buying access to good data.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, and good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Somebody should organize a Cruiseathon. Hackathon on a Cruise. I will be game!

<comment><USER11> Keep in mind that internet access can be slow and sometimes out of reach of the Satellite. Other than that it's a great idea and there have been tech cruises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The "Round Trips" don't say where they go and all the links on the right don't work for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is really nice, I just found an awesome deal! Too bad the listed cruises are only for United Statians, and I couldn't book a cruise when I clicked on the link, because they only accept bookings from United Statians. Fixed it by just visiting the website of Holland America Line, from there I can book it. But it would be much nicer if I could just purchase it from your link. I assume you'd also get a commission for it.

It would also be nice of there would be some pictures of the cruise or the cruise ship. Anyway, bookmarked this, will come in handy :)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is the kind of thing most affiliate marketers dream of making, and rarely ever succeed at.

Very well done and I think this could easily become a business itself. Keep this one rocking!

</comment><comment><USER14> I read original article also, but... ...I've never wanted to be on a cruise so much before.

When I finish my living abroad, I think I will try it. It would cost me around the same to get a cheap hostel.

</comment><comment><USER15> Mentioned on [http://tynan.com/cruisework](http://tynan.com/cruisework) \- Why Cruises are a great place for development/focus.

</comment><comment><USER16> What's with the trailing "8" on every page, is it a typo or does it mean something more? ;)

</comment><comment><USER17> Uh, awesome. Can I filter by price? i.e. everything less than $500? Or date range?

Anyway, awesome.

<comment><USER2> Not yet-- will be adding these. Bookmark and check back in a couple weeks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, this looked like a spam post at first with three votes.

And wow, the cruises listed are cheap!

</comment><comment><USER19> It is basically cheaper to cruise than to live at home.

<comment><USER20> Except that when you're on a cruise you're typically also paying rent for a house or apartment elsewhere.

<comment><USER21> Rent out your place on airbnb. Bonus if you can rent it out for more than it costs you, and you can fund your cruising with the profits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1) Post fluff blog post about how cruises are great places to work: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416). Get upvoted.

2) Follow up with link to the website you built to find cruise deals.

3) Profit.

How much are you making off this, Kirubakaran?

<comment><USER23> This site was linked from that post, which is probably where kirubakaran found it. I'm not sure why you think he's making money for sharing Tynan's link. Are you suggesting that, while submitting links to HN is free, he _paid off_ two different people to submit the blog post and the link to Cruise Sheet separately? Why?

<comment><USER22> Because it's such a maddeningly blatant shill post which, out of context, would be considered the worst type of spam: a single link to a "Find hidden hot cruise deals" site.

And in the context of the post it's not much better. You know where I like to work? From the deck of a cruise ship! No shit, I'd love to be on a cruise ship too.

"You know where I like to code? From the beaches of Aruba!" Followed up by a link to an Aruba travel deals site. No.

Extended rant: my frustration equally applies to Tynan's post [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416) \- nothing personal per se, save for the obviousness of the article I ham- handedly parodied above.

These class of ex post facto blog posts authored solely for self promotion seem like the bread and butter of HN. He build a website to sell cruise ship deals and now he _really_ wants everyone to know how great it is to [insert relevant occupation] from the deck of a cruise ship.

I really need to start thinking of HN as "Hustler News" instead of "Hacker News" I think it'd alleviate the cognitive dissonance I got going on.</comment></comment></comment>


Tale of RQ-170 Hijack In Doubt as Told in Tehran - <AUTHOR> http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3abca8e6e2-70ef-40a3-8c56-f83aa6fc7ade

<comment><USER2> I was mildly surprised at the lack of cynicism here about the Iranian claims on HN. This article then comes as no surprise</comment>


Ask HN: Would you join a listed company calling itself a "startup" and high risk? - <AUTHOR> I'm offered a CTO position in a listed company that calls itself a startup. They are yet to release their product and operating on a loss for the past 2 years while spending investor money. There is a high risk since they are running out of cash and their burn rate is high. Asking the obvious. but I'm interested in different perspectives. <comment><USER2> Sometimes it makes sense to ignore the red flags with full knowledge that you are ignoring them, i.e. if there are other significant reasons for pursuing a new job that the job with all those red flags solves. Othertimes, aka 'usually', it makes sense to heed the red flags because there are red flags that you'll miss because you've yet to experience them.

In this case, I think it's worth unpacking the term 'startup'. In most of the world, 'startup' has become a sexy synonym for 'new business' and new restaurants are startups and a fellow with a lawn mower and a pickup truck and a trailer is running a lawn care startup...because of the success of startups from Silicon Valley, 'startup' is sexy.

And Silicon Valley is where the other meaning of 'startup' is common. There a startup is a company that is designed to grow fast and organized to receive venture capital and either succeed or fail within the timelines of Venture Capital investors and according to how Venture Capital Investors define success. They define success as valuations in the 100's of millions of dollars.

This means that startups in the Silicon Valley sense usually burn through money in pursuit of growth and usually don't achieve the growth and die and that's pretty much accepted and acceptable by Venture Capital Investors. Startups in the 'rest of the world sense' are not expected to grow-or-fail. They are expected to return reasonable profits over a sustained period and that's what investors in those companies expect.

This means that taking a job at any startup in the Silicon Valley sense should be accompanied with a healthy expectation that the company will run out of money and fail because that's just what happens and with the hope that the company will hit it big and the equity won't be worthless and that's mostly a matter of luck (there's a well respected HN'er who sold their Sun stock and spent it on a Camero not long before Sun went public and the stock would have been worth many times more).

The question I'd ask myself looking into this type of situation is 'What happened to the previous CTO and if there wasn't one, why the hell not?"

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Been there, done that.

You should replace the CFO by a monthly spreadsheet.</comment>


Recent experiences with Heroku? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I went to a job interview yesterday for a very interesting new role; I would basically be starting and heading a new branch of the company with upcoming big projects and the company seems to be very keen to use Heroku a lot for the deployment.
I have been using own servers / VPS's for years (VPS.NET and especially Linode), so I have always had full control on what I could/needed to use, with basically no limits. But of course the overhead of the administration, while I have never had any real problems with it, is something that sometimes I would like to avoid to focus more on development etc. So in a way I like that this company is keen to use a PAAS provider.
I was just wondering however, how is Heroku doing these days? I've seen they've added a lot of addons etc, but I am wondering about performance and reliability as well. What's your experience with them so far? I am particularly interested about experiences with big projects with high traffic and perhaps a lot of backend processing.
Cost: it still looks to me like Heroku is more (or a lot more) expensive than running your own servers on Linode or similar; of course this is justified by the fact that the administration is taken care of for you. However I am wondering if you find anyway that the advantages of such a platform overcome the higher costs, in your case.
On a side note, have you experienced any big limitations or hiccups that have led you to move or consider a move out of Heroku for your projects?
Thanks a lot in advance for your insights. <comment><USER2> How is heroku doing these days: Recently acquired by Salesforce and expanding their add-on range means that they will be around for a long time and it is promising that they are catering to a larger variety of developers.

Reliability: They run off Amazon web services which are continually expanding their regions. So they are highly reliable (especially after the EC2 outage in 2010).

Cost: In my experience, heroku has saved me a lot of time and my clients a lot of money. Yes, I can setup and manage my own servers and it can be for as little at $10/month. heroku on the other hand costs up to $100/month for my production servers. Why am I willing to pay this much? Because I put a higher price on my time than $100/month. I don't have to worry about infrastructure or redundancy issues. Furthermore, my clients can afford these hosting costs as I explain to them that $100/month is cheaper than my hourly rate if I have to troubleshoot network/server issues and also perform server maintenance... which none of these I have to do on heroku.

Limitations & hiccups: I've found that I've needed to employ alternative ways of doing things due to some minor heroku limitations. Overall, everything is achievable with some resourcefulness and some extra money.

Overall, heroku is easy to get started with, especially if you've got sys admin experience! Hope this helps and good luck with your job interview!

<comment><USER2> And today I eat my words regarding the reliability :)

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL Can you believe that I searched this discussion I started just to see if somebody would change mind since then? :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Their limitation on cron jobs was kind of a deal breaker for me. They allow you to run either a daily cron job (free), or an hourly cron job ($3 per month), but I enjoy the flexibility of a VPS and being able to run cron jobs however I see fit. This is probably a pretty minor problem (if even a problem at all) for most people.

<comment><USER4> Heroku has a couple of ways to get more granular process frequency. You can use Resque on top of the RedisToGo addon to get scheduleable processes. It's also possible to use the SimpleWorker addon to accomplish the same thing in a very cost-effective manner (i.e. not bound to workers).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wonderful, thank you for your comments. I can definitely see what you mean about the cost of your own time, and all makes more sense now if Heroku is as reliable et all as you suggest.

@jrsmith1279, Have you tried to schedule tasks directly from within your app with Rufus Scheduler, instead of Cron?

</comment><comment><USER5> How much do you get paid per-hour?

Hoe many hours will you spend wrangling you servers?

Each month.

If heroku doesn't make sense you aren't getting paid enough.</comment>


Microsoft Click-to-Run - <AUTHOR> https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219427.aspx <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the time that the disk got filled up on my Mac Mini (running Windows) because "click-to-run" generated 20GB of log messages...</comment>


Netflix/Roku box threatens Apple, Microsoft plans for streaming video - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/05/20/netflix-disrupts-apples-and-microsofts-tv-strategies

<comment><USER2> I am a netflix subscriber (>4yrs). I think the comments about the limited selection are overblown. I ordered this box earlier today as I have been happy with the selection and the online streaming service. The selection also appears to be growing every week. Now I can do away needing a Windows PC to access the streaming service. The price is right too!

</comment><comment><USER3> "Part of the problem is that few recent movies are available on Netflix's streaming service. That's a major shortcoming because nearly one-third of the rental requests on Netflix's DVD service are for new movie releases, Friedland said." -- AP

If I'm reading all of the press releases properly, at least today only 10% of the titles are available for streaming, and hardly any new releases. It's a HUGE step in the right direction, but there is a marathon ahead to catch up.

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you folks looked at what's actually available with the AppleTV for rent? Not a strong selection either - and they're hitting you every time you want to rent a movie or buy a TV show. For a series, that really adds up. I think the all you can eat, one time fee for this additional point of consumption is great for prior members. I for one am happy to add it alongside our Tivo and AppleTV.

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't seem like much of a threat. It's just a set-top version of their already existing mediocre streaming service, which itself is just a sweetener for their core business. (Nobody would pay $9-$18 a month for the streaming alone.) There's nothing to recommend it unless you're already a Netflix subscriber, making it entirely harmless to Apple, et al.

</comment><comment><USER6> Netflix Roku box is a step in the WRONG direction in my opinion. Integration in existing tech (360, ps3, wii) would be much better/cheaper for both consumers and Netflix. As a consumer I don't want to spend 100 bucks on a box just to rent movie. Netflix needs to target consumer hardware vendors and partner and integrate their software/service with them.

</comment><comment><USER7> I subscribed to Netflix a couple months ago when they added the all-you-can- eat streaming package. The streaming selection was atrocious. I don't watch that many movies per month and the ones I do watch are either on HBO On-Demand or a couple bucks from the iTunes store.</comment>


Does natural language proficiency make you a better programmer? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60661-8 <comment><USER2> Regardless of the answer, whenever I see English typos I am very inclined to thrash the whole source code. I am not even a native English speaker.</comment>


Meditation helps kids pay attention, neuroscientist says - <AUTHOR> http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/Meditation+helps+kids+attention+neuroscientist+says/6167465/story.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of the more recent peer-reviewed publications found on that researcher's website related to attention training:

[http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/pubs/2009/LutzMentalJNeuro....](http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/pubs/2009/LutzMentalJNeuro.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: Why were GUI tools more popular with web devs in the 2000's? - <AUTHOR> In the decade of 2000's we saw a plethora of graphical interfaces being used for web site and server management. We had Plesk, cPanel and WHM come into widespread use. To spin up a complete web stack all you had to do was open XAMPP, tweak a few control panel settings, and away you go. Similar with MAMP on Mac platforms. Uploading files could be done with a myriad of FTP software with drag-and-drop interfaces.
Then the transition to more CLI based tools took on strongly in the 2010's and its momentum does not appear to let up. The benefits of CLI completely are discovered in that you have more control, everything is more "exposed" and with more flexibility. About the most popular GUI tool that still stands today for web devs are IDEs.
I still find it peculiar that in the past web devs had more interest in user-friendly GUIs. It's peculiar because in the past, modern software development in general did start out with command line tools, but the recent past of web development was full of windowed apps, with tons of forms and visual interfaces. "CLI discovery" was rather delayed for web devs and I'm wondering why. <comment><USER2> CLI interfaces have none of the inherent benefits you describe.

* They are not inherently completely discovered

* They do not inherently offer more control

* They are not inherently more flexible

In fact, I would argue on all points a GUI interface is inherently FAR superior to a CLI interface in each of these measures. GUIs clearly offer more control and clarity. Ever try to specify a partial list of US states via a CLI?

HOWEVER:

CLIs crush GUIs in my opinion on two CRITICAL dimensions

 _CLI are scriptable_

and more importantly

 _CLI work over SSH (a rather low threshold to cross)_

The ability to productively work in a terminal over SSH is (in my opinion) at the core of the resurgence in popularity of CLIs and other terminal based apps like vim and emacs as well. Yes, chording is productive and even well supported by most gui editors, yet these terminal editors remain super popular I believe in large part thanks to their ubiquity and ability to work over SSH.

Just my two cents and is not an attempt to start a flame war.

</comment><comment><USER3> Windows was more prominent and didn't have a real cli culture, Internet Explorer was still king back then. Dedicated Linux servers were expensive, virtual servers didn't really exist, most people spinning up VPSs today would only have been able to afford shared PHP hosting with no shell access. And most importantly, web development was much simpler back then.</comment>


Are Frameworks Making Developers Dumb?  - <AUTHOR> http://java.dzone.com/news/are-frameworks-making

<comment><USER2> I have to agree and disagree, I think developers need a balance, but they should know the framework inside and out. If it is an open sourced framework they should know what every line of code does and how it works.</comment>


Quitting My Bad Multitasking Habit - <AUTHOR> http://postblogism.tumblr.com/post/55780760035/quitting-my-bad-multitasking-habit-taking-up-batching

<comment><USER2> I love the idea of batching, I think I always assumed I was multitasking, but I think I may have been doing more batching, for example, I would start a compile, or run, and then jump to another piece of the puzzle and work through that, once I felt completed enough on that, I'd kick that off to run (or compile), and come back to #1, or if not done move onto #3, and on and on.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds like batching to me. It's early days in the multitasking revolt, but I define batching as having "finished" a task. If a FOR loop is one of those tasks and you finish that before emailing a client or something, then that's batching.

BTW sorry for being slow on replying, I'm just starting to get into this hacker news thing ;)</comment></comment>


Sad Day For Microsoft: 5,000 Laid Off, Earnings And Revenues Down  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/22/sad-day-for-microsoft-5000-laid-off-earnings-and-revenues-down/ <comment><USER4> I am just not really surprised. Their tech is just not the best in any category.

I hosted on windows server, now Linux I had my PC on windows, now I run OSX and Linux. I had a pocketpc phone which killed the palm and then completely stopped innovating and was in some cases still very buggy, now I have an iPhone. I used Office, then switched to open office and now 80% google docs. I have never liked MS browsers, Firefox all the way. I can't think of a single web property from MS I use...

With them loosing all the developers, developers, developers... It doesn't take long until they start to loose people that are leading everyone elses technology choices.

(I admit visual studio is pretty sweet, but I use Ruby)

<comment><USER5> I was just about to say that. About the only MS product I actually _like_ (as opposed to use out of necessity) is Visual Studio. It's the only one that keeps innovating and has a feature set ahead of much of the competition.

Well, I gues add Xbox to the list. MS came into the market and beat Sony on features fair and square, and built up a whole new meaning for online multiplayer. Good for them. If only their Windows and Office teams were half as innovative.

<comment><USER6> Xbox Live is the only truly innovative product I can think of that MS has put out in quite a long time. And even Xbox Live is getting pretty old.

<comment><USER7> I think I read somewhere that these days the 360 is more profitable than their OS or any of their software. I liked Live, but never really thought it was worth it since a majority of the games that included a multiplayer feature either hit or miss, while most missed. i.e. Halo (anyone of them) all hit. Star Wars BattleFront (anyone of them), all missed.

<comment><USER5> It's really the social aspect of Live that is the most innovative. While most people were still playing with server lists and friends lists, MS had a way for you to log in and instantly jump into a game that your friend is playing. You could even tell _what_ they were doing inside each game (e.g. "Tom is on rescuing the princess in Some Game.")

And the fact that they completely overhauled their interface, added new features (like Netflix streaming), all while being still ahead of the pack, is extremely un-Microsoft-like. Usually I expect to see MS innovate only when they've been soundly beaten by the competition. It's a breath of fresh air.

<comment><USER7> Very true, although I don't own a 360 I have plenty of friends that do, and one feature I thought was interesting was how easy it was for my friend (who is as ignorant about computers and networking as anyone else in the masses) to manage his home network and files (which was on windows inevitably) through his 360, which he never knew how or cared about before owning a 360. Another thing that caught my attention was the content Microsoft made readily available to 360 users, (as you pointed out, steaming Netflix) from entire games, free demos, other user profiles, and game stats.

<comment><USER5> The only thing that comes close to giving MS a run for its money is, surprisingly, Steam. I've been playing some Left 4 Dead lately, and the social features in that game are very compelling, and it stretches over to other Valve games like Team Fortress 2, and even some third-party titles.

Too bad PC gaming is a bit of a dying industry :(

<comment><USER8> > Too bad PC gaming is a bit of a dying industry :(

This is a good thing for a number of reasons. One is that there's no need to have Windows around anymore, meaning that home users can switch to something more usable, stable, and secure. The other is that game companies will only have to test two configurations (Sony and Microsoft), instead of the thousands that they do on PC games. Less QA grunt work == more features, or faster releases.

I'll concede that FPSes suck on consoles, but considering they all have USB, there's no reason why you can't connect a keyboard and mouse to them.

<comment><USER5> I think Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 have been great examples of why console multiplayer is still substandard. Both games came out, sold massive numbers of copies, and naturally some balance problems were discovered.

Valve patched the PC versions almost immediately, and in fact have even added content to the game in subsequent updates. All of these updates _just_ hit the 360 version days ago. MS is allergic to fast-turnaround updates, and also allergic to free content updates (it sets a bad precedent for devs who want to charge for more content).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Mini-Microsoft blog comments are a good place to read Microsoft employee reactions to this: [https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7555958&postID=...](https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7555958&postID=3728181185969775606)

</comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps they shouldn't have spent so much money on those shitty ads with Seinfeld.

<comment><USER11> It's hard to say what the quarter would have been like without a major ad push in Q3. Maybe the ads were bad, but maybe their revenue would have been worse without them-- solely from a business perspective, you have to be careful with statements like that.

For all I know, their advertisement strategy is what saved the company from needing to lay off 20k in this announcement.

<comment><USER12> Unlikely. Those Seinfeld ads didn't actually try to sell anything. A bit of overpriced, mild brand reinforcement most likely would not have affected the company's short-term prospects.

By the way, what M$ is doing here is very screwed up. They're laying off the first batch (1400) immediately, but using the remaining 3600 as a threat to make competition cutthroat. I might just quit if I worked there.

<comment><USER13> Wow, that is really sad and not something I would have expected from MS.

<comment><USER14> It's also probably not true. It may happen, but there's no evidence it was intended that way. Layoffs are often done slowly in tranches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The headline's a bit misleading, isn't it? Revenues and earnings are not down; they actually grew, but not as much as expected.

Still looks bad, I guess, compared to Apple (disclosure: I use Apple laptops and desktops) which reported great numbers. But still, "Earnings and Revenues Down" is quite a bit different than "Grew Slower Than Expected"; especially in an economic downturn.

Client revenue declined, which is caused by, I presume, Vista woes. Server, Tools, XBox revenues all grew.

<comment><USER16> That's not entirely correct either. Revenues are indeed slightly up, but earnings are down: <http://www.cnbc.com/id/28791677>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> 5% really isn't that many. Sounds like a good excuse to cut the chafe.

<comment><USER18> When 5% means 5,000 people without jobs, it's a lot. I don't work for MS, but I live in Seattle. I guarantee you every tech company in the area is affected in some way by this.

Within MS, the uncertainty will be detrimental to the entire culture there until all they layoffs are done and probably for quite awhile after that.

Outside MS seeing the largest company in town, one that rarely lays people off, axe so many jobs will have everyone nervous. No matter what your feelings about MS are, their influence in Seattle (not to mention elsewhere) is huge and a layoff of this size means a lot.

<comment><USER17> I wasn't making a value judgment or arguing against any of the other points you mentioned.

Headlines often do this. When it's a big actual number and a small percent they post the actual number. When it's a big percent, but a small actual number, they post the percent. It's one thing if they're cutting tens of thousands of jobs and 20% of their work force. But most big corporations are so inefficient, this feels like a natural layoff/reduce the chafe move. We'll find out soon enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I see this as resources getting freed to go towards a better use.

<comment><USER20> Like what? Flipping burgers?

That "better use" may be elusive for some.

<comment><USER21> Some people at Microsoft (or any company) might contribute more by just that.

<comment><USER19> agreed. Flipping burgers is a net gain for the economy, moving icons around in the control panel for no reason and confusing people is a net loss :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1.5 billion devided by 5,000 people is $300,000 saved per person let go, unless I miscounted zeros in doing that calculation.

That seems high, I think usually companies claim savings of around twice the employees salary when they fire people.

Of course they also mention reducing contractors also, but then they are also hiring more too.

<comment><USER23> Microsoft has one of the world's greatest health insurance packages. They also have one of the best overall benefits package (much better than Google, for example). They are saving multiple years' worth of salary per employee by letting them go. And the layoffs have allowed them to cancel/delay the purchase of several lots of real estate. I actually thought it would be more than 1.5 billion estimated.

Also, they are apparently laying off a lot of LCA (lawyers) who probably are very well-paid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Maybe now they will be able to focus on creating competitive software like they did in the late 80s.

<comment><USER25> > Maybe now they will be able to focus on creating competitive software like > they did in the late 80s.

I hope not!

I'd much rather eat their lunch while they eat their dogfood...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anybody has an idea of the percentage of developers out of that?

<comment><USER27> "Microsoft announced today that it will be laying off up to 5,000 people over the next 18 months... Microsoft also says that it will continue to hire..."

I don't know what percentage of those are developers, but my guess is that it will include a significant percentage. Does anyone else see a problem with this approach to hiring? To me, it seems to reflect a lot of the negative aspects of the "career" software engineer. After a few years on the payrolls of mega-corp, you get replaced by someone younger, cheaper and with more recent knowledge. Perhaps it's inevitable with a competitive labor market... just kinda sucks if you ask me.

<comment><USER28> They can replace you if you are just a coder. If, on the other hand, you work on an important product, acquire domain-specific knowledge, and know the code inside-out, then replacing you with someone else will be a lot harder.

Think, for example, about the folks who work on the Microsof's C/C++ compiler. I doubt any of them need to worry about their job. On the other hand, if all you did is implemented the Shutdown button for the next release of Windows then, sure, you can be easily replaced.

<comment><USER29> That's both right and wrong. While making yourself valuable to your company is probably a good idea, you have to be working for an employer smart enough to realize it. Which is, in my experience, not most large employers.

In the layoffs I've been through, the people let go were almost random WRT how valuable they were as employees or developers. What was rewarded was managing up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This concerns me... I've got a ton of friends at Microsoft including my co- founder that is moonlighting with me on a start up (hopefully he won't need msft for much longer). I don't understand why a company that spends so much trying to get the best talent in the industry and has as much cash as Microsoft does would throw a good percentage (5.5%) of their workforce back to their competitors. Seems priorities are misplaced, not to mention the tons of negative morale that mass layoffs cause.

<comment><USER31> Do you not think the competitors are going to have to reduce heads too?

There is some denial amongst the startup community at the moment - <USER3> recession will be very long, very painful and few will be exempt - those that cut early and cut deep may survive okay - if they have revenue.

<comment><USER32> _"There is some denial amongst the startup community at the moment - <USER3> recession will be very long, very painful and few will be exempt"_

That is not the consensus among economists: <http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node%2F2785>

IBM expects a good 2009: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/technology/companies/21blu...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/technology/companies/21blue.html?scp=2&sq=ibm&st=cse)

<comment><USER31> IBM and other major hardware companies will still be living off budget spends that were set in 2007 and 2008 - these will not be reoccuring in 2009.

Enterprises now have vast quantities of surplus desktops and servers because of redundancies and contraction in the markets they operate (a recession is a contraction) - whatever you needed 3 servers for in 2008 you only need 2 now.

IBM are also living off the massive defence and security budgets under the Bush administration - this is all coming to an end. They are in for a very painful 09 H2 and 2010.

Any tech hardware company who thinks they are exempt from this is off their heads.

And any economist blogger who thinks this will all be over in 09 H2 is just whoring for pageviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I feel sad for the people but not for Microsoft.

In fact, I could even feel happy faster if Windows would load the page a little quicker.

</comment><comment><USER34> I somehow suspect there would be more comments on this post here on HN if anonymous comments were allowed.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why so many dismayed comments? Hackers should be celebrating. Microsoft and its products are the antithesis to everything software and software companies ought to be. We've been waiting decades to see the empire crumble. Now that it's finally starting, we're worried about a few coders having to go find work with someone non-evil?

</comment><comment><USER36> How could this have happened? Ballmer was just so confident. I mean, it was like yesterday when he was bragging to the entire assembled Redmond staff how they would "continue to allow others to innovate." Looks like that's worked out really well for Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER37> 5000 very talented people...MS has enough cash they could have sponsored all of them in a new venture. what a waste

<comment><USER38> You're assuming they're "very talented people..." but that's not necessarily the case. Given Microsoft's size and breadth and the fact that they've been hiring and not firing all these years, it's to be take for granted that they've gathered a number of people that are as brilliant and talented as they'd like over the years... so perhaps this isn't as bad as it seems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Microsoft has been hoarding cash instead of reinvesting it. <http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MSFT>

I think it is time to regulate market capitalization (not more than 2 times quarterly revenue) of all listed companies.

I believe it will enhance entrepreneurship in America.

<comment><USER17> There's only so much to reinvest it in. Once you have ample cash reserves, it's usually best to issue dividends, which is what they've done.

 _I think it is time to regulate market capitalization (not more than 2 times quarterly revenue) of all listed companies._

You have to be trolling. What about growth companies and growth rates? What about companies that issue dividends vs. ones that don't? What about _profit margins_?

<comment><USER39> I am not trolling.

I stand by my proposal which I believe is

1\. a win-win proposition and

2\. makes America more competitive

<comment><USER40> I think your comment score is a typical illustration of people misunderstanding the use of the 'down' arrow.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you create high quality how-to videos? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a product that's going to require in-house video content creation. This is way outside my wheelhouse since I've only really worked on user-generated content before. I know little to nothing about video production.<p>What's the fastest and cheapest way to go about creating high quality how-to videos? What kind of people do you need to find, etc? <comment><USER2> > fastest and cheapest high quality

As the old saying goes, pick any two (or sometimes just one)

I used to produce high quality video tutorials. I used "Screenflow" from Telestream. I had a professional quality Shure microphone and an audio mixer, as well as a USB sound card. Probably the most important component is your audio, much more so than video quality, so spend some money on good quality audio equipment.

I pre-planned my tutorials, recorded the tutorials and then edited them. For editing, I did most of it in Final Cut Pro, although I was eventually able to do it all in Screenflow. I spent a huge time editing - synching audio and video, recording parts where I messed up.

All told, for a 20 minute tutorial I would probably spend an hour planning, 40 minutes recording, 3 hours editing, and 2 or 3 hours encoding the video. The encoding part would probably go much faster on today's hardware, but the 2 or 3 hours editing was the result of many hours of learning - it was probably 8 or 9 hours to edit the first ones.

If you're recording screencasts, I wholeheartedly recommend screenflow. Without a doubt it's the best screencast software there is (not an ad, just a happy customer).

</comment><comment><USER3> > What's the fastest and cheapest way to go about creating high quality how-to > videos?

Very simple:

* Watch a lot of highly-rated how-to videos.

* Take copious notes about structure and content.

* Imitate them.

Remember that video production is an art, not a science. There are some common-sense guidelines, but a good video is usually good for intangible reasons, reasons that cannot be scheduled or controlled, reasons that require experience and expertise.

<comment><USER4> This is exactly it. I run [http://sysadmincasts.com/](http://sysadmincasts.com/) and this is the system that I have used. Also, expect that high quality audio/video takes time, each minute of video takes me about 1-2 hours (research, planning storyboard/transcript, recording, editing, transcoding, review, etc) to produce.

<comment><USER5> I like it. I think, you using ubuntu. Would you care to share what screencasting softwares/tools you use in Ubuntu ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Definitely check out [http://voicebunny.com](http://voicebunny.com) \-- it's amazing how much higher quality anything sounds with a professional voiceover. If you don't care about the specific voice (and just that it's professional- sounding), it's not too expensive and the turnaround is quick. They also have something called bunnycast.com, that turns your blog posts into audio for $19/each.

That being said, it's not exactly cost efficient for long how-to videos.

<comment><USER2> As you said - not really cost effective. But I had an audiobook recorded by someone I found on a similar service for a lot more than $19 and it was worth every penny. If I was a startup producing howto or advertising videos I would absolutely do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was facing the same situation when I needed to create an demo video for an app I designed. I had never done any type of video production before. Luckily I found this course on Udemy that lays out all the steps needed to create a demo video [http://bit.ly/1bUkHSV](http://bit.ly/1bUkHSV)

I was then able to go step by step from brainstorming ideas, creating a script, finding artwork, finding music and effects and then optimizing for the web.

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER8> Check out [http://hadoopscreencasts.com/](http://hadoopscreencasts.com/) and contact Rohit Menon (the creator of the site). He told me he did a lot of research before starting his site, and also got some very good tips from Ryan Bates of Railscasts.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wistia has a lot of great how-to videos for people new to video content: [http://wistia.com/learning](http://wistia.com/learning)

I believe they also have a newsletter where they share good tips.</comment>


Are Lodash and Underscore still relevant in 2019? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript/comments/alkkqo/are_lodash_and_underscore_still_relevant_in_2019/ <comment><USER2> ES6+ is the way to go; with Babel transpiling and adding shims if backwards- compatibility if needed. These utility libraries will spread throughout the codebase and are very tricky to remove once they become obsolete. They often have subtile differences in behaviour to the ES6+ native constructs that further complicates removal. Babel on the other hand can eventually be removed somewhat easier, since you've been writing pure ES6+ anyway.</comment>


The "Million Dollar Homepage" as a Decaying Digital Artifact - <AUTHOR> https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2017/07/21/a-million-squandered-the-million-dollar-homepage-as-a-decaying-digital-artifact/ <comment><USER2> I can still access [http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/](http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/)

I can't currently access the article at [https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2017/07/21/a-million- squand...](https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2017/07/21/a-million-squandered- the-million-dollar-homepage-as-a-decaying-digital-artifact/)

[Insert joke about irony here.]

<comment><USER3> I think the Harvard link is down due to traffic.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure the Million Dollar Homepage is getting a lot of traffic right now too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Of the 2,816 links that embedded on the page (accounting for a total of 999,400 pixels), 547 are entirely unreachable at this time. A further 489 redirect to a different domain or to a domain resale portal, leaving 1,780 reachable links

Looking at the million dollar homepage, many of the links _were never valid_ :

[http://paid](http://paid) & reserved/

[http://](http://) paid and reserved - accent designer clothing/

[http://reserved](http://reserved) for edna moran/

[http://paid](http://paid) & reserved for paul tarquinio/ (1200 pixels)

[http://pending](http://pending) order/

These links are all shown in plain red ("link to unreachable or entirely empty pages") in the "visualization of link rot," so it looks like the authors didn't account for invalid URLs.

</comment><comment><USER6> Gwern has a good summary of the research in this: [https://www.gwern.net/Archiving%20URLs](https://www.gwern.net/Archiving%20URLs)

>In a 2003 experiment, Fetterly et al. discovered that about one link out of every 200 disappeared each week from the Internet. McCown et al 2005 discovered that half of the URLs cited in D-Lib Magazine articles were no longer accessible 10 years after publication [the irony!], and other studies have shown link rot in academic literature to be even worse (Spinellis, 2003, Lawrence et al., 2001). Nelson and Allen (2002) examined link rot in digital libraries and found that about 3% of the objects were no longer accessible after one year. Bruce Schneier remarks that one friend experienced 50% linkrot in one of his pages over less than 9 years (not that the situation was any better in 1998), and that his own blog posts link to news articles that go dead in days2; Vitorio checks bookmarks from 1997, finding that hand-checking indicates a total link rot of 91% with only half of the dead available in sources like the Internet Archive; the Internet Archive itself has estimated the average lifespan of a Web page at 100 days. A Science study looked at articles in prestigious journals; they didn't use many Internet links, but when they did, 2 years later ~13% were dead3. The French company Linterweb studied external links on the French Wikipedia before setting up their cache of French external links, and found - back in 2008 - already 5% were dead. (The English Wikipedia has seen a 2010-2011 spike from a few thousand dead links to ~110,000 out of ~17.5m live links.) The dismal studies just go on and on and on (and on). Even in a highly stable, funded, curated environment, link rot happens anyway. For example, about 11% of Arab Spring-related tweets were gone within a year (even though Twitter is - currently - still around).

<comment><USER7> There's an automatic system on Wikipedia now which attempts to rescue dead links by finding the page in the Internet Archive and updating the Wikipedia page accordingly.

<comment><USER8> It should also do the reverse -- find links in wikipedia that aren't in archive.org and initiate an archival task.

<comment><USER9> A few years ago, there was a bot automatically submitting all links to archive.is and adding the archive links to Wikipedia. It got blocked and the site banned for spam. There was another discussion about it last year, and the consensus was to remove the site from the spam list so that links would be allowed again. (Not sure if that actually happened or not though.)

If you're curious, take a look at the discussions at the following links:

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.is_RFC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.is_RFC)

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.is_RFC_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.is_RFC_2)

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.is_RFC_3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.is_RFC_3)

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.is_RFC_4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.is_RFC_4)

I'm also not sure what the current status of automatically archiving links is though, but as you can see, the idea has been attempted before.

<comment><USER8> Those RFCs seem to have nothing to do with my suggestion.

In Wikipedia's usual frustrating manner, it's unclear to me what was even going on to trigger those RFCs or why people thought it was a problem. For some reason they were upset with links to archive.is. But why? Was archive.is replacing working links with archive links, or something?

Edit: From what I can tell, the archive.is bot was doing the same thing the archive.org bot Animats mentioned was doing. It's just archive.is didn't follow Wikipedia's policies and procedures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Decaying in more than one way. The JS files on milliondollarhomepage.com start with:

        /*
             FILE ARCHIVED ON 5:47:20 Aug 6, 2015 AND RETRIEVED FROM THE
             INTERNET ARCHIVE ON 20:45:17 Aug 24, 2015.
             JAVASCRIPT APPENDED BY WAYBACK MACHINE, COPYRIGHT INTERNET ARCHIVE.

             ALL OTHER CONTENT MAY ALSO BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT (17 U.S.C.
             SECTION 108(a)(3)).
        */

I guess someone didn't keep backups?

<comment><USER11> Either that, or the homepage owner doesn't want to pay the hosting (bandwidth) costs, so he/she just references the Way Back machine. This is kinda brilliant.

<comment><USER12> That doesn't seem to be the case:

      curl -v http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/index_files/widgets.js

returns an HTTP 200 (not a 301/302). Additionally, the comment says:

      /*
         FILE ARCHIVED ON 5:47:20 Aug 6, 2015 AND RETRIEVED FROM THE
         INTERNET ARCHIVE ON 20:45:19 Aug 24, 2015.
         JAVASCRIPT APPENDED BY WAYBACK MACHINE, COPYRIGHT INTERNET ARCHIVE.

         ALL OTHER CONTENT MAY ALSO BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT (17 U.S.C.
         SECTION 108(a)(3)).
      */

Note the dates. It was archived on Aug 6, 2015 and retrieved just 18 days later on Aug 24, 2015. Given it's 2017, there's no way this file is being served directly from archive.org's servers.

<comment><USER13> The '/index_files/' bit seems to imply someone went to the internet archive, pulled up milliondollarhomepage, and then in a Browser, did 'Save As Webpage Complete' which saves the main page (in this case index.htm) and all its assets in a sub folder called 'index_files'.

They then just copied it all as-is back into some web hosting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Million Dollar Homepage is not decaying (it is still serving its million dollar purpose) - it is the Web itself that has decayed. The brittleness of URIs is on full display. "Cool URLs don't change," but most of these URLs were never cool: they had to rent coolness from Internet cool kid Alex Tew.

<comment><USER15> It's a frame of reference problem. Note that this article is published by a library research group. One of the hottest topics in library science is how to archive and reference the WWW. While it's entirely valid to view the Million Dollar Web Page as a decaying artifact (let's call this the Art Critic view), it is also possible to view it as an archaeological record that needs its links to be complete (let's call this the archaeologist view).

<comment><USER16> Librarians are always worried about preserving garbage, which is what the Million Dollar Web Page is. Now before you downvote me, bear in mind I did Information Science in grad school, so I hung around with a lot of librarians. I know the librarian hoarder mindset pretty well.

The point I'm trying to make is that the Internet is a different kind of thing than a library, it is more dynamic (which is good and bad) and generally a more living and lived-in type of medium. MDH was a money making scheme. Clever? Maybe. Intended to be long-lasting? Doubtful.

It's a cool article, nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article seems to be suggesting that the Million Dollar Home Page has in some sense failed to fulfill it's promise because many of the links are now dead. I don't follow that logic at all. To me it seems that the MDHP's job was to be an iconic piece of internet history, and they've entirely fulfilled their end of the bargain.

<comment><USER18> I don't see how the article suggests that. The article is using the Million Dollar Homepage as an example to draw attention to interesting things about internet history, including the complexity of archiving internet content. The page itself isn't being attacked, but rather used to exemplify a broader concern.

The article uses the Million Dollar Home Page as an example of an interesting historical artifact that tells us a lot about the internet of 2005 in terms of design, the context in which the page was created, etc.

However, Million Dollar Home Page is also used as an example of the complexity of archiving internet content, i.e. archiving a page in a complete way must also involve archiving the pages it links to, otherwise the functionality of the archived page will decay over the years. This has important implications for its usefulness as a historical artifact.

Most of us remember what the internet was like when the Million Dollar Home Page was created, but many years from now, it will be challenging for people studying the history of the internet to really know what it was like back then unless we archive things in a way that preserves functionality.

<comment><USER19> that's beautiful and all, but nothing works like that. a page is lots of things. the html and js can be preserved like an artifact in a museum, ok. but the rest, the server hosting it, its connection to the internet, it being http only, etc... has to be preserved like architectural works. yes, some building facade migth still look like it was build in the 1800, but everything in it is updated to conform to fire code, exit signaling, etc.

so, in the end, even if we managed to keep that page up, it would still be of very little interest to the pople of the future.

the proper way to do things is to document everything. by good historians.

<comment><USER18> The article does not purport to have a solution to this problem. It is a contribution to an ongoing effort to describe the problem and understand it so that solutions may be pursued.

<comment><USER20> But, and I feel like I'm going to get a proverbial reprimand for asking the obvious, but why, in all this time, has no solution been proposed?

<comment><USER21> "No perfect solution has been proposed." might be more accurate.

<comment><USER20> That sounds like a excellent opportunity for corporate IT departments to make a good haul of PR and general kudos, for making a effort to release their archived caches, wherever they may be stored due to data retention policies.

I have a huge soft spot for projects where you can get the most happening because you are not required to jump a known hurdle to usefully contribute.

Overnight I was fretting with the necessity of sorting out any residual legal issues that might attach to digging out old cache dumps.

But forgetting the fact that the very same companies are commonly invested in just the tech to sort out the problem,.

Problem being one which can present all kinds of ways. Do you have any chance of finding adult content in your cache? Do you care about how much you are seen surfing the competition's websites? Will URLs reveal that anonymous forum login from 2002, slagging your rivals benchmarking? Did you put Squid on your intranet or webmaster, without https because your predecessor thought it was on the non routeing private range? Did you use DNS in any way to point to document resources that are accessible to users via the proxy server and Squid?

Anyhow lots of data protection suites have been used to purge archives and remove any trace of activity or files best kept private.

That's how the latest HDS kit is sold : cluster FS with hyperconverged local nodes crunching security, audit and search results.

I'm sure I'm only wishing on a prayer that you can find great troves for redecorating the empty space that the WWW once pointed to.

But imagine that we really could fill enough gaps in the dead link forests!

Even just attempting could be a superb way to promote your storage products and bless your customers who offer up the raw stores with lots of great ways to engage regular journalists with the subject.

I totally live best effort projects, and especially the ambitious culturally interesting ones.

So does Joe Public.

I'm in.

Where do we start?

(if I have the time, I'm quite serious about this, my profession is advertising not online but the traditional way of doing it. I have just got my head back from exploding with the multitude of ways to sell, promote, demo, boast, reminisce, predict, forecast, warn people about how society will crumble without personal all flash arrays... Last one might be pushing it a bit, but I see a fantastic deal of business on the back of the idea. It's beautiful because everyone is invited to participate, no vendor or company is locked out. So the public is not getting the boring official line and canned quotes. This is real people showing the technology but showing the extent to which we discard valuable culture. For thousands of years mankind grew as our means of recording documentation and thought and expression grew. Look now how easily we will throw it all away!!!! I know we can do better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I actually purchased a $300 spot on this. I did get quite a few clicks, but very low-quality traffic. Mostly, I got lots of offers from copycat sites to join their "billion dollar" homepage or whatnot.

It's crazy how many copycats came out, very unoriginal thinking going on.

<comment><USER23> I remember that time - there were even people trying to sell __guides __purporting to teach people how to set up their own million-dollar homepage!

<comment><USER24> s/million-dollar homepage/altcoin/g

<comment><USER25> > Any successful thing on the internet that hits the media will sooner or > later be copied (usually sooner)

Definitely not copied from anotheer commenter ;)

I keep a list of things that follow this pattern, and yeah, altcoins/tokens are another. It really just becomes a catalogue of what's been popular/happening these past couple decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think in many ways it is not a 'decaying digital artifact' as it is an excellent representation of the fallacy upon which a lot of the Internet hangs. In the Library of Alexandria you didn't have scrolls disappear because the kingdom where they originated had been crushed under the boot of an invader. But the Internet is no great library, no respository of knowledge, or an oasis of independent thought. The Internet is a conversation in a crowded room with amplified shotgun microphones pointed at all who walk through it.

<comment><USER27> Yes - and a different economic model for maintenance than the Library of Alexandria.

In this case, the library didn't fail. The ecosystem around it did.

<comment><USER16> The library burned down, iirc. Largely due to societal rot as you suggest-- invasions, pestilence, and probably the deaths of the original founders and their vision did not translate to the following generations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm not sure why the article considers it "squandered": it did its job as long as the advertisers cared to maintain their links.

It hardly seems fair to blame a billboard being in disrepair if the company it advertised no longer exists.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think all the broken links just goes to show that failure in business is the norm or that someone who thought it would be a good idea to promote their company on this service is probably not good at running business.

</comment><comment><USER30> Would be interesting to know how many people on the million dollar homepage are on HN. I imagine there's a wonderful cross over between the two groups.

Even though its with a business we're not doing now, my business partner and I are on there.

Edit: don't think it deserves a downvote - is it not an interesting question? I bet there are loads of serial entrepreneurs on both

<comment><USER31> A company I used to work for are right up in the top left, Cartridge Save.

<comment><USER32> Ha. Also worked for Cartridge Save. Remember them buying those pixels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> FWIW, I'm building [https://PageDash.com](https://PageDash.com) as a private web archive to address the problem of link rot, beginning from a personal level. Launching in late August. Think of it as a private version of perma.cc.

<comment><USER34> lol, you found your domain on impossibility, didn't you.

<comment><USER35> lushhat, zinghelm, usedgrue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I just heard about the "Million Dollar Homepage" for the first time last week. Would this idea (or one like it) work today? Making a million dollars for something so bizarre, fun, and straightforward sounds amazing. Can anyone reference other attempts at similar ideas?

<comment><USER37> It's just a random example of something silly going viral. Stuff like this definately could work today (potato salad kickstarter was a thing) but any individuals attempt probably wouldn't work, it mostly comes down to luck.

<comment><USER38> Not a million bucks, but $71k for something very recent...that was even more upfront about how useless it was. [https://uetoken.com](https://uetoken.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> A more modern variant, [https://catbillboard.wordpress.com/](https://catbillboard.wordpress.com/)

"Million Dollar Cat Billboard project sells 10 000 "squares" (places on a billboard) $100 dollars each to make world's first ever cat billboard and put it up in 10 cities around the globe for a month. To proudly show your cat to the world you need to buy at least one square. But of course you can buy as many of them as you wish as long as they are available."

</comment><comment><USER40> As good a time as any to trot out my hobby horse with suggestions on how to mitigate data rot. Aimed at science, but more broadly applicable.

"Identifiers for the 21st century" [https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001414](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001414)

note/claimer/disclaimer: Although I am included as an author I do not write that well.

</comment><comment><USER41> It's amazing how well designed the ads within the image are...it's a big jumble but many of them stand out quite strongly with just a single word. I wonder if they designed ads with the surrounding color context taken into account.

</comment><comment><USER42> This homepage demonstrates what an average city would look like without any regulation.

</comment><comment><USER43> My first web page ever is in there. I'm not sure how special of a thing that is I don't know how many icons are involved.

Also I wonder how Word got around to me about things like this in the days of MySpace and yahoo as my internet.

<comment><USER44> Fark, Slashdot, TheRegister, etc.

News aggregation sites have been around for awhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Do this with an ICO, with your space verified via smart contract.

It's all in the marketing!

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder how he got everything to fit as more and more space was sold and if it was a manual process? It must have been like playing Tetris on expert mode.

<comment><USER47> The way it worked was that as you bought, you could select the region that you wanted. You would be charged based on the number of pixels in the region.

I actually have seen the server that it was on. The hosting company provided free hosting to it for several years (at least 8 IIRC). I think that at some point the server died and Alex Tew decided to move elsewhere.

At one point, he had the million dollar pixel lotto which was the same idea except at two dollars per pixel and one person who clicked on one of the pixels would get half the money that came in.

<comment><USER46> So it was like buying tickets online? if multiple people were interested in the same region, the one which payment went through first got the region? However, this must still have been chaotic once the interest started to rise as space would seem empty until the payment was confirmed, and others would try to buy in the meantime. I guess you would also just have to make a rough estimate on the design of your banner and just buy the space, no time to design it first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Xanadu lost.

<comment><USER49> I know Ted Nelson of Xanadu.

For the record, in 2005 I told him about Million Dollar Homepage, and he was angry that someone could get rich off such a stupid idea when so many others fail.

<comment><USER50> Mandatory posting of one of the best wired article ever: [https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/](https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Worst of all, only 8 of the 3306 links use https. 11 years really is an eternity in internet years.

</comment><comment><USER52> Here's an archive of the article for those having trouble accessing it: [https://perma.cc/A6ZZ-79X6](https://perma.cc/A6ZZ-79X6)

</comment><comment><USER53> Whatever happened to DOI? (Or leveraging Google's knowledge of redirects?) A lot of rot is hosting changes; the documents, if the author cared, could well be hosted somewhere else.

<comment><USER54> DOI is still there; in fact one might say that it's sci-hub and not google that has made DOI actually useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> 1780/2816 links being reachable is actually much higher than I'd expect over 12 years. I'm not sure if that's what I would have predicted from the outset.

</comment><comment><USER55> Everytime I find something interesting, it goes to Pocket.

That provides me with a digital copy, and it is automatically sync with my Kobo reader.

</comment><comment><USER56> Oh wow, I remember that.

1 million pixels for only a dollar each!

That guy made a nice bundle off the idea, it got picked up and hyped by the media so much I'm sure the companies that bought in got some ROI, or at least some publicity. Such was the extent of the dot com bubble that this sort of nonsense could happen and everyone cheered...

<comment><USER57> I don't think 2005 would be considered part of the dot com bubble.

<comment><USER56> Wow, didn't realise it was as late as '05...

It still rode a wave of media hype and naivety.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> An interview with the creator would've been a nice addition to the story.

</comment><comment><USER59> I wonder what the "rot factor" is for scientific citations? Some professional societies I am in mandate URLs for bibliographical references. Most of the time these are peer-reviewed articles. But they can be softer references like Wiki reviews, data repositories, etc.

<comment><USER60> There are some info/studies about it linked here that show it's fairly high: [https://perma.cc/#landing-problem](https://perma.cc/#landing-problem)

Perma.cc was created by the Harvard Law School Library specifically to try to solve that issue, since so many citation links were becoming useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm just jealous.

</comment><comment><USER62> All the links except twitter on the homepage are broken

</comment><comment><USER63> it was always destined to decay, was always going to be a one-off success. interesting in it's success juxtaposed by its immediate pointlessness.

</comment><comment><USER64> the left of the yellow coupons ad in the right middle

</comment><comment><USER65> I didn't realize you bought the pixels permanently. How did the owner keep up with serving costs?

<comment><USER66> It's a _million dollars_. Even if it cost a thousand dollars a month to host, you could pay that with ~1% interest on the money.

And realistically it's something that after the initial craze cools, can run on quite cheap hosting.</comment></comment>


Should Zuckerberg Resign From CEO Position? [POLL] - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/08/20/should-zuckerberg-step-down-poll/

<comment><USER2> Thats ridiculous. The guy is going nowhere and even posing questions like this are a waste of time.

FB has more opportunity than time to do it in. They can literally go in every direction and the stock price will be what the stock price is.</comment>


Twitter Loses 'Occupy Wall Street' Case, Forced To Hand Over User Info - <AUTHOR> http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/twitter-loses-occupy-wall-street-case-forced-to-hand-over-user-info.php

<comment><USER3> This seems fine to me. It's a public tweet so the government could have easily captured a copy initially. Asking Twitter to produce the message with a court order seems better than the government having their own database of public tweets.

I see a few other problems.

The first is wasting so much money on prosecuting someone who was walking on the street instead of sidewalk. Yes, they blocked the Brooklyn Bridge. But there is the Manhattan Bridge, Queensboro Bridge, Midtown Tunnel, and many other alternate routes from Manhattan to Long Island. The net impact was probably nothing. The sidewalk on the Brooklyn Bridge is woefully inadequate for everything anyway so I don't really blame them for using the road. Better to block cars that can divert at 60mph than bikes that have to divert at 3mph :)

The second issue I see is with the prosecution proving that a chain of custody was maintained for the messages that Twitter produced. If any Twitter employee has write access to the data store, the messages and timestamps could easily have been altered. How can the prosecution prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this did not happen?

Finally, how can one prove a tweet conveyed actual intent rather than mere interest? I often tweet about things like, "I should go get 5000 of my closest friends to block the Brooklyn Bridge." If I did that on the day of the protest, that would look bad for me. But I might have been posturing rather than organizing, which is my right to do without interference from the government.

Anyway, this is all a huge waste. It seems like New York City is being pressured to keep working on this bullshit case when they should have just cleared the bridge, issued fines, and moved on. Or maybe, you know, provide adequate pedestrian capacity so people can peaceably assemble without having to block traffic!

(Incidentally, the exact lane that the protesters blocked is closed every night for construction...)

<comment><USER4> The subpoena wasn't just for the public contents of tweets; it was also for _any and all_ user information for the account, including email address and an anything else twitter might have collected, including IP addresses, physical location, browser type, etc.

In addition, the court ruled (yet again) that the defendant had zero standing to challenge (or even know about) the subpoena since it was directed at Twitter not him. Which is kind of terrifying given the push to cloud storage for everything.

<comment><USER5> Most of this fruitless discussion seems to be between people who have just read the TPM article (or scanned to the pull-quote from the judge), and those who are more familiar with the case. Here's an ArsTechnica article that communicates the issues quite clearly: [http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2012/07/ny-judge-compels-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2012/07/ny-judge-compels-twitter-to-reveal-user-data/)

The subpoena is for all public _and private_ information Twitter has for a period of three months and a half. The charge is for disorderly conduct at one point during this period. The EFF and Twitter are pointing out that the prosecutor is going on a fishing expedition. The "shouting from a window" analogy the judge made is irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand the ruling. Sure, my tweet is public, but why does that mean that the government can demand my email address and other identifying user information?

I'm also confused as to what's even being demanded. If the tweets are public, doesn't the Manhattan DA already have them? And if they know who this person is (since they said his name, Malcom Harris), what identifying user information do they actually need?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it sounds like an absolutely ridiculous ruling. The judge compares a tweet to shouting something out a window. Which is a perfectly good analogy. But then in his analogy, since you shouted it out the window of the Twitter Bar, now months later that establishment is required to turn over all its CCTV recordings and information on you to the DA

<comment><USER8> How is this "absolutely ridiculous"? The government is investigating someone they suspect committed a crime and issued a subpoena to get more information. It's how the system is supposed to work.

<comment><USER9> As the judge noted, there are different standards for the subpoena depending on whether there is a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the information being subpoenaed, because the Stored Communications Act of 1986 adds certain extra requirements on when an ISP may release materials that fall under the latter category.

What was in dispute here wasn't that some information was subpoenaed following proper procedure, but that the judge held that the "proper procedure" in this case was the procedure for public information in which there _isn't_ a "reasonable expectation of privacy", while Twitter was arguing that the subpoena was requiring them to disclose things that were not in fact public information.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but the idea that tweets have an expectation of privacy, reasonable or not, is absurd.

From a PR point of view, Twitter did the right thing. They executed their right to challenge the subpoena. Now they have to begrudgingly hand over the data. It makes it look like they'll fight for their users, even though there's clearly nothing they can do.

<comment><USER10> _Sure, but the idea that tweets have an expectation of privacy, reasonable or not, is absurd._

What about the rest of the information associated with a Twitter account?

<comment><USER8> The top comment, by Tangaroa, points to 18 USC 2703 which covers this. A company can be compelled to give that information.

You really find it odd that the government can force company X to turn over your ip address, name, email and other such information?

The concern over growing fascism comes from warrantless government behavior. This, on the other hand, seems completely within the realm of government acting properly.

<comment><USER10> _You really find it odd that the government can force company X to turn over your ip address, name, email and other such information?_

People keep on pointing out to you that the judge applied a standard meant for public information to a request for non-public information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Legal merits aside, that the judge would invoke the founding fathers as he assists in the corporate-governmental squashing of civil disobedience and dissent is pretty damn hypocritical/ignorant. 90% of the founding fathers would likely be strong supporters of, if not there on the front lines of Occupy Wall Street and similar protests if they were alive today. The US government in its present state stands directly (and proudly) against their most strongly held and stated values.

</comment><comment><USER12> As crappy as this is - it seems to be legal and logical. You don't get to claim privacy on something you're broadcasting to the world, and neither does the company, considering they asked LoC to permanently archive a chunk.

<comment> why-el I think the issue here is whether they should hand in the email address as well, at least as I see it.

<comment><USER8> Why? They had a subpoena asking for it.

<comment><USER13> Did you read the article? Twitter was arguing that the subpoena was incorrectly issued in the first place, not they are somehow above the law.

The subpoena was based on rules that assume that the twitter user's email address and direct messages (like public tweets) are already public. This is surprising since I think most Twitter users would agree that those things _aren't_ expected to be public.

<comment><USER8> No. I'm pretty sure the subpoena was for _public_ tweets and personal identifiable information (ip address, email, ...).

I think you are confusing personal identifiable information with direct messages. The direct messages _do_ have an expectation of privacy around them, but that information was never requested.

<comment><USER13> It was for "all user information" whatever that means.

[https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/destructuremal%20Sub...](https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/destructuremal%20Subpoena.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Twitter won. They've stood up for their users in court and got a lot of public support for doing so. The verdict is disappointing but doesn't really affect that.

The users involved, and others down the line, are the ones who effectively lost this case.

</comment><comment><USER15> >The judge also turned Twitter's own policies and businesses decisions against the company as rationale for upholding the subpoena, pointing out that Twitter in 2010 signed an agreement to allow the Library of Congress to keep an archive of all public tweets ever made on the service, using the information sharing as an example that Twitter itself didn't consider the content private.

Does this mean the government sued twitter to get information they could have simply looked up at the library?

The judge is missing that no one is entitled to put an administrative burden on twitter, especially for information they can get off the internet anyway... Archive.org much?

<comment><USER16> Got a citation for that last sentence? While I agree it's a valid counter to a subpoena, if you have evidence and a judge issues a subpoena ordering you to hand it over.. it's pretty clear cut if everything is done by the book.

Why not go to the LoC? Because the judge can just order twitter to produce it, which one would expect is probably easier. LoC may be far from having a way to do this easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This makes a great case for an anonymous, P2P-based clone of twitter.

Plus, having the intelligence in the client would allow a nice variety of client tailored to different people's needs.

</comment><comment><USER18> So what if I post a message on Facebook and share it only with my immediate friends. Does that also classify as public? What if I share it with only one person?

<comment><USER19> We're talking about law. Quit trying to use reason.

<comment><USER19> Why does the hive disagree? If law was objective, we could replace judges and juries with software. In the end, the law is not drafted, or applied by any objective or empirical framework.

<comment><USER20> Are you claiming that every question with an objective answer can be encoded in an algorithm guaranteed to terminate? If so, would you care to provide the algorithm used to determine if a particular question has an answer that can be arrived at using such an algorithm? :-D

<comment><USER19> if (measurable) {

}

<comment><USER20> You're conflating two separate concepts. Concepts like damages decided by a judge reflect an objective fact (eg loss of business) that is in no way measurable, and concepts like "beyond reasonable doubt" reflect facts that are measurable but subjective. Where measurable techniques have become available to law - DNA profiling, for example - they're taken up very quickly.

I'm completely ignoring the other functions of courts, like legislative oversight, that obviously can't be performed by an algorithm.

<comment><USER19> > Concepts like damages decided by a judge reflect an objective fact (eg loss > of business) that is in no way measurable

Right, but we could right a formula to get close enough.

Compensation = (official estimate or bid to repair damages) * ( 1.3 for hardship)

These variables could be punched into a program and a consistent result would come out.

> and concepts like "beyond reasonable doubt" reflect facts that are > measurable but subjective

That doesn't make any sense to me. Facts are not supposed to be subjective. Especially considering the use of "reasonable doubt" is subjective, for example, officers claiming PC based on drug odors.

> I'm completely ignoring the other functions of courts, like legislative > oversight, that obviously can't be performed by an algorithm.

Why can't an algorithm do "legislative oversight"?

Update ---

> Where measurable techniques have become available to law - DNA profiling, > for example - they're taken up very quickly.

DNA has been used to set people free that were locked away based on opinions. Why should ANYONE have the "discretion" to lock away a human being? I think that kind of trust comes from years of brainwashing and episodes of CSI (or the million other variants).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you post on social networks or micro blogs your posting information into the public domain. You are therefore responsible for what you say and this can be used for/against you. I see no difference between a twitter, a spoken recording or a written statement.

Either way it is nice to see twitter did fight this to some extent

<comment><USER22> A big win for the Internet is not having to cough up who you are. This proves that e government will hunt you down if you say something they don't like and will violate privacy policies along the way to get it. This could mean anonymous Internet is over.

<comment><USER16> Pretend it's a real riot-starter you don't like and think about it. The internet changes nothing. It's not a free ticket to anonymity, any more than putting up posters in the middle of the night was. You run the risk of getting caught. Privacy policies are between you and a company, not law.

The danger is in widespread digital fishing expeditions by prosecutors - <USER2> can't have "turn over everything so-and-so said ever on your service". We need specifics, like everything else... thats' the danger.

The internet is not a thing - it's a bunch of cooperating entities running networks all over the world, and a bunch more people running services on top of that.

The courts have ALWAYS been able to subpoena information during investigations. Why should digital information be different?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That makes no sense. It takes years for a court case to reach the supreme court, so how can this already have been decided?

</comment><comment><USER24> What if the data got "accidentally" delete?

How could anyone say anything about that? You know, since it was an accident and all...

</comment><comment><USER25> Franzen (the linked article) discusses the justification for surrendering the user's public tweets but not the user's private information. Judge Sciarrino's decision distinguishes between these tweets and the user's "non-content" private information, finding that "The law governing compelled disclosure also covers the above mentioned non-content records." This law is 18 USC 2730[c][1][B], which is fairly straightforward.

<http://law.onecle.com/uscode/18/2703.html>

In short, this is no big deal. The information was legally subpoenaed in connection with a criminal investigation. I think this is only on the front page because it has the words "Twitter", "Occupy", and "Forced" in the title.

<comment><USER26> The ruling may be correct under the law, but that doesn't make it a good thing.

The Judge is a douchebag for referencing Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in his ruling. Franklin, Hamilton and Adams wrote pamphlets anonymously with the precise expectation that the content be public while the writer stay anonymous. Obviously I concede that an ink on paper pamphlet is not the same as a tweet.

Rulings like this will only push reputable critical speech of the US government further into less civil minded groups like Anonymous.

Must TOR, I2P and IRC be the domain of our modern day pamphleteers? The sad truth is, probably. The First Amendment hasn't truly protected free speech since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Freedom_of_speech)

I guess those who prefer critical thought and freedom over security had better brush up on loathsome l33t speak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Talking Points Memo? Seriously?</comment>


The Matrix has you, Neo. When is it Time to Unplug? - <AUTHOR> https://lifebeyond.one/blogs/tech-impact/when-is-it-time-to-unplug <comment><USER2> is it ok to post ads here? I kinda don't like that.</comment>


Feathers and Fur Fly Over Pterosaur Fossil Finding - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/pterosaur-feathers-fur.html <comment><USER2> Pterosaurs have been such a staple of dinosaur pop culture that you start thinking they were a relatively "recent" phenomenon. Then you read the timeline mentioned in the article - 190-230M years - and it blows you away how long a history this planet has, and now insignificant and short humanity's history is

<comment><USER3> I'll agree with short. Kicking off the fifth extinction isn't exactly insignificant; more philosophically, I would suggest that significance of an era can only be appreciated by beings with a sense of the past that reaches past their own birth, so perhaps this is the only significant era.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pay wall :(

<comment><USER5> The internet needs some sort of fast, widely acceptable pay-with-one-click system. If the article asked me to pay 10 cents to read, I'd do it.

<comment><USER4> I'd love something like that. Even if I had to buy say $10 a month and had some credits to burn down each month. I don't however want to subscribe to every news outlet. There are only a handful of articles I'd read from each.

<comment><USER3> This is close enough to how Brave works that you may as well use it and see how you like it. Adoption is a chicken and egg problem; be a chicken.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How 8chan Finances Itself via Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1127904617688440832 <comment><USER3> _> a racist message board >a wellspring of racism, violence, and criminal activity online and in the physical world_

The irony of this being posted on Twitter is not lost on me. Twitter, the site where bullying, racism, illegal content, calls for violence & discrimination, political extremism etc. are much larger _in numbers_ than on any of the 2/4/8/whatever-chans.

What accounts for the difference? IMO it's all about paying lip service - <USER2> occasionally providing a feature to help users. The feature may get yanked out anyway, like "Quality Filter Discrimination" was.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is the story link:

[https://popular.info/p/exclusive-how-money-flows-from- amazon](https://popular.info/p/exclusive-how-money-flows-from-amazon)

Can we update this post to reflect please. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate that, I was tired at the time of posting and didn't think to link directly to the longform version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 8chan, I believe, is not a "racist" message board, rather a free speech message board, which means they host racists among other users.

But after reading the thread I see the intended public: [https://twitter.com/DevinFaux/status/1127956035552120832](https://twitter.com/DevinFaux/status/1127956035552120832)

<comment><USER6> do you really intend to tie the concepts of free speech and racism together like this?

<comment><USER5> I certainly do. Supporting free speech means supporting the right to say things you (and the majority of the population) find unsavoury.

I support free speech.

<comment><USER6> do you support organisations like isis having online platforms too?

<comment><USER5> Evidently.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


C++ Insights – Examine transformations made by the compiler front-end - <AUTHOR> https://cppinsights.io <comment><AUTHOR> I really like how this allows you to learn more about how the compiler understands your code. It could be really neat if it were added as an assistant editor in Xcode.</comment>


ReceiptLoader - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/receiptloader/id447701411?ref=hn

<comment><USER2> I like the concept, but $7/Month for the base plan seems like another subscription I just don't want to deal with (and a bit more than I would be willing to pay)

You should consider an annual pricing plan, and a lower rate. (I pay $45/year for evernote, and it solves a lot more pain points for me)

Again, like the concept, so please take this as the constrictive feedback it is meant to be.

<comment><USER3> Evernote has $93M in funding...

Just saying. :)

I wouldn't pay $7/m for this service though. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always thought that the problem with all those data tracking apps (for example "Dayta") was that it took so much time to enter the data so that after a while the user wouldn't care. If this really solves the problem (can't try, I'm an Android user) then I wish them much success. Android-port anyone?

<comment><USER5> Yup, we extract the Venue, purchase total, and assignit a category, in about 3 minutes. We're working on an android app, but before that we'll probably have a submit by email solution. Would that be enough for you if it were available?

<comment><USER6> would be for me

<comment><USER5> Awesome. We'll double our efforts!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can see how this would be nice for people who prefer cash over cards, but it seems like a lot of work unless you're tracking expenses for reimbursement. I'd rather just use credit and debit cards and let an app like Mint handle the categorization and bookkeeping.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hi HN, I'm part of the team here at receiptloader. if you have any questions, please ask anything you'd like.

<comment><USER8> There's lots of people out there that simply don't use cash anymore. Does this service have anything to offer people like me that mint doesn't already offer? I see the use if you make most of your purchases in cash...just not otherwise.

<comment><USER9> I dunno about you, but while my credit card company does itemize my transactions, they don't provide any sort of reporting tool to track how I spent my money. (They do provide a CSV export, which is suddenly looking like something I should try to analyze.)

<comment><USER8> Mint does a pretty good job in analysis. It categorizes anything I spend at Schnucks for example as "Groceries" and allows you to track how much you've spent this month compared to previous months and such. It only fails in purchases from places like Wal-Mart, where what you purchase can vary wildly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really looking cool. But now I have to ask for receipts when I get doughnuts.

<comment><USER5> The Late great Mich Hedberg: [http://www.break.com/usercontent/2006/9/28/mitch-hedberg- on-...](http://www.break.com/usercontent/2006/9/28/mitch-hedberg-on-donut- receipts-158599)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great application.I was a beta tester, my car was stolen with just purchased merchandise.I got the receipts for the insurance claim from the application.

</comment><comment><USER12> Can I add custom fields (i.e. to search for and collect a 10 digit alphanumeric tracking number on postage receipts, por example)?

</comment><comment><USER13> Similar site: <http://ShoeBoxed.com>

</comment><comment><USER14> I want this on Android. According to their website, it will be here soon.

<comment><USER5> We'll have the android app out probably within the next couple of months. In the meantime we're working on a submit by email utility which should be ready much sooner.

<comment><USER15> Can you explain what you mean by submit by email utility? Do you mean a web app that allows you to submit receipts via email?</comment></comment></comment>