China's social credit system 'could interfere in other nations' sovereignty' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/28/chinas-social-credit-system-could-interfere-in-other-nations-sovereignty <comment><USER2> That is pretty horrible that so many companies from outside can be pressured to behave outside of china, like changing how they describe Taiwan. But that's separate from social credit, and that's not new.

<comment> King-Aaron > That is pretty horrible that so many companies from outside can be pressured > to behave outside of china, like changing how they describe Taiwan.

Try this on for size then. Cliff notes: school kids have their designs on a fake cow painted over, as not to offend the Chinese beef industry...

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-09/childrens-cow- statue-d...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-09/childrens-cow-statue- design-altered-taiwan-flag-painted-over-qld/9739574)

<comment><USER3> Not the first time either, e.g. lecturers getting in trouble for calling Taiwan a country: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- australia-41104634](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-41104634)

This is not likely to change, universities make too much money off foreign students. Australia is maybe in a more precarious position simply because of their geographic location and the resulting trade partners. (That isn't to say Australia is the only place this pressure is felt though.)

<comment><USER4> I thought Taiwan believed themselves to be China. As the govt. in exile.

<comment><USER5> > I thought Taiwan believed themselves to be China. As the govt. in exile.

Some of them do, and I believe that's still the official position (so as to not anger the PRC), but they've been politically separate for so long that many Taiwanese believe they are a separate nation and have little desire for future political integration with the mainland [1]. IIRC, the current Taiwanese president is from a pro-independence [2].

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsai_Ing-wen#Cross- strait_rela...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsai_Ing-wen#Cross- strait_relations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > it may have positive benefits for Chinese citizens because government > officials can be blacklisted for corrupt behaviour

I understand the Guardian's reporter needs to report what people said, but for the love of god, could they please stop giving support to this absurd notion that "corruption" crackdowns in China have anything to do with corruption? They are almost always about power consolidation.

<comment><USER7> Couldn't agree more with you. I suspect that their reporters either have a very poor understanding of what a totalitarian state is, or they just couldn't be bothered to visit any place beyond Beijing and Shanghai (which represent < 5% of China) for field studies.

<comment><USER8> What's really strange are Westerners who unilaterally deem China totalitarian, a sentiment not shared by most Chinese themselves. You wonder if people will ever outgrow the need to invent a boogeyman to legitimize their own dire circumstances. Imagine, victims of one of the most profoundly inequal systems in the world railing against Communism/Socialism/China/that-other-system.

<comment><USER6> You're right, the sentiment is not shared by most Chinese people. Then again, most of them wouldn't recognize the Tank Man picture. They have no legitimate news journalism. Their version of the internet is profoundly sabotaged. Human rights lawyers are routinely kidnapped and their families placed under indefinite house arrest. When protests happen, they are violently crushed and subject to complete media blackout. If Chinese people were able to express themselves and hear others express themselves, with some semblance of a news media, I think they'd feel quite differently.

<comment><USER8> Your fantasy version of China bears little relation to reality. In fact there's vibrant discussion online and in person, frequent protests (which actually produce real change because local officials are very sensitive to protests [1]) and plentiful journalism that is far less corporate controlled and far more relevant to the common person. Feel free to hop on a plane and come visit. This "totalitarian state" can be freely visited by most anybody (stop by Hong Kong to pick up a visa).

[1] [http://time.com/5323079/china-army-veterans-protests-xi- jinp...](http://time.com/5323079/china-army-veterans-protests-xi-jinping/)

<comment><USER6> I lived in China for three years. I speak Mandarin. The article you linked is a report in western media. Can you find the same story in Chinese media?

<comment><USER8> Considering that everybody's talking about it online and GT (Global Times) just published an editorial I don't think it would be too difficult. (BTW, congrats on making it out alive. Millions of people weren't so fortunate and failed to escape from such totalitarian states.)

<comment><USER9> They're right though, and you must not be pushing any kind of sensitive boundary to think it's not an authoritarian state.

Which town are you from? In the countryside there are hilarious Big Brother style posters on houses promoting civil obedience. People don't think it's strange at all, of course they're not going to recognise the depths of their repression unless they're educated and well traveled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is the system

www.gsxt.gov.cn

Everyone can query for enterprise basic info, executives info, shareholders name, annual reports (if any), and also, as the article says, credit and violations.

You can type "微软" for Microsoft as an example. (there might be a bullshit CAPTICHA where you must drag the tile to the missing place)

btw I hate articles that rambles about "some guy say" instead of some plain, direct hyperlink to the goddamn website. The reader should have basic Internet skills and judgement level.

<comment><USER11> I can't make sense of the captcha. I get an image with 5 Hanzi embedded, and I'm supposed to click in 5 different places – but clicking on the characters doesn't work.

<comment><USER10> They had that? damn. I think you were supposed to click the characters in idiomatic order.

Try refresh the page. The one I've encountered were tile dragging ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am i parsing this wrong?

The first headline says: China's social credit system 'could interfere in other nations' sovereignty'

And the second headline says: [China's social credit system] is shaping behaviour of foreign businesses

So "to interfere in other nations sovereignty" is "to shape behaviour of foreign businesses"? So "other nation" is "foreign business"? So "business" is "nation"?

</comment><comment><USER13> Affecting how businesses choose to conduct themselves so that they may continue to access the Chinese market? Sure! Impacting the sovereignty of other countries? What a ridiculous statement..

Companies have always catered to the major markets. That's how California fuel standards have become the US benchmark, or why Texas school boards in effect control national teaching materials and school books in the US. Companies also have a history of being used as political tools, willingly or not. The only reason we're suddenly seeing outrage is because the one wielding these tools is China, not the US. That's not to say I support any of the shit China's pulling.. But Australia, Austria or whomever still retain their sovereignty and freedom to set whatever rules they want within their borders. Companies can comply if they wish to do business there.

<comment><USER14> One might argue that those are progressive benchmarks. A lunatics social credit system is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Critics of China's social credit system say it is an Orwellian tool of social monitoring and political repression; but the Chinese government says it is a way of boosting administrative efficiency and encouraging trust and moral behaviour by its citizens.

This is so sad. China is such bad shape on matters like trust and moral behavior that the government has to resort to these sorts of extreme measures.

The problem is this will likely just backfire over the long term. The more expression is suppressed, then the less real information about facts and people's views is available to the government, and so the government makes worse and worse decisions. Just watch this happen in the coming years and decades.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is also likely to impact web-services internationally in cases where you need a license to be viewed from China even if you are hosted internationally. This happens in the case of some content delivery networks and related software that are specifically targeted.Alternatively, they can throttle your access. Add social credit to that and you have a tool that makes GDPR look positively benign.

<comment><USER7> > This is also likely to impact web-services internationally in cases where > you need a license to be viewed from China even if you are hosted > internationally.

I'm afraid you are being optimistic. They do things way worse than that. The Great Firewall can block your website for no reason [1]. By 'block' I mean completely blocked, even if you use OpenVPN, GFW can detect its packet and still block it. Back in 2016 there was a time that even GitHub was blocked. And bandwidth throttling has been in place as early as 2014 for websites that are not completely blocked by GFW. Now the so-called "social credit system" is basically the Skynet or Matrix. If the US and other western democracies don't stand up to this kind of lunacy and bullying, then nothing would be able to stop China.

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

<comment><USER16> Yes, I know. there are ways around it though, even without VPN. What I was referring to was PRC pressuring foreign companies via the internet license mechanism, basically they have used targeted bandwidth throttling of foreign companies/technology that have not purchased PRC internet licenses. If you buy the license they don't throttle you. They have also been centralising internet routing regionally to speed things up. Basically, you have a two-speed internet. It's similar to what would likely happen if net neutrality were scrapped in the US. Social credit could lso be applied globally, even to nation states if they so chose. Couple it to the internet license and they have a powerful too that reaches far beyond their geographical territory.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Economics of domain hoarders - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the process of building a Twitter app. Taking a break from coding (hey ... it's new years day), I go over to godaddy and try to register a decent sounding domain name. As you can guess, a large fraction of domain names that include "twit" or "tweet" are taken. I expected this ... there are supposedly 300K twitter apps out there. Normally, I'd move from name-to-name quickly ... and just keep searching until I found a decent name. Today, however, I decided to check out what "lives" at these domain names. Again, no surprise ... crap, crap and more crap. So HN: what are the economics for people who hoard domain names with no intention of setting up meaningful websites? <comment><USER2> .co did something interesting by making domains $30... which is no different than $8 if you're buying a small number of them.

However, these is a huge issue if you're buying 100 or 500 or 1,000.

Moving domains to $25 a year would probably reduce the amount of hoarding, as it would narrow people's focus.

For Weblogs Inc. I bought 3,000 domains when we started, and for Mahalo I've bought 2,000 or so. It's a trivial cost to buy all the possible options you might need. If the economics were 2, 3, or 4x i would have narrowed the focus down considerably.

<comment><USER3> A friend had a client who purchased 1000 domains for his site. I've never even imagined buying this many - can you explain how you use them?

Do they all point to the same site? Is the reason simply to catch people who may mistype your real URL ie ycominator, ycombinator, ycombinates etc?

I find this fascinating, as even with these thoughts in mind I could only get up to about 10-20 domains for my current project! Thanks for any insight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Simple. Domains are so cheap that if you buy one for ~ $8 then you only need to make that money back in one year for it to be profitable. That's less than 70 cents per month for a .com. There are a number of parking services where making that much money isn't terribly difficult. So... the more you buy, the more money you could possibly make. Some might just make their money back, some might do very well. Overall, the domaineers are likely at least breaking even. Add in the fact that they have a bit of experience doing this, then for sure they are making money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. 70 cents a month is likely easy to recover.

Another thought I had was hoarders attempting to grab usable names in order to extort real companies to pony up. I believe this happened a lot in the late 90s. Wonder how common it is today?

<comment><USER5> This has become quite a fruitless endeavor. WIPO and other domain arbitrators will swiftly hand domains over to their rightful owners if there is a trademark or history of trading under a particular name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think you'll find two audiences. There are those who are looking to flip domain names and pick up a lot of them to resell, then there are those who buy domains more defensively to try to figure out the best domain name for their ideas. In the end, it's just incredibly cheap to get a domain name, so it's no barrier to entry.

If I have an idea for a site, the first thing I do is try to find a good domain for it. Depending on how serious I am about the site idea, I will pick up any serious contender for a name. That means for any particular idea, I might register 1-20 domains depending on various factors like how serious of an idea it is and how quickly I find "the" domain name. I'll even buy from set-price brokers up to 4 figures for a domain I think I will eventually use.

My portfolio is about 350 domains at the moment, which costs me ~$3150 a year to maintain. That is a footnote expense in almost any profitable small business.

</comment><comment><USER7> The other category to consider are those domainers who hold websites which are _not_ typically covered in ads; they might just have a notice on them saying "contact firm X for details." In many cases, I have even written such outfits saying, "is XYZ.com for sale?" and been told no, it isn't, or something like that. I have seen this for some domains which are more high-end, more generic useful words and less just pure spam.

This said, it's still a disgusting waste of internet real estate.

</comment><comment><USER8> It would be interesting if domains could be bought and owned (instead of being rented like today) by means of cryptographic certificates. This would allow anonymous ownership as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> just-another-twitter-app.com maybe.</comment>


A manually curated list of 240+ popular programming podcast episodes - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gIRjeB1Y_AMvtmJsZWl_dNMDJ7lPSIxiVUYyEvrP5P4/htmlview?usp=sharing&sle=true <comment><USER2> Interesting idea. Ulf Love to see titles and primary subject to make listed.

<comment><USER3> Adding the subjects will be really helpful.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What web technology stack would you use? - <AUTHOR> What web technology stack would you use that could scale the likes of Instagram Video, Snapchat or Vine? Be it front end or back end frameworks, languages, etc <comment><USER2> Polyglot microservices that are appropriate for each context on kubernetes.

<comment><AUTHOR> A little more detail please. I will be compiling and researching and discussing with the team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd probably use Erlang + Beam. WhatsApp uses it and supposedly has absurdly high uptime.

[https://www.fastcompany.com/3026758/inside-erlang-the- rare-p...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3026758/inside-erlang-the-rare- programming-language-behind-whatsapps-success)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10225096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10225096)</comment>


A Bitcoin Believer's Crisis of Faith - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/business/dealbook/the-bitcoin-believer-who-gave-up.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Since [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905118) is also on the front page and is the original source, we've demoted the current thread as a dupe. But both are worth reading.

(We plan to build something to aggregate related URLs, so this should become less of an issue at some point.)

</comment><comment><USER3> To give everyone some background on the block size debate, here is a recap:

"Small blockers" propose keeping the block size at 1 MB, essentially 5 real transactions per second. They argue that the bigger blocks are, the less people will be able to run a fully validating node, and the network will less decentralised. They want Bitcoin to be a base layer for bank and network settlement.

A 1mb limit means that there is a very low "production quota" for block space. As with every quota, prices will rise - ie Bitcoin network fees will go higher. Currently fees are about 4 cents per transaction. They're anticipating a three orders of magnitude increase.

But that's okay, or they say. Banks can pay $400 to move a million. A typical user can't. So they must use something else.

Most of the "small blockers" are employees of a VC-funded company named Blockstream.

They are building things that bypass the Bitcoin network, occasionally settle, and charge it's own set of fees. Oh yes you don't pay Bitcoin fees. You pay our fees. That's claimed to be a major selling point.

Also, bitcoin currently handles "zero confirmations" pretty well. That's because the miners will refuse to mine double spends if it knows about them. These big blockers have removed that functionality. Yes, lightning handles 0 confirms!

On the other side, there are "large blockers". These people believe the block size should be raised in accordance to natural evolution of hardware progression. 2MB today, 4MB in 2 years, dynamic adaptive limit, whatever.

They think there shouldn't be a artificially ceiling on Bitcoins transaction volume, and people should be able to use the Bitcoin network directly. Fees would be reasonable. Instead of 10 people paying $4, they want 100 people paying $0.40 or 1000 people paying $0.04. Pretty simple.

I think you might be wondering why there is a limit in the first place. Back in 2010 someone made huge blocks. So satoshi put in a crude, static anti DoS limit. Back then the average transaction volume was 10 kB, so the limit was set to 100x the average transaction load.

<comment><USER4> As ingenious as this all is, it seems even more preposterous. I think I'll go spend some money now without thinking about for even a nan-second.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought this article was interesting because it highlights the problem when there is a lack of strong governance in an open source project.

After talking to a bunch of financial firms about bitcoin I've got the sense that the strong consensus is that they don't believe the core bitcoin team "has their act together" in terms of a coherent road map, or possibly more charitably, that the core team isn't at all interested in having the transaction limit increased.

This means that that if bitcoin, or other related technologies like the block chain are going to be adopted by companies to run real businesses on then either the companies themselves will own the technology roadmap or some other entity with a fair bit of credibility will have to step in.

<comment><USER5> It's fascinating to me that someone paid the Russian hacker to develop such a comprehensive and powerful solution to kill XT. That couldn't have been cheap. But it also wouldn't make sense for a large GPU/ASIC miner to block the move to XT, as it would have favored their hardware over those mining on regular CPUs.

So it must have been an ideologically-driven attack? But it defeats the main ideological purpose of the protocol - democratic consensus as nodes decide to accept or reject changes to the client. Weird and paradoxical.

<comment><USER6> ASICs are basically it these days, GPUs and CPUs are only used by hobbyists at this point. The reduced energy requirements of ASICs over GPUs has made it basically a requirement to use ASICs, as energy costs can't be amortized over the lifetime of the miner (while the fixed cost to buy the miner can).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Unlike the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, institutions that are managed by > humans, Bitcoin was supposed to rest on the infallible logic of math and > computer code. In this system, programmers like Mr. Hearn, who often > volunteered their expertise and effort, were viewed as neutral technicians.

This is the key. If the neutrality and technical/economic/ethical character of the lead developers is called into question, Bitcoin (just a flavored brand of blockchain) is done. An untrustworthy/biased dev team could adjust the cap, difficulty, etc. for their own gain or that of their sponsors. While this would probably cause the majority of nodes to fork the chain and reject a bad update, it would leave the protocol without strong leadership and call the brand into question.

Will be interested to see how this plays out with the dev environment around bitcoin becoming so toxic and ideologically split.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Bitcoin "core developers" don't matter. It's the big miners who matter. Both of them. What Antpool[1] and F2pool[2] decide is what Bitcoin does. They have 52% of mining capacity. Jihan Wu, CEO of Antpool, and Wang Chun, chief administrator of F2pool, rule Bitcoin. They're the ones in charge. Not the "core developers". And certainly not the Bitcoin Foundation clown car.

[1] [https://www.antpool.com](https://www.antpool.com) [2] [https://www.f2pool.com](https://www.f2pool.com)

<comment><USER5> It is often asserted (for example, in the Bitcoin white paper [22]) that a cartel can double-spend Bitcoins. In a strict sense, this is true: a cartel can spend a Bitcoin by paying it to a player Alice, receiving goods or services, and then shifting the consensus choice of history to a branch where that coin is instead paid to a different player Bob. However, we argue that double-spending by a cartel has a limited payoff. Bitcoins have value because people are willing to trade them for goods and services. If players were unwilling to accept Bitcoins for trade or unwilling to spend Bitcoins for fear of having their payments nullified, the value of Bitcoins would diminish significantly as players lost confidence in the system. Worse, because players are encouraged to generate a new identity for each transaction and because identities are not linked to any side information, players cannot easily determine whether a proffered payment is coming from the double-spending cartel or an honest user. Thus, a rational player should refuse to accept any payments when there is a significant threat of double-spending. As a cartel must outmine the entire Bitcoin network and thus outspend the entire Bitcoin network for as long as it would remain a cartel, we believe it is very unlikely that a cartel could double-spend enough to recover the cost of the attack.

An interesting facet of mining cartels is that they can censor certain transactions. The cartel can choose to ignore any transaction it does not want appended to the log. Further, the cartel can choose to treat any blocks appended by others to the log as forks which it will not attempt to extend. Thus, other players will naturally also abandon these transactions, possibly even consciously if the cartel announces that certain transactions (or transactors) are disfavored.

[https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~kroll/papers/weis13_bitcoin.pd...](https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~kroll/papers/weis13_bitcoin.pdf)

<comment><USER8> It's still not obvious whether or not bitcoin is economically secure.

With ETFs and other instruments, a mining cartel can potentially spend less money performing a 51% attack than they can make from a massive short sale of the currency.

<comment><USER7> Double-spending is detectable by anyone with a full Bitcoin node. It's not in the interest of the big players to double-spend; it would destroy their credibility and devalue their assets. My point is that in the arguments over block size, only what the big mining pools decide to do matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the actual medium post, where Mike expresses his frustrations and what this article is referencing.

It explains things rather well.

[https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the- bitcoin...](https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin- experiment-dabb30201f7)

</comment><comment><USER10> Here is what will happen (my guess): as Bitcoin usage continues to grow, the limited capacity will start to hurt over the coming months, with the planned "segregated witness" proposal not helping much. Also, the block reward will be cut in half this summer to 12.5 Bitcoins per block, driving many miners out of business and reminding the rest that they could earn more with larger blocks. Furthermore, some of the affected companies (e.g. Coinbase) will announce rewards for larger blocks mined (e.g. 1 Bitcoin reward for each block above 1MB for the next 1000 blocks), making the first miners jump to the new protocol (the much feared hard fork), with the others following soon after the most popular exchanges announce that they will not accept "old branch" coins.

</comment><comment><USER11> A bit off topic, but did he literally let a reporter into his house and take a photo of him in his bed - or is that just a stock photo? Either way a bit creepy...

<comment><USER10> I think this is a couch.

<comment><USER12> Looks like a big pouffe to me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Disagreement over an important technical decision gets politicized and spirals out of control. An anonymous DDoS and death threats against developers fan the flames, and key figures bow out.

Who did that?

There is a significant contingent of people promoting Bitcoin as a force that will eventually undermine the power of governments. This can hardly have escaped their notice. Perhaps one of them saw a conflict brewing, and decided to opportunistically fan the flames?

<comment><USER14> There's really no need to add unfounded conspiracy theories like yours to the public discussion.

<comment><USER13> It's a known fact of psychology that people fight less if they believe they have a shared enemy. In this case, there is what looks like enemy action (anonymous DDoSing and death threats) directed at both sides of the block-size conflict, appearing to come from across the aisle but definitely anonymous. Why not speculate on possible third parties that could be responsible? Maybe it'll make them notice they both just want Bitcoin to succeed.

<comment><USER15> It's also a known fact that it doesn't take insidious government involvement to get a bunch of programmer-ideologues to get political and spiral out of control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Worth reminding people:

On August 15th, 2015, Mike Hearn announced Bitcoin XT, and his attempt to fork the blockchain: [https://medium.com/faith-and-future/why-is-bitcoin- forking-d...](https://medium.com/faith-and-future/why-is-bitcoin- forking-d647312d22c1#.cdoemw4gh)

On January 14th, 2016, 5 months later, Mike has unilaterally declared Bitcoin to be a failed experiment.

In the intervening period, support for XT was at best minimal, and that's being charitable.

There is a phrase we use in my neck of the woods when developers behave like this, and "responsible grown up behavior" isn't it.

<comment><USER17> There's some serious accusations of sabotage in that article. It hardly seems like a hissy-fit in that context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If bitcoin is such a disaster, why is the price holding firm or even increasing?

</comment><comment><USER18> tl;dr: "Money" is political. If you don't think it is, well, that's a political statement about "money."

</comment><comment><USER19> There are three types of people who are into Bitcoin:

1\. People who are in it out of sheer curiosity.

2\. People who are in it to get rich quick.

3\. People who have been scammed into it.

The people who are in it out of curiosity are the people I don't take issue with. At its beginnings, I found Bitcoin to be a curious thing because it was a novel and new idea. However, as things progressed and I learnt more about how it all worked, I saw it as a cumbersome idea that wouldn't effectively replace anything and as a result now I'd rather make jokes about it than take anything about it seriously. I've never spent more than $20 CAD on Bitcoin and I have gotten it all back for that matter too.

People who get scammed into Bitcoin typically get scammed either one of two ways: they're either being coerced into using it because they've gotten something like malware on their machines (CryptoWall and its variants) or they see it as an investment alternative. The only times I've ever seen non- technical people experience Bitcoin is when I have to tell them that the malware on their computers will only release their unbacked-up data requires a payment using the cryptocurrency to get it all back. And that is really what a non-technical person's experience with Bitcoin is going to be: it's a way to pay thieves.

As for the get rich quick people, they tend to fall into the third category or they themselves are scammers.

Right now there are two forces dominating the Bitcoin community: the miners and those who are holding out on whatever magical unicorn rainbows makes the coins have value. The miners don't want to see changes to the software because it'll hurt their bottom line and the people holding and exchanging it want to see these changes so they can benefit. So as a result, Bitcoin has entered a war of attrition and is starting to show its problems. Mike Hearn's leaving is definitely a consequence of this problem.

Earlier yesterday [1], I made a quip about how it's insulting to suggest that we get those who are "unbanked" as a result of living at no-fixed-address (ie: "homeless") should eventually move on to Bitcoin as an alternative to mainstream financial institutions. It's really for the reasons that Hearn made: would you want to wait a random period of time ranging from maybe a few minutes to a few hours for your transaction to go through? It's already insulting enough that they're living at the bottom of society, so why would we want to get them to use a bottom-tier financial system? Why not instead suggest making it easier for them to participate within mainstream banking schemes?

I anticipate based on my last remarks that the responses to this post will consist of feckless anecdotes and pointless accusations that I and others have a "problem" with Bitcoin. I guess to a certain extent the statement of me having a problem is true, but at the end of the day Hearn is right.

Bitcoin is a failure and if you invested into it then you're getting what you deserve.

[1] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10898408](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10898408)

<comment><USER20> > Bitcoin is a failure and if you invested into it then you're getting what > you deserve.

How do you quantify a failure?

<comment><USER19> > How do you quantify a failure?

I think that Hearn's article can answer that for you.

<comment><USER20> The Bitcoin Blockchain is still processing transactions right?

What part of the technology has failed?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Open-Source Parse (Startup School 2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.divide.io/

<comment><USER2> I am sure there is lots of interest in such a project but the project website doesn't talk (at all) about the capabilities of the system. Hence such a dull response from the community.

At best it provides sketchy details about how to deploy it but things end there. You are going to have touch time selling it to intended audience this way.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I could be wrong but as far as I could tell it looks like it offers a way to do basic CRUD over a RESTful service hosted in the Java application but nothing more.

Perhaps this is just the MVP and it will be significantly expanded at some point.</comment></comment>


JQuery Enlightenment ($5 off today) - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/codylindley/status/6765396579 <comment><AUTHOR> For the record, I just want to support this developer by encouraging people to buy his awesome book. $10 seems way too cheap for what it is.

</comment><comment><USER2> No longer available, I just tried but couldn't get the discount!

<comment><AUTHOR> Bummer, you might want to contact him directly.</comment></comment>


How to live stream Apple's iPhone 6S event on Android and Windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2981623/ios/how-to-live-stream-apples-iphone-6s-event-on-android-and-windows.html?nsdr=true

<comment><AUTHOR> Apple is making its live stream available on Windows for the first time, but only for Windows 10. Here's how to watch it on Android and other versions of Windows.</comment>


Twitter reportedly in talks with Google, Salesforce for potential sale - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13028616/twitter-sale-talks-google-salesforce <comment><USER2> Google would be a good match, but dangerous to us. Salesforce would be less of a match, but not so dangerous to us. Salesforce did try to create their own similar application that never really took off.</comment>


Why does no one ever tell you how brilliant ageing can be? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/20/why-does-no-one-ever-tell-you-how-brilliant-ageing-can-be <comment><USER2> So the main thrust of this op-ed is that when you get old, you're allowed to settle comfortably into your routines.

Those people you've been avoiding? Keep on avoiding them. Kids playing shitty new music that sounds more like a cat being dragged across a cheese grater than the dulcet tones of a young lover? Don't listen to it. Friends going up to Scotland for the weekend to view, and maybe participate in, some improv? Fuck em; stay home and watch _The Great British Baking Show_ again.

Which is all fine, but there's nothing intrinsic about aging that allows you to do those things, or about being young that makes those things impossible.

There are good things about getting older. I'm with the person I love, and I don't have to figure out how to hack Tinder in a desperate attempt to get laid. I'm making more money now than I ever have. I know, more or less, who I am and what I want to do.

But I'm also closer to losing all of those things, every day. _That 's_ what aging is, and that's why we react so viscerally against it.

I used to be an athlete. Now, I have arthritis in my knees and shoulders, and my physical prowess is on a slow but inevitable decline. I make plenty of money, but that comes with significantly more responsibility, and the constant worry that I'm getting too old to be taken seriously as an engineer. I know who I am and what I want to do, but I worry that, despite all of the good choices I've made, I'll never be able to actually retire and do those things.

 _That 's_ aging. I've been telling people I don't want to go to some shitty rock concert for decades. I didn't need to turn forty to feel that it was allowed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ageism is great, it's the only thing that is guaranteed to come back to haunt people that make fun of you for being old.

</comment><comment><USER4> In fairness, while getting old is not ideal, it usually beats the alternative</comment>


Microsoft Announces Partnership With WordPress.com - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2010/09/27/microsoft-announces-partnership-with-wordpress-com/ <comment><USER2> That article is so terribly written I couldn't get to the end. Here is the story from the source:

[http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archiv...](http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/09/27/wordpress- com-and-windows-live-partnering-together-and-providing-an-upgrade- for-30-million-windows-live-spaces-customers.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER3> Matt has actually been steering Wordpress in a very vendor neutral way. As much as Wordpress is free opensource software that usually runs on unixes, it has always been windows friendly - and runs on the azure platform as a launch partner.

It's not hard to see why Microsoft would want to continue their partnership.

</comment><comment><USER4> Official post from WordPress.com: [http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/welcome-windows- live...](http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/welcome-windows-live-spaces- bloggers/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm impressed by Matt Mullenweg. I think the folks over at Posterous could learn a few things from him.

<comment><USER6> A quick Google tells me that he's the founding developer of WordPress, but that's all I know of him. Could you elaborate on your statement?

<comment><USER7> He is the CEO of both wordpress.org (maintainers of the open source distribution of wordpress) and automattic (wordpress.com). He is the main visionary and final say on all features that are released.

Back in 2003 he forked an old blog tool called b2, then grew it until it became one of the most versatile and healthy CMSs out there.

One of the things that has impressed me most about how he has run things is that he is able to balance the creation of a hosted blogging platform (wordpress.com) while respecting the needs and desires of those who wish to own their own data and operate their own systems (think about facebook vs diaspora here).

I recently had a chance to meet him at the portland wordcamp. He was able to answer both highly detailed questions (why is x implemented this way and how will it be improved?) to big picture questions like how wordpress will continue to develop to compete with the likes of tumblr as well as providing the functionality of wordpress.com to everybody.

Overall he is one of those rare CEOs who is very much enlightened about all aspects of the organization.

<comment><USER2> Sorry to bust-up the love-in but Matt isn't the CEO of Wordpress.com, but Toni Schneider is.

Also the open source project doesn't have a CEO. Matt is lead-dev at both.

Points still apply though, and Matt should get a ton of credit

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I ran WP on a Windows host, the biggest frustration I had was that so many WP hacks required .htaccess. I don't know for sure if there's a market out there for a Windows .htaccess emulator, but I'd bet there's a lot of Windows shared hosting users that would love to see their hosts provide one.

<comment><USER9> AFAIK, .htaccess files are strictly for Apache web servers - if you're even using lighttpd or nginx, you're pretty much boned.

<comment><USER8> That's why I said emulator. I should have searched before posting, but apparently there is already at least one product on the market that does this (Helicon Ape).

<comment><USER10> Are you looking strictly for mod_rewrite syntax support in IIS?

<http://www.isapirewrite.com/>

More here: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60857/mod-rewrite- equival...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60857/mod-rewrite-equivalent- for-iis-7-0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Finally Microsoft decided to stop investing in a bad tool and made a great partnership. Too bad it took many years for it to happen. Hopefully they will make the integration with Live profiles simple, much like what Google/Blogger did. I would love to see Live Gallery features/plugins available for Wordpress.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was browsing Wordpress.com (their home page) the other day and noticed that the Windows Internet Explorer Blog was using Wordpress.com. That surprised me a little. I figured they'd used Windows Live Spaces or some Microsoft-created blogging system. Maybe they do both?

</comment><comment><USER13> A good choice for MS as long as they don't try to influence an "improvement" of WP to .NET.

<comment><USER14> Microsoft has been very supportive of the PHP community, and has worked to ensure PHP runs well on Windows. While they have .NET, they do a lot to make PHP apart of their architecture. This is, of course, a smart business move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anybody think this will affect Jason Cohen's startup announcement this morning that will sell WordPress hosting?

<comment><USER16> I don't think it will. Jasons's new project isn't just run-of-the-mill WP hosting. It's a cultivated WP environment with a different target than the Windows Live platform, in my opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Somewhat off-topic, but I've switched to Tumblr ... it does posts to Twitter / Facebook automatically, and sometimes you just want to post a small snippet or a picture.

After using it, Wordpress / Blogger seem kind of outdated.

<comment><USER18> I love Tumblr and I love Wordpress. Tumblr has a lot of great features, but WP is a very powerful engine. Far from perfect, but it is improving steadily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Now if only Microsoft would move all their blogs to WordPress it would be a complete win. I'm not sure if they use the same platform everywhere but some of their blogs look and function badly.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why do I feel like my WP blog is suddenly contaminated?

</comment><comment><USER21> Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?

<comment><USER22> I was thinking they'd more than double the security holes.

But seriously, it's nice to see MS on a steadily better track record with open source, and WordPress isn't a bad project. Hopefully it continues that way.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is "a decentralized alternative to X" the new "Uber for X"? - <AUTHOR> I keep seeing more and more products being launched  in Show HN or Product Hunt that present themselves as a "decentralized alternative to X" (GitHub, Youtube, Facebook, Soundcloud). Is this just a hype train that people board or is it the future of web? <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, it is a hype right now.

It really shouldn't be, but for that, everyone needs to understand, the federated (eg. "decentralised") is infrastructure, not a product. Infrastructure is rarely capable of making vast sums of money, it's more about serving needs for longer periods - think of post, or ISPs. Yes, it's profitable, but it's not unicorn, and exit strategies are also incompatible with decentralisation.

It can, could, and, should be the future, but it needs a change in mindsets before we can get there.

<comment><USER3> Not all decentralization measures require federation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _Is this just a hype train that people board or is it the future of web?_

It's even less than "uber for X". It's an "uber for X" kind thing with no commercial options and nobody but us geeks caring for what it sells ("decentralization").

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, there is definitely a hype train, but that's not mutually exclusive from being productive. The dotcom boom produced many failed companies... alongside Amazon and Google, which changed society in many ways.

<comment><USER6> Most decentralised projects are inherently unmonetisable, meaning these aren't new companies but mostly open source community projects.

I think it's a pushback against the hyper-centralisation of the web over the past few years. This is people wanting to provide open, trustworthy alternatives to the walled garden approach. I personally am pretty excited about the opportunities of decentralisation and the distributed web.

<comment><USER2> > Most decentralised projects are inherently unmonetisable

Good. For example, the value of email, is not email itself - it's the communication it can provide. Maybe some things never meant to directly make money, but to add value in other ways. Imagine of Facebook was actually to connect people and to make communication and sharing simpler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, but I hope that more decentralized application for X will have a network effect that can talk one to another in the future, if they were built with that kind of mindset at the first place.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to see a decentralized alternative to "rating stuff".

(where the rating applies to everything from products, services and websites to comments)

<comment><AUTHOR> So you mean a decentralised alternative to Yelp? ;) I actually agree, would love to see that too.

<comment><USER9> Ratings are worthless without trust. Actually PeerMountain is building a decentralized trust protocol that supports this. They call ratings "attestations". It's worth a read.

<comment><USER8> Interesting.

Do they have the concept of "transitive trust"? (Is there a better term for that?)

Let's say I want to buy some new camera. I'd like to express something like:

\- People on HN, I trust for 80% (say, because of the technical nature of the product)

\- Friends on facebook I trust for 40%

\- Friends of friends on facebook, I trust for 10%

Then using this spec, I'd like the system to come up with a sorted list of cameras, with ratings. Would this be possible without privacy issues?

By the way, if a rating system turns out to be robust, we could potentially use it for rating politicians :)

<comment><USER9> Yes. Transitive trust is a core concept for Peer Mountain. And they call it exactly that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not until we see more companies raise millions/billions in venture capital to fund it. It's certainly a trend right now, but it doesn't seem to be as much of a 'mention it and get free money to try starting a unicorn' one as say Uber esque services or cryptocurrency ones are at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER11> How can a business effectively make money, and scale, running on decentralized infrastructure (blockchain) though? How is it not more cost effective/business-wise to run in a centralized cloud environment? Seriously what are the business & profit models for these companies? (beyond crypto and ICOs).

<comment><USER12> "Hard for companies to make money" is seen as a benefit for some

<comment><USER11> There was another reply that is now gone that stated something similar where the founders would effectively limit their profit gains and declare some statement that their work was done for the people rather than profit...

I'm not trying to bring about a formal argument here and I may be way off, But IMO these type of quotes are borderline reflective of Marxism or wording that belong in Mein Kampf.

<comment><USER12> I'm sorry, what? _Mein Kampf_?? Seriously? The idea of non-profit driven organisations is very old and very well established. From charities, to co- operatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Decentalization is the future. Unfortunately 99% of the projects out today are money grubbing. Think about this: if the team needs to hire tech to run an ICO, how would they ever build a blockchain solution? De facto, they don't have the skills! (only outsourcing marketing makes sense)

</comment><comment><USER13> You know what this reminds me of?

Back in the day the hype was "open" and openness. That's the wave that companies like Twitter and Facebook rode to grow.

At the time there was no time to talk about any of the hip hot topics you hear about today like "russian trolls", "political ads", "regulation", "twitter's harassment problem" and so on.

The cult belief was open and free and connected and inclusive will magically create a beautiful utopia.

Openness was thrown around as the obvious solution to anything.

This "decentralised hype" looks very much the same.

It's thrown around mindlessly as the obvious and magical solution to problems.

When in reality it leaves many things unsolved and almost always turns into "theoretically decentralised but there are like 10 people who actually control it".

A part of it is people looking for an excuse and a cover to gain power.

A part of it is nerds wanting to solve everything with the single hammer of tech that they have.

Bitcoin is a good recent example of how quickly the utopic ideals and promises give their place to a good old blood bath.

In the same way that "open everything" hype created problems that now people are complaining about.

I think a decade of "decentralise everything" hype will eventually backfire in the same way.

And once people see and feel the consequences they will get annoyed and will be asking for the opposite of it.

"We said openness and freedom of speech ... but not these horrible people ... take these people away"

"I said freedom of speech .. everyone can publish stuff yay ... but NO FAKE NEWS! fact check it all and make sure it's all true"

"I said decentralised but I don't want these inconvenient consequences of a decentralised system"

Same thing that happened with the open/free/freedom/connected wave.

Also see this Dilbert: [https://i.imgur.com/FlC0K2l.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/FlC0K2l.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER14> Federation isn't a feature, but the promise (although not explicitly guaranteed) of data portability and service inter-op is definitely a feature. For me at least. I'm not too fussed about a federated Facebook, but I'd be very interested in a data platform that allows me to use Facebook if it's the best social network tool and then instantly switch to twitter or some other system if I want, taking my data (graph & content) with me easily

<comment><USER14> Interesting also, data portability also comes with individual responsibility, however I don't believe most people would want that responsilibilty. Most SMEs outsource IT for this reason.

I don't think that's a sustainable model at the individual level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The underlying technology is important, IPFS, WebTorrent, WebRTC, blockchain, but how they are going to disrupt an entrenched competitor is another question.

</comment><comment><USER16> Very much so. No doubt this is a form of "growth-hacking" where you copy existing names, words, and ideas.

This leads to:

* A curated list of ..

* ... made with love

* Deep learning ..

* .. on the blockchain

* .. uber for X

Sometimes these things do lead go genuinely interesting projects & products, but often-times the hype is so hard to swallow that people move on to the next big thing.

<comment><USER17> A curated deep-learning list of uber for X on the blockchain made with love :D

<comment><USER18> Wherr can I buy?

<comment><USER17> ICO coming to your nearest beach bar any moment now.

<comment><USER17> entering pre-sale. all sold. let's hodl. to the moon.

and...

it's gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It depends. If it mentions just plain P2P stuff, it might be. If it mentions blockchain or involves some kind of ICO then is probably more like "Ponzi Scheme for X".

</comment><comment><USER20> This is the future of the web. Platforms and networks that offer better incentives for participation will replace those of the old (current dominant) model. Rather than users-as-the-product, users will be in the driving seat - with agency to accept or reject changes that are offered as well as be rewarded for their contributions. But it will go much further than this as even the basic corporate structure (passive investors only interested in monetary gain and managers beholden to them) may be challenged by new organisational architectures where all kinds of incentives and agendas can be baked right into the protocol.

</comment><comment><USER21> Yes, for the same reason.

The reason why they call themselves "decentralized for X" or "uber for X" is because that's what makes most money. It was "uber for X" a couple of years ago. But in 2018 it's "decentralized for X", because of the ICO hype where all the coins rails hundreds of millions of dollars.

But on a positive note, exactly because it has so much potential I think we can't dismiss it as just a fad. After all, Uber and the similar approaches DID change the world.

It's kinda funny because if you said "decentralized for X" a couple of years ago, people would just say "yeah good luck with that, nerd", and the only place you would hear about these things would be HN.

The only change since then is Bitcoin. But even on its own Bitcoin is such a disruptive piece of technology that so many people are just betting on it. And I do think some will succeed. But from what I see, most people working on these have no idea why Bitcoin works therefore will fail.

I see two groups:

1\. Super tech nerds who think they understand how Bitcoin succeeded so far, but actually totally miss the rest of what made Bitcoin successful. But at least these people have ability to build something meaningful. Most of the famous projects that sound like they're doing really well belong to this category. I won't name names, but I'm not even talking about obscure projects. The leaders from most of the top tier highest profile projects don't seem to understand how to make their project a success, they're either too focused on tech (thinking somehow if they keep working on it, it will succeed in a "decade") or too focused on shady stuff. They will all fail either because someone better will come along and fork their protocols and do it leaner and better, with all the lessons learned, or because they all get burned out before the "decade". A decade is a really long period.

2\. Shallow people: most entrepreneurs I see have no knowledge about how these blockchains work and just assume that they will work and raise millions of dollars. Actually a lot of my friends are like this, but I can't just outright tell them to quit because they're friends. But I'll use this opportunity to say, if you don't understand what you're building on, from economic aspect, technological aspect, and social aspect, you'll probably fail 99.9%.

I think the success won't come directly from these first generation protocols with this naive mindset. I think the only way to actually succeed in this wild wild west is to educate yourself on a deeper level. Then you'll quickly see that a lot of these high profile projects are bunch of bullshit. And maybe along the way, you can come up with your own solution that can truly become the "Uber of decentralization"</comment>


How to Measure PR Coverage - <AUTHOR> http://seatgeek.com/blog/seatgeek-news/how-seatgeek-measures-pr-coverage

<comment><USER2> Big thanks to Geckoboard for creating a kick-ass interface that makes our metric tracking a lot easier on the eyes.</comment>


Acquia introduces (+open-sources) Bolt, dev tool to generate Drupal 8 projects - <AUTHOR> http://devacquia.network.acquia-sites.com/blog/introducing-bolt-a-development-tool-for-generating-new-drupal-8-projects/25/05/2016/10486 <comment><USER2> This looks good. Can it go beyond Drupal projects?</comment>


Show HN: Convert your Google Slides to high-quality animated GIFs and tweet - <AUTHOR> https://talltweets.com <comment><USER2> Cool idea! I think it's very useful for people who want to share slides but don't want to share the entire pptx file.

I wanted to make a GIF of another user's Google Slide, but with the webapp it looks like I only have access to my own slides, and only google slides. I whipped up a quick API to generate a GIF of any Google Slide URL or of any PPTX file available on the web: [http://188.8.131.52/](http://22.214.171.124/)

You can use the API like this: [http://22.214.171.124/?url=xyz&delay=100](http://22.214.171.124/?url=xyz&delay=100) which would make a GIF of the URL pptx file. For example, it could be [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13838392jfdjkfsd/edit...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13838392jfdjkfsd/edit?usp=sharing) or [https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/torman_personal/files/samp...](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/torman_personal/files/samplepptx.pptx) or any ppt or pptx url of your choosing. It works with any public google slides too.

As a sample, you can try [http://220.127.116.11/?url=https://scholar.harvard.edu/files...](http://126.96.36.199/?url=https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/torman_personal/files/samplepptx.pptx&delay=100)

<comment><USER2> Here's the source code (PowerPoint compatibility will be added soon, but Google Slides works): [https://github.com/Decagon/muto](https://github.com/Decagon/muto)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why no example on the page? Gotta seek through a 5 min video to find an example of it in action?

<comment><AUTHOR> The animated GIF in this tweet was generated with TallTweets [https://twitter.com/labnol/status/945643019490824193](https://twitter.com/labnol/status/945643019490824193)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice idea.

but i people would not want to give you permission to see their google drive files - may be add another option like, have people make their slide public and use that url to create GIF.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, that's how the Google File picker works. It needs permission to read files from Google Drive even if you are looking for a specific Mime Type (Google Slides in this case)

<comment><USER5> Why not make it an add on, then?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is likely the next step. Addon take more time for approval.

<comment><USER5> Good luck, keep up the good work!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here are some additional resources to get you started with TallTweets.

Sample tweet with the GIF embedded: [https://twitter.com/labnol/status/945643019490824193](https://twitter.com/labnol/status/945643019490824193)

Blog post explaining the app: [https://www.labnol.org/internet/google-slides- gif/30763/](https://www.labnol.org/internet/google-slides-gif/30763/)

Video tutorial: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POdIuzaFVH8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POdIuzaFVH8)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great! I really appreciate it!

I can see this being REALLY useful for people giving presentations, to help viewers share favourite content without being distracted with snapping photos. If you agree, it might make sense to have a special link to the screen for processed slides -- then the presenter could share a bitlink to that page, and users could easily tweet out slides with their own comments :)

Example: [https://talltweets.com?url=https://docs.google.com/xxxxxxxxx...](https://talltweets.com?url=https://docs.google.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)

Also, is there a github issue queue where we could file tickets and feature requests? If it were available, I would be happy to transpose the tickets in these HN comments into action items for continued conversation

</comment><comment><USER7> This is really, really nice from what I could tell from the video. I could see this being very useful!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So we're converting a bunch of frames to lossy gifs, then when uploading to Twitter it's being converted to an interlaced video

I really don't think this was thought out very well

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool idea, I can see how it is useful. Doesn't have to be only for Twitter, if you get gif file, you can use of wherever (e.g. Product Hunt).

</comment><comment><USER10> I honestly cant't understand why people insist so much on having complicated arguments over twitter, an explicitly limiting (in terms of message length) platform. Beside this, threading is awful.

Now with slides too?

<comment><USER11> I presume that might be because Twitter has established itself as the place where everyone is, not necessarily because Twitter is a particularly good platform to argue over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why GIF ? Why not webm ? I understand that GIF is popular and works on all platforms, but it's such a waste of resources, has bad image quality and so on.

<comment><USER5> Webm is not supported out of the box for ios. Neither is WEBP (sure about webp, not sure about webm).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In case you don't want to watch the video, there's a free automated transcript

[https://scribie.com/transcript/7aaafeae86da402d8f7b4bfc68ea8...](https://scribie.com/transcript/7aaafeae86da402d8f7b4bfc68ea8aabad716d63)

<comment><USER14> >helps you convert your google slides into animated jeff</comment></comment>


Tesla Model Y will be unveiled March 14th - rising-sky https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/3/18249076/tesla-model-y-suv-unveiled-march-14th <comment><AUTHOR> Teslas are finally getting close to good enough for the average consumer. The $35k price rag is still the biggest hurdle. Once they hit the $25k mark _and_ can produce a decent volume of them, it will finally hit the point of no return. Why buy a Camry when you can have a cheaper to operate and maintain electric car that is also much safer? And once a used Tesla is an option, other manufacturers pretty much will have to offer similar products. I think we will hit that inflection in about 10 years.

<comment><USER2> I don't know why Tesla fans ignore that Chevy and Nissan are already big in the pure EV market at mass market prices, and almost every manufacturer had a plug-in hybrid offering for in-town electric-only and gas for long trips.

<comment><USER3> It's because GM can't produce Bolts without a significant loss (for now) and Leafs aren't taken very seriously by most people because of their shorter range, fast battery/value degradation and frankly, funky appearance.

Any many of us are energized (no pun intended) by moving completely away from gas. So while plug-in hybrids are better than ICE cars, we don't get excited about them the same way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only one who sees the release date and think "Cute, they released it on Pi Day :)"

<comment><USER5> 14.3?

<comment><USER6> It's america: 3/14

<comment><USER7> In the rest of the world, Pi day is the 3rd of February next year. Overflow error.

<comment><USER8> I would think it would be July 22 (22/7)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious about the options that they'll offer initially. With the Model 3, Tesla only sold the long-range, premium version at first, which IIRC is more profitable than the basic $35k version. Maybe they'll repeat this with the Y and sell just a more expensive model first as well.

<comment><USER10> The S and X both released premium versions at first, so if Y did the same thing, it would be the 4th in a row.

For Roadster I don't remember, so maybe the 5th in a row.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ongoing reddit thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/awzd94/model_y...](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/awzd94/model_y_unveil_event_on_march_14_at_la_design/)

</comment><comment><USER12> S 3 X Y

This was intentional and I'm just now catching on, right?

<comment><USER13> The only reason the Model 3 is named that is Ford owns "Model E" and said that Tesla couldn't use it.

And yes, this has been Musk's plan since the Roadster.

<comment><USER12> Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why did this get marked as dupe even though it is the only one I have seen on the front page? And the only one I can find at all through search.

</comment><comment><USER15> Tesla will produce in China? Interesting they're finally going that route.

<comment> dan-robertson Cars tend to be affected a lot by tariffs. A good way to make more money selling cars Is to sell more cars (at a similar margin) and a good way to do that is to make the cars cheaper (at a similar margin) and a good way to do that is by cutting out tariffs (and possibly reducing transportation costs too).

Making cars (and batteries) in China is a statement that Tesla think their cars will be more popular in China if they can reduce the price and that will justify the cost of making the factory there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's ~200 miles each way from SF to Tahoe. I imagine that's a pretty important number for people considering an electric SUV.

Model 3 advertises a 325mi range, and Musk says the Y will get about 10% less than the 3.

<comment><USER17> The cold actually reduces range considerably and increases charging times. I've even heard reports of being unable to charge a Tesla through a standard 120VAC outlet if the weather is below freezing.

<comment><USER14> I haven't had a problem with 120V. They have always given me 3-5 miles of charge per hour regardless of weather. But I have had superchargers go at that same rate when it is cold.

I quickly learned my lesson to charge in the evening or after driving for a while instead of first thing in the morning :)</comment></comment></comment>


Why So Many Men Hate the Last Jedi but Can't Agree on Why - <AUTHOR> https://bittergertrude.com/2018/01/04/why-so-many-men-hate-the-last-jedi-but-cant-agree-on-why/ <comment><USER2> I finally saw this a few days ago knowing that there was some controversy but not what it was about. When I googled "TLJ Controversy" the first thing I found was not the controversies, but articles criticizing the people who found the film controversial. Very odd.

Anyway, after finding out that the main concern for fans was the amount of women in the film and the attempts at making Luke Skywalker interesting, I was pretty surprised. Those are some of the better decisions in the film.

The film was fine. It's too bad people are tripping over themselves to hate on the film, other viewers, the cast, etc etc. Just so much mean spiritedness being thrown around in all directions over what was a perfectly enjoyable film.

Internet continues to suck.

</comment><comment><USER3> looks like rank sexism in disguise

<comment><USER4> The article? Not really disguised much.

<comment><USER3> True, a sad commentary on the way we treat each other</comment></comment></comment>


Spectre and Meltdown: tapping into the CPU's subconscious thoughts - <AUTHOR> https://ds9a.nl/articles/posts/spectre-meltdown/ <comment><AUTHOR> A great, human-readable, explanation of how Spectre and Meltdown work.</comment>


Ask HN: free online tool for project coordination? - <AUTHOR>

We started working on a new open-source project with a group of enthusiasts, and we need some common place to discuss the product design and to record the project progress.
What are the best free tools available for this?
I tried trello.com, but there's a problem with browser compatibility, and also it's not so much transparent for this purpose.
The source code will be published on bitbucket or github later. At the moment we're in the conceptual design phase. <comment><USER2> <http://freedcamp.com> has come a long way. I still don't understand why they don't charge for <http://podio.com>: it is a great quality product.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been enjoying teambox. It is a simple web based project collaboration tool. It is free as long as you only need 3 projects going. So far we haven't gotten past the free stage, but I would have no problem paying for this product.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot, will check that out

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you need mainly to discuss your project or track changes, please drop me an email at email@example.com and I'll create you an account and we can get in touch.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, but I think I stick to asana for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> trello: <https://trello.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually mentioned it in OP :)

</comment></comment><comment> saiko-chriskun asana is pretty darn awesome. I use it for everything.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, this looks promising</comment></comment>


My PyQt App's Year in Review 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://fman.io/blog/year-in-review-2017 <comment><USER2> I love to hear stories of people creating something useful or beautiful (or both) and finding success. OP's initial goals were very reasonable and achievable, and the product looks great.

It motivates me to keep trying at side hustles like this. Well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :-)</comment></comment>


Bend Lego Bricks, Learn Some Geometry - <AUTHOR> http://news.discovery.com/tech/bend-lego-bricks-learn-non-euclidean-geometry-110715.html <comment><USER2> Where does the non-Euclidean geometry come in? OK, I see normal circles, you could interpret that as lines in the hyperbolic plane (though I'm not sure having two planes overlap like that is meaningful), but it's not like that interpretation is necessary and I don't see anything else that suggests non- Euclidean. But I must admit I'm not really too familiar with geometry; anyone else can say?

<comment><USER3> Well, that's all you're going to get, really, is shapes "inspired by" non- Euclidean geometry. In practice, we live in a world of Euclidean geometry.

(Theoretically, this isn't true, but undetectably so on this scale. If you were somewhere where the non-Euclidean nature of our universe could be easily seen on the scale of a couple of feet, you'd be too busy being squashed incomprehensibly flat to be building lego structures.)</comment></comment>


At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/us/14alabama.html <comment><USER2> When a postal worker goes postal, it's going postal.

When a PhD from Harvard -- _the_ first detail mentioned, note -- goes postal, they are suffering in an academic pressure cooker.

Dumbly applying the nearest pop-psych explanation to hand to explain the inexplicable only makes it more difficult to show respect for the victims and sympathy for the grieving.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the author was applying an explanation either dumbly or trying to reduce its significance. I think it is part of our human nature to try and contain a tragedy by labeling or attributing some cause to it. I'm not a therapist, but I sincerely believe this human trait persists in many people as a coping mechanism. That's why it makes sense (even as an academic myself) in some weird, comforting way.

<comment><USER4> _I think it is part of our human nature to try and contain a tragedy by labeling or attributing some cause to it._

Are you implying that tragedies have no cause.

It seems like human to try understand tragedies as they are significant part of our human world. Moreover, tragedies usually do have causes.

Claiming that there is no cause to an event may serve some psychological purpose...

<comment><USER5> Tragedies usually have _so many_ causes that it's impossible to point out a single cause in a 3-paragraph comment and have it mean anything.

Usually, if you do a root cause analysis of _anything_ , you come up with so many contributing factors that the resulting document is hundreds of pages long. Think of industrial postmortems or court proceedings. Everything is more complicated than it seems at first.

Saying "This was because she was denied tenure" does a disservice to everyone involved. It was probably _partly_ because she was denied tenure. It was probably partly also because she had easy access to guns, and she was super focused on her research, and she didn't get along with the school administration, and she had once accidentally killed her brother, and plenty of other factors that we could never know about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Ms. Bishop, a grant-winning scientist"

That is like saying, "a salary-earning division manager." I don't know of any serious academic scientist who isn't funded by grants. Seems like the writer really wanted to put "award-winning," but there were no awards.

<comment><USER7> There _are_ academic scientists who don't get grants. They are denied tenure outright. Since she was denied tenure, it's worthwhile to note that she did have grants. If she had no grants and expected to get tenure, then that would tell us something. This also tells us she met some requirements for tenure. (But not much, because we don't know how much money these grants were, and how much her department expects.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> See [http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=392617&#...</a>

</comment><comment><USER9> When will people come to their senses? How many more senseless killings are required before we can take action? Ban academia now!

</comment><comment><USER10> The irony of this is the fact that I had a lecture that very day across UAHuntsville's campus in which my literature teacher said often times, when a person murders someone, there is a significantly higher chance they will do it again. I'm not saying that the death of her brother was indeed a murder, but I couldn't help but get a chill when I found out the news later that day. All of the teachers at UAHuntsville have passion about what they do; this is evident especially in the passion that the teachers seem to imbue in us as students. It is saddening to hear that three faculty have been killed, especially since one of those teachers was my own this past semester.

</comment><comment><USER11> I find it veeery interesting that she "accidentally" killed her brother when she was twenty. Casts some doubt on that situation too.

<comment><USER12> Wrong conclusion. I think that she must have been emotionally scarred by the accident.

Did the accident make it easier for her to kill those faculty members yesterday? That's really hard to say. Would it be easier for the former first lady to murder someone because of the deadly car accident she was involved in? I'm inclined to say no.

<comment><USER13> The Braintree police don't seem to think that it was an accident. To be sure, they seem to be operating on "oral history".

<comment><USER14> Not much choice when all the official records are "missing" except for one recording it as an accident.

If the reports that 3 rounds were fired are correct, that's some "accident".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What Dr. Bishop did was unjustified, no matter what other facts we may find (excepting force initiated by the victims); justice requires her death. (Because this penalty is irrevocable, and all possible legal systems are fallible, the closest we can get to this ideal is life imprisonment.)

Having said that, look at how the system worked. These guys were stringing her along for six years (or so?), while maintaining the illusion that her activities (against university initiatives and attitudes) would have no impact on her career. Obviously her against-the-grain attitudes had a great deal to do with the way they treated her.

What's the best way to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring? The only way is to take the pressure off by eliminating tenure completely. That way, there's no insane buildup of emotion on either side. In a properly functioning organization, people that don't work out (for whatever reason, including personality conflicts) should be informed of the situation as early as is possible, which takes what, about a year?

Existing faculty could be offered buyouts (which, of course, would have to be lucrative enough to be accepted), and you're at a nice clean slate.

<comment><USER15> I would suspect Dr Bishop has a personality disorder, such as Borderline Personality Disorder.

I find it interesting that they have a 6 year rule, when the average is around 10 years to get tenure.

I think that people missed warning signs, that she was feeling stress, and that there is a stigma against seeking help, and people often deny they have a problem.

I agree with most of your comments, except the bit about "requires her death". She was possibly suffering major depression at the time of the incident, and other mental health issues.

<comment><USER12> How do you "recover" from something like this? If I had done something like what she did, and I had full memory of it, I would attempt suicide - not out of some perverse sense of duty, but as a way to escape.

(I believe that the soul dies with the body, and that supernatural events are categorically impossible. So when I say "escape", I mean a completely different thing than a religious person would mean.)

<comment><USER15> I don't believe she would "recover" from this. She will quite likely spend along time in a prison psych ward.

John Hinkley, Jr who shot Reagan in 1981 was sent to a psych ward and is still under the care of the psychiatric facility, even though now allowed conditional release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is one of the things I hate about the NYT... an imposed narrative contained in a headline without any identifying details. Wouldn't "Huntsville University Killer May Have Killed Over Lost Tenure" be a) more accurate b) less obtuse?

</comment><comment><USER17> Why did she care about tenure? She could have just focused exclusively on the startup, making it more likely to succeed.

<comment><USER5> Remember that not all people have the same goals as HN readers. We self-select for people whose goal is to found a successful startup. For many other people, their goal in life might be to be a good parent, or to be a professional sports player, or to be a tenured professor. It seems like she was well on the road to success by _our_ standards, but that doesn't mean she was successful by _her_ standards.

<comment><USER17> What gave her the idea that being a tenured professor is better than a founder of a successful startup?

Perhaps this is the result of societal pressure on intelligent people rather than her own thinking?

<comment><USER18> > What gave her the idea that being a tenured professor is better than a > founder of a successful startup?

The same thing that gives HNers idea that starting a startup is better than being a tenure professor -- personal choice and personal set of goals and motivations.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The enterprise strikes back - <AUTHOR> http://sufficientlyadvanced.net/the-enterprise-strikes-back <comment><USER2> _Design matters more than the feature checklist_

Not in any enterprise I've ever serviced.

What enterprise people really need to know:

I already know from existing reporting that 984 orders (18% of our backlog) are already past due. For those 984 orders:

      - How many are for one item and how many are for multiples?
      - Do we own what we owe those customers?
      - If we do own it, is it in the proper warehouse?
      - If it is in the proper warehouse, can we find it?
      - If we can find it, is it undamaged and certified?
      - If it's shippable, do we have enough labor to ship it?
      - If it isn't certified, how soon can QA certify it?
      - If it isn't in the right warehouse, can we move it?
      - If we don't own any, where can we get some?
      - Which vendors have it on the shelf?
      - Which vendors do we have blanket purchase orders with?
      - Which vendors do we have contracts with?
      - Which orders can be split to satisfy a partial?
      - Which orders are for customers already on credit hold?
      - Which customers are threatening not to renew with us?

and (ironically) the most asked question of all: \- Which orders must be shipped to hit our quarterly numbers?

Enterprise solutions better answer these questions. If they're pretty, that's a bonus, but well designed tools that don't answer these questions are just lipstick on a pig.

<comment><USER3> _Not in any enterprise I've ever serviced._

Nor I. However, mobile _is_ indeed changing they way IT thinks. I've recently attended both a large mobile conference (AppsWorld) and an SAP conference (SAPPHIRE/TechEd). Every person that is implementing mobile in the enterprise is saying the same thing - capturing the mobile experience is important. But, there are so very few organizations doing it right now.

At SAP SAPPHIRE/TechEd this year there was a massive (I mean took up a very substantial area of one of the entrances to a conference hall) that was dedicated entirely to UI/Design Thinking[1]. This has _never_ even had a tiny booth dedicated to it.

That being said. 2013 is _not_ the year. 2013 is the just the beginning. I suspect design will become more of the norm in 2014 and beyond. I also suspect as my generation becomes more and more influencers in enterprise technology we will see that design creep in. But until the dinosaurs hold the budgets, it ain't happening anytime soon.

[1]- [http://www.sapdesignguild.org/community/design/design_thinki...](http://www.sapdesignguild.org/community/design/design_thinking.asp)

<comment><USER4> Mobile is changing the way enterprises think the same way the web did: very slowly.

They will recognize the need long before they act on it. And when they act on it, it will be on an offering built to their specifications, with data connections to other enterprise systems that they have millions invested in.

And most of the initial mobile rollout for enterprise will be shoddy half- assed stabs in the dark by the same enterprise vendors they already have, that are neither well designed, nor disruptive, nor will they deliver on the promise of mobile particularly well.

<comment><USER5> The adoption rate may be slow but the market is massive, probably comparable to consumer web when you include all the medium and large business in the world. Combined with the fact that smart phones are becoming more and more popular among the consumers (i.e. the employees of these businesses), the uncaptured market size is growing fast.

Even now in slow industries like ECAD and MCAD I see AutoDesk, Dassault Solidworks, and Altium working on more collaborative software like their PDMs (like Solidworks Vault) and more mobile applications to view and annotate CAD models. AutoDesk especially has exploded with many web and mobile apps ranging from 3D scanning to editing and 3d printing.

I don't think 2013 is the year but it is certainly only the beginning.

<comment><USER6> I disagree that the enterprise market is growing that fast. Each new mobile enterprise user used to be a laptop enterprise user. This isn't a market that's drawing in new people, only migrating the existing ones to a different technology.

<comment><USER7> But that's _every_ emerging market. Facebook didn't find a billion new people, they just got a billion people to do something different with their time, and that's all any new market does: get people to do something different with their time, money or attention.

So while the _enterprise_ market isn't growing, the _mobile enterprise_ market is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Design and usability do matter, indeed. Most enterprise applications fail miserably in that respect. However, I'm wondering how or if it is possible at all to disrupt common enterprise software segments such as:

\- document management \- time tracking \- issue tracking \- project management \- information management

For all of these there already are great solutions. Most enterprise companies still to stick to the SAP, IBM and Oracle solutions they're used to, though. Part of the reason for this is bureaucracy and aversion towards change. Another issue is support. Companies like IBM can agree on extensive support and SLAs, which startups or SMEs certainly cannot. Finally, there's this well- know issue that the people the software is sold to most of the time aren't those who in the end have to use it.

Anyway, I think the enterprise market is very interesting because there's lots of money and potential in it.

So, what do you think would be interesting areas of enterprise software to tackle?

</comment><comment><USER9> Truly the only blog title which could top this would be "Return of the ScrumMaster"

I will not be holding my breath for "Attack of the beanlet containers"

</comment><comment><USER10> It is not enterprise that strikes back, it is the technology that strikes. Cloud, IT are doing good and so are enterprises and startups in same.

</comment><comment><USER11> 2013 is the year of _open allocation_ : [http://www.quora.com/Software- Development-Methodologies/What...](http://www.quora.com/Software-Development- Methodologies/What-is-Open-Allocation)

As the bubble deflates (slowly, because it came up slowly) engineers are realizing that they're probably _not_ going to make $50 million on their 9th- employee startup equity and retire at 27, which means they need to optimize for something different: plan B, for most of them, is interesting work and career development. This is to the detriment of companies that "seem like" they could be worth billions based on macroscopics, but that really don't have better cultures than any other corporation. However, it provides an opportunity to drink the rest of the tech world's talent milkshake: learn from companies like Valve and Github and build a culture actually worth caring about.

</comment><comment><USER12> Problem with enterprise is not a technology or even design, it is bureaucracy times mediocrity.)

<comment><USER13> The biggest problem with enterprise is budget. People tend to see short-term gain as opposed to long-term gain.

Bureaucracy and mediocrity are minor compare to the usual mindset of budgeting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Enterprise needs to wake up as a matter of sustaining their advantage, otherwise a startup like Airbnb can eat them for lunch. With social media the market can shift dramatically towards any service that can deliver superior value to customers. So in my view Enterprises are driven much more by fear than any inherent need to serve better. Whatever the case may be, it does open up opportunities galore for astute startups, that have patience to deal with Enterprise quirks.</comment>


Fedora 14 cloud servers launched with full root access by CloudSigma - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloudsigma.com/en/about-us/press-releases/180

<comment><USER2> Nice timely release! I've been using Fedora 13 for a while and was interested to give Fedora 14 a whirl. I've just signed up for your free trial so I'm interested to see how it compares to version 13 but also how it performs on a cloud infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes the 14 day trial is a nice touch for Fedora 14! Probably not worth holding out for the next release to get the extra free day :-)

I like having root access, its one of my main gripes with some of the larger cloud vendors I've tried in the past.</comment>


Get ready to eat bugs if you want to live beyond 2050 - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/28/crickets-algae-lab-grown-meat-future-of-protein/ <comment><USER2> The title of this is incendiary, to make the reader emotional about being force fed insects.

Everyone eats trace amounts of bugs all the time without giving it a second thought. Bugs get in our food before we buy it, and after we buy it. For every critter we accidentally discover, there are others that go right through our digestive system.

I have no issues buying a slab of steak or bacon - part of the product is the abstraction from animal to dinner. I'm probably a vegetarian in denial because the process of turning an animal into dinner stresses me out but I am happy to have a bacon cheeseburger.

So it seems fair to me that if we can mask the process of trillions of crickets turning into protein powder for making 2050 meatloaf, that someone like me will have no issue eating that either.

I have a feeling my opinion on this will be controversial because talking about food is controversial. I'm not trying to antagonize anyone reading this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickbait title. The article is about alternative protein sources such as crickets or seaweed. The conclusion is a fairer description of the content:

"So whether it comes from a cricket or a lab or off the coast of Indonesia, tomorrow's protein alternatives will be a win for both consumers and the environment, though likely neither are as excited about those prospects as the cows."

<comment><USER4> > though likely neither are as excited about those prospects as the cows

This is somewhat ironic, since cows will most likely undergo a population collapse if they are no longer being raised domestically for the meat. The remainder would probably be kept mainly for milking. Do you suppose dairy cows have a better overall quality-of-life than other cows?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Or, y'know, I'll stick to beans, lentils, and veggies.

<comment><USER6> > Or, y'know, I'll stick to beans, lentils, and veggies.

I'd do that too, on top of making use of those insect proteins to feed my chickens and eat eggs, roosters and the hen when it gets too old to lay eggs.

There are a lot of efforts to shift aqua-culture feed to mainly insect larvae based pellets in several countries. Which makes total sense, but I have limited experience with that; but I do know chickens will devour a bowl full of maggots in seconds, which have an amazing fat/protein ratio as way healthier than the typical corn based feed they are often given.

I'm very skeptical when it comes to these headlines, the World produces more than enough food (be it fruit/meat/veg) to feed all of the World's population, its the logistics of a broken food supply chain--obfuscated by subsidies--that make it impossible for it to reach every person at a profit.

Its amazing that it works at all when you think that less than 2% of the World's population works in Ag and this broken system feeds the other 98%, but its also alarming when you think of the vulnerabilities and untenable practices baked into the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please stop scaring me. In 1975, at 4 billions we were not going to be able to feed 8 billions. Now we do. I want to respect the food chain. Let the birds eat the bugs. Let us eat the birds.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can I just buy long term soybean commodity contracts which follow the price of beef/pork, then sell some each year? I'd prefer that to eating crickets.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pompous title. I'll happily do it, but not because you made me. Rather, it sounds quite tasty and nutritious! The 'capacity' concept is a lie. Don't forget to look at the drastically slowing worldwide population growth. I'll continue to kill and eat venison and grow my garden.

</comment><comment><USER10> Bugs are delicious.</comment>


Ember.js API docs - <AUTHOR> http://ember-docs.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> The experience of trying to use this website on MobileSafari (with iOS 5.0, for the inline scrolling and fixed position support) is truly "amazing". ;P (Also: is there a reason this isn't docs.emberjs.com?)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why are the docs not powered by Ember.js?

</comment><comment><USER4> Where is Ember.Select?</comment>


Volkswagen Currywurst - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_currywurst <comment><USER2> Wow, I wish I could satisfy my currywust craving now. I ate a ton of it on my short trip to Berlin. Delicious!

<comment><USER3> go to Indian cornershop and buy roasted curry powder, mix with ketchup, that gets you the sauce. experiment a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm disappointed that the main Volkswagen article doesn't say "Volkswagen is a German car and sausage manufacturer..."

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of Maytag Blue Cheese. Are there other food products out there from surprising brands?

<comment><USER6> [https://us.peugeot-saveurs.com/en_us/pepper-mills](https://us.peugeot- saveurs.com/en_us/pepper-mills)

Peugeot, the car company, invented the pepper grinder and still makes them.

They started making pepper grinders before they made cars though, so perhaps you could argue they're a kitchen tools company that also makes cars.

<comment><USER7> Like Nokia made boots

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ha, I drive a VW. Next time I'm at the dealership I should swing by the parts department and see if I can get it delivered to the US. Gotta get the ketchup and plate too.

<comment><USER9> Alas!

 _> The product is sold in 11 countries but is not available in the United States due to its rules on the import of uncooked meat._

But, there is still hope that they might make it available again:

 _> In the past Volkswagen has sent a team of chefs to the United States to replicate the product with locally sourced ingredients._

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I went to the Wolfsburg Autostadt and took a tour at the factory next door a year ago ([https://www.autostadt.de](https://www.autostadt.de)). It was a great tour. The guide was making jokes about the currywurst. I didn't realize he was serious. I guess I could have had some at the museum.

Its a highly automated factory so it was very interesting to see work done (or not done) by machines. If you're in the area, its well worth the visit. The auto museum is a huge complex next to the factory; its not just VW stuff.

</comment><comment><USER11> Factory tour [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWP32tCPv_w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWP32tCPv_w)

</comment><comment><USER12> I love the fact that external profits subsidise the staff meals. Very wholesome setup</comment>


Ask HN: Finding old stories in HN, best practices - <AUTHOR>

I remember reading a blog about a guy selling software on his website and things he did to improve sales (something with bingo maybe?)<p>How in the world would you find something like that again? <comment><USER2> <http://www.searchyc.com/>

<http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/rails-seo-tips.htm>

<comment><AUTHOR> What did you search for?

<comment><USER2> First: "bingo" Then, the full URL to his site.</comment></comment></comment>


Any Mobile Streaming startups? - <AUTHOR>

Any mobile streaming startups you know which use video as a medium <<apart from entertainment>>? I know there is a mobile version of youtube and got to know something about fineplayer based in czech republic.TV/news/podcasts on mobile is a good way to utilize time while travelling/elevators/waiting for somebody. Please share your views and urls on this topic <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=112421>

<comment><AUTHOR> from which country this startup is working from? Quality of videos is good...what is the delay between the time when video is sent to site and then time when it becomes live...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> i have worked on several mobile products and streamed music to a mobile phone thru a java app, but streaming video is a bit tricky due to the phone specs and the connection speed.

<comment><AUTHOR> can you share the urls for the same?</comment></comment>


Why You Should Be Excited About the New Record for the Largest Prime Number - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/05/curtis_cooper_has_found_the_new_largest_prime_number.html?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=t.co&original_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.snsanalytics.com%2Fa2lty4

<comment><USER2> Can someone summarize? All I got out of it is "you should be excited because, even though it's nearly insignificant, it's one more data point in some statistical distribution we're trying to sample more of".

I'm not sure how "it's not very exciting, but we're doing it for a greater, also-not-very-exciting purpose" should excite me.

<comment><USER3> I think you're pretty close to it. The last line seems a reasonable summary though:

>" _Just finding one large prime number is a fun puzzle to have solved, but it doesn't say anything basic about how the world works. The patterns behind the primes, however, both proven patterns and ones only suspected, are the lens through which humanity can apprehend deep and unfamiliar truths about how reality is structured._ " //

<comment><USER2> Right, that was where I got my summary from too, I just wanted to know if I missed something and am being too critical. Thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> Curtis Cooper of the University of Central Missouri moved one small step closer to Euclid's infinity_

Within the first paragraph, the author displays ignorance of math that every Korean high school student knows.

<comment><USER5> that's a figure of speech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Non-mobile URL: [http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/05/curtis_co...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/05/curtis_cooper_has_found_the_new_largest_prime_number.html)

<comment><USER7> The mobile version loads fast and is more readable on the PC. Why would anyone want to visit the "non-mobile" version?

<comment><USER8> I might agree if the text wasn't so wide (edit: on my screen, at least). Longer lines are less readable because you can't easily find the next line when your eye flicks back to the left after finishing a line.

<comment><AUTHOR> I use a narrow window, then I can scan the page down the middle reading all of the text as I go. Much faster and more convenient.

I also turn off the image to avoid the disruption. For me, reading the mobile version is much to be preferred.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The new number has 17,425,170 digits—just writing them down makes for a > 22.45-megabyte text file

Um, what?

Even if you include commas... um, what?

<comment><USER10> If you include commas that's 23,233,560 characters, which would be 22.15 megabytes (at one byte per char). Maybe 22.45 is just a typo?

<comment><USER11> There are line breaks at a fixed interval so that it wraps at 80 chars. I imagine that makes up the other ~300KB.

Edit: Line-breaks do indeed make up the bulk of the overhead, but it's also an HTML page so there's some boilerplate markup at the beginning and end of the file.</comment></comment></comment>


Ubuntu 19.04 comes refreshed with the Linux 5.0 kernel - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/ubuntu-19-04-comes-refreshed-with-the-linux-5-0-kernel/ <comment><USER2> They have wrongly written "Microsoft Visual Studio available as a snap". It should be "Microsoft Visual Studio Code available as a snap"</comment>