No Cookies, No Problem – Using ETags for User Tracking - <AUTHOR> https://levelup.gitconnected.com/no-cookies-no-problem-using-etags-for-user-tracking-3e745544176b <comment><USER2> Quick note on this one. ETags have been used for years, but there is a court case from 2011 and before, speficaly noting this ETag technology as undeletable cookies. Was just a click away from the Wikipedia page. So I think anybody using it, would have an huge issue with the laws. Personally, I think the tracking pixels are more interesting to look at.

[https://www.extremetech.com/internet/91966-aol-spotify- gigao...](https://www.extremetech.com/internet/91966-aol-spotify-gigaom-etsy- kissmetrics-sued-over-undeletable-tracking-cookies)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ah, but using ETags to track users doesn't work _unless_ JavaScript is enabled. As one who normally doesn't use JavaScript, I had to turn JS on then refresh the page to make this spying example 'work' (i.e.: track me).

As I've been saying for years, get rid of JavaScript and 90%+ of these privacy violations and other security breaches will melt away.

The trouble is we users have to suffer the brunt of this JavaScript 'disease' because it primarily benefits large commercial interests. If ordinary users get trampled upon as a consequence then that's just too bad.

Seems I've found yet another good reason to keep JavaScript turned off.

<comment><USER4> They use JS to show it for the example. But using etag for tracking works just fine without JS.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I should learn not to post late in the night when I should be asleep (when I abbreviate, I often get into trouble). I didn't explain the other steps I take to stop tracking and there's quite few. Besides turning off JavaScript, these include plug-ins for ad-blockers, on-the-fly cookie-deleters and for the random changing of User Agent info among other things.

In addition, I use multiple browsers on both my PCs (usually 4) and smartphones (3) which—with the exception of one instance mentioned below—all are set by default to the following parameters:

\- Location access — off

\- Block 3rd party cookies — on

\- Remove identifying headers — on

\- WebRTC – off

\- Clear cookies on exit — on

\- Clear cache on exit — on

\- Clear web storage on exit — on

Often before closing a browser—and depending on the sites I'm visiting—I'll manually clear the last three items above. (If I deem a site to be risky then I'll clear these items every few minutes or as soon as I'm finished with it).

Naturally, such action can break some sites, so to avoid this and or to save time I'll copy the relevant URL to another totally 'clean' browser specifically set aside for the purpose. For instance, I normally use Palemoon to browse HN but it's so loaded with protection that cannot be turned off quickly that it poses problems when posting comments (this level of protection means that sometimes I'm blocked from posting or that I have to refresh or renew the login info every time I want to do an edit, etc.). To overcome this I'll copy the URL into say a clean copy of Waterfox which still has protection (but it's minimal). This certainly overcomes any cache tracking (in fact you'll note this process effectively doubles protection against the cache tracking issue mentioned in the article).

Next, when internet activity has stopped for 10 minutes my machines are set to reboot the router/modem which gives me a new IP address when I next connect to the net. Moreover, my PCs upon start (and during router restarts) are set to only connect to the internet manually (i.e. the internet is essentially never connected to my PC unless I'm present at the machine).

I've been doing this with ongoing refinements ever since the early days of XP (then using Internet Explorer and Firefox as my original browsers).

At the time, it was a somewhat slow process to clear IE's cache on-the-fly so I put a link to its cache directory on the taskbar which gave me instant access to it. As subdirectories in IE were locked by the system, deleting them was performed by that wonderful utility _unlocker_ , it'd kill the lot in a second or two and IE would have to rebuild a new clean set when it was next used.

Often, out of convenience, I'll simultaneously use multiple devices to browse the internet. Here, I'll use a smartphone's browser in conjunction with one of those in my PC. To save time typing a link on the second machine, the URL is 'copied' manually from one device to another with the aid of search engines (Duckduckgo or Startpage). As the smartphone and the router/modem each use different ISPs, there's no common IP address, hence tracking is made all that much harder.

Furthermore, my smartphones are rooted and I've deleted all their GApps, Gmail, etc. (BTW, I never use social media nor trust any of my files to the cloud). Also, I always use a firewall to block access to the internet for all apps except those that I've especially permitted (those permitted are mostly safe apps from F-Droid). The firewall is also set to automatically block all 'unknown' connections to the internet that act through various UIDs, 1000, 10015, etc. All unnecessary internet access is blocked not only by denying permissions but also by nuking 'receivers' and or modifying apps' manifests. Moreover, the only Android system app that I allow through the firewall is _Downloads_. Also, a utility manages the _hosts_ file as additional bootstrapping protection (same goes for my PCs). The rule is simple—block any and everything from internet access, the only apps with access are ones I'm specifically using.

That's the brief explanation (there's more I've not had time to mention). I accept that my attempts at maintaining my privacy and blocking ads etc. won't be perfect for reasons too lengthy to explain here (except to say that those with whom I've contact on the net are likely to 'put me in' to Google (as they've usually Google accounts, etc.) and the same goes for Google's monitoring of my neighbors' routers to gather my SSIDs, etc [this nasty scam gives my location away and ought to be highly illegal]. _BTW, I 'm too lazy to bother suppressing the 'leaks' any further than this [i.e.: by killing visible SSIDs]; at this level of suppression I reckon it's not really that important that I grind the privacy granularity any finer._

The net effect is that going on for nearly two decades I've never had any hint that Google, _et al_ , are tracking me with sufficient success for them to bother with me in any noticeable way (any info they gather will be essentially digital noise). Moreover, I never see ads on my either my PCs or smartphones! Again, I'd add that by far the most important procedure in taming the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. is to kill JavaScript and _NEVER, EVER_ use any of their apps.

Killing JavaScript also has other great advantages, the most of important of which is speed—the internet sans JavaScript is lightening fast. _(If you want to know what else I reckon is wrong with JS then see some of my earlier posts on the subject.)_

Of course, none of this should be necessary. That's why we need internet Mark- II — an internet that puts power and privacy back into the hands of ordinary users — one that puts these big tech companies in their rightful place and at our disposal—not vice versa as it is right now.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand what the relevance is (in the big picture) of any of the details in how web pages track people. As long as a server can return a page with arbitrary links, isn't that good enough? Any way at all that the page received shapes the next server access, is good enough for tracking.

<comment><USER3> 1\. From many users' perspective the perception is that tracking is an undesirable and or unnecessary feature that's crept into the Web over the past 20 or so years. It is undesirable because it violates users' privacy not to mention their autonomy to act independently without being watched and monitored. And given that most tracking is done covertly and surreptitiously it just makes matters worse. When new tracking method come to light (as with this cache tracking) users become depressed, these problems seem never-ending, we users feel as if we're constantly under siege.

2\. Users were never asked about whether they wanted to be tracked or their privacy violated _before_ these so-called spying 'features' were unilaterally introduced to the Web by powerful players—advertisers, web hosts and others who introduced the technology for their own pecuniary interests, _inter alia_. Even now, most PC and smartphone web users have little or no idea about how all encompassing and dangerous this technology actually is—as it's not in the interests of those who introduced it to overtly publicize the details.

3\. As governments worldwide have almost universally failed to act with any degree of effectiveness to protect online users, there is still no consumer law that's specifically aimed at protecting end users from tracking harassment and privacy violations. This means that users themselves have had to take on this responsibility. Many have tried with varying degrees of success (unfortunately, they've mostly failed).

4\. Years by year, users have found that it's increasingly difficult to stop themselves from being tracked and to maintain their privacy because the techniques used against them have become more frequent as well as increasingly sophisticated (as with this cache hack). Whenever users have a minor victory and succeed in thwarting hacks, Big Business responds with yet another. It's a David and Goliath problem, Big B. has huge financial resources that enable the further development of hacks and users little or none for the development of protection measures.

5\. And as we know, this is only the beginning: Google's tracking ecosystem† also includes seemingly free Google apps with smartphones and PCs—apps such as Gmail, Google Maps and Google Earth along with many others that have been cleverly designed to be highly-addictive. This electronic heroin as I call it has now become so all pervasive that it has become totally indispensable to not millions but actually billions of people.

6\. Even if they aren't _au fait_ with the all the details, users are effectively at war with Big Tech over privacy, tracking and the mining of their data (and tragically it's a war that Google and other Big Tech companies have been winning for years).

I would have thought the relevance of my previous post would have been obvious, that is that this browser cache matter is just one small part of this much huger problem. As such, it cannot be isolated from the other matters that I raised therein. Moreover, listing the other matters was to bring to the reader's attention the extreme lengths that internet users have to go to if they want to escape the clutches of these behemoth online monopolies. Even if they do succeed then their freedom is likely to be short-lived.

__

† _(One only has to look at how Google has used its overwhelming monopoly to track users and to violate their privacy, not only has it been completely successful but the way it 's gone about it has meant that it has been diabolically effective doing so. Moreover, when it comes to tracking and extracting user's personal data, the Android ecosystem is conceptually and in practice a technical masterpiece without peer. It is unrivaled in its ability to collect massive amounts of data then deliver it all up to Google. The Android O/S is a watershed in operating system design as it includes paradigm- shifting technology that was specifically development by Google to ensure that it had total control over every aspect of users' smartphone data. Whilst I do not like the way it works to have 'control' over users' data, it'd be churlish of me for not to acknowledge Google's brilliance in developing it. The bottom line: Android has been and is remarkably effective for Google, it's brought in billions of dollars profit for the company.

Android was designed by lateral thinkers working at their best and it shows what can be achieved when billions of dollars profit is potentially in sight. Giving but one example, one cannot help but be truly impressed by how effective Android's 'transmitters', 'receivers' and 'broadcast' mechanism is [sorry, it's too detailed to explain here]. ('Tis a shame MS Windows isn't as sophisticated—but in a user-friendly way with more control given over to users.)

That said, Android is only just one part of Google's larger data collection operation, Google bootstraps the accuracy of its collected data by cross- referencing every aspect of it with data from a multitude of different sources. Just to mention a few, it data-mines its search engine and records who is searching and for what; it searches and collects data from its many applications including reading the contents of users' Gmail messages; and, as previously mentioned, it uses various nefarious tricks such as manipulating Wi-Fi hardware of my Google-using neighbors so as to determine my SSID with the view of determining my location, etc.—even though I'm not an active user of any Google service! Why you may well ask—well Google still needs to know about me, as information about my email address, location etc. can be used to, say, provide intermediary data which is used to link people who own Google accounts but who otherwise are seemingly separated and unconnected from each other. If I happen to know these people and I email them independently of each other then this is the only pretext Google needs to link them with the view of determining groups centered around these people, their interests and degrees of separation from others—and so on, and so on.

Nothing in all of history has ever seen the likes of this monumental surveillance system. Google now tracks personal information and indexes it for about a third of the world's population and it achieved all this without so much as a whimper from governments. No one in power ever seriously questioned whether this is legally or morally acceptable until after it was all in place and up and running. Now that ecosystem is too big to change let alone dismantle. A similar situation exists with Facebook. The implications of this for the world's population are truly enormous.)_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Friend link (no paywall): [https://levelup.gitconnected.com/no-cookies-no- problem-using...](https://levelup.gitconnected.com/no-cookies-no-problem- using-etags-for-user- tracking-3e745544176b?source=friends_link&sk=23762a0d85cb0025e78e2d7f42cd034a)</comment>


Berlin's Startup Hub Wants to Prove It's More Than Just a Scene - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-28/berlin-s-startup-hub-wants-to-prove-it-s-more-than-just-a-scene <comment><USER3> I re-visit Berlin several times per year and I wouldn't be surprised if the real number is higher, there are a lot of very quiet hardworking people there that are plugging away without any fuss on their projects and some of those have more promise and are better thought out than quite a few of the ones that are hyped.

<comment><USER4> Spot on. We're at a 8 digit dollar valuation here after just 2 years of hard work and nobody knows yet - as we don't hang out on shiny conferences or court "prestigious" VCs but simply put the pedal to the metal from day one with a kick-ass team.

Zero financing rounds and not a single name in our Crunchbase entry to date, and we'll come in with a bang one day.

VCs were simply too slow to follow our pace so far (by now we grew out of their typical round size & target multiple) and we'll probably grow profitable without them.

Sociomantic did the very same thing by the way and nobody was any wiser when they did a huge exit from nowhere. Thanks to the environment, it's still pretty easy to bootstrap in Berlin and go after alternative financing sources (it's starting to change though, starting at the rents).

There's still the usual Rocket copycats and some interesting SV-style overhyped BS startups too by now that won't survive - but by and large Berlin has a lot of humble, technically excellent and hard working startups to offer. It's definitely going to survive the down-market to come.

<comment><USER5> Hello,

>We're at a 8 digit dollar valuation here after just 2 years of hard work

and

>Zero financing rounds

Are a contradiction. Valuation isn't something you come up with your executive team or your accountant, it's the number that is deduced from an investmenet or an acquisition.

Also, valuation is by no way a measure a success, the real measure of success for a company is the amount of profit.

<comment><USER6> There's no rule to how to calculate valuation. You can take your profit numbers and run them against a multiplier based on industry. Ex. using an average of the profit to valuation ratio of the next 3 competitors.

That would be a generally fair assessment of valuation, and shows how one can calculate valuation without direct investment by an outside party.

<comment><USER7> But they aren't profitable yet. How does that work with negatives?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's an article on the same topic, but less euphoric:

[http://www.thelocal.de/20160729/how-the-berlin-startup- scene...](http://www.thelocal.de/20160729/how-the-berlin-startup-scene-is- wasting-its-potential)

The author's glorification of the middle management and how it adds "efficient communication" makes me a little skeptical. But the rest sounds accurate.

<comment><USER9> I disagree with some points. The hate for "no middle management" is laughable HOWEVER the "too many cooks" situation can definitely happen

The German management style is built on many people agreeing at the same time and doing things as good as possible which is great when you're building a train network but not so much with software

<comment><USER8> Not just management, but all parts of German society. It leads to a Merkel-ish leadership style with late, opportunistic decisions.

<comment><USER10> You could also call it a Volkswagen approach towards innovation. Never first to market, never anything rushed out, and do not stray away from the beaten path until the new thing has been implemented perfectly.

<comment><USER11> Buying up every brand under the sun and cutting costs by putting the same window openers into their cars sounds reasonable to me. Tesla is innovative and all, so was Porsche. VW does not care and just buys you. I mean, they are running out of car companies to buy so they have to buy motorcycle manufacturers.

<comment><USER8> The original VW (the bug) was innovative, but then again, that was actually a Porsche (designed by Ferdinand Porsche) ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Should we link to this post here?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12196525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12196525)

"How the Berlin Startup Scene Is Wasting Its Potential"

[http://www.thelocal.de/20160729/how-the-berlin-startup- scene...](http://www.thelocal.de/20160729/how-the-berlin-startup-scene-is- wasting-its-potential)

<comment><USER13> Indeed. That post was awful, partial, shortsighted and badly written by someone who doesn't get complexity and thinks berlin should just be a silicon valley or London copycat. Therefore no, let's not link it anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Remarkably, average income in Berlin is actually growing slower than the rest of Germany. Berlin's economy is growing faster than the rest of Germany, but people keep arriving almost as fast as the economy grows.

</comment><comment><USER15> (Living and working in Berlin for 2 years now)

Also while salaries are relatively low, an experienced engineer and still earn 60k+ which is decent money because the city is still quite cheap. Many other startup jobs are paid pretty poorly though.

<comment><USER16> Numbeo agrees:

Consumer Prices in Berlin are 30.83% lower than in San Francisco, CA

Consumer Prices Including Rent in Berlin are 56.36% lower than in San Francisco, CA

Rent Prices in Berlin are 78.16% lower than in San Francisco, CA

Restaurant Prices in Berlin are 36.88% lower than in San Francisco, CA

Groceries Prices in Berlin are 49.39% lower than in San Francisco, CA

Local Purchasing Power in Berlin is 16.50% higher than in San Francisco, CA

([http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...](http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&country2=Germany&city2=Berlin))

<comment><USER17> But it sounds like salaries are 50% lower... Also car costs are conveniently missing from that list.

<comment><USER18> I don't think car costs would be hugely relevant for Berlin, every time I've visited Berlin the U-Bahn / S-Bahn has got me everywhere I wanted to go. Though I can't imagine using a car in SF either - perhaps a BART/Uber vs U-Bahn comparison would be appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sometimes I wonder how much long-term damage the Samwer[0] brothers have done to Berlin startups' being taken seriously. Not just from outside Berlin -- it's pretty common to run into someone working on "PetFoodScout24" or the "German Snapchat" or whatever.

As has been noted elsewhere here, one of the cool things about Berlin is that there is a "scene" if you want it but if, say, Soho House[1] isn't your idea of cool then there's also a lot of alternative things going on. And plenty of people who freelance while working on side projects that might grow into startups.

The low cost of living and (AFAICT, since I'm a regular employee) the viability of tech freelancing creates a lot of space for exploring non-obvious ideas.

For instance, while the gentrified and hipsterfied neighborhoods have quite high rents compared to incomes, it's still eminently possible to live for _cheap_ in a safe and quiet neighborhood just a few subway stops from the urban hustle & bustle. This buys you a lot of creative freedom.

[0]: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-15/germanys-s...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-15/germanys- samwer-brothers-take-their-web-copycat-act-global)

[1]: [https://www.sohohouseberlin.com/en](https://www.sohohouseberlin.com/en)

edit: typo

<comment><USER13> The Samwers's companies and their awful approach to company structures and culture continue to do a lot of damage. Let's hope it's just not that long term, and it can be flushed away with their eventual and inevitable demise. One good thing, though, is that most of the people of the tech scene won't consider Rocket companies as a good example of what you shouldn't do if you want to have a thriving company culture. On the other hand, though, the idea that one's in it for the quick money grab that may come from a nice exit is very much ingrained in most of the "cool startuppers" here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am non-German living and working for a startup in Berlin and so far my biggest struggle is the language barrier. If you don't know German you will be fine in your work but outside you will feel as a stranger. You usually feel it when you go to a doctor, you shop for something more complex, you use services where you need to communicate or you go to government offices or when you look for a flat.

It is possible to learn German but it requires huge effort and dedication and not many people are capable of that.

<comment><USER21> Is there anywhere else where learning the local language doesn't play the same role?

<comment><USER22> Pretty much every young person in the western world speaks English, so I'd say anywhere where that is the local language.

<comment><USER23> Sorry, you are really deluding yourself here. Not even in Scandinavia or in the Netherlands - where literally everybody speaks good english - <USER2> alone is enough.

You will always feel alienated without the local language.

<comment> k-mcgrady > "You will always feel alienated without the local language."

My experience throughout Europe is that people generally have enough knowledge of English that you can get through a 2 week holiday without knowing the language. But even during those two weeks you start to learn little things to make life a bit easier. I don't understand people who go to a foreign country and expect to live without learning the local language. It's hard work but not impossible and just seems arrogant.

<comment><USER20> You cannot compare holidays with actually living there. In your everyday life you have problems that you don't experience as a tourist or did you order a plumber to fix your pipes? Or did you buy a television that you had to return because it was not working correctly? Try to figure out these problems with your A1 German.

<comment> k-mcgrady That was my point. Maybe I wasn't clear enough.

1\. You may be able to do 2 weeks there without learning the language.

2\. That doesn't mean you can live there without learning the language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's my dream to work for a start-up in Germany. I have even been learning German for a while.

<comment><USER25> if you have a EU passport or an engineering degree it's not hard.

Learning German will differentiate you if you don' have one of those.

<comment><USER3> Even if you don't have an EU passport or a degree it's not hard. There are programs that target entrepreneurs especially and at least one HN'er made it into Germany for several years running now working on his start-up. The start- up even got some German government funding.

Learning German is useful on many levels, it will make it easier to get through everyday life (though Germans in general will speak English quite well official stuff tends to be in German only), it will also allow you better access to the German market.

<comment><USER26> There is the Blue card, seems easy to get compared to the U.S. "green card".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_\(European_Union\))

<comment><USER18> In addition, the Blue Card (in Germany at least) can fast-track you towards permanent residency. If you can prove German language skills at B1 level, then you can apply for permanent residency after just 21 months (see the section on "level of language skills):

[http://www.bamf.de/EN/Infothek/FragenAntworten/BlaueKarteEU/...](http://www.bamf.de/EN/Infothek/FragenAntworten/BlaueKarteEU/blaue- karte-eu-node.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Living in Berlin since 1 year. I am coming here from Barcelona and everybody asked me if I was crazy because I was living a "super cool beach and sun" city and going into storms.

First of all, Barcelona might seem to be cool for vacations but once you live there, you will see that in winters it's pretty boring, people are not happy with their lifes due to policital and economical issues. Maybe you can build your circle with expats and isolate yourself from daily problems but I was surrounded by local people, also knowing the language I could not isolate. It was unbearable listening peoples' complaints about how big fucked they are etc. Barcelona pissed me off finally. After Berlin,

\- I liked Berlin two times more than I expected. I am originally Turkish, so the community here helps me in my day-to-day business. No, I am not living ghetto life and avoiding that, but it's cool to be able to communicate when I go for shopping. Now I can also communicate in German more or less, so I need less my Turkish skills but still it helps me to feel like at home. You never know who is Turkish there, the doctor, the police officer, the hipster hamburger boy. So it's cool.

\- Of course economically it is much better. In Berlin you make not so less than other parts of Germany but definitely you spend less. This is the cheapest capital of developed EU countries. Many people already mentioned that.

\- I like using cars. Maybe for Americans it is unbelievable but in almost all European capitals you are punished because you have a car: Expensive parking, so strict rules etc. Berlin is not one of them, you can use a cheap and good car and you will need it. You can go shopping (and then you can go to the cheapest and best one, not the nearest one to your home), you can go out of the city etc. Having car won't hurt you here.

\- There is one thing that many people in Berlin did not discover: Poland is one hour away. I know that country because my GF is from there. Very occasionally we are going there to do our shopping, repair the car etc. So it is possible to lower your spending even more exploiting this possibility. If you have a car you should definitely do that. Also supermarkets there have fancier stuff and very good food.

\- Well about work culture everyone already said what it should be said. Briefly I am happy here, I think Berlin will my home for the next decades and I recommend to everybody to give a chance. This is a city where you can live easily.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm considering a move to Berlin.

Anyone know if something like the Hacker Dojo exists in Berlin? A 24 / 7 hacker, coders, ideas, dreamers sort of space.

<comment><USER29> No, but we have several similar things. Betahaus ([http://www.betahaus.com/berlin/](http://www.betahaus.com/berlin/)) might be the closest. There's a new one called Ahoy! ([http://ahoyberlin.com/](http://ahoyberlin.com/)) which is getting off the ground. And there are tons of coworking facilities with their own cultures and work feelings. Avoid the Factory, it's full of the SV brogrammer types, or (worse) German transplants from Munich and Frankfurt playing SV dress-up.

<comment><USER30> I couldn't help but smile reading your description of factory because it is mostly true. We stay there as it is extremely cheap - membership fee only barely covers my coffee consumption :-) and because the environment is modern and nice. Ping me if you come by again anytime soon.

<comment><USER29> Extremely cheap?! Last I saw, a flex desk is about 350 Eur/mon, fixed 470. That's the most expensive coworking rate in the city as far as I know. But maybe you got a different deal.

<comment><USER30> They changed the model recently. It's now 50€/mth and flex is the only option.

<comment><USER29> Ah! Interesting. Wonder where the rest of the money is coming from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And 1.809 of those are on AngelList: [https://angel.co/berlin](https://angel.co/berlin)

</comment><comment><USER31> Are there any gay startups or gay people in startups in here? I've been living in Berlin for the past two years and cowork every Thursday - so if you are keen to make some new friends, shoot me an email at hi@(myusername).com

<comment><USER32> [http://www.erasys.de/](http://www.erasys.de/) is kind of gay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I worked 3 years in a Berlin startup. Here's some things I observed over that time.

First the city itself. Berlin changed drastically and is still changing. Cost of living, especially housing sky-rocketed over that time (1). The city has become hipster central with many ghettos forming (Neuköln) (2), which isn't necessarily a new problem but I saw it expand over those 3 years. If you love hipster culture its great, if not there's little escaping it unless you can get into a calm Viertel of which there are increasingly fewer. Also Berlin is increasingly poorer (3) and crime is steadily on the rise (4), and this is a palpable increase in comparison to just 4 years ago when I moved to Berlin.

But to qualify my statements, Berlin is a multicultural city like just about every other major city in Europe - you can find and do whatever you want or imagine. But the above are generally the things neglected by those trying to sell Berlin as an amazing place to live your life.

Secondly, the funding and general startup environment. Here Berlin is number one in Europe and was so even before the Brexit as the article mentions. There is definitely a huge startup network and hub of activity, so in terms of numbers and access to investors, cofounders, talent, there is a lot going on, but what I think is still lacking, and this article does a good job of mentioning it, are break-out homegrown successes - at least in terms of notoriety, i.e. Spotify. There are indeed moderate successes, companies that get bought out by US expanders or develop a moderately profitable business which are homegrown.

I think there are many reasons for this, one could be we haven't had enough time in Berlin, another one of the biggest factors I think, is that the European market is very hard to penetrate at such a high level, there are so many different cultures/languages, EU laws and country specific laws that expanding is more difficult than homogenous markets like the US or China (obviously), especially when you are a small team.

Anyways, the experience was amazing and if I could go back I wouldn't change anything. Still Berlin is not all a bed of roses, just as its not all work and no ecstatic elation and amazing exitement when you're building a new company.

1\. [http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/studie-zum- wohnungsmarkt-i...](http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/studie-zum- wohnungsmarkt-in-berlin-mieten-steigen-auf-rekordwert/12885670.html)

2\. [http://www.news.de/politik/855636121/problemviertel-in- deuts...](http://www.news.de/politik/855636121/problemviertel-in-deutschland- duisburg-marxloh-hamburg-eidelstedt-koeln-chorweiler-und-co-das-sind-die- schlimmsten-ghettos/1/)

3\. [http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/arbeit-und-armut-in- berli...](http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/arbeit-und-armut-in-berlin-wie- sozial-ist-berlin/13669758.html)

4\. [http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/polizei- justiz/statistik-d...](http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/polizei- justiz/statistik-der-polizei-stadt-der-diebe-kriminalitaet-in-berlin- drastisch-gestiegen/11409420.html)

<comment><USER34> Neukölln is not a ghetto by any means.

Source: lived there 2010-2014, am there weekly.

<comment><USER35> This ^ Now it's even less ghetto, I see hipsters moving here every week. Rent prices are also raising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there any truth to the claim that CVs in Germany must adhere to the Lebenslauf form or they'll be thrown out (if applying to Berlin startups?)

[http://www.thelocal.de/jobs/article/47649](http://www.thelocal.de/jobs/article/47649)

[https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/editors/en/cv/compose](https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/editors/en/cv/compose)

<comment><USER36> A friend who works in Germany told me that recruiters in his company discard all CVs that use Europass template.

<comment><USER18> Oh wow, that's very helpful to know. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> >> Inside, the Factory is packed with all the perks of a Silicon Valley campus: nap rooms, scooters, 3D printing stations.

Showers, showers, showers.

When working long hours, I shower to refresh myself and they are great for people that don't go home for a day or two.

<comment><USER13> Why is not going home even considered a possible scenario? There is no way that it's a good thing, unless you wanna live a myth that Silicon Valley developed and has been portrayed as cool and "the right way to really innovate" by too many movies.

<comment><USER37> Even after 8 or 10 hours, a shower is refreshing and you can continue working.

When working on tight deadlines, might be too tired to drive and taxi/Uber not always an option.

Even in science buildings at universities having nothing to do with startups, there are showers.

<comment><USER38> Showers also make it easy to get exercise in. Heading out for a quick run at lunch completely resets my day but without showers I have to head home or to a gym afterwards to freshen up.

<comment><USER13> This last answer makes much more sense. Making crunch-time a normal thing to be sought after totally does not. Not seeing how this culture is problematic really baffles me.

<comment><USER37> Have you worked for a startup or in a situation with tight engineering or software deadlines? I ask that because for those of us that have had to work that situation, it is not so baffling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sounds like a lot. For a comparison, how many startups are there in Silicon Valley?

<comment><USER39> According to Angel List, it is 25K [https://angel.co/silicon- valley](https://angel.co/silicon-valley)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think this video (Berlin as a Startup) is relevant:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e22vY4CWpEI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e22vY4CWpEI)

<comment><USER41> Thats a very very good pitch. Thanks for sharing I actually watched the whole thing and learned something

</comment></comment><comment> T-A Since there has been some enthusiasm about pointing out my involuntary dupes lately, I guess it's only fair to say...

Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12182965](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12182965)

:P

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm in Berlin today, anyone wanna show me around? Got nothing to do otherwise...

</comment><comment><USER43> Some prominent Berlin tech startups include:

Adjust

AppLift

Ascribe

Blacklane

Clark

Clue

Contentful

Cookies App

Delivery Hero

EyeEm

Freeletics

GetYourGuide

GoButler

GoEuro

Heaven HR

HelloFresh

Jobspotting

Junique

Kitchenstories

Movinga

Nu3

Number26

OneFootball

Outfittery

Soundcloud

Thermondo

UberMetrics

.

Incubator and corporates:

.

Airbnb

Atlantic Food Labs

Axel Springer Plug & Play

FinLeap

HitFox

Houzz

Hub:Raum

Pro7 Sat1 Digital

Project A Ventures

Rocket Internet

Stripe

Techstars

Twitter

Uber

WeWork

<comment><USER44> You should read up on Rocket Internet, they're far from being a startup. And Axel Springer is one of the largest publishing comapanies in Europe.

<comment><USER45> Axel Springer Plug & Play (ASPnP) is a corporate funded accelerator just as Hub:Raum is funded by Telekom. A large portion of the accelerator here are structured like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> What counts as one of those startups? Any new business - then its not impressive at all. New tech companies - then it's something to notice. Or venture backed - then the figure is really something, especially if they are no more than 2-3 years old and have employees.

<comment><USER47> Good point, but you probably didn't read the article. Here is something even more impressive than the title:

 _Berlin's startups collected €2.4 billion in venture capital last year, according to Ernst & Young. That's more than the total haul among startups in London, Paris, or Stockholm, though it's about 9 percent of Silicon Valley's take._

<comment><USER48> Salaries in Berlin are much lower than London. London is still the tech place of Europe, i don't live in London, but I get contacted by UK recruiters nearly every day, very infrequently by Germans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Soon 2501, Lisk is coming.

</comment><comment><USER50> As a french man, this makes me sad.

</comment><comment><USER51> Berlin is awesome!</comment>


The Deepest Uncertainty (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/72/quandary/the-deepest-uncertainty-rp <comment><USER2> Question from a non-mathematician to any HN mathematician...

Has any work been done on the continuum theory by viewing different infinite sets as dimensions (like arrays) of infinity rather than sizes of infinity?

Perhaps it's a superfluous distinction, but it seems that an infinite set of integers can be viewed as a 1-dimensional infinity. The set of all real numbers between 0 & 1 (or any 2 consecutive integers) could equivalently be viewed as a 1-D infinity. However, the set of real numbers between 0 and 2 (or any 3 consecutive integers) would be a 2D infinity, and by extension the set of all real numbers would be an infinite dimensional infinity.</comment>


How JavaScript works: memory management and common memory leaks - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sessionstack.com/how-javascript-works-memory-management-how-to-handle-4-common-memory-leaks-3f28b94cfbec <comment><USER2> > As of 2012, all modern browsers ship a mark-and-sweep garbage-collector. All > improvements made in the field of JavaScript garbage collection > (generational/incremental/concurrent/parallel garbage collection) over the > last years are implementation improvements of this algorithm (mark-and- > sweep), but not improvements over the garbage collection algorithm itself, > nor its goal of deciding whether an object is reachable or not.

WebKit uses a constraint-based garbage collector that does not rely on reachability alone. This is an improvement over the classical garbage collection algorithm.

<comment><USER3> For reference: [https://webkit.org/blog/7122/introducing-riptide-webkits- ret...](https://webkit.org/blog/7122/introducing-riptide-webkits-retreating- wavefront-concurrent-garbage-collector/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice article. Minor gripe about the static vs dynamic memory section. The requirement that the data sizes be known at compile-time for static memory (with the example of an array allocated to a user-inputted size), seems to be based on a past restriction of the C language. C has since remove the requirement that stack-based arrays are sized with a compile-time constant; there is nothing at the hardware/assembly level which prevents such arrays. So these stack-based non-compile-time-sized arrays don't fit into either the static or dynamic memory categories presented here.

<comment><USER5> I was bothered by saying that static memory is assigned on the stack (implied that it is only on the stack). As an embedded guy, at least in bare metal situations, local function statics, any const variables, and any globals are either in the read-only data section[1] or in the general data section[2], both before the heap and definitely not in the stack section.

[1] - .rodata section in gcc

[2] - I think this is in the .data and .bss sections, where .data is copied from the file and .bss is zero initialized before calling main by the crt. If you peak into a linker script, or dump one by passing --verbose to ld, you can even see where it puts all the C++ bits and pieces. A dump I did on Debian with g++ is here: [https://gist.github.com/Phyllostachys/0682a3bda13ef9c6b49d04...](https://gist.github.com/Phyllostachys/0682a3bda13ef9c6b49d0445052ec955)

<comment><USER5> After looking at that default linker script dump, I noticed it didn't have the stuff I saw in the ARM linker script that I'm used to. So I attached one for a Silicon Labs EFM32 part. It's below the x86-64 linker script and is a little easier to read.

<comment><USER5> After a little investigation[1][2], it seems things get weird with an OS, as would be expected with virtual memory, et al.

[1] - [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16360620/find-out- whethe...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16360620/find-out-whether-a- pointer-is-pointing-at-the-stack-heap-or-program-text)

[2] - [http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/anatomy-of-a-program- in...](http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/anatomy-of-a-program-in-memory/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wait, is #3 for real? If that's the case it seems like a huge oversight.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, of the four things listed, I think it's the one that would trip me up the most. I think the safety net here would be dead code elimination: `unused()` should be detected as never called and removed during compilation/transpilation so that this wouldn't be an issue.

I am sort of surprised that `unused` is not picked up by the garbage collector in the first place though. Since JS functions are objects, shouldn't it detect an object that's not referenced during the mark and sweep?

In general, I really hate having to debug memory leaks in JS or Python. The interpreter for both will randomly allocate additional memory as it runs, so using tools like Valgrind is next to impossible. The only reliable method I've found is to pepper my code with logging statements that show what the current memory usage is, run the code like 1000-10,000 times, and see the points between which the memory usage goes up without coming down on a consistent basis. Python's built in `gc` module seems nearly useless for determining what's actually stuck in memory, and having a billion libraries that can have their own memory leaks is also not fun. These are the times I miss C: when you leak memory in C you know it because it becomes painful fast and it's usually easy to find, if your code is sane.

<comment><USER8> I haven't done JS in a while, but it sounds to me like it _is_ referenced, just not in source code. `someMethod` references it implicitly.

Is my understanding correct?

<comment><USER9> Yes. The function's frame contains a reference to the object storing local variables of the parent frame. To do better you need to store a list of variables referenced (which you can only do if there's neither direct-eval nor a with statement).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Who is this article written for? There's a whole section on "What is memory?". If you are optimizing to remove memory leaks I really hope you already know what memory is.

<comment><USER11> In my experience there are (I don't know how many) some programmers who, given how they were taught/learnt, can do productive work but generally don't know computing/programming in the abstract e.g. Memory at the machine level, or type systems.

<comment><USER12> _can do productive work but generally don 't know computing/programming in the abstract_

 _e.g. Memory at the machine level,_

I think it's the other way around --- their usual level of abstraction is too high to understand such things...

 _or type systems_

...and slightly too low to understand others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Jump straight to "The four types of common JavaScript leaks" section:

[https://blog.sessionstack.com/how-javascript-works-memory- ma...](https://blog.sessionstack.com/how-javascript-works-memory-management- how-to-handle-4-common-memory-leaks-3f28b94cfbec#82b7)

<comment><USER14> Didn't jump for me, but this should: [https://blog.sessionstack.com/how- javascript-works-memory-ma...](https://blog.sessionstack.com/how-javascript- works-memory-management-how-to-handle-4-common-memory-leaks-3f28b94cfbec#82b7)

<comment><USER13> Oops, it looks like medium removes the hash on load so my copy/paste didn't work. I fixed my link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The main problem with JS being sluggish (in electron apps for example) is memory and especially the GC.

I can optimize CPU usage all I want, but only after I optimized for minimum allocations, the tiny, but noticeable lags now and then would disappear.

The average javascript-GC must be really simple/naive compared to seasoned workhorses like the JVM's various GCs.

There I can happily create millions of short-lived objects before getting problems in a single-user application.

<comment><USER16> Well, you can run JS on the JVM through Oracle's Rhino (now Nashorn), but apparently perf is still largely worse than Sunspider or V8. The language doesn't lend itself to optimization as much as java does for JVM bytecode: [https://blogs.oracle.com/nashorn/nashorn-architecture-and- pe...](https://blogs.oracle.com/nashorn/nashorn-architecture-and-performance- improvements-in-the-upcoming-jdk-8u40-release)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Haven't read such an easy to read technical article in a while. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER18> having stuff do stuff for you is useful until it doesnt

<comment><USER19> I agree. I strongly dislike "magic" in programming. I prefer to call it "denial" because you need to know about the complexities anyway, and "magic" often means sweeping them all under the rug.

<comment><USER20> At some point every abstraction above Assemby meets that criteria though. The lines are personal and mostly arbitrary.

<comment><USER21> Meh, if you try and split hairs, even assembly has magic in it nowdays. Not all instructions take the same amount of time. Some flush caches, thus cause unexpected memory behavior, etc.

However, I think it is fair that most people learn roughly what the side effects are of each line at a local level.

Ironically, this is an argument against many functional languages. There are not side effects of the logic, per se. However, there are massive implementation side effects that are not necessarily easy to reason on.

The saving grace for the vast majority of people is that typically you can get by without knowing all of this. The people that care, do care. But statistically you are not one of them. :)

<comment><USER20> Like I said - it's mostly arbitrary. ;)

That said I think the issues with assembly you mention aren't magic as such, they're just consequences of the commands. They don't really hide much (if anything) behind the scenes that you'd have access to anyhow.

It's just that CPUs do _so much more_ than they used to.

<comment><USER22> It's not that simple though. Most modern CPUs that support the x86_64 instruction set don't actually run them as instructions on the hardware. They do all sorts of magic to queue operations, increase pipeline throughput, manage register access, make branch predictions, etc...

You can think of assembly on those cpus as a high level language. It has little correlation with what's actually happening in hardware.

This is EXACTLY the same type of "magic" that is getting complained about above. The real implementation details are hidden and unknown, but the abstraction is useful.

<comment><USER20> Ah interesting. Not familiar with x_64 really. Mostly 16 & 32 bit experience here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > To prevent these mistakes from happening, add 'use strict'; at the beginning > of your JavaScript files. This enables a stricter mode of parsing JavaScript > that prevents accidental global variables.

I don't think using strict will prevent accidental global variables, such as this.var in global scoped function calls. Strictness main goal is to prevent inadvertently misspelled variables from going unnoticed.

<comment><USER24> Iirc, if you use strict the this gets set to null by default instead of the global object

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> More extremely junior posts being rated to the front page. Y combinator is changing and i don't like its new junior tutorial level.</comment>


Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain, Tokens, ICOs: Why Should Anyone Care? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@preethikasireddy/bitcoin-ethereum-blockchain-tokens-icos-why-should-anyone-care-890b868cec06 <comment><USER2> Awesome deep dive into the space. The two positions I object to are:

> In some ways, Bitcoin could be considered the first decentralized > application since it runs on blockchain technology, is fully open-source, > and runs without a central authority.

Decentralization is not a new thing that only came into existence with Bitcoin... Torrents are decentralized, the email protocol is decentralized, Tor is decentralized, etc. Decentralized protocols and applications have existed before the blockchain and what the blockchain adds as a decentralized application is decentralized transaction validation. Basically decentralizing the validation of what can and cannot get written to a database. If you make your "writes" application state, then you can generalize the validators to be not only validating database-writes, but program execution steps as well (Ethereum).

> By no means do I believe that decentralized applications have no benefits. > In fact, I foresee a future where applications are 10x more secure, 10x > cheaper, 10x more efficient, or 10x more on some dimension than the current > ones.

Decentralization is always costlier. Netflix is faster and more reliable than torrents, Facebook is more reliable, faster and easier to use than Diaspora. Fiat and credit cards are faster and easier to use than Bitcoin. AWS is faster, cheaper and more reliable than StorJ, and on and on. When you decentralize something, you must add coordination and communication costs such that your overall costs will always be at least as high as the centralized alternative. So the claim that the decentralized applications will magically be faster and cheaper definitely needs research and a [citation needed].

If we realize that the decentralized application will always be costlier than its centralized alternative, we must ask ourselves: why do we need decentralization? Then, we will really know what blockchains are for!

<comment><USER3> Vitalik (of ethereum) has a pretty good blog post talking about the different types of decentralization: architectural, political, and logical.[0] For blockchains, he says:

"Blockchains are politically decentralized (no one controls them) and architecturally decentralized (no infrastructural central point of failure) but they are logically centralized (there is one commonly agreed state and the system behaves like a single computer)"

[0] [https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of- decentrali...](https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of- decentralization-a0c92b76a274)

<comment><USER4> So ironic to read "decentralized (no one controls them)" coming from the leader of ETH that made the decision to fork ETH and revert transactions related to the DAO hack.

<comment><USER5> But with decentralized control it's not a decision, it's a proposal.

A lot of people feel like Bitcoin etc. are Stick-it-to-the-man endeavors. In the long term I think they will be disappointed.

I think the real benefit of this sort of decentralization would be if multiple governments took an active part in its operation. America could propose something but it wouldn't take effect if they can't convince the mining majority of China,Russia,France,Australia,Nigeria and India. No one entity can unilaterally make a decision for their own benefit.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Well put. I've seen the 'DAO-hard-fork' line swung around pretty wildly over the recent popularity surge the past few months -- but you nailed it.

That difference is the whole point. It could be argued that Vitalik has enough political clout in the community now to do nearly whatever he wants, but that only goes so far as whatever he's proposing is agreeable upon a consensus.

If the miners disagree, then it's a no go because they make it work. If the larger userbase disagrees, then the miners will be bent to disagree because there won't be any money in it if everyone sells off. It's shortsighted to think that because there are influential parties the whole system is broken. (hint: functioning democracies work this way. As far as most people can tell so far, it's a good thing)

I also agree with the rest of your positions here. To wit: while governments are hesitant and slow to get directly involved, they _are_ doing active research[0][1] into how/why/when it will be valuable to use existing blockchains or for what reason they could employ new ones. So are many banks. The distributed ledger seems to hold inherent value for everybody.

[0] Being from Canada, I know more about the goings here than elsewhere. The article has a rather negative tone, but the point being they are experimenting and recognize the need to keep up technologically, and the need to improve upon current systems. They are speaking more directly to virtual currencies here. -- [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/bank- of-c...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/bank-of-canada- says-wont-use-blockchain-for-interbank-payment-system/article35112169/)

[1] Fintech and Financial Services: Initial Considerations - IMF -- [http://www.imf.org/~/media/Files/Publications/SDN/2017/sdn17...](http://www.imf.org/~/media/Files/Publications/SDN/2017/sdn1705.ashx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The idea of the ICO is ridiculous to me. It's nothing but a scam: here's why.

I think that there are three ways in which something can have some sort of "value."

(1) The object is scarce and has uses --- e.g., gold.

No matter what, people are going to want gold. It's scarce (assume you can't just produce it) and is essential to modern electronic equipment (besides its appeal as THE famous precious metal).

(2) The government backs it --- e.g., the U.S. dollar

Techno-libertarians are going to lambast me for this one, but governmental backing actually means a lot to a currency. There is a reasonable expectation that the U.S. government, for example, be around tomorrow; if they aren't, we've got bigger problems than what we're going to do with our portraits of dead presidents.

(3) Agreement within a community --- e.g., Chuck E. Cheese's tokens, bitcoins

Now we've reached the most basic level of commerce. I'm not going to explain the social structures behind bartering and tokens, but essentially, everybody in the Chuck E. Cheese's agrees that a token is worth a game (or everybody involved in bitcoin transactions agrees a token has a certain worth).

Being a computer geek, the idea of a digital transaction becomes obviously quite appealing. However, bitcoin (and ether et al.) seem to be a waste to me: just a token that a useless computation has been done on an abused piece of hardware. Perhaps it would be better to get token credit for contribution to medical research or the like.

The altcoins and these bullshit "ICO"s are the next level of dumb. Now, not only do we not have any computing value (as they're 99% perfect clones of bitcoin or ether), we don't even have the ONE thing that bitcoin did right: recognition, which led to some insane valuations in those early, early days.

Today's news story: Invest in our ICO: we're totally not a scam based around fake currency. People totally value what we sell. Yeah, right. People barely accept current coins.

<comment><USER7> > a token that a useless computation has been done

You don't understand the fundamentals of Bitcoin. The computation isn't useless. Go find out why, and perhaps things will make a little more sense.

<comment><USER8> That's not a helpful answer — rather than just saying RTFM, do you understand the problem well enough to explain what inherent value the computation provides?

<comment><USER9> If you assume that there were rational designers of Bitcoin, why would they put in a useless, expensive computation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >I've been personally invested in this space for a while now — most recently as an engineer for Coinbase

Sorry if this is too bitter and tangential, but ... I'm not so sure I'd name- drop my employer so gratuitously, when they had ~3-4 site outages in two weeks[1], all of them coinciding with a major price drop (to say nothing of the miffed customers that are seeing their money and cryptocurrencies disappear [2]).

[1] [https://status.coinbase.com/?again#month](https://status.coinbase.com/?again#month)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14523126](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14523126)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14587941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14587941)

<comment><USER11> It would also be great to read about these technologies from a source without the bias of being personally invested in them. It seems impossible to find a writer with any kind of expertise in this field who isn't also personally betting on it's success.

<comment><USER12> As a crypto fan, I try to pay close attention to the critics. Its tough to find someone who understands the tech and doesn't think it has some chance of success.

Having said that, Tim Swanson has some good critiques of bitcoin/blockchain. [http://www.ofnumbers.com/](http://www.ofnumbers.com/) He does work for R3, the banking consortium which isn't creating blockchain technology, but distributed ledger technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One troubling aspect of the bitcoin proof-of-work is its tendency to eat the world.

Miners will tend to expand their operations until the electricity cost approaches the block reward. So if we plug in some numbers[1] we can estimate that bitcoin may soon consume a significant fraction of all electricity production. And it gets even worse as the price rises.

[1] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(2500$%2Fbitcoin+*+12.5...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=\(2500$%2Fbitcoin+*+12.5+bitcoin+%2F+600+seconds\)+%2F+0.05+$%2Fkwh+as+a+percentage+of+global+power+consumption)

</comment><comment><USER14> _Why Should Anyone Care?_

Well, you probably shouldn't care. It is not too long until we will be a decade into this adventure and for all practical purposes there is still zero adoption. We may or may not get a useful mainstream product one day but right now we don't seem to be substantially closer to it than when the Bitcoin genesis block was mined. Sure, tomorrow someone might have this one idea that makes all the pieces snap together but it might as well take another decade or not happen at all. So unless you belong to a small group of speculators, early adopters, or want to invent the killer application yourself, you probably should just care as little as 99 % of all people do.

</comment><comment><USER15> Easy. Don't. One day the bubble is going to pop and cryptocurrencies will be largely forgotten. The entire bubble is built on speculation. This is clearly unsustainable.

Bitcoin will probably still be used as a medium of exchange for illicit goods but that's about it.

<comment><USER16> > Bitcoin will probably still be used as a medium of exchange for illicit > goods but that's about it.

As if this was a small use case...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This isn't so much of a "Why Should Anyone Care" but rather more of a "How Does It Work?" for anyone who _already_ cares.

Those wondering why they should care, will not care enough to read this much information.

</comment><comment><USER18> I looked into making a simple dapp with Solidity. They deployment of a dapp on the mainnet is not easy... There are only a few tutorials, and they are not very clear. When you deploy to the mainnet you start playing(wasting) with real wallets, i.e. real money, and the lack of clarity does not help here. For now I gave up in the middle of configuring geth node. This whole scene does not seem to be developer/user-friendly. Perhaps someone can recommend _simple_ dapp/solidity tutorials, and most importantly, clear deployment howtos?

<comment><USER19> Did you try Truffle? I understand it's the goto for that.

[http://truffleframework.com/](http://truffleframework.com/)

<comment><USER20> Truffle is also just as useless for understanding how developing on Ethereum works.

Edit: Not saying Truffle isn't useful as a framework. You just won't learn a lot more about Ethereum by just learning Truffle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thorough report but fails to answer the important part of the title: Why should anyone care?

I dont see how any of this stuff benefits anyone I know. Most people don't need to care, and I can't see any application being discussed that sounds useful.

The only reason people are interested right now is that you can make money out of a ponzi scheme - just remember to get out early before the house of cards collapses.

</comment><comment><USER22> I laugh when I read the petition asking Amazon to support bitcoins payments. Not because of the volatility but because of being the slowest database to date. How can Amazon or other big retailer support a tech with 7 t/s for bitcoin or 20 for eth when they have in ten of millions of customers?

There is more innovation to come to outpace the current proven technologies. In the last 18 months or so there is an explosion of new blockchain whitepapers, especially this one: [https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/red-belly- blockchain-to-proc...](https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/red-belly-blockchain- to-process-over-400000-transactions-per-second/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Another great perspective

[https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/stories/design-challenge-avoid- ce...](https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/stories/design-challenge-avoid- centralization-and-singletons.html)

The original Ripple was decentralized in this way. No global consensus was required. What changed that now it has an entire whitepaper on global consensus?

</comment><comment><USER24> Who are the people investing in ICOs? Does anyone know? Which countries do they tend to live in and why are they so speculative?

As a developer, I think giving so much money, no strings attached, to a team before a product even exists sounds crazy and kills incentive. I must be missing something.

</comment><comment><USER25> I can't help but feel cryptocurrency is a fad. The technology seems sound but the economic policy isn't. There's a reason we don't use the gold standard.

Fiscal policy is an important tool and I just don't see a future where the world's nations give that up.

</comment><comment><USER26> Can anyone predict approximately when eth miners will be unable to use gaming gpus?

<comment><USER27> Well it all depends on when POS (proof of stake) kicks in... Good question though, any takers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I thought the white paper was all about making irreversible payments...</comment>


How to spend my summer improving my programming skills? - <AUTHOR>

Hi there,
I am a belgian computer science student and will finish my bachelor next year. I would love to spend my summer in California to expand my knowledge of computer science and to experience the atmosphere of Silicon Valley.
The biggest project I co-created untill now is an Android app equivalent to Blackboard Mobile. We worked on that with six people, as a task for the university. So I'm not a very experienced programmer yet. But because I follow all the tech news everyday, my knowledge of the market is up to date.
Most of the university summer courses seem to be for high school kids, but after two years of study I think that won't be challenging enough. There is one course at Stanford ('Client-Side internet technologies') that seems perfect for me, but it already starts in June, when I still have exams in Belgium. I will be able to stay in California from mid July untill mid August. I would also be glad to take some language courses, in preparation for my GRE. Do you guys know of any courses that might suit me?
As mentioned before, I'm not very experienced yet. But if you know of a stage at a company or a research project that might suit me, that would be very interesting as well.
Thanks a lot!
Lucas <comment><USER2> You might be interested in Google's Summer of Code.

Also check <http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs>, and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2396027>.

</comment><comment><USER3> This topic has been covered before, see this

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2069477>

</comment><comment><USER4> Is the source available for your Android equivalent of BB Mobile? I'd love to take a look at adapting that for my school.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a lot to read, so you might get more advice if you find a way to shorten it a lot.

I think the best way to improve your programming skills over the summer is to program a LOT; just work on open source projects that you find interesting, and maybe start a few of your own. Learn some new technology you've been curious about (languages, operating systems, version control systems, and so on).

The advantages of being in Silicon Valley are going to be marginal, compared to the advantages of getting more practice/experience and learning more. Maybe someday it'll be worth heading out there, but I'd guess it wouldn't be worth it right now. (But don't let this advice stop you if that's your dream, or something.)</comment>


C++11 threads, affinity and hyperthreading - <AUTHOR> http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2016/c11-threads-affinity-and-hyperthreading/ <comment><USER2> > So if you've wondered why hyper-threading is sometimes considered a trick > played by CPU vendors, now you know. Since the two threads on a core share > so much, they are not fully independent CPUs in the general sense.

> Caches isn't the only thing threads within a core share, however. They also > share many of the core's execution resources, like the execution engine, > system bus interface, instruction fetch and decode units, branch predictors > and so on [3].

I would go even further than this... rather than starting from the idea "they sound separate, but apparently share a lot of stuff", you are probably better off working from the original goal of a hyperthread: sometimes the CPU blocks on something slow, like memory or a dependent register, and it has nothing it can easily reorder to do in the mean time; the idea of hyperthreading was to provide the CPU something else to do when it got stuck. So from that concept we would never expect it to have anything at all that it doesn't share: you are just filling in gaps in the execution of a single core by having the CPU itself implement something akin to a coroutine task scheduler. The issue I take with the mental approach in the article is then that it still implies there is at least some parallel compution possible there that is being limited by how much is being shared, but the reality is that hyperthreading has more in common with "green threading" than real concurrency: there is really only one thing there pretending to be two things entirely for the purpose of tricking legacy software into giving it something else to execute.

<comment><USER3> It's a bit better than green threading since out of order engines are imperfect at extracting parallelism and you can often use a second thread to fill in spare functional units that the first thread isn't using. There's also the danger that the extra cache pressure from two threads on a core will cause enough thrashing that using SMT will decrease performance on net. So it's more complicated but of course you're right that green threading is a much better first approximation than multiple cores. I suspect you already knew that but just didn't want to go into it.

One technique I've heard about is to schedule producer and consumer threads on the same core so that there's zero data transfer overhead and no extra d-cache pressure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >This is fairly low-level thread control, but in this article I won't detour into higher-level constructs like task-based parallelism, leaving this to some future post.

That's fine, but just as an FYI to others: C++11 also provides some great tools for creating futures and promises that significantly simplify the work in multithreaded programming. In fact it closely resembles the conveniences I came to enjoy working in Clojure, which is considered to have a great approach to threading.

<comment><USER5> Also, if people should look at intel's tbb([https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/intel-tbb- tutorial](https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/intel-tbb-tutorial)) library, it has been really excellent in my experience using at a respectably large scale.

edit: formatting

<comment><USER6> TBB is a little underwhelming in my opinion. Stuff like mutexes, condition variables and even atomics is pretty much standard nowadays (even if you need portability, you can usually rely on stuff like glib or Qt or boost); thread- safe collections are rarely the right solution, because too many fine-grained locks incur excessive overhead. The work-stealing queue is nice, but if you really want things to scale you need stuff like highly-parallel fast paths, with message passing on the slow paths. And this is where TBB falls a bit short of the expectations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We've experimented a lot with thread affinity and our conclusion is that more often than not playing with thread affinity brings no performance advantage and is very problematic to work with on different platforms.

For example on Linux the name of the mask set is cpu_set_t and on BSD it is cpuset_t. On OS X you have to use the function thread_policy_set and on Windows SetThreadAffinityMask, all with different logics.

The other problem is once you play with affinity you have to take care of _all_ the threads of your application because if you leave one thread roaming on all cores your affinity approach is ruined.

Making sure that different steps of the same operation are processed in the same logical thread makes a bigger performance difference than playing with thread affinity.

Last but not least, the code in this article is incorrect. You must first do sched_getaffinity to know the cores on which your program is allowed to run and then do pthread_setaffinity_np.

<comment><USER8> It really made a difference back in Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0.

We used it to keep a Apache threads per core on our servers back in those days.

The scheduler wasn't still optimized for the .com loads and the Apache threads kept jumping between cores.

Also Apache still wasn't that optimized for Windows as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It was worth reading this article just to discover this lstopo utility

<comment><USER10> Also worth noting: lstopo -.txt</comment></comment>


Breakthrough Announced in Dark Matter Detection Technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.washington.edu/news/2018/04/09/admx-detection-technology/ <comment><USER2> Can someone help me understand, is the "breakthrough" this? :

>t is the world's first and only experiment to have achieved the necessary sensitivity to "hear" the telltale signs of dark matter axions. This technological breakthrough is the result of more than 30 years of research and development, with the latest piece of the puzzle coming in the form of a quantum-enabled device that allows ADMX to listen for axions more closely than any experiment ever built.

Basically, is the purpose to announce that a new higher-fidelity device has come online? If that's the case, I feel mildly bamboozled... creation of a newer, better tool doesn't to me indicate any new "discoveries" regarding dark matter.

I'm pretty bad at understanding anything "physics" above the most basic classical stuff though so it's very possible I'm totally off base here.

<comment><USER3> The headline calls it a "breakthrough technology", not "breakthrough science".

Basically this is a new experiment about to begin operating. If nothing goes wrong, within a few years we'll be able to confirm or reject the axion theory of dark matter. Which is pretty big news, all told. A confirmed axion detection would be at least as important to physics as the Higgs result from CERN or the discovery of the W/Z in the 80's.

<comment><USER4> > If nothing goes wrong, within a few years we'll be able to confirm or reject > the axion theory of dark matter.

Well, we'll be able to reject the _current_ axion theory of dark matter. I suspect we won't be able to reject all possible ones. (But I don't know for sure.)

<comment><USER3> That's sorta speciously true of any experiment. The space of hypotheses is infinte, you can only target one. Ruling out one attractive and well-supported theory would be news on its own. A confirmation of a particle discovery would be bigger still, of course.

<comment><USER5> The axion may not be an example of the following, but there are highly specific predictions of new particles (etc) that drop out of current theory and knowledge. Antiparticles, from Dirac is one example. If they hadn't been found there would have been no motivation to look for something much like an antiparticle, since those variants wouldn't have fit into Dirac's theory.

So not speciously true of all predictions or most (before String Theory came along!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Original paper here: [https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.151...](https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.151301)

<comment><USER7> Thanks. Do you know a non-pay-walled link to :

[https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.3583380](https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.3583380)

<comment><USER8> SciHub works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope they detect nothing. I'm rooting for modified gravity theories.

<comment><USER10> Modified gravity theories don't fit all the evidence, such as the distribution of mass in the Bullet Cluster [1] or the large-scale structure of the CMB [2].

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Cosmic_microwave_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Cosmic_microwave_background)

<comment><USER11> Some would disagree:

[http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/04/no-that-galaxy- with...](http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/04/no-that-galaxy-without-dark- matter-has.html)

As a non-scientist, it seems like dark matter has been relentlessly adjusted and overfitted and still appears very inadequate to fit all the evidence.

<comment><USER10> > Some would disagree

Some do, but they're in the minority (which, to be clear, doesn't necessarily make them wrong). You can find scientists who refute climate change, too. That says nothing of the state of prevailing consensus, though.

<comment><USER12> > You can find scientists who refute climate change, too.

That's an appeal to nature as well as a false equivalency. It is difficult to refute climate change because we have incredible amounts of tactile observations that match predictions - the stuff from which the scientific method stems.

At one point science (well, philosophy as the progenitor of science) said that the Earth was flat. It was a small number of rebellious scientists that corrected this misconception. Group-think and consensus do not mean that you are correct, it could mean that you are collectively wrong.

We've never seen dark matter. The so-called "evidence" that is continuously regurgitated[1] is an image of the _problem._ It would be like making a map of the missing periodic table of elements and calling it all "Dark Elements," never bothering to figure out what the missing elements individually are. We didn't do that, which is why we can do so many useful things with heavier elements today.

If axion decay is observed, I will have no choice but to agree with the WIMP theories. As it stands, there is _zero_ credible and scientific evidence for the stuff.

[1]: [http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2007/01/3D_map_of_da...](http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2007/01/3D_map_of_dark_matter_as_seen_by_Hubble)

<comment><USER13> _> We didn't do that, which is why we can do so many useful things with heavier elements today._

This article is literally about the development of new sensor technologies designed to make that kind of progress for dark matter.

It seems you just have a chip on your shoulder and a complete misunderstanding of the concept of dark matter.

<comment><USER12> _> This article is literally about the development of new sensor technologies designed to make that kind of progress for dark matter._

Which is exactly what the last paragraph in my comment addresses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> there was a Scientific American article on this a few o months back (sadly paywalled).

Essentially they can ringfence the potential masses/energies of axions based on other things, if they exist, this device contains a resonant cavity that should be able to detect them breaking down across most of the theoretical energy range

</comment><comment><USER15> What frequency range are they scanning?

</comment><comment><USER16> i recently saw a paper that called into question the expansion of the universe. i think it was by a man called eric lerner. he provided evidence that seemed pretty convincing. is there anything to this?

<comment><USER17> Looks like he's one of the electrical universe proponents.

[http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/lerner_errors.html](http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/lerner_errors.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> No. Some things are not meant to be questioned. Science has gone too far.

<comment><USER19> What makes you say that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I hope other scientists figure out the riddles the dark matter theories are supposed to solve. These particle hunts seem like a waste of time and money.</comment>


Converting Wi-Fi signals to electricity with new 2-D materials - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2019/converting-wi-fi-signals-electricity-0128 <comment><USER2> There's a whole generation of kids that haven't built a razor blade diode / foxhole radio. That's a fun thing to do.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link. I knew about crystal radios but didn't know about the razor blade technique.

<comment><USER4> There's a remarkable array of ways you can get a crude semiconductor junction. See also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_bolt_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_bolt_effect)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This press release is quite misleading... the only novel aspect here is "flexible". It's less efficient than the existing rectenna solutions. And it's just as useless unless it's placed directly next to a WiFi router that is experiencing unusually high load. A single AA battery can deliver 40uW for about 4 years, continuously.

<comment><USER6> And if you forget the battery in those four years (which is often) when it finally fails you find the inside is full of chemical garbage.

<comment><USER7> Use a carbon zinc dry cell for things like that, they won't leak like other alkaline battery types. Bit lower capacity so you'll have to replace them more often but they'll not lead to destruction of the device either.

<comment><USER8> or if you really need higher capacity, a lithium battery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Correct me if I'm wrong here but wouldn't tech like this also sap signal strength like nothing else?

This seems like it would be a potentially nice to have first layer in a secured room/building. Recoup some energy then actually go about blocking unwanted signal leakage.

From a wild speculation side: if a tour bus of the elderly with pacemakers powered by this goes by are they just a traveling dead zone?

<comment><USER10> Can't you just do this with tinfoil?

<comment><USER9> You can make a Faraday cage out of a lot of stuff but I doubt you could get much in the way of power out of it. Granted you can't get much out of this either but it's measurable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> FWIW, Wi-Fi is generally considered a poor source of harvestable RF for little doodads you might want to power passively. Among other issues, there's a lot of "quiet time" as radios on the same Wi-Fi network negotiate who gets to use the channel at a given moment.

If you are interested in the challenges of harvesting energy from Wi-Fi and some ways to address those challenges, here's a nice paper (originally in CoNEXT 2015) from a team I was fortunate to be on: [https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/3/213830-powering-the- ne...](https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/3/213830-powering-the-next-billion- devices-with-wi-fi/fulltext)

[Edit: the relevance here is that, even with an awesome antenna like the one in the news, the Wi-Fi protocol kinda works against you, which raises a bunch of interesting questions.]

</comment><comment><USER12> You really just have to assume that the writer of the article is completely ignorant in this case. I hardly think that MIT is claiming to have invented the worlds first antenna connected to a diode but that's the claim that seems to be made in the article. The state of technical reporting is rather sad.

<comment><USER12> I guess to be fair to the authors. The actual technical achievement is mentioned, albeit briefly, "To build their rectifier, the researchers used a novel 2-D material called molybdenum disulfide (MoS2)" It's a novel material that can be used to make planar shoctkey diodes via an unusual process.

The entire rest of the article is just pointless misleading fluff.

<comment><USER13> _The entire rest of the article is just pointless misleading fluff._

No, it's not. It's a press release, which while being pretty technically basic is broadly accurate. It includes some comparisons with existing technology, reasons that this development is different, and possible applications. The point is to make this development known to other people outside the field who have less knowledge about the underlying technology. That's a totally reasonable goal; not every article has to be an in-depth technical review.

This article does commit one unforgivable crime, which is failing to link to the research itself. I absolutely cannot understand why media outlets and press offices are so reticent to do this simple thing.

<comment><USER12> Let's break it down then. The first paragraph opens with, "the first fully flexible device that can convert energy from Wi-Fi signals into electricity that could power electronics." This is blatantly false.

The second paragraph is sort of true. They are using their novel diode in an otherwise standard antenna structure.

Third paragraph repeats the second. Mentions that it can be manufactured in sheets?

Fourth paragraph sort of repeats the previous but this time as a quote from someone. The Quote, " have come up with a new way to power the electronics systems of the future — by harvesting Wi-Fi energy in a way that's easily integrated in large areas — to bring intelligence to every object around us." It's pure marketing speak. We need more funding, let's throw ai onto this for some reason.

The next 3 paragrpahs are repeats of, This device that provides power can be used to provide power to things. It at least mentions a broad figure of merit, 40 uWatts when exposed to 150 uWatts.

We are now half way through the article when the next paragraph finally mentions rectifiers, giving a brief but not great definition of what they are and their current state of the art. It mentions some problems with modern rectifiers, which are not actually true.

The next paragraph is actually only a single sentence and contains the entirety of the new development that the whole article is supposed to be about!

The next paragraph tries to explain the shortcomings of current Schottky diodes with bad physics.

Another quote about the device but lacking in broader context.

The second to last paragraph gives a better version of the efficiency figure of merit from earlier. Lacks details.

Last paragraph is a list of funders who are paying for the research.

That is a pretty crappy fluff to meat ratio in my book.

<comment><USER14> > Let's break it down then. The first paragraph...

Can we have this as a service? Fluff-to-meat-ratio feature is a requirement though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the source article in Nature: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-0892-1](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-0892-1)

</comment><comment><USER15> 40 microwatts of power, to be precise. Compared to, say, 5V*1A=5W of typical phone charger, this is impractical by a large margin.

<comment><USER16> Why is "enough power to charge your phone" your line of practicality? Phones contain an enormous amount of power hungry electronics, bright screens, speakers, multiple GHZ CPUs and radios for transmitting across different spectrum. With 40uW, you'd have to strip most of that away, but you could do something like: power up, take a temperature/CO2/RH/etc reading, transmit to a base station, sleep and repeat every 5 minutes. Sensor networks like these are extremely practical, especially in an industrial setting. Being able to accumulate some power, eg. with an integrated capacitor could also increase your max power draw for when your device is doing work.

<comment><USER12> Because the first line of the article alludes to using this to power your phone.

It also states. "Promising early applications for the proposed rectenna include powering flexible and wearable electronics, medical devices, and sensors for the "internet of things." Flexible smartphones, for instance, are a hot new market for major tech firms."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oh, wow. I had to do a double-take when I read '2-D', because the initial shock of 'converting wi-fi signals to electricity' was already too much for my mortal mind to comprehend.

If this ends up being practical, this is really, really, cool - and that's an understatement.

<comment><USER18> Antennas already convert wifi signals to electricity, so it isn't that much of a stretch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I foresee the Amazon/Google slogan 'Always Charged. Always Connected.'

</comment><comment><USER20> We're not even going to need to have electrical wiring in homes anymore. 802.11ad 60GHz wifi mesh routers with a lot of coherence and a directional mechanism could power the whole home.

</comment><comment><USER21> > _Devices that convert AC electromagnetic waves into DC electricity are known > as "rectennas."_

This is apparently a portmanteau of "rectifying" and "antenna".

</comment><comment><USER22> So, like an antenna?</comment>


YouTube to ruin music videos and get you to pay for upcoming streaming service - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/google/2018/03/22/youtube-wants-ruin-music-videos-get-pay-upcoming-streaming-service/ <comment><USER2> I think that's a perfectly legitimate strategy. Most of the music on YT is from random people whom have no connection to the musician or label, and so are effectively pirating and selling access through ads.

That being said, if it gets too annoying and AdBlock doesn't work, I'll just switch more to buying more music again so I can have it local.</comment>