Children prefer to read books on paper rather than screens - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/children-prefer-to-read-books-on-paper-rather-than-screens-74171 <comment><USER3> This article significantly misrepresents the study. It says that children prefer to read on paper than on devices, which indicates that children were asked about their preferences, or asked about habits that are likely to reveal their preferences. This is not the case.

Subjects were never asked which they liked better, and the underlying research report clearly indicates that the differences in their behavior between reading on screen and on paper could be due to their lack of awareness of where to get free ebooks.

Since kids don't have credit cards, they wouldn't be able to buy Kindle books, and might not even have an account. So looking at observational data about what kids use to read books is not a good way to determine what kids "prefer" in this instance. You'd have to give kids the same books in paper and on digital and then see which one they end up reading.

The underlying research is fine, and appropriately nuanced. The article describing it is misleading clickbait.

<comment><USER4> The research's starting point is literally treating _all iPads and all Kindles as the same device_. It is not appropriately nuanced.

<comment><USER5> Both the article and the research is a giant cliché.

Neither seems to have a basic understanding of either technology or even perceptions of technology.

>Challenging the assumption that all young people prefer to read on screens

Who believes this? They don't seem to source this claim. It's seems like academic karma whoring. State people believe something they don't actually believe, disprove it so you get karma.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I prefer having a physical book. Flicking through pages to reread sections, highlighting and margin notes are not yet seamless with the reading app I'm using.

But Getting a tablet has increased the amount I'm reading by at least a factor of 4. It is now so easy to buy books after reading a recommendation online. The free sample feature makes it so I don't buy a book I won't like, And the built in dictionary has me looking up new words without pausing my reading flow.

Physical is great but I don't think I'll ever go back for reading fiction. Having said all that my kids will be getting physical books. The distractions in electronic devices is something I'm still struggling with.

<comment><USER7> > _Having said all that my kids will be getting physical books. The > distractions in electronic devices is something I 'm still struggling_

Having four kids myself, I would never have tried to start them reading on a device. Kids don't start reading novels or textbooks, they have books that are physically interactive in a way that doesn't translate very well to a screen. Starting out, children learn by touch and taste as much as with ears or eyes.

Even at ages four to six, many kids need a physical or tactile element to help them learn. My youngest used to love turning the pages back and forth to talk about the differences in the characters of Dr Seuss books like Go Dog Go. The physical interaction of turning a page to demonstrate progression of time in a story is something that doesn't seem to translate as well when swiping or tapping in a tablet.

<comment><USER8> Dude. P.D Eastman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I still use my Kindle for travel, I've actually purchased more hardcover books SINCE I got a Kindle, then I have at any other point in my life. Using the Kindle, just gave me even more appreciation for the experience of holding a book, flipping the pages, the smell, that whole tactile experience that is just missing otherwise.

I'm also making a serious attempt to distance myself from technology for at least part of the day. Smartphones have essentially taking over my life, and I'm actively removing myself from that as well.

<comment><USER10> I have the opposite experience. I read a lot on the train and I read a lot of books on the Kindle I probably would have avoided before because they seemed so large that I didn't want to carry them or they just seemed imposing. I also find reading for extended periods on the Kindle far more comfortable. The only thing I don't prefer it for is books where I know I'll be flipping back and forth a lot (textbooks, reference manuals, etc.).

<comment><USER9> Again, for the travel convenience, the Kindle is great. I fortunately do not spend long periods of time on a train. My reading is at home, in silence.

<comment><USER11> Even at home, I prefer the ergonomics of holding a pad that's flat open. Paperbacks - new ones especially - require pressure to keep open, usually a thumb/pinky grip. Often the words nearer the spine are read at an angle and with less light. Kindle is more evenly lit and more comfortable to hold.

As mentioned above, it's great for linear reading e.g. fiction; poor for computer books.

<comment><USER12> In my experience desktop PDF readers are better than paper for technical books - maybe there are good tablet readers for them too, but they'll allow you to jump directly to sections and make bookmarks in an instant rather than searching through random physical pages and holding your finger in different spots. Displaying the full tree of the book's index while you read through interesting sections is incredibly valuable.

I find it hard to read any technical book on something other than the computer I'm using it on though. Without being able to copy and paste to try things out on my own I tend to learn absolutely nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Until I got a Kindle Voyage, I found the Kindle reading experience to be subpar to books (but still more convenient in most cases). But with the higher resolution of the Voyage (300ppi), better backlight, and most importantly, buttons to move forward/back instead of swiping, I now prefer the Voyage over paper books.

Much easier to read one-handed on the train, and having a good backlight makes for convenient reading at night (with the screen brightness turned down enough that it doesn't bother my partner). I've pretty much stopped buying paper books now, while with my old kindle, I'd alternate between paper and digital books.

<comment><USER7> What is the color like for the Voyage backlight? Lately I've been using my iPhone in night-shift mode as a reading light with paper books.

It may just be psychological, but I do seem to fall asleep easier than I did with a regular white LED reading light. At the very least I haven't found myself still reading at 3am wondering why I'm still awake.

<comment><USER14> It's not just psychological. According to some measurements the cold light from screens, neon lights, white LEDs etc. causes an increased heart rate, making it more difficult to fall asleep.

The Voyage is supposed to have a warmer backlight mode, but I only have experience with the Paperwhite(I only read during the day anyways).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> chad-autry Study seems to exclude e-ink, (when grouping kindle with iPad, I assume they mean the android tablet) while many of the comments here are arguing about e-ink vs books.

I'm not surprised by the study. My 2.5 year old would much rather watch something if the tablet is available than read. Even the interactive and pictures + audio books aren't much competition.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's anecdata, but I know I much prefer a physical book to a digital one. Even more so for documents (not source code) that I'm reviewing.

<comment><USER16> I think that in some cases, it can even be helpful for source code.

There have been a couple of times where I wanted to understand how an interesting library or bit of code worked, so I printed the code out and made notes right on the page as I read through it.

I'm sure I could have accomplished the same thing digitally - but for some reason, the knowledge seems to 'stick' more quickly when I'm writing out the notes physically on the same page as the code.

IIRC, one of the developers in 'Coders at Work' liked to print out code he was working on to help him develop an understanding of it. I think it was Josh Bloch, but it's been a while since I've read the book.

All of this is also anecdotal, but I think it's worth a try for anyone who hasn't. It might be useless for most people, but I believe in experimenting with different ways of absorbing information to find out what works best with your brain.

<comment><USER17> > There have been a couple of times where I wanted to understand how an > interesting library or bit of code worked, so I printed the code out and > made notes right on the page as I read through it.

I do this as well, although I usually get a page or two in, figure out what the code does, and regret printing out the rest. Still worth doing, but I need to train myself to waste less paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ebooks are fine for quick referrals but I simply can't stand using them for sustained reading. If I'm engrossed in reading a paper book, I'll knock off a hundred pages without noticing the time. I try to do that on my iPad or a computer monitor and I'm edgy and disinterested in just a handful of pages.

<comment><USER10> The Kindle really is way, way better for extended reading.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I recognize the valid criticisms of the Kindle, specifically it doesn't feel as nice as reading a paper book, but the ability to control brightness and font-size, alongside the super light weight of the Kindle makes for some very easy extended reading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I cannot read longer books unless I'm reading on an ereader. Normal books are fine in paper or ebook, but if a book is >500 pages, I psych myself out when trying to read (and also find it unwieldy to read on public transit when I dont have a seat).

The other bit that I could not live without now is the time-left-in-chapter estimator. It's so much easier for me to get squirreled away for hours because I'll end a chapter and see the next one is only 12 minutes... repeat x 10.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have a number of ebooks and PDFs, mostly references. I have a number of the reference books as _both_ ebooks and paper books.

I just... Don't have the freedom with digital copies of things that I do with paper ones, and I refuse to have key knowledge DRM'd. Papers on PDF are alright (as in, I only print _really_ important ones), but proprietary ebooks?

Im not trusting my only copy of professional knowledge to the people who silently removed copies of 1984. That would be insane.

<comment><USER12> Definitely, but there's plenty of ways to obtain legitimately without DRM, obtain legitimately and strip DRM or just straight up pirate books.

And the advantages from that point are excellent. I can read the same thing on my phone, e-reader or desktop, so it's a very fluid experience whatever I'm doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've just finished doing quite a bit of reading and research on this since e-books are big responsibility of mine as a librarian. The data seems to point to most people not having a really strong preference. There are a small percentage of people (less that 10%) that prefer ebooks and a larger percentage (30%+) that prefer physical books, but most people's preference is either complicated (they prefer one for a specific use case such as travel or technical books) or not that strong. We are looking to shift to a fulfillment model, which reduces collection crossover some. Most people just want to read their book and will take it however they can get it soonest. For what it's worth, I expect our ebook circulation to top out at about 30-35%, which is about where estimates of the commercial market are. Those estimates are complicated by Amazon's holding Kindle Direct numbers close the chest, which are probably fairly large.

<comment><USER23> Does your literature review only takes into account e-ink kindles ? because a lot of the research literature disregards the uniqueness of the kindle.

<comment><USER22> It's more general to "ebooks". FWIW, Kindle's make up a plurality of our e-book circulation, but we don't know the ratio of black and white to tablets. Anecdotally, we see a fair amount of Fire Tablets, but that could just be because people using Fire Tablets need more help. The survey I'm referencing (along with some other supporting data) is Pew, so take that for what it's worth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think that the quality of intake of information is somewhat different when it comes to projected light vs reflected light. I think that with dyslexia printed words are slightly easier because it's easier to see the edge of the ink (so you can see the shape better), on a screen it's much harder to see the shapes in the letters. The dyslexia font thing helps a little but it's kinda gimmicky I think.¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER14> > I think that with dyslexia printed words are slightly easier because it's > easier to see the edge of the ink

What e-book reader have you tried? The more expensive Kindles have a high resolution, on my Paperwhite the edges of the letters are very sharp just like in a printed book or magazine, no matter how close I hold it to my face. Combined with the right backlight setting and some daylight it really looks like a printed page to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well yeah; since right now kids are still human beings, the animal is just going to be far more receptive to staring at broad spectrum light than narrow spectrum light. That's before accounting for what we already know about human children needing way more tactile stimulation than adults.

Of course, 10 years from now when we've started optimizing our genetically engineered offspring for staring into the black mirror, all bets are off.

</comment><comment><USER25> Some anecdotes:

I (late 40s) love my eink ereader (a Kobo Aura HD) when reading for pleasure. I also use it for reading a lot of web-page articles away from the computer (via it's pocket integration). I've read 205 books in the last three years[1] and I would say less than five were physical books.

On the other hand, almost all those books were fiction, read for pleasure. I would never read that amount on a tablet screen or any similar screen that emits its own light.

I also find for technical topics, especially if they involve lots of diagrams or tables, I prefer physical over electronic because the ability to navigate around and annotate is so much faster and superior.

§

My kids, who are now in the teens and both avid readers, prefer physical books over electronic almost exclusively. They are willing to wait weeks to get hold of a physical version of an eagerly anticipated tome rather than get the electronic version immediately.

The only time my daughter uses an eink reader is when something she really wants to read is only being published electronically, never physically. I have tried to get her interested in a few books or series I think she would like, but with the rare exception was unsuccessful unless I could provide a physical version of the book.

§

At the opposite end, my dad (late 70s) who while not quite a luddite is far from a digital native, has expressed interest in getting an ebook reader primarily because he can then change the text to a comfortable size for his failing eyesight.

[1] [http://www.michevan.id.au/tag/books/](http://www.michevan.id.au/tag/books/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm an indie publisher of utility nonfiction (i.e. how-to guides). Close to 90% of online unit sales are print. This number has actually risen in recent years as print has grown and ebook sales have remained flat or declined. There are lots of theories floating around on why this is so, but I have to say that Google and Apple have really dropped the ball while Amazon continues to blaze forward on many product and service fronts. For example: at one time the iPad ebook experience was vastly superior to the original Kindle, now with the Kindle Fire and Paperwhite (not to mention the Kindle iOS app) Amazon is in front.

For an analysis of trends in the industry check out the Author Earnings reports here: [http://authorearnings.com/](http://authorearnings.com/)

</comment><comment><USER27> We bought Kindles for both of my kids, as they expressed a sincere interest. Today, those devices collect a lot of dust. I can't put my finger on why. With my son (7), I do know he seems to really enjoy books that include pictures scattered throughout the text (e.g. Geronimo Stilton). For my daughter (9), who reads very thick paper books typically in series, I really don't know - <USER2> has a huge reading appetite and reads every chance she can get. It may be she has much easier access to paper versions. She almost never has to ask us to buy her a book as she can just go pick one up.

I should ask her. I do sometimes wonder if there is a bit of subliminal affection for the covers of books, too, to reinforce one's personal identity, which you never get with a black mirror.

</comment><comment><USER28> I feel that whenever I have book that Im reading on kindle it's much harder for me to pick it up and continue reading after couple of days.

</comment><comment><USER29> Considering just the reading experience, I prefer physical books, too.

But there's more to consider, and eBooks are better and more convenient in every user case that I have.

I still buy a lot of physical books, but only from used book stores, and only when there's unlikely to ever be an eBook. If I'm buying a new book, it's going to be digital. The only exception is for outdoor guide books.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is definitely true for my 7 year old daughter. She's an avid reader, but even when I buy a book she is very interested in reading (typically the next in a current series) on a Kindle rather than getting her a hard copy, she'll end up reading something else.

</comment><comment><USER31> I prefer physical books for reading fiction and eink / display for tech books.

<comment><USER32> Fascinating - I am the exact opposite! I've found that for reading fictions - a narrative that mostly move forward - the limition of eink displays in freely flipping between pages to be less annoying.

<comment><USER33> Same here, especially since fiction rarely has diagrams or maps.

<comment><USER34> I find myself constantly flipping back to the maps at the beginning of most fantasy novels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Adults too.

<comment><USER36> I know this seems a common sentiment here, but I just don't get it. There is almost nothing better about a physical book vs. a Kindle, especially on the high-eng (e.g the Voyage). Whenever I've discussed this with people the only reason I seem to get is some vague sense of nostalgia.

<comment><USER37> \- Random access.

\- Non-random access: we are surprisingly good at knowing where in a book something we read was, and flipping back to it. While keeping our finger in the place or places we were. You can build a working stack of locations in paper that's a pain to do in every e-reader I've tried.

\- Notes/Marginalia/Markup are available on both, but with vastly more expressiveness and options on paper (though without search)

\- Share/re-share/bequeath

\- Some evidence of better comprehension and retention of physical reading vs screens.

\- No batteries required.

\- Attractive physical objects can be a pleasure to own (and a pain in the ass when moving house)

<comment><USER38> > Notes/Marginalia/Markup are available on both, but with vastly more > expressiveness and options on paper

I wouldn't want to annotate or highlight a paper book - that feels like damaging it.

> No batteries required.

Not really an issue for a Kindle-like device - it lasts about 30 days without a charge, which is long enough to read more books than I'd care to carry on a no-electricity trip.

<comment><USER39> >I wouldn't want to annotate or highlight a paper book - that feels like damaging it.

Don't do it with library books obviously, but if you own the book, try it. It vastly improved my reading experience when I started annotating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> paper books are better for children I think because they need a lot of pictures, and e-readers really haven't gotten up to that level. Also, I think it's good for children to have physical books to hold and interact with that allow for no distractions.

As an adult though, I much prefer ebooks, it's more portable and convenient. I do almost all of my reading on e-readers now.

</comment><comment><USER41> I prefer to read on my kindle. More convenient and can be used at night (paperwhite). I like to read, be it a paper book or an ebook. I don't see why the whole ebooks vs. paper is a thing, at all.

</comment><comment><USER42> you can't write on a computer screen -- even with touch screens it's rather clumsy.

books took several thousand years to evolve.... give them some credit.

<comment><USER43> Some of us don't write in books, either...

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Children also prefer to eat fries and chips

</comment><comment><USER45> A barely twenty years old technology is not gonna take over a five hundred old refined one.</comment>


Nothing is impossible - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@martinposchenrieder/nothing-is-impossible-d904ddfa4fcb

<comment><USER2> Impossible Is Nothing</comment>


What I Learned Co-Founding Dribbble - <AUTHOR> http://simplebits.com/2019/06/25/dribbble.html <comment><USER2> One thing Dan didn't mention in the article is that he wrote 3 books about web design _before_ Dribbble's launch: Web Design Solutions (2004), Bulletproof Web Design (2005) and Handcrafted CSS (2009). These books were unique among the first to hit a then-niche market: web designers who cared about quality. This was the perfect set-up to launching a platform for web designers who cared about quality and likely foundational to the early growth of Dribbble.

<comment><USER3> Precisely.

What launched Dribbble into a high orbit was a combination of three things.

1\. It was _really_ well executed. It didn't just look good, it has zero friction in use. The UX was flawless. You'd think "I wonder if I can do this", click where it would logically belong and, lo and behold, that thing _was_ there and it worked exactly as you'd expect. It was, to use pg's qualifier, delightful.

2\. It was seeded with top-tier designers from the start whom Dan was able to recruit because he was well-known in respective circles. If I were to try and reproduce this, it won't work no matter who good the site was, simply because I am nobody with no street rep.

3\. Invitation-only system that was completely closed to the public in the beginning. All you'd see are "leaked" screenshots on sites like PatternTap from the member of the cool boys club, and they looked spectacular. So when they allowed public in, still with no way to post, the whole thing just took off - it already had the community that was massively appealing and it was flattering to become a part of it. Invites were golden, the hype was over the top.

Regrettably, after it was sold to Tiny/Meta the quality of the site took a nose dive. They keep pushing out questionable "improvements" that clearly aim to improve their engagement stats rather than to be actually useful to the members. They reworked Pro accounts, bloating them with very niche and largely useless features and using that to raise the prices. What used to be an annual $20 no-brainer tip to Dan and Rich for their great job become an obnoxious $60/year subscription. They were getting an earful with every such improvement, so they now disable comments on every new announcement. I really wish Dan was back an the helm. He and Rich showed very unusual levels of restraint and common sense, and they _did_ in fact listen to the people rather their analytics numbers.

* A Dribbble member since 2010.

<comment><USER4> > it won't work no matter who good the site was, simply because I am nobody > with no street rep.

Sadly this is the case so many times when I read these types of articles with hopes of real insights. There's some mention like "so I was talking to my friend who founded Huge Startup and he was like 'yea, great idea!'. So I built my prototype and sent it off to other person from Hot Unicorn and it just grew organically because of my hard work and smarts!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great article and while my startup didn't make it past 5 members the advice in here is solid.

On shirts (and swag):

My startup had a mascot at the end and I wish we would have had it upfront and had stickers.

It may seem trite but it's even documented in books like Managing the Unmanageable (or might have been Peopleware) that Apple made shirts for projects. When I worked at NatGeo we made internal swag for our project.

For me personally, living in a world of intangible software, stickers and shirts give me something physical I can hold in my hand. Something I can wear or point to and relate to what I'm doing.

On not knowing what you're doing:

I think the best people I've worked with are very intelligent and curious and do great work for things they don't understand because they ask a ton of questions to learn it which helps lead to epiphanies. It doesn't always shake out that way but with a group of motivated individuals it is so rewarding.

On everything being temporary:

Leaving design / trends aside and looking at our code-- our engineering-- this is absolutely true. For any devops engineers out here reading this: repeatability helps a TON. It's so much easier to migrate from bash scripts to RPM/Deb and from RPM/Deb to Docker. Or from [Puppet|Chef|Ansible|Salt] to [New Flavor Of The Week]. Once it's codified in some way it's so easy to move it forward. Automation == repeatability == freedom.

On people are everything:

Please, please, please don't hire smart jerks. Great, you're smart, you can program in 10 languages and worked at a FANG. If the team doesn't want to sit next to you and work with you on a project I am hoping to shape my life, my future and my family's outcomes 8+ hours a day (even remote) it's going to spoil the whole bunch.

I could go on and on for each section. I loved this article. Y'all will certainly find parts you disagree with but on the whole it is great and very applicable.

<comment><USER6> Smart jerks are the worst. I work with a few of them and they can really be insufferable.

They interrupt every conversation (IRL or through Rocketchat) because they know absolutely everything about the subject you happend to be talking about. I have started to use the AKSHUALLY meme image in retaliation from time to time.

But what gets me the most is their self-importance. The bragging about the import people they have met, or the presentations they are asked to do. It gets really old really quick.

<comment><USER7> At Recurse Center, it's the #1 social rule. Some folks have a hard time adjusting, but the environment is materially improved when everyone respects the rule.

      1. No well-actually's
      2. No feigned surprise
      3. No backseat driving
      4. No subtle -isms

[https://www.recurse.com/social-rules](https://www.recurse.com/social-rules)

<comment><USER8> While I disagree with the concept of pushing one's beliefs on onto other team members, I think it's good that you guys are upfront about your philosophy. This way people can use this information to decide if they want to be involved with your organization or not. I recently joined a seemingly normal team only to discover a culture packed with unwritten rules and arbitrary taboo, a situation I would have completely avoided if only I had known the reality of the situation.

<comment><USER5> At a previous job my first week included 4 people telling me they were sorry I had to work with the person I was working with and several more explaining the political undercurrent / power holds.

And that's really hard to shrug off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really like Dan and have been following his stuff since the mid-2000s, but it's hard to apply this advice generally.

#2 and #3 are only effective if you're Dan Cederholm. He already had a reputation which put him in a very luxurious position to essentially choose his first users _and_ have them actually use it. The same goes for #3 – imagine if all of the "people you want on your platform" got tshirts and postcards from every startup that wanted them?

<comment><USER10> Don't take it so literally. Can you find 100 people (or a few dozen) in your circles that could be first users of your product? Start with them. If you have trouble gaining traction with those folks, you may have trouble getting others to pay for your product.

The caveat being that you have to make sure the people you're inviting fit somewhere in your customer profile. You can get discouraging feedback if your initial invitees don't fit your product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am not as convinced making a t-shirt for your startup as a first thing is a great idea. I think that can actually be an indicator of playing house. But you can do whatever you want.

<comment><USER12> I worked on a musical once where the book writer did photo shoots, logos, and T-shirts before the actual script, and it was a sign of bad things to come. So I agree with you and think this advice is mainly only a thing if you're on the level of Cederholm.

As an aside, I like the idea of ending a response with "But you can do whatever you want." I'm going to end every work email today with that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The point about hiring _good_ lawyers and accountants is important. I've been misguided in the past project by both lawyers and accountants that didn't know my type of business very well, but acting like they did.

</comment><comment><USER14> Dan and some of his early books and tutorials / opinions on web design I owe so much of my career to. It's always a treat seeing him pop up here.

</comment><comment><USER15> > "What I Learned Co-Founding Dribble"

As a benefit to readers who aren't already familiar with Dribble, or with the author, perhaps he could add a quick introductory sentence to the article saying both who "I" refers to, and also what Dribble is.

Interestingly, neither anywhere appears on the page anywhere, nor above the fold on the "About" page.

PS: Seems like a good article and a very interesting author.

</comment><comment><USER16> This post will probably be undervalued and overlooked guessing by the slow pace of points and comments, but over the years I have read countless similar ones and to be honest this is the most substantial writeup I have ever encountered. Each point is exactly what matters. The tshirt idea is brilliant. Thanks!

<comment><USER5> It was a great read and certainly aligns with my take-aways from being at a startup from day 1 as well as joining other startups at early and late stages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, this is a really great article. My favorite pieces of advice are the last four ones:

 _> 17\. Write, teach, and share what you're learning_

I totally agree. Getting into blogging, and being a part of a blogging community can be a great way to connect with people in your field, _and_ help others along the way.

 _> 18\. Don't take funding_

Yes!

 _> 19\. Take care of yourself first_

This is too often under-emphasized.

 _> 20\. Knowing when to let go_

Something that we all probably struggle with.

</comment><comment><USER18> His piece about funding was very true. If you truly care about the community and slowly evolving things, VC may not be the right approach.

VC money is about scaling fast and colonizing. It may not be for everyone and I'm guessing tons of great products got destroyed because they tried to grow too fast before getting a product market fit.

</comment><comment><USER19> For those not aware, Dribbble was acquired by Metalab/Tiny back in 2017 (and is briefly referenced under #20)

[https://medium.com/@awilkinson/dribbble-2-0-c2cd1fa184c5#.8k...](https://medium.com/@awilkinson/dribbble-2-0-c2cd1fa184c5#.8k5gezlet)

</comment><comment><USER20> I "discovered" dribble a little while ago, but I've just realized I think I have been completely unaware of what it really is. I found and use it for helping select color combos.

I basically go to [https://dribbble.com/colors/E94F2E](https://dribbble.com/colors/E94F2E) with a color I'm pondering about, and just find pleasing combos, click through to their palette. Very cool. I was thinking it would be nice to have a vscode plugin color picker based on this. It's certainly help me make nicer looking things.

</comment><comment><USER21> Regarding 'start up's:

I have a project idea that i think is pretty good and think could actually be useful to people and fill a niche, but:

* Nobody close to me I mentioned it to seems really interested.

* I am not 100% sure it would actually work/be useful/generate revenue/...

* I work full time and don't really want to invest my week-ends developing an idea I'm not sure will catch on.

What's the best next step? How do I evaluate my idea's chances? How can I get feedback without risking it getting stolen (very little chance but it would sting)

<comment><USER11> It sounds like you should not do it. Bootstrapping startups take commitment to use your free time. Raising money requires you show effort that would take up your free time. Worrying about having your idea stolen shows you haven't spent much time learning about how this stuff works. Either dive in or go do something else.

<comment><USER21> But the thing is I like the idea and should like to see it executed (by me ideally)

<comment><USER22> Set up a very short timeframe and goal - let´s say, I´m going to make a prototype (or code feature X) this weekend.

Then show it here :) .

The risk of it "getting stolen" exists, of course.. but if you don´t do it it´s exactly the same. If you aren´t convinced, you think someone else will have the time and commitment to do it? Unless they were already planning on it.

My recommendation: go ahead and do it. Maybe you need some structured help, join a hackathon?

<comment><USER21> Fair points. I like the 'short timeframe/small goal' idea... might try that.

Thanks for the tips!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any other HN users also Dribble users? Here's mine:

[https://dribbble.com/davidmcooper](https://dribbble.com/davidmcooper)

</comment><comment><USER24> The best advice I ever read on founding your own company. Clear and concise without any fluff about big markets.

</comment><comment><USER25> I am curious, especially being a logo/branding expert, if Dan ever got push back on 3 b's in the name?

<comment><USER26> Not Dan, but naming these days is hard. You basically have to invent a word to get a .com domain and good SEO.

"Dribbble" is good because you can tell people "the name is 'dribble' with three b's" and people will immediately know how to spell it and their first instinct will be "dribbble.com" and if they search for it, it will be the top search result.

Contrast that with a properly-spelled word like "Dribble." Their app will be nowhere near the top of any search result and people will go to dribble.com which is no-doubt already registered so they'll lose traffic because the domain will have to be something else unintuitive like dribble.io or dribbleapp.com.

<comment><USER25> " "Dribbble" is good because you can tell people "the name is 'dribble' with three b's" and people will immediately know how to spell it and their first instinct will be "dribbble.com" and if they search for it, it will be the top search result. "

Totally agree with that. great point. I asked his question cause I am considering 3 letters in my startups name and I often use Dribbble as a reference that it can be done. I've done for the exact reason you mentioned. In 2019, getting a .com domain + instagram + twitter handles is really difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _> "No thanks, I'm too busy."_

 _> I know. What a moron I was._

I don't think that's moronic. No one should hold it against you if you have to say no to things because you already have a full plate. Saying "no" is healthy. People should do it (politely, of course) more often.

</comment><comment><USER27> A refreshing read, honestly.

</comment><comment><USER28> Great content. But why use ragged-right?

<comment><USER29> Because justified leads to inconsistent word and letter spacing.

<comment><USER30> Fully-justified text is also generally harder to read for everyone, but for dyslexic folks especially. On the web, this is exacerbated by browsers' relatively poor support for fine, print-quality type layout.

<comment><USER31> Do you have any links that explore this?

<comment><USER32> Studies have found that justified text reduces reading speed by up to 11% as the eye has to do more work to find the next word as they're irregularly spaced.

I did a quick search and found a PDF [0] (page 8) referencing a study from 1986, but a lot of work has been done on typography and readability over the years. Actually, even though it's pretty old, that document is full of solid design advice.

[0] [http://core.ecu.edu/engl/tpc/MennoMenno/ftp/williams%202000....](http://core.ecu.edu/engl/tpc/MennoMenno/ftp/williams%202000.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Was reading article while listening to his banjo song: [https://dancederholm.bandcamp.com/track/election- day](https://dancederholm.bandcamp.com/track/election-day). Good article, fellow Masshol...yman!

</comment><comment><USER34> [https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/26/18759672/dribbble-ceo- zac...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/26/18759672/dribbble-ceo-zack-onisko- timothy-reynolds-account-suspension)

Not sure I'd consider any company good that bans (highly followed) users who disagree with the owners or criticize the site on other social networks.

<comment><USER33> I read the article and full disclosure, I don't use Dribbble and am not a member. My thought is that temporarily suspending a user based on report from community members is reasonable. Dribbble looks like a very social/community- centric site, I'd imagine if a rogue member were to post inappropriate content, the community can come together and help moderate. This also mean that if community members feel personally offended and take it the other way, and ding someone like in this instance, the site steps in and make it right. Again, Dribbble unbanned him shortly after. I just feel like it's a non-issue- but that's just my opinion.

<comment><USER35> That is very obviously not what happened.

[https://dribbble.com/turnislefthome](https://dribbble.com/turnislefthome)

50k followers, no new shots since February. This isn't a "rogue account" posting "inappropriate content."

Don't you think it is suspect that his account (no activity in months) is "flagged" on the same day the CEO blocks him on Twitter for legitimate chirps?

<comment><USER36> The guy was ranting away on twitter about some recently announced changes, attacking the company and the CEO. It doesn't take a conspiracy for both the users to flag him and the CEO to block him in response.

I don't know and I'm not going to try to guess, but I think the simplest answer is the most likely and the simplest answer is that the angry rant elicited strong reactions from multiple people.

<comment><USER3> This "guy" has been an integral part of the Dribbble community for as long as I can remember, churning out and sharing absolutely incredible work. Just look at his portfolio. Front page material, literally created a new style trend with his desaturated low-poly mini scenes.

Dribbble got from him being a member far more than he got from being on Dribbble. If there's someone who full on deserves the right to criticize the site, that'd be him.

CEO picked a personal fight with one of most visible and respected members. He should've not. It was indeed _petty_.

<comment><USER36> It's great he has been such a strong contributor to the community, but that doesn't mean people can't object to a twitter rant.

> CEO picked a personal fight

Did he though? That's not evident. Maybe you know differently?

Honestly, I don't really care, but I see one guy ranting in public, throwing around angry insults and accusations without backup and I'm OK if people don't give him what he wants.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What I Learned in My First Month Being a Contract iOS Developer - <AUTHOR> http://brandontreb.com/what-i-learned-in-my-first-month-being-a-contract-ios-developer/

<comment><USER2> "The other day, I asked my wife to make me a sandwich. She told me to make it myself, and I politely informed her that the 15 minutes spent doing that would cost us $25 so it had better be the best sandwhich I have ever made."

Ugh, what a load of nonsense. This would only be true if the OP was so overbooked that every minute not spent working would result in irreversible income loss.

I bill clients $200/hour for running their product or startup. Does that mean that when I go out for coffee it costs me $100 just to be away from my laptop for half an hour? Of course not. Some people seem to think that when they bill hourly they are tapping into an infinite sea of money, and the only constraint on how much they make is how much time they put in. This is clearly wrong in the vast majority of cases.

The $25 you 'loose' by making a sandwich at 14:00, you gain back by working another 15 minutes at 19:00, or the next day, or the next week.

<comment><USER3> There is a one-in-a-million longshot that he was not being completely, one hundred percent serious, did not in fact think that he should be paid 25 dollars for making himself a sandwich, and was using it as an illustration of his new-found feeling that time spent not working is time spent watching money slip through his fingers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great post ... thanks for sharing</comment>


ProFTPD.org main FTP servers compromised using a 0day in..ProFTPD  - <AUTHOR> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=alpine.DEB.2.00.1012011542220.12930%40familiar.castaglia.org <comment><USER2> _attackers most likely used an unpatched security issue in the FTP daemon_

If they don't know exactly how the server was compromised I don't understand how they can know the vulnerability is limited to software downloaded within a certain timeframe. The added backdoor yes, but the vulnerability that allowed the attack to succeed is still unaccounted for.

Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> _how they can know the vulnerability is limited to software downloaded within a certain timeframe._

It isn't. The bug has been in ProFTPd for years, here's the details:

<http://bugs.proftpd.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3521>

If anyone is running a ProFTPd version older than 1.3.3c then you should act _now_. Your host is open to remote code execution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Title is a little silly. What FTP server did you EXPECT them to be running?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard _vsftpd_ [1] is quite good. I certainly wouldn't expect them to be running anything other than ProFTPD, of course, but being aware of alternatives somewhat helps, no?

[1] <http://vsftpd.beasts.org/>

<comment><USER5> Indeed. When all the Linux distros kicked out WUFTPd from being the default FTP server in the early 2000s due to security concerns, nearly every one evaluated ProFTPd and VSFTPd against each other, and VSFTPd came out on top.

<comment><USER6> I never really liked ProFTPd, it always seemed too huge and bloated.

My favorite has always been Pure-FTPd - it really has some neat features and is very easy to setup and so far very reliable for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People still use ftp?

<comment><USER8> To the downvoter, it's a valid question. FTP needs to go away, it's just a crap protocol that is totally out of place on today's internet.

<comment><USER7> Thank you. I could've phrased it better, but it was serious.

Everyone knows it's unencrypted and HTTP is faster for simple file serving. Right?

<comment><USER8> I wish... Part of the problem is that FTP is still built into today's browsers, so many people don't even know that they're using FTP, it's just a link they click. Luckily IE removed support for password in FTP links a few releases ago, but still.

HTTP is ok for small files, but I'm often on unreliable links with big files to up/download, and browsers implement 'resume', ehm, let's just say 'not so well' (it's a server thing too, to be honest). Anyway I've used scp for years myself, and I've tried getting others to use it, too; I mean winscp isn't harder than any ftp client. Some would grudgingly accept if I made them, others would just say 'I can't up/download the files'. So I've given up on that part of trying to improve the internet :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Happens to the best of them. What really matters is how deep the attackers got beyond the FTP server, how quickly they can recover, and how quickly they can get patches out to all users / versions affected.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, and their response was lightning-fast, compared to today's standards.</comment></comment>


Tin Hat Linux - <AUTHOR> http://opensource.dyc.edu/tinhat

<comment><USER2> I almost fell out of my chair when I realized this was from D'Youville College back where I group up. Interesting idea for a Linux distro although I'm not immediately clear what a 100% in RAM OS is good for but that's probably just my ignorance speaking and lack of wearing a Tin Hat. So I guess I take that back, I do see what this is for, if you wear a Tin Hat.</comment>


Trillions of Viruses Fall from the Sky Each Day - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/science/virosphere-evolution.html <comment><USER2> >One study estimated that viruses in the ocean cause a trillion trillion infections every second, destroying some 20 percent of all bacterial cells in the sea daily.

That excerpt really put it into perspective for me. I guess I always thought that viruses didn't have much of an impact, aside from ocasionally causing a pandemic and incorporating themselves into our genome. But the thought of viruses killing a fifth of all bacteria in the sea everyday is staggering.

<comment><USER3> One would assume the reproduction rate of the bacteria is sufficient to make this sustainable.

<comment><USER4> Yes, in the lab, bacteria can double in less than an hour.

<comment><USER5> Also in the kitchen.

<comment><USER6> Yes, kitchen is a half-assed organic chemistry lab for doing what's basically alchemy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I saw this quote in Nature last year [1]

"Viruses outnumber prokaryotes by ten to one and are said to kill half of the world's bacteria every two days"

Maybe these two are locked in some sort of existential battle for Earth while everything else is a side show?

[1] H. Ledford, "Five big mysteries about CRISPR's origins", Nature, 12 January 2017. Volume 541 Number 7637

<comment><USER8> Viruses are fundamentally smaller than bacteria, so they're not really competitors in the zero-sum sense.

Saying they are in an existential battle is like saying birds and insects are in an existential battle. They might kill each other and occupy the same physical space, but one can't really replace the other in the fitness landscape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > (There is a small group of researchers who believe viruses may even have > come here from outer space, an idea known as panspermia.)

Fred Hoyle [1] is one such researcher. He is an astrophysicist who was the first to demonstrate how elements heavier than helium are synthesized by nuclear reactions in stellar cores. He holds a number of non-mainstream scientific beliefs and one involves the source and evolution of life on earth. He discusses it, along with other evidence challenging the neo-darwinian theory of evolution [2], in "The Intelligent Universe" [3]. I'm reading it now and highly recommend it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_synthesis_(20th_century...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_synthesis_\(20th_century\)) [3] [https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Universe-Fred- Hoyle/dp/00...](https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Universe-Fred- Hoyle/dp/0030700833)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a rare example of extreme understatement in a headline. If the figure given in the article is true, about 800 trillion viruses fall to Earth each day _per square kilometer_.

<comment><USER11> _Hundreds of Sextillions of Viruses Fall from the Sky Each Day_

<comment><USER10> Doesn't quite have the same ring to it, huh? I think they probably made the right decision to understate it here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess the layman's followup question (if I may) is, why didn't something like Smallpox spread over to the Americas, if viruses are that prevalent? Why did they need a human host? Is there a specific evolutionary niche to not being infectious via the air?

<comment><USER13> I would think that the virii that have that kind of prevalence are mostly bacteriophages.

<comment><USER14> This is the correct answer.

Viruses are also very specialized molecular machinery, and eukaryotic cells (and by extension, organisms) are quite complex. Think of molecular evolution between viruses v. prokaryotes / eukaryotes like a constant arms race: viruses have the "key" to (1) enter a cell and (2) hijack cellular machinery, and prokaryotes / eukaryotes are constantly upgrading their locks (mostly as a factor of diversity x natural selection --- the cells without great locks tend to be terminated rather quickly).

Also consider that it's not in a virus' "best interest" (from a sustainability / propagative standpoint) to actually _kill_ or even _incapacitate_ 100% of their hosts, which contradicts their very mode of replication (often completely hijacking transcription and translation mechanisms in a cell, leading to lysis). They rely on these hosts to survive --- a 100% termination rate of the host means an evolutionary dead-end for a virus.

Arguably, the most "successful" viruses are ones that have been incorporated into host DNA - it's estimated that up to 8% of our genome consists of endogenous retrovirus DNA [1]. After all, viruses are simply small containers of self-replicative material (DNA / RNA, a few proteins) surrounded by a protein coat: if they can hijack their own environmental shield (like, say, a full human nucleus / cell) and still propagate their DNA they've arguably "won."

So --- yeah, harmful virulence is (1) tough to achieve and (2) not actually all that evolutionarily advantageous.

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

<comment><USER15> How much genetic complexity exists just to thwart viruses?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The possibility that viruses can benefit a host or cellular species is interesting. I have wondered whether the common cold virus(es) may impart some benefit to humans? Are we symbiotic with mutualism?

Could they provide some defense or warning against other diseases in the environment? Just speculating.

<comment><USER17> Depressing facts of evolution time.

Evolution will totally evolve systems where something is both necessary for the system to keep function and detrimental to the system. If you evolve in the context of "there are tons of viruses just all over the goddamn place", even if the viruses are constantly harming you, there is no reason your body shouldn't come to depend on them for some functions. Eg, the amino acids liberated from your immune system breaking them down could be a vital precursor to some protein or another, _even as they continue to hurt you_.

For a computer example, imagine writing programs to run on a computer that suffers frequent, intermittent power failures. You could very easily end up with a program with memory leaks that don't matter because the power failures happen too frequently for enough memory to leak for it to be a problem. The frequent power failures are _bad_ , and you would prefer to eliminate them, but you can't because the program has evolved in the context of frequent power failures and can't run for long without them (hell, maybe the memory leaks will end up corrupting on-disk data if you fill up main memory and your hacky memory management system begins double-allocating).

<comment><USER18> Brilliant analogy. Especially when you consider how heavily nature conserves and multi-utilizes molecules and structures, it's not much of a stretch to see how what starts as a side effect can quickly become an essential machination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Having just read this article, how might this virus activity be tracked / measured back in time?

If viruses and bacteria are the forerunners of more complex life, wouldn't this be helpful to know?

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are- we-e...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are-we-earths- only-civilization/557180/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Someone should quickly tell the king that the sky is falling down

</comment><comment><USER21> Why does this feel a little like fear-mongering?

George Carlin on germs, really funny stuff.

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

<comment><USER22> You should have read more than the headline before commenting.

<comment><USER21> Let me rephrase then:

"Why does this _headline_ feel a little like fear-mongering?"

<comment><USER22> Unless you have an (irrational exclusive) association of "virus = bad/fear/disease" to begin with the headline is perfectly fine. It's just your interpretation made by adding your own context. You should try to separate what is actually there from what you yourself add. It's a statement of fact that sounds interesting and that's all, and unlike what the other person said it's not very "click baity", it actually is a pretty accurate description of the main point.

<comment><USER21> No virus that I have ever had, or heard of anyone having, was ever called "good".

I'm literally stunned this isn't common sense.

To prove me wrong, please show me any everyday circumstance an average person from the past 50 years would have had a good experience with a virus.

<comment><USER22> You should read the article and take a course in biology. Coursera and even more so edX.org offer excellent free courses.

To you last sentence: The fact that you exist. Viruses contributed significantly. _If you had read the article(!)_ you would already have been told about that, including examples.

For example, quoting the article:

 _> Researchers recently identified an ancient virus that inserted its DNA into the genomes of four-limbed animals that were human ancestors. That snippet of genetic code, called ARC, is part of the nervous system of modern humans and plays a role in human consciousness — nerve communication, memory formation and higher-order thinking. Between 40 percent and 80 percent of the human genome may be linked to ancient viral invasions._

It bothers me that there are people on HN that keep commenting while completely disregarding the article that is being discussed.

<comment><USER21> > _You should read the article and take a course in biology._

You have proved my point for me. The everyday person has never once in their life, ever, heard that viruses are good.

I'm an educated and well read, and I have only recently started hearing this, and only because of genetic manipulation. This is a _new_ idea in the last 20 years, and even today, it appears to be all talk about something in the future, and not a single instance I've ever heard of where you could get a virus treatment that was good for you today.

I read the article, I am talking about average people, not scientists who read journals.

It's shocking to me that people have such short memory. Maybe you are a teenager, but there was no virus manipulation 50 years ago that was considered a benefit to humans. And if there was, it certainly wasn't advertised to the masses.

<comment><USER22> > The everyday person has never once in their life, ever, heard that viruses > are good.

Uhm... I'm shocked to find someone who seems to think that viruses have an effect only when people "believe" in them/have heard about them. Sorry, that's not how anything works. It is of exactly zero importance whether or not anyone has "heard" about viruses. I'm shocked to read stuff like that in this forum.

We were talking about the headline, and I repeat, it's a faithful representation of the main point, pretty much 1:1. From my perspective, I felt well informed when clicking on the article - for once I actually knew what it would be about before I clicked. That is a _good_ thing.

<comment><USER21> The title of the article is this:

> _Trillions of Viruses Fall from the Sky Each Day_

I learned in 4th grade science that viruses are parasites. Having trillions of parasites falling from the sky every day is not a good thing.

Some mental gymnastics are required to conclude "parasites are good", but I suggest that the vast majority of people don't believe parasites are good.

<comment><USER22> Full circle. I point to my previous comments. You keep repeating your weird claims as if that makes them seem any less weird. The title is well-chosen. If _you_ had a horrible education that is besides the point, it has nothing to do with that article. Sorry for your bad experiences in school, can't help you there I'm afraid, I don't understand why you bring it up.

<comment><USER21> My first comment was about the title being "fear-mongering". If you don't think saying "parasites are falling from the sky" is not fear mongering because you are more educated than others, then maybe you simply can't understand the common man's dilemma.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Decentralizing the Internet So Big Brother Can't Find You - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/nyregion/16about.html?_r=1&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter <comment><USER2> _"... Eben Moglen, was putting together a shopping list to rebuild the Internet — this time, without governments and big companies able to watch every twitch of our fingers. ..."_

The key idea behind the _"Freedom box"_ is to own your logs and not let anyone else infer without your express permission. The idea was discussed in full in his speech, _"Freedom In the Cloud"_ at the NY Internet society, 2010FEB05. You can read speech ~ [http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2010/isoc- ny/FreedomIn...](http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2010/isoc- ny/FreedomInTheCloud-transcript.html) or listen/watch here ~ <http://www.isoc- ny.org/?p=1338>

<comment><USER3> And his recent FOSDEM speech can be read at [http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2011/fosdem/moglen- fos...](http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2011/fosdem/moglen-fosdem- keynote.html). There was good discussion on the recent LWN story, too: <http://lwn.net/Articles/426763/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a ridiculous amount of a lack of information in that "news" entry.

"Rebuild the Internet"... how? They're evidently not planning on wall-warts to route the Internet. "would decentralize information and power" how, precisely? There's absolutely squat in the article about wtf the thing would do.

</comment><comment><USER5> But what is it? What does it do? How does it work? I skimmed the article, maybe I missed the answers to these, but seemed precious thin on actual information.

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems like an awesome idea in concept but I agree with twir...what stops the government from just getting the ISPs to turn off traffic?

I would pay $99 for myself and buy each and every one of my friends one of these boxes if the concept proved true.

<comment><USER7> Assuming the goal here is to have the Free Exchange of Information:

Step 1 is to own the hardware that serves up your information.

Step 2 is to own the path that your information travels upon.

You are correct, Step 2 is a significantly more difficult problem to solve, but this does not mean that we should not try to solve Step 1 while we have an opportunity to do so.

<comment><USER8> I believe IPv6 provides a start for what is necessary to solve Step 2.

IPSec is part of the protocol so these connections can be trusted. Also no NAT issues so connecting directly between trusted 'plugs' may be simpler than with IPv4. May need to start with a mesh network over a mix of paths that you own and paths that you may not.

I have no real world experience implementing IPv6, just been looking into it lately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"They're $99; they will go to $69. Once everyone is getting them, they will cost $29."_

They're $99 now? Where?

<comment><USER10> A Tonidoplug, which is a Sheeva plug with the Tonido software on it, is $99:

<http://tonidoplug.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would start thinking about decentralization from the software end, because it's much simpler to change. My #1 item would be decentralized alternative to DNS. Once you decentralize names, the state of a particular physical server stops to matter that much, because you can always point your name to another server Without that you will always have a single choke-point - the server's name.

</comment><comment><USER12> Because having a night-light server plugged into your wall will prevent the government from turning off internet services?

Because encrypted distributed servers running around the country will efficiently serve internet traffic?

</comment><comment><USER13> For pete's sake...

I'm a fan of Moglen and the SFLC but this is about as practical as a bicycle with square wheels.

<comment><USER14> What you've said doesn't add anything to the conversation. It's roughly equivalent to standing up in the middle of a lecture, yelling "You suck!" and then walking out without any explanation of your own ideas.

Why is his idea flawed? What would it require to succeed? Are there other similar ideas that you think are good? Answering these questions would be interesting. Doing what you did is not.

<comment><USER15> I'll bite.

It's a fantastic idea. What is missing from it is how the infrastructure is and probably always will be under the domain (pun intended) of corporations.

For example, how do we provide "internet access" with these servers? We don't own the fiber; it it gets shut down we're dead in the water. ISPs run the networks and therefore control the content and charge for it as much as they want.

An alternative is state-controlled ISPs--but we all can guess how fun that would be.

I'm trying to think of yet other alternatives, but I'm drawing a blank.

<comment><USER12> I'm not entirely sure it's possible. We've seen examples of other governments taking down sites because of the way internet protocols work, specifically BGP [1]. I believe some number of the DNS root servers are directly or nearly- directly controlled by the government. Service providers have legal obligations to allow access into their facilities. We're not as bad off as others - some governments do run the ISPs.

I don't see the difference between having encrypted data on a mini-server at your house vs. housed at a provider. If the data was stored centrally and there were few options, it would make the legal process of getting the data easier. With the existing options for hosting data in many different countries, this doesn't seem to be a problem. Even then, you could probably stripe this data across centrally stored hosting solutions and still have a more efficient and secure process than hosting off of a 'Freedom Box'.

Options seem to be: 1\. Distributed storage. The storage is striped across these boxes all over, and no single box has any data. Nobody can subpoena the data because of the process involved in getting the information from so many people at once. I think using distributed storage would be very, very difficult with data redundancy, latency, and maintaining security with such high availability and access.

2\. Each box is self operating, but managed centrally. Data storage is contained to a single (or few) boxes to simplify data access and speed. This still allows centralized access to the data, and fewer people would be involved in collecting the data. Higher levels of security could be maintained, but legally easier to access.

3\. Self managed secure boxes that have a 'cloud' or 'bot' organization of peer-to-peer relationships. Again, these types of systems work today, but there are still centralized servers and most of the workload is still carried by large servers/organizations.

It seems easier to simply make Tor more secure, which is a different debate if that's even possible. The article reads like a lawyer who has some tech experience thinks he has created a magic Internet v2.0 because he's found a way to get around the legal ramifications of privacy without regard to technical ramifications.

1\. [http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/022608-youtube- outage-...](http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/022608-youtube-outage- underscores-big-internet.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ex-CIA Director: 'North Korea Can Disrupt Electric Grid, Kill 90 Percent of US' - <AUTHOR> http://observer.com/2017/04/kim-jong-un-north-korea-ballistic-missiles-threat/ <comment><USER2> If North Korea can do it anyone can. So why isn't the government patching those holes if they already know how NK can "kill 90% of the US" by disrupting the electric grid.

This sounds more like beating the drums of war against NK.</comment>


The Brotopia Myth - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@socialjusticet1/the-brotopia-myth-39c7535c786f <comment><USER2> What a load of nonsense. Somehow in a 4 minute read the author (Social_Justice_Tech)has managed to fit in every form of information bias known alongside unattributed graphs and a picture of THAT guy from Google.</comment>


T-Mobile Merger Approval Violated Every One of the DOJ's 'Antitrust Principles' - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200903/11333545242/t-mobile-merger-approval-violated-every-last-one-dojs-updated-antitrust-principles.shtml <comment><USER2> The timeline is that the merger approval happened and sometime after that, the new principles were published.

If we assume positive intent, someone at DOJ was tired of approvals like the T-Mobile deal, and was able to (somehow) build concensus to an announcement of new principles. These newly announced principles are quite a bit different than the old ones, so we shouldn't be surprised that old deals don't align, that's kind of the point.

It's also not too surprising that an old deal finalized a few months before the new principles finalized. Everything is on a long pipeline, and it gets done when it's done, changing principles in the middle is hard --- especially when the new ones are unpublished and you had already done significant work under the old ones.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention, imagine the legal headache for the DOJ to stop a merger on as- yet unpublished principles. "Arbitrary & capricious" and various violations of rules like the Administrative Procedures Act would be thrown out in court. It's a little sketchy as is that the DOJ can change its criteria without any decision in Congress, but at least this is closer to following the contours of the law as is rather than arbitrary decision-making.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think in this case, the decision was to either allow the merger and create a three way competition with AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint/T-Mobile, or watch as AT&T and Verizon slowly pushed out Sprint and T-Mobile. Sprint was mostly dead by this time. T-Mobile got a jump start due to innovation in the consumer space, but that was dying out. Instead, by allowing the merger, we have a viable third company to compete with AT&T and Verizon.

</comment><comment><USER5> Techdirt is acting like Sprint was going to remain as a viable company "if only they didn't merge".

But the reality was either they merged, or Sprint would shut down. There was no scenario where Sprint stayed in businesses acting as competition.

On top of the that T-Mobile had a really hard time competing with Verizon and AT&T because of lack of spectrum, so preventing them from getting Sprint's spectrum would actually make them _less_ competitive.

I think the author may have forgotten that Verizon and AT&T are competitors to T-Mobile and instead only paid attention to Sprint.

> "Not only did the DOJ ignore all objective data showing the deal would > clearly be terrible for customers, the market, and employees"

What data is this? Because out here in the real world the deal has been amazing for T-Mobile customers and the market. Perhaps not employees, but that's not really a reason to stop it.

<comment><USER6> >But the reality was either they merged, or Sprint would shut down. There was no scenario where Sprint stayed in businesses acting as competition.

That is because SoftBank didn't know what to do with Sprint and refused to invest money into the business. When SoftBank bought Sprint, the company was profitable and T-Mobile was unprofitable. Deutsche Telekom had been trying to offload T-Mobile for years but wanted more than it was worth. Slowly the tables turned and T-Mobile became profitable while Sprint started losing money.

Masayoshi Son is the Eddie Lampert of Japan. Son used to be worth about $100 billion, but his bad investments via SoftBank over the last twenty years cut $80 billion off his wealth.

<comment><USER7> Sprint made a lot of stumbles -before- Softbank. Honestly when the Acquisition happened I thought softbank was insane for doing so. IOW Sprint didn't know what to do with sprint either, I'm just glad TMO got some spectrum out of it at the end.

But, even before that, Sprint was realizing the pain of their missteps. Probably the biggest of which was WIMAX, the smaller was taking too long to get rid of IDEN.

Sprint didn't know what to do with Sprint in 2013. Even before the Acquisition they were foregoing parts of their normal maintenance and instead 'living' with problems.

The one major saving grace in all of it? The biggest reason it was still good for TMO? Sprint had a LOT of sub-1000Mhz spectrum whereas TMO had none.

And, to TMO's credit... They played the game very well. Their roaming deal from AT&T before the sprint merger completed allowed them to temporarily gloss over lot of their coverage issues until they were able to start using that spectrum for LTE (Also that nice piece of 700mhz they got from VZQ).

Source: Sprint user from 2009-2013, switched to TMO, Used to deal with maintenance of Sprint Infrastructure in a large municipality as a contractor.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Kids-friendly videos - <AUTHOR>

I built this small app (www.kidsfriend.ly) for my friends and their kids. It comes with iOS apps as well but hasn't been put onto the appstore. Here I'd like to share it with you and get some suggestions/comments.
A sample playlist: http://www.kidsfriend.ly/playlists/28c99bf8-2314-41b8-a53b-8ce809157d8f <comment><AUTHOR> clickable links: <http://www.kidsfriend.ly> and [http://www.kidsfriend.ly/playlists/28c99bf8-2314-41b8-a53b-8...](http://www.kidsfriend.ly/playlists/28c99bf8-2314-41b8-a53b-8ce809157d8f)</comment>


Ask HN: spring break projects, anyone? - <AUTHOR>

for those of us still under tutelage and with spring break upon us/arriving, any mini-projects you're pursuing?  Myself, I'd like to explore some garden management, track what you grow, software. <comment><USER3> since I really can't avoid school... I was planning on making some software to help me choose classes.

<comment><USER4> You need software for that?

<comment><USER5> probably really helpful if you are trying to optimize your time to degree - <USER2> did my undergrad with a double major in 3 years, it's a lot of work setting that up and it requires special permission. I'd setup a DAG of class dependencies and look at which classes to ask special permission for - this is easy in early CS classes in particular, you go to the prof and go I want to take X as a coreq with Y instead of as a prereq because I have basic competence and let me show you how. <blahblahblah about X and Y></comment></comment></comment>


The Photographic Science of Detecting Fake Lottery Tickets - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/?/archives/478-Fool-Me-Once.html <comment><USER2> Is it possible to reverse engineer the image such that it passes all tests? Knowing the various algorithms that could be used, what would be involved in constructing the modification such that it doesn't reveal evidence of any modifications?

One thought would be to actually render an entire scene in something like POV- Ray. Imagine if something like this rendering <http://www.povray.org/community/hof/chado.php> contained a winning lottery ticket on the table. If you save the rendered image using the same compression algorithm and same EXIF heading information as a camera, how would one tell the difference?

<comment><USER3> I imagine it would be hard for renderer to fake all subtle qualities digital camera introduces. Things like "colors too clean", "noise too uniform", "geometric distortion doesn't match any existing lens" would turn up.

In this specific case I think I'd print a fake ticket with dot matrix printer and take photos of it.

<comment><USER4> I have worked so hard to completely replace dot matrix that I am actually trying to think were I could get access to one and am coming up blank! Many receipts are now the crappy thermal paper that magically disappers from being left on the dash.. Its like magic in the retailers favor...and just about everything else is laser. Where would you get the dot matrix?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Simply blowing the contrast out in Photoshop makes the fakery pretty apparent too: <http://i.imgur.com/6niwJ.png>

</comment><comment><USER6> What's funny about this to me is that the "04 02" reveals the fake without any kind of photographic analysis whatsoever. The numbers are supposed to be sorted smallest to largest. A valid ticket would read "02 04".

<comment><USER7> The author mentions that anomaly in the article, but goes on to assume that the sorting is picked by the state printing the ticket (probably for the benefit of being able to continue the case study).

I also noted that the differing color of the "04 02" in that image can be spotted with the naked eye if zoomed in - no advanced analysis techniques necessary.

I think the techniques used were far more interesting than the particular case study - while the media and non-camera-original nature of the images made the author's most basic techniques somewhat ineffective, the fakes were overall very poorly executed.

<comment><USER8> If it were the case that the numbers on this ticket were unsorted, you would expect all of the rows to be unsorted, whereas everything except 04 & 02 are in order, including the numbers that follow in the same row. Still interesting to see the "forensic" approach to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To fake a lottery ticket for posting online, it'd be much easier just to print a fake ticket and then photograph it. I suppose, however, that the purpose of doing it digitally is to practice skills and "because I can."

To fake a lottery ticket for claiming a prize ... well, that'd be fraudulent and would result in loss of freedom for quite some time.

</comment><comment><USER10> I find it utterly frustrating that a scientific seeming article would end with this conclusion:

 _"A single algorithm can trigger false-positive or false-negative results... if something is really real, then it should pass everything."_

How you going to be so thorough about detecting a crappy photoshop job and then trip over your own words in the conclusion?

</comment><comment><USER11> Not for nothing, but if you merely zoom in on the picture you can tell that the 'winning' line is a different color with the naked eye. And if you want to 'prove' this, a 10-second color replacement in photoshop does the job: <http://i.imgur.com/7Mg4z.png>

</comment><comment><USER12> There is nothing scientific about any of these tests. What's a 'high' ELA or 'low'? The thing that triggers a 'positive' seems to be only the authors intuition. While some of the tests might show something, I'm pretty sure ELA is absolute garbage - you can't separate the number of needed resaves because of the content frequencies from number of times it has already been resaved.

<comment><USER13> What, may I ask, makes a test scientific?

<comment><USER12> You don't need to get technical about it, but I think most people would expect any test described as scientific to be objective.

<comment><USER14> Do you mean free of bias or reproducible?

I think the author was clearly free from bias, and his results are easily reproduced by applying the same algorithms.

The subjectivity which you complain about may be the conclusions drawn from the results of the tests, which I think are distinct. Specifically, you cite his "intuition" as the origin of the conclusion.

I think the author's intuition is reliable because, like "real" scientists, he's an expert and speaks publicly about his work.[1] Or at least he appears to be. Are you prepared to challenge him as an expert?

[1] <http://www.hackerfactor.com/papers/bh-usa-07-krawetz-wp.pdf>

<comment><USER12> I could, but shouldn't we demand he show some proof for his claims?

It seems to me that if you pull a bit of maths and technical magic out the normal skepticism the tech community melts away into a compliant bundle of gullibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This site has a GIMP script for doing Error Level Analysis: <http://sites.google.com/site/elsamuko/forensics/ela> (After saving it to your ~/.gimp-2.6/scripts folder, the tool hides in the Image menu.)

I just tried it on a couple of my own images, the results are very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can you use Photoshop filters to do this, or are there more professional programs to do so?

</comment><comment><USER17> Slightly related, I was wondering how the actual lottery tells if your ticket is real - do the machines record your ticket's serial number and number(s) chosen and then send the info to the lottery HQ? Or do the lottery machines compute an HMAC of some kind and encode it in the serial number on the ticket itself?

<comment> excuse-me I don't know about this US lottery specifically but in most systems everything is recorded at HQ. Not just the numbers, but the place, the date and time, serial number etc

That way they can also check with CCTV.

It's an interesting topic in database design because the link to the store may fail at any time (remember lotteries started years ago on dialup) and you must not have an issued-unrecorded ticket at any point in the process

<comment><USER18> Then why did it take so long for them to announce how many winners there were? First they said "at least one", and then they said "three". If everything was stored in a central database, they could have found out the exact figures (and a lot more) as soon as the last winning number was announced.

Maybe it's due to lack of coordination between states? Or maybe they need to do fraud checking, etc. by watching CCTV footage from the point of sale?

<comment><USER14> I doubt they use recordings for fraud prevention. I'd be pretty upset if my winning lottery ticket were denied because the store lost the recording, or never had them. It's just too costly to record every purchase.

<comment> excuse-me They don't insist on CCTV but it's a useful tool.

Actually the major source of fraud in most lotteries is the store owner . For small wins the ticket is taken back to the store to scan it to check for a win, the store owner will tell the buyer that it lost, or that it only won a much smaller prize, pay that out of the till and then claim the prize. Especially in poor/immigrant communities where many player may not speak English or have internet access.

There was a story on here about an analyst for an oil company who worked out the random number sequence for a lottery in Ontario. He also analysed the winning claims and discovered that certain stores where claiming a disproportionate number of middle wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> not directly related, but this made me remember some reading I did awhile ago on EXIF analysis.

a really cool tool for EXIF <http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/></comment>


Google was down for 15 minutes (+/- from 09:35 UTC) - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com <comment><USER2> The homepage sometimes works.

The search results page sometimes works.

The search result _links_ , however, seem to be 90% broken, for example this is always broken:

[http://www.google.pl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=...](http://www.google.pl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3schools.com%2Fcss%2Fcss_link.asp&ei=rna2U7DRKLTb7AaSh4H4CQ&usg=AFQjCNFtZhdGn98eN1WR9gUAcgqbX8EYJA&bvm=bv.70138588,d.bGE)

Edit: looks like that 5 minutes of fun is now over, and all is back to normal.

I'd love to know how much that little outage cost Google.

<comment><USER3> More importantly, I wonder how much that outage cost _everyone_.

I've seen many computer users simply "give up using the Internet" when Google is down, returning after a coffee break to resume.

It wouldn't surprise me if Wikipedia, at least, had a measurable traffic drop during the outage. I think they even have public MRTG logs, so someone more enterprising than me could confirm that... :-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some alternatives if you really need to search:

[https://duckduckgo.com/](https://duckduckgo.com/)

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

Edit: I thought duckduckgo used search results from Google but without personalisation and tracking, removed my comment as this seems to be incorrect

<comment><USER4> Duckduckgo is most definitely not google, though you can access the anonymized google interface startpage.com by using the duckduckgo s! bang (for anyone unfamiliar with ddg, the bangs are a productivity heaven). If google is down, so will be startpage.com.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Google Apps seems to be working everywhere, so that can't be it:

Here is the status board of GAPPS: [http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=nl&v=status](http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=nl&v=status)

</comment><comment><USER5> I do not seem to have any kind or problems... But ... duckduckgo is a really great service!

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems to have been some sort of europe wide hiccup then.

Appears to be working again now.

</comment><comment><USER7> Working fine in London. Didn't get any errors in past 15 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER8> Aaaand its back up. Looking forward to the post-mortem.

</comment><comment><USER9> google.co.uk is throwing 500 errors.

[https://www.google.co.uk/#q=test](https://www.google.co.uk/#q=test)

Does work every now and then

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't got it to work though

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> it was down in parts of the UK for about 50% of people too

</comment><comment><USER11> g search is occasionally failing with HTTP 500, in CZ

</comment><comment><USER12> someone typed google into google :(

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxLmLUT- qc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxLmLUT-qc)

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes Google.be is down. Lucky Google.com does work

</comment><comment><USER14> same in uk

<comment><USER14> nevermind, back in < 1 minute from me noticing

<comment><USER9> Hah, takes far longer than that to find somewhere in their support pages to report the 500..

Did that page detailing developer excuses include 'Google is down'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Down for me in Belgium, correct.

<comment><AUTHOR> Working again for me

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> .nl was down, working again.

</comment><comment><USER16> Works fine in Montenegro...

</comment><comment><USER17> Down in Denmark.

</comment><comment><USER18> Same here in .nl

<comment><USER19> for me too

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Germany as well

</comment><comment><USER21> Down in .nl too

</comment><comment><USER22> google.com.fj working fine in Fiji.

</comment><comment><USER23> Lots of 500s

</comment><comment><USER24> UK too

<comment><USER25> NL is down.</comment></comment>


New advanced malware, possibly nation sponsored, is targeting US utilities - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/08/new-advanced-malware-possibly-nation-sponsored-is-targeting-us-utilities/ <comment><USER2> "Advanced malware"? "Possibly nation sponsored"?

This is a pretty obvious phishing email ("Dear participant...") with a Word macro which would have to be explicitly allowed in order to run even under Word's default settings.

Like many of these announcements, it's really just an advertisement for a vendor whose company "was able to block all phishing attempts used against the three customers in this campaign".

<comment><USER3> The phishing campaign may be really lame. The payload, however, was pretty sophisticated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Phishing will always be a threat. Infrastructure will always be a target. I am surprised that we don't hear more about events like this.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Don't use Windows

2\. Don't use Word

<comment><USER6> I know it's a meme, but linux isnt necessarily impenetrable either

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Turnabout is fair play?</comment>


Used Google Ads Wizard, got account suspended. Google won't tell me why - <AUTHOR> So nearly two years ago, I signed up to google ads to promote my website.  I used their 'wizard' / onboarding process, and clicked next, next, put in some sample words and hit go.
Next thing, my account is suspended for 'circumventing systems'.
This confused me, as everything I'd done was through their own system.  I immediately contacted, and was told "we can't tell you why".  Again, I was confused - I wanted to fix whatever the issue was.  I asked them to recheck.  "We've reviewed your case and can confirm you violated the policies. We can't tell you how though.".
Annoyed, and obviously stuck, I gave up.
Every few months since then, I get emails asking me to use free google ads credit.  Excited (at first), I login to use it, only to see the reminder that my account is still suspended/cancelled depending on where you look.
I've twice tried to contact them again, and again get stonewalled with "you've definitely violated something which we can't tell you about.".
Is there anyway back from here? Anyone else been in this (clueless) situation and have a way to resolve it? <comment><USER2> You could sue them. During discovery you would probably be allowed to depose their engineers and subpoena their records. Aside from that you have no recourse.</comment>


Goodies star Brooke-Taylor dies with coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52262490 <comment><USER2> dies with != dies of

<comment><USER3> Are you implying (or implying they are implying) suicide?

<comment><USER2> No, what I'm implying is that If I jump off a 17 story building and it later turns out that I test positive for covid, the cause of my death sure isn't covid.</comment></comment></comment>


Market price for developers at startups? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm thinking about joining a former YC company, and it just so happens that this company is the first startup that I've seriously considered, so I don't have many data points for comparison. I could spend the next 3 months interviewing with other startups and collect data points, but I'm thinking there's got to be a smarter (and faster) way. Therefore, if anyone can offer any advice on what's the market price for a strong mid level developer at a VC funded ~10 employee startup nowadays, that would greatly help me out.

In fact, the only part I'm concerned about is the equity offer. Right now I'm being offered ~.5%. Is that even in the correct ballpark for a company of this size?

Sorry if I'm breaking any unspoken laws or courtesies by asking a question like this, but it's one of the few ways to get context for my offer within 48 hours...

Thanks!

Will Qian firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER2> Seems pretty reasonable. They're paying you market/above market salary?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the replies - Yea salary is reasonable for the area. If you've got any other advice on things to consider while choosing a startup, please let me know (either here on drop me a line at firstname.lastname@example.com). Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> that's reasonable equity, and the salary shouldn't be too much of an issue so long as it's market or near-market. i feel like anyone working for a pre- revenue but funded startup (i.e. one with a finite runway) shouldn't have a problem taking a below-market-rate salary if they're happy with the stock they're getting, because of course if the money runs out too soon a bit of extra money in the savings account isn't much reward for the months / years of startup hours..

</comment><comment><USER4> Check question #1: <http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/03/nine_questions_.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> That equity stake is appropriate.</comment>


Chinese Stealth Plane J-20 Revealed - <AUTHOR> http://www.asb.tv/blog/2011/01/the-mystery-behind-the-chinese-stealth-plane-j-20/

<comment><USER2> The characteristic stealth shapes and angles are clearly based on the F22. Their cyber-espionage appears to be paying off.

 _'The J-20 has a canard delta layout (like Chengdu's J-10) with two canted, all-moving vertical stabilizers (like the T-50) and smaller canted ventral fins. The stealth body shaping is similar to that of the F-22. The flat body sides are aligned with the canted tails, the wing-body junction is clean, and there is a sharp chine line around the forward fuselage. The cant angles are greater than they are on the Lockheed Martin F-35, and the frameless canopy is similar to that of the F-22.'_

[http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/jsp_includes/articlePrint.jsp...](http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/jsp_includes/articlePrint.jsp?storyID=news/awst/2011/01/03/AW_01_03_2011_p18-279564.xml&headLine=null)

<comment><USER3> Nothing about the fact that the J-20 looks like the F-22 implies cyber- espionage. If I were trying to build a stealth fighter, the first thing I'd do is look at pictures of it and make something that looks similar. (Since aviation week, or whoever, was able to tell what the angles of the J-20 are, I assume China would have no problem figuring out the shape of the F-22 from the numerous pictures available.) Even if you just knew the idea of shaping the plane to deflect radar signals, you'd probably end up with something similar. I expect that the really important stuff is in things not in the pictures: materials to use, paint to use, paints not to use, how to make non-radar- reflective joints/weapons/mounts, how to get good aerodynamics with all those sharp edges, etc.

<comment><USER4> I just finished reading Skunk Works, and actually the biggest contributor to stealth technology IS the angles and the shape. The materials definitely help (or hinder, if you get them wrong), but thing #1 is having the right shape.

Aerodynamics relies heavily on having a good computer-assisted flight system, since stealth shapes tend not to be aerodynamic.

<comment><USER2> Yup, great book, amazing stories. Ironically, the understanding for how shape an aircraft to redirect radar was inspired by a journal article by a Soviet aerospace engineer on how to design fighter nose cones for optimal nose radar transmission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the multiple images here but for some analysis I saw this a couple days ago...

[http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/jsp_includes/articlePrint.jsp...](http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/jsp_includes/articlePrint.jsp?storyID=news/awst/2011/01/03/AW_01_03_2011_p18-279564.xml&headLine=null)

2c, I think the fixation on 4th-Gen, 5th-Gen or whatever is distracting. How fast, how far, How much would be more interesting questions.

</comment><comment><USER6> One has to wonder that by the time manned stealth air-superiority fighters are deployed, whether they will be operationally inferior to, and greatly outnumbered by, adversary air-superiority fighter UAVs.

What a waste of resources on behalf of pilot-dominated air forces.

</comment><comment><USER7> also known as "No Ping"</comment>