Germany sets new solar-power record - <AUTHOR> http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-solar-idUKBRE84P0FI20120526 <comment><USER4> It really peeves me that there can be so little outcry (close to zero) and such immediate government action to shutdown nuclear plants when it's proven damn near impossible to get people to shut down coal plants. It's absurd. Coal is _guaranteed_ to have costly negative health and environmental impacts on surrounding areas, while nuclear merely has the _risk_. I am glad _something_ is being replaced by solar, but it is extremely aggravating that coal isn't getting the same treatment as nuclear.

<comment><USER5> The main difference is in my opinion the visible action - <USER3> relationship. If a nuclear power plant blows up, the whole area is going to look for years to come like a scene from a apocalyptic movie, while with coal plants you might have just people to "cough a bit more".

The only thing I do not get is why energy companies are not forced to carry more extensive insurance policies to the long term damages/risks they cause. Pushing this through all the way should provide enough incentives to move towards renewables.

<comment><USER6> > The main difference is in my opinion the visible action - <USER3> > relationship. If a nuclear power plant blows up, the whole area is going to > look for years to come like a scene from a apocalyptic movie, while with > coal plants you might have just people to "cough a bit more".

Not really. Nuclear disasters are bad for the environment, but considerably less bad than say... Building a city somewhere.

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120411084107.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120411084107.htm)

And "cough a bit more" is probably the understatement of a day. Those fuckers even create more radioactive waste (which won't get collected) when they work as intended, than nuclear plants when they break down. ([http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash- is...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more- radioactive-than-nuclear-waste))

You are on track with the insurance policy. Though it's pretty safe to assume, that real costs of coal and carbon-based fuels are not calculated very well for insurance purposes either.

The end-point of unstoppable climate-change could potentially render the entire earth inhabitable via the Venus-effect. Even most apocalyptic local consequences are pretty minor compared to those.

<comment><USER7> _Those fuckers even create more radioactive waste (which won't get collected) when they work as intended, than nuclear plants when they break down._

How about reading your own linked article before making a fool of yourself with claims like that? It says coal plants create more radioactive waste than a nuclear plant that has _not_ broken down.

<comment><USER8> It's true for common failure modes. Three Mile Island, for example, did leak less radioactive waste than a correctly working coal plant.

The problem is that it's so politically difficult to build new nuclear plants so that old ones can be retired, that we're still using poorly designed plants from the 1960s that are already past their design lifetime. And then people are surprised that they're problematic.

<comment><USER9> The reason we're still using the old plants is because even wind power is cheaper per watt hour than a modern nuclear plant.

Finland is building one at the moment. At $4.1 billion it's now 50% over budget.

<comment><USER8> Your numbers are incorrect. The cost for nuclear is cheaper than oil and gas, and only somewhat more expensive than coal, when factoring in the full lifecycle costs.

And Finland's reactor is remarkably cheap, if it only cost $4.1B. I believe typical plants cost closer to $10B. Nuclear plants are not cheap to build.

<comment><USER7> _The cost for nuclear is cheaper than oil and gas_

That's a lie.

The equation breaks down when you factor in _any_ of the following:

A) Waste handling and disposal

B) Reactor upgrades and replacement on a sane schedule (i.e. more frequently than the current ~35 years)

C) Hardening against deliberate attacks such as airplanes

or

D) A single catastrophic event due to continued negligence of B and C

The nuclear industry operates on the premise of being able to push the cost for all of the above upon society at some indefinite point in the future (cf. Fukushima). You may or may not agree with that approach (i.e. you could argue "it's worth it"), but let's not drink their kool-aid please.

<comment><USER8> If you didn't factor those in, then the cost would be almost nothing, even when compared to coal. Almost all the cost of nuclear power is in the construction and decommissioning.

When you factor those in, it becomes more expensive than coal, and slightly cheaper than oil or gas.

Also, airplanes pack very little punch compared to other things like internal steam buildup that plants are already hardened against. In a properly designed plant, you get airplane tolerance effectively for free.

<comment><USER7> _When you factor those in, it becomes more expensive than coal, and slightly cheaper than oil or gas._

And that magic knowledge you take from... where?

Last time I checked there was no solution to the waste issue; we simply have no idea what to do with it in the long term. Meanwhile in most countries the transport and "temporary" storage of the waste are conveniently paid for by the tax-payer.

Last time I checked most reactors are destined to be running for _40 years_. Except when, like in USA and France, they decide to extend that to _60 years_. So much for replacing ancient reactors with safer designs.

Last time I checked most reactors were _not_ hardened against deliberate attacks. And Fukushima was _supposed_ to be one of the few specially hardened sites - we have seen how that went.

 _In a properly designed plant, you get airplane tolerance effectively for free._

Bullshit.

<comment><USER8> > _And that magic knowledge you take from... where?_

Studying the viability of, of all things, solar power, and comparing the costs of various competing technologies. (The school I studied at is quite involved in solar research. It's price needs to drop by a significant factor before it becomes competitive, but it's on the way.)

> _Bullshit_

To borrow your words: "And that magic knowledge you take from... where?"

When you design a reactor to take the rather substantial internal steam explosions (and the associated water hammer) that might happen in a complete failure scenario, you end up with quite a solid building.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 20GW is nowhere near 20 _plants_ at full capacity, it's 20 _reactors_ , and is probably more of an average.

Reactors range from 400MWe to 1600MWe, and plants generally have 2 to 6 reactors with 2 outliers at respectively 7 (Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in Japan) and 8 (Bruce in Canada, although it's only running 6 reactors right now). The 10 biggest nuclear plants all have more than 4GW installed capacity.

FWIW, France _has_ a total of 20 active plants grouping 57 reactors. The installed capacity is almost 62GWe.

<comment><USER11> Don't forget that the amount of power lost due to cooling systems, mining, fuel transport and refining of fissionable materials should be considered as it's a considerable chunk of that output.

<comment><USER12> The same can be said for the cost of manufacturing and delivering solar panels.

<comment><USER13> No. The costs for the lifestyle of a solar panel are considerably less than nuclear rods.

<comment><USER14> Color me curious- what sort of lifestyles do solar panels and nuclear rods lead?

<comment><USER15> Solar panels need to be cleaned and at the end of their lifespan, several years if not decades, need to be replaced. I dont know about nuclear rods, but they do require security and safety measures.

<comment><USER16> [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/should-you-spring- cle...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/should-you-spring-clean-your- solar.html#!/2009/07/should-you-spring-clean-your-solar.html) indicates that solar panels mounted flat do indeed need to be cleaned, but panels mounted at a sufficient angle will be rinsed off adequately by the rain and do not seem to benefit measurably from manual cleaning.

<comment><USER17> Average soiling loss for tilted installations is around 5%, but it can vary quite a bit with location and rainfall patterns, so it is occasionally worth manually cleaning them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Front page of TED.com

[http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_ren...](http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables.html)

See 9:16. He arranges the power consumption of countries by per person per sq m. And renewables can sit on same scale, and his estimate for PV solar is about 20% of land mass of Germany needs to be covered.

This is one of the many problems of the renewables debate - apples and oranges. The Germans have done an incredible and positive thing. Massively upped the feed into the electric grid from solar PV. And electrical consumption is where nuclear plants feed - so the two methods are direct competitors.

But electrical consumption is only about 1/3 of goal energy budget of western countries, rest is evenly split between transport and heating and about 5% for everything else like rocket launches.

So 50% of about 30% says that "Germany has 15% of it's total energy from renewables, will need to increase that by 7fold, give everyone an electric car and heating that uses electricity and not ....

Yes it's a great step forward. But really, we are going to have to change our lifestyles beyond belief to meet even 80% energy use from renewables. Forget driving to supermarkets to pick up refrigerated milk and tomatoes flown in from Africa.

Watch the talk - his book is very good too.

<comment><USER19> Something doesn't add up though. From those calculations, it would seem that 3% of Germany's land mass is "covered". I strongly suspect that isn't the case.

<comment><USER20> Figures I heard on German television suggest 0,06% of Germany's area covered.

<comment><USER19> Okay, so his estimates are off by 50x... ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a deceptive headline. The solar plants produced that much power during a few hours. The article is light on details (and makes a few basic errors) but at a bare minimum we can know that the average amount of power over an entire day was far less for these solar plants than these peak power figures, probably about 1/5th as much. Whereas nuclear plants keep producing all day long.

This is great propaganda for the solar power industry but it does little to change the fact that solar power doesn't produce power when it's needed and storing energy is extremely expensive. This is not an indication that solar power is ready for prime time, to serve as base load power generation, it's just an indication that if you build enough PV panels you can get a lot of power for a few hours on a sunny day, which is something we've always known.

</comment><comment><USER22> _Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone._

Despite the discussions in Germany about the high costs of PV for consumers, this still shows something remarkably: a (in general) not so sunny country in the northern hemisphere installed approximately half of the solar power capacity of the world. It's not easy, and even in Germany there are huge challenges lying ahead, but especially industrialized countries should take this as a sign to accelerate their own renewable energy strategies.

<comment><USER23> also, half of the pv capacity of the world is only 4% of the power needs for germany.

<comment><USER24> growing > 50% CAGR in the last 5 years. Don't write it off just yet :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Germany also has a lot of installed wind power which works at nights too. Plus new re-pumping hydro plants, which can be used to store the surplus energy of such peak solar output. So, with such diversification, the nuclear plants really are not necessary.

Plus with modern international energy trade, you get averaging benefits. I.e. when it is cloudy in your country, it may well be sunny in one of your neighbouring countries, so you can do instantaneous energy swaps like that, reducing the need for storage.

<comment><USER26> Sadly the nuclear plants in Germany, which provide 20% of the electricity, can not be replaced by renewables but only by coal and gas power plants.

<comment><USER25> Why not? Does not this directly contradict your statement? > Germany became a world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its overall annual electricity from those sources.

<comment><USER6> 1\. Current renewable power sources need adjusting power (is that how it translates to English?) when it's not shining or windy. 2\. Current distribution networks for electricity do not work well enough to transport large quantities of electricity for long distances. 3\. Due to getting rid of nuclear, 90% of new electricity production built to Germany before 2020 will be from fossil fuels. ([http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2012/05/germany_returns_to_c...](http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2012/05/germany_returns_to_coal.shtml)) That is what "the global leader" can achieve. And the fossil fuel plant's are not going to be closed any faster than nuclear plants. Those investments are for the next 60 years, and it's likely that there will be more if/when cleantech can't really deliver out all the things we need.

And that's a pretty good result btw, truly a world champion -level achievement. Meanwhile, Japan's nuclear phaseout is done with 99,999478% in fossils. (The bloomberg links are down where they were calculated before, but should be googlable with "Japan's Use of Oil May Surge by 300000 Barrels a Day" & "Japan Will Use More Coal During Maintenance, Deutsche Bank Says".

Yes, you can get rid of nuclear, but for all intents and purposes, it has always resulted with more dinosaur burning, not less. And that's pretty bad.

Even with all flaws, nuclear is a lot cheaper economically and environmentally as an insurance option than what Germany and most global economies are currently pursuing.

<comment><USER27> Don't worry. As Germany reduces its use of nuclear power, it'll just import more nuclear generated electricity from France.

<comment><USER28> Oh really. In winter everyone in France turns on their electric heater and in the summer the rivers run dry and EDF has to shut down plants due to insufficient cooling...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Total world energy consumption is about 16 Terawatts. The article reports Germany's solar production peaked at 22 Gigawatts. That's over 0.1% of humanity's use, from a single country covering a land area smaller than California. We have just begun to exploit solar PV power generation.

<comment><USER30> > [...] from a single country covering a land area smaller than California.

To be more precise: From a single, cloudy and relatively cold country. California isn't really the right comparison.

<comment><USER29> Apparently it was very sunny that day, and cool temps actually help PV efficiency IIRC.

<comment><USER25> Yes but we are still a month away from the longest day, so the chances are that this record will be broken again, soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "22 gigawatts of electricity per hour" ?? WTF? As soon as I read that the credibilty of the whole post went waaay down...

But anyway, very cool.

<comment><USER19> It's not uncommon for people in the energy business to say "gigawatts" as short hand for "gigawatt hours". In that context this sort of makes sense. At their peak (likely when the sun was just right and the clouds were parted over most of Germany), it produced 22 gigawatt hours in a one hour time period. Without the implied "gigawatt hour", saying it just hit "22 gigawatts" isn't really that impressive, because that could just be a momentary spike. Being able to sustain it, even for an hour, is impressive.

<comment><USER32> They didn't say "gigawatt hours". They said "gigawatts per hour", which would be a rate of change of power generation. For example, if the sun came up and in 6 minutes your solar power station went from producing 0 to producing 2.2 gigawatts, that would be an increase of 22 gigawatts per hour. I strongly suspect that the author of the article is just ignorant.

<comment><USER19> Yes. Gigawatt hours would be meaningless. I'm saying that the "gigawatts" was a short form of "gigawatt hours", which means what they were talking about was "gigawatt hours per hour", which is really just average gigawatts over an hour, but that is quite meaningful as compared to straight up gigawatt.

<comment><USER32> It clearly carries a certain meaning, the same meaning as if a news story referred to "the country of Africa" or "Pablo Picasso, a well-known classical composer": its meaning is that the person who uttered it is too innocent of reality to be a reliable source of information on the topic.

<comment><USER19> ...or too familiar with industry jargon to realize that they aren't being clear to a wider audience.

Like I said, it isn't unusual for people to say "gigawatts" and actually mean "gigawatt hours" when it comes to the power business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> You know what makes me happy? Germany's Solar Power. Germany's Political system. I personally believe this country is on the best path possible over all other countries even being an American my self. They are by far the most advanced politically than any other country I know, and that helps them advance it other areas of the country.

I applaud them!

<comment><USER25> I agree. It is very beneficial for the healthy outlook of any large and powerful country to badly lose a major war on its own territory. However, I don't really expect any Brits or Americans to even understand what I am talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Although many of the Fukushima stories may have been sensationalist I _welcomed_ them. Because in a way nuclear energy generation is also a status quo industry and an idea, although less so than coal. But we needed something to nudge people into _wanting_ solar power, even over nuclear. The more demand there is for it, the more research will be made for it, and new ways will be found to make solar more efficient and cheaper.

We already hear about such new discoveries every few months now. Imagine if many more countries and Government were committed to solar energy and would make the solar industry boom because of it. We're still very early in this, and the potential is enormous.

<comment><USER35> What's wrong with nuclear?

Concentration on solar is great but has some sub-optimalities. Concentration on an energy industry that could also provide materials for a cold war arms race was clearly a bad idea.

Why aren't people working on thorium reactors?

<comment><USER36> Interesting. Are you saying that the technology for thorium reactors wouldn't be so closely related to weapons technology?

<comment><USER35> Thorium can't, as far as I know, be used for bombs. Unlike plutonium or uranium.

<comment><USER25> And there you have the real answer why it is not used and why uranium/plutonium is. It has very little to do with the economics and safety of energy production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> At night, Germany's solar power equals 0 nuclear plants.

<comment><USER29> That's true. Fortunately: (1) it's always sunny somewhere (2) we are increasing our ability to store power (3) industrialized countries use less power at night.

<comment><USER38> His point is that if one depends too heavily on solar, there are times when they'll have no access to power. How does one transport solar power from Japan to Germany?

<comment><USER15> You put mirrors in space.

But seriously, solar power generation by huge space stations that beam the power down to earth, then use mirrors to feed it where it is needed.

<comment><USER39> I think it's been shown that it's infeasible. You'd lose too much power in the beaming process, or you'd have a death ray beam that destroys anything that flies between it... you could increase the area, but then you'd need a collector dish the size of montana.

The best idea might be something like in the movie Moon where the power is stored chemically, then shipped back to earth.

<comment><USER7> We actually already have energy-storage technology (in your macbook, too!) - it's just terribly inefficient.

I think the most common technology in use today at powerplant-scale is the "Pumped-storage hydroelectricity plant". You basically pump water uphill when you have energy - and let it flow downhill again, through your energy- producing turbines, when you need it back.

Either way, there is tons of research in this area (e.g. SmartGrid). It seems like a problem that we will solve eventually.

<comment><USER40> Energy-storage technology isn't inefficient. Energy-storage technology is expensive.

<comment><USER41> "Efficiency in general describes the extent to which time or effort is well used for the intended task or purpose."

Comparatively high cost is the main factor why it is still be considered less efficient although that is slowly changing.

<comment><USER40> If you go on to the next paragraph in the wikipedia article you copy-pasted without citation, you'll see "The term "efficient" is very much confused and misused with the term "effective". In general, efficiency is a measurable concept, quantitatively determined by the ratio of output to input. "Effectiveness", is a relatively vague, non-quantitative concept, mainly concerned with achieving objectives."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You need not even postulate any terrorist scenarios to realise that the nuclear plant risks are frighteningly real.

There are some 50 reactors in the US of the same vintage and design as Fukushima, including the spent fuel rods storage right next to the reactors.

Nuclear reactors produce very large amounts of heat concentrated in a small volume. Thus when the cooling system stops working, for whatever reasons, the core is going to melt down, guaranteed.

Despite the secrecy of TEPCO and their friends in government, many people now believe that the cooling failed the moment the earthquake struck. Mostly due to the poor state and maintenance of the cooling pipes. The backup diesel generators to run the cooling circuits (again the same as in the US), with known shaft/bearings problems, packed up within minutes. After that, there is nothing anyone can do, as we had seen. The tsunami probably provided just a creditable scapegoat excuse.

</comment><comment><USER42> Kind of meh that the HN commentary is 'blah blah nuclear blah blah.' There are, IMHO, other aspects to this that are actually interesting: The effectiveness of subsidy in spurring a tech sector; the importance of cultural values; concrete rebuttal to the 'energy incident per solid angle crowd'; etc.

</comment><comment><USER43> _Critics also complain growing levels of solar power make the national grid more less stable due to fluctuations in output._

DaniFong, I hope your company Light Sail Energy has some deals with Germany in the works for your energy storage product.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is impressive, but I would guess that this was an especially sunny day. I'd like to see what the average output is.

<comment><USER45> [http://www.unendlich-viel- energie.de/uploads/media/AEE_Strom...](http://www.unendlich-viel- energie.de/uploads/media/AEE_Strommix-Deutschland_2011_Jan12.jpg)

This is in German, but the only source i could find. It says PV produced 3% of the procuced energy in 2011. It is said the capacity grew about 30% since q4 2011, but the stats seem to be pending.

[BS]

In 2010 604,0 TWh where consumed [1], so that would be 604,0 TWh * 3% / 8760 h = 2 GW as a conservative estimate. But note the stats are all a bit out of date.

[1] [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedarf_an_elektrischer_Energie...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedarf_an_elektrischer_Energie#Deutschland)

[/BS]

As the graph says 612 TWh where produced, so 612 TWh * 0.03 / 8760h = 2 GW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder if the nuclear plant will become the new unit of measure for popular discussions of energy production in a similar way that the Library of Congress is a unit of measure for data.

What's really impressive here is that _Germany_ of all places is producing this much solar energy. One would better predict a sunnier climate as the place to do this. It's great work, but I can imagine that maintaining base- load is is still a difficult thing for the Germans. Anybody know how they are handling storage for distribution during winter months/nighttime/inclement weather conditions?

</comment><comment><USER47> The real insight for me is the success of the feed in tariff program. These reward suppliers at higher than market rates for feeding electricity back into the grid. E.g. You get paid retail prices, where you really should only get wholesale, which excludes transmission costs.

For personal generation a well designed feed in tarrif should provide incentive to build solar panels/wind turbines on your roof etc. A million households producing a little power each makes it a lot easier to get to sustainability.

<comment><USER27> Yes, the FIT is great if a) you're a solar equipment provider that can't compete with other energy technologies or b) if you're a energy provider that has hitched its wagon to solar energy, and can't compete with other technologies on a cost basis.

For consumers, it's not so great. Germany has some of the highest electricity prices before the FIT, and the FIT just makes it worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> What is the "GW per hour" referenced several times in the article? Do they just mean GW or do they mean Gigawatt Hours?

<comment><USER49> They mean gigawatts of power, at some specific time. Germany has about 24.8 GW [1] of installed solar capacity, which recently peaked about 22 GW of actual power. The time-average is about 2.1 GW as of last year [1] (as 18 TWh/year), because solar panels in Germany only yield about 10-12% of their capacity averaged over the day and year. [a] So this is about the same as a (one) large nuclear reactor in electricity generated, but not peak power.

Incidentally it's cost about €100 billion [2] to build this, at taxpayer expense. (Though this a future-spending figure: the subsidies aren't paid at the time a power plant is built, but deferred over 20 years -- the present value is somewhat lower). The specific subsidy rates are listed here [3] (they're set by the year the plant is installed).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany>

[2] [http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inflated- incenti...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inflated-incentive- environment-minister-retreats-on-solar-subsidies-a-811530.html)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_incentives_for_photov...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_incentives_for_photovoltaics#Germany)

[a] Note that the installed capacity increased a lot over 2011, so you can't do simple comparisons like dividing 2.1/24.8 -- a lot of the capacity wasn't installed at the beginning of the year, and was at the end. But see the example capacity factors in the power plant table in [1]

<comment><USER45> >€100 billion [2] to build this, at taxpayer expense.

At energy consumers expense to be precise. 100 billion € sound scary, but it's just adds another 8,2% to the incredibly expensive German electricity bill.

<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strompreis>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's relatively easy to produce 22GWh for a couple hours each year. Try doing it 8,760 hours straight.

According to Reuters, solar provided 18TWh in 2011 (up 60% from 2010) which was 3% of total power output.

</comment><comment><USER51> How many energy was consumed building this thing? and in what time will this power plant produce same amount of energy?

<comment><USER52> About 1 to 2 years. Highly variable by technology.

There is a persistent myth that solar panels take more energy to fabricate than they produce in their lifetime. It is shown false with minimal effort (consider if the entire cost of a panel was energy. no labor, not capital equipment overhead, no raw materials… they still have payback periods shorter than their lifetimes).

<comment><USER53> For the newest, most efficient panels, it's about 5 years.

<comment><USER20> Where do you get this number from?

<comment><USER52> I don't have a number, but the exotics that are used in space applications may never pay back their production energy. But it takes a lot of extension cords to reach geosynchronous orbit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> > 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour

I'm cringing.

</comment><comment><USER55> Weather is a factor here, for example this lasted for a very long period for us humans - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age>

But then technology advances so fast, so it might be the right stuff.

<comment><USER55> Why downvoted? I'm not against it, just noting that weather affects such technology much more than other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Anyone else have a sudden urge to play Power Grid?</comment>


Crowd Fund The Debt - <AUTHOR> http://www.crowdfundthedebt.com/

<comment><USER2> On one-hand it's funny. On the other-hand, it's horribly sad considering that national debt (and taxes, generally) is a constitutionally-mandated crowdfunding scheme.

Having this presented as an April fool's gag rustles my jimmies in an odd fashion.

</comment><comment><USER3> Holy shit, this is the funniest thing I've seen all day. Although, kind of depressing at the same time...

</comment><comment><USER4> Okay, put a trillion dollars of it on my credit card.

We only pay if it tilts, right?

</comment><comment><USER5> It's an April Fools joke _and_ an off-topic flame-generating story all wrapped up in one, and, as a bonus, early flags don't seem sufficient to kill it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I forgot it was April Fool's Day until I saw this.

</comment><comment><USER7> April Fool's winner of the day right here

</comment><comment><USER8> april fools!</comment>


Any recommendation on a good accountant? - <AUTHOR> Need to consult an accountant for some basic startup questions. Who would you recommend? <comment><USER2> Questions like this are great when you don't give your location.

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL. Sorry about that. I'm in Colorado. But for the accountant, anywhere in the states would be fine. We have a DE C Corp. An accountant who specializes in SaaS startups would be great!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Freelancers who transitioned to passive income, how did you do it? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Try to package up as a product the experience you're selling when you're doing consultancy work e.g. as a book, a SaaS, a mobile app, an online course. Jumping between companies as you freelance lets you see common pain points that you could address and manual work that you could create a product for to automate. It's probably harder to do this if you're on a salary in the same company on the same project for years too.

[https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/) is a paid Chrome extension I built that automates many of the checks I used to do manually during contracts when optimising the SEO, speed and security of websites. I found many developers and content editors on websites I worked with weren't checking for web best practices because of lack of knowledge + time and because doing manual checks is error-prone + tedious.

<comment><USER3> That's it, really. Adding that passive is a bit of a myth, you will actually become a salesman for your personal brand.

<comment><USER2> It's possible to get to a stage eventually where you're making money daily without needing to put in a full working day every day (e.g. selling a SaaS/app/ebook, consultancy retainers), but that's not likely to happen without many hours invested beforehand somewhere.

I'm guessing it's extremely rare you can create + sell something with minimal hours invested with little specialised experience though.

I agree though, I think you're always going to have some level of ongoing responsibility as well e.g. responding to customers/clients, keeping an eye on server issues, checking up on contractors, marketing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have an Amazon affiliate site that I've posted about previously. As the other poster suggested, passive is a bit of a myth, its actually quite a bit of work. But its always at my pace and no one is looking over my shoulder. I can craft things in the winter when I'm at home a lot (I live in Wisconsin), and then they make me money in the summer when I don't want to put in as much work. It's enjoyable work, I virtually meet a lot of wonderful leather crafters (its a watch strap website), and its fun to post about stuff they have created. Some of it is incredibly beautiful. All in all I like it as a side project, but I'm not sure if it could ever replace my job income totally. It would be placing too much importance on one vendor.</comment>


How cork is made: an illustrated guide - <AUTHOR> http://www.wineanorak.com/corks/howcorkismade.htm?daysago=365 <comment><USER2> Previous submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4668526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4668526) (507 points by shawndumas, 1 year ago, 121 comments) Why?</comment>


Ask PG: What steps would you advise a company to take after leaking passwords? - <AUTHOR>

If one of the YC companies leaked half of their user's hashed passwords and immediately asked you for your advice on what to do, what would it be? What if they had low security standards? Would it change if the company was bigger? (even public?) <comment><USER2> Apologize, explain what happened, and fix the bug(s).

</comment><comment><USER3> The typical advice to contact the users is good public relations advice, but we all need to remember that there are strict data breach notification laws throughout the US (46 different laws in 48 states)[1] and in many countries around the world. If you know you've been breached and suspect personal data has been stolen you need to get yourself a lawyer. These laws are complicated and professional help is definitely warranted.

[1][http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/telecom/security- breach-...](http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/telecom/security-breach- notification-laws.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER4> It happened:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070311083012/http://reddit.com/...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070311083012/http://reddit.com/blog/theft)

</comment><comment><USER5> My first thought is to force a password reset via email on the next login.

<comment><USER6> I have to say I'm pretty amazed I haven't gotten an email from LinkedIn yet about their leak. Craziness. They seem to have no problem occasionally changing the setting of my "send me emails updating me of my networks" option.</comment></comment>


Mega Overtakes Rapidshare, DropBox - <AUTHOR> http://www.zeropaid.com/news/103145/mega-overtakes-rapidshare-dropbox/ <comment><USER3> Is traffic to Dropbox.com indicative of anything? I've been a Dropbox user for years (yo-yoing between paid and unpaid plans based on my need - the ability to do so is something I hugely appreciate) but never visit the site.

Is this not the equivalent of judging Windows usage based on visits to microsoft.com?

<comment><USER4> > _I've been a Dropbox user for years [...] but never visit the site._

I created a Dropbox account (which I do use) a couple years ago, and last week I visited the site for the first time in almost as long as I've had the account.

A word of warning to you, since you don't access the site often: your password expires, and you'll need access to your email account when it does.

My laptop semi-died last week (it's not actually dead, but I couldn't get it to boot at the time), so I used my girlfriend's to order a new one.

I keep my KeePass database in my DropBox for just such occasions, so I tried to log into Dropbox's web interface to retrieve it and access my account on the computer retailer's website. Dropbox accepted my password, but told me I couldn't continue until I changed my password, which required clicking a link they had sent to my email account.

Unfortunately, the password to my gmail account is also in KeePass, and is an incomprehensible mess of generated gibberish that I don't know, so I couldn't get in. I had to reset my Google password using an email account that is apparently on file with Google, in order to reset my password with DropBox, in order to access my retail account with the laptop vendor.

I don't know if this would have been easier had I known about DropBox's two- factor authentication before this, or if maybe I could have installed DropBox on my girlfriend's laptop and got in that way without needing to reset anything, but I ended up burning half an hour on this because I didn't know I had to keep my password constantly up to date on their website.

It seems like an obvious thing to do, but for something like Dropbox which is just "always there" on your local machine, it's an easy thing to forget.

<comment><USER5> I think you must remember at least one password, and everything else is in Keepass database. I also do the same thing.

<comment><USER6> Exactly

Some people rely _too much_ on "one password" solutions, because of security, etc

But it's very easy to lock yourself out of everything. Very easy.

The best place for keeping important passwords is still my head.

Sure, you can use password management solutions, just keep a backup (piece of paper, secondary means of logging, etc)

<comment><USER7> If you were ever in an accident, or became incapacitated, those passwords would be irretrievable in your head.

I think that a software password manager (regularly backed up) with a master password stored in a secure (offline) location is the best solution.

<comment><USER6> Yes, your password DB should be backed up in a couple of places, and of course, keep the master password offline securely as well. I don't use a ready made solution, but something similar with GPG

And don't forget to test the backups periodically, and check the master password

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "We welcome the ongoing #Mega security debate & will offer a cash prize encryption challenge soon. Let's see what you got ;-)"

I can't think of a better way to get someone with real crypto cojones to fix their crypto missteps. Power to Kim and what he´s doing. 50GB for free is amazing.

<comment><USER9> Hiring a competent and qualified security consultant/company to evaluate their services/processes, maybe?

The really good hackers are likely out getting paid good money for their work, and won't necessarily have time to poke at this for uncertain reward. There might be sufficient value in the publicity associated with finding flaws (especially while it's getting lots of media attention right now), but a competition/challenge is rarely a good economic choice for the potential entrants.

A bug bounty programme might be useful as a supplement to a rigorous security audit, but the issues discovered so far seem to be things that could have been identified by reasonably competent netsec people, indicating that such an audit either didn't happen, or wasn't acted upon.

<comment><USER10> What about Google? They hire plenty of competent netsec people, and yet the Chrome bug bounties yielded discovery of bugs that even those folks couldn't find.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> With the amount of publicity it has generated thanks to the incompetence of US and NZ authorities it is wonder it has not overtaken twitter yet.

But there is the thing - mega is not a good service - too much false promises. Seems like a honeytrap for infringers. There are ways to design it better with better guarantees for user privacy.

<comment><USER12> Can you explain further? As far as I can tell, there does not appear to be any better possible option given the requirements (usable from a browser, legally defensible, anonymous usage with proxies, resistant to DCMA takedowns, etc)

<comment><USER11> Well ... I had this idea few years back. I am no encryption specialist.

1\. I will get as many backblaze pods as I can.

2\. Client will mostly be the same with few differences - the encryption will be symmetrical (AES probably), with randomly generated key from high quality entropy. This key will never leave the client. File names will be encrypted too. It will be bundled with the file and uploaded in some blob For directories - they can be tared first before encrypted. So the only thing that I will see as a host is file size.

3\. There will be some more keys that will be generated and uploaded - <USER2> alive and kill switch. keep alive must be given on regular intervals or content expires. The kill key will delete the file on the server and as many of the logs as legally possible, end of story.

4\. The server returns the unique url.

5\. You get some text on your screen that will give 3 urls \- kill url \- keep alive url \- decrypt key \- safe download url (<http://something/url>) will be asked by the page to give key. Decrypt will be on the client too. \- unsafe download url (<http://something/url#key)the> javascript will begin decryption immediately but if someone intercepts the url - he will have the key.

5\. Premium accounts will be given on scratch cards or bought with bitcoins. Donations will be accepted anyway but won't give benefits.

6\. .onion address for upload

7\. Outgoing bandwidth - the speed of the downloads for all but premium accounts will be function of the donations received the previous day.

8\. Everything will be open , and the community will be allowed to audit the systems.

That is in general details.

<comment><USER13> And btw, that's basically what Dropbox (and mostly every other private file sharing service) does: files are encrypted using your password as the key.

<comment><USER7> Even if that's true, Dropbox is still able to access your files at any time. If you don't control the key yourself, it might as well not be encrypted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mega is a file sharing service, Dropbox isn't (well, sharing is just one of the bonus feature). Comparing traffic is stupid!

</comment><comment><USER13> 4shared.com intentionally left out:

<http://cl.ly/image/0q2e462p1V2Y>

Dropbox is used primarily via client apps, those figures must be less than 10% of it's actual usage.

<comment><USER15> Dropbox was intentionally included for link bait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> *on Alexa's top list.

<comment><USER17> That's an important clarification. The article is eager to make a sensational statement, offering a clever bait-and-switch claim in the first paragraph. It starts out mentioning signups...

"If the launch day signups and traffic were something to shout home about, after the surge of media attention that Mega garnered over the next few days from sites like ourselves,"

...but ends up supporting its claims with Alexa traffic ratings...

"it only got stronger and now we're at a stage where Mega has almost broken into the top 100 sites in the world."

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Alexa rankings are not reliable.

<comment><USER19> Why not?

<comment><USER20> The system they use for metrics is biased. They track the visits of the users who have installed the Alexa toolbar in their browsers. It's really hard to get a decent sample of Internet users using that data collecting method.

<comment><USER21> Alexa now does direct tracking, in a somewhat similar manner to Quantcast. I don't think very much of their data is yet represented in that manner however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how long it will take countries to block Mega in the same way that torrent sites (TBP) are blocked, and what steps Mega has taken in anticipation of this...

<comment><USER23> He had A-list endorsements coming through with the previous product, when it becomes that high-profile and main stream the U$A won't be able to just steal the domain without public due-process.. They had their chance, but they may still find a way..

<comment><USER24> not what the OP said. TPB is very much high profile but you can't access it in some countries because it is banned at the ISP level (with a reasonably public legal process).

<comment><USER22> Yes, exactly this. TPB's IP addresses are blocked at ISP level, and the response has been to set up many reflector sites (e.g. malaysiabay.org), and mirrors.

A complicated interactive site is of course much harder to mirror than a bunch of magnet links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I want to know how the security and cryptography work with my files and shared files.

<comment><USER26> Some details in this article: <http://fail0verflow.com/blog/2013/megafail.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't know... it seems like people are just curious about it, but it couldn't really be used properly (at least for me... I wasn't even able to download my files).

Let's give it a few days and then we will see.</comment>


Rust 2017 Survey Results - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/09/05/Rust-2017-Survey-Results.html <comment><USER2> > Among editors, vim remains king, though we see healthy growth in VSCode > adoption at 34.1% (up from last year's 3.8%). This growth no doubt has been > helped by VSCode being one of the first platforms to get support for the > Rust Language Server.

This suggests that it would help to have better getting-started guides for vim, and for using it with RLS in particular.

> 10% responded that tools aren't use mature enough.

I've seen more than one person mention that the fact that RLS doesn't work on stable Rust is a sign of immaturity.

Also, in the context of people who had stopped using Rust:

> The rest of users mentioned [...] were turned away by Rust's syntax, [...] > or had a bad interaction with the Rust community.

Is anyone systematically looking over each of the responses that said either of these, in detail, in order to address them as well as possible?

<comment><USER3> What I personally did not like is: I'm very minimal vim user, I don't use plugins or plugin managers, I just setup some basic options like syntax highlighting and auto indentation. All I wanted from Rust plugin is to enable syntax highlighting and some reasonable indentation. But it turns out that I must install some kind of plugin manager just for rust plugin and I would receive lots of bells and whistles that I'm not interested, at least while I'm learning.

Actually I think it's the same problem with golang. Last time I used it, I had to browse VCS history of go project, they shipped vim plugin long time ago but then deleted it, I had to recover it from there and install it into ~/.vim/.

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't have to use a plugin manager, that's just how many people use plugins.

Furthermore, earlier in the year I upstreamed rust.vim [https://github.com/vim/vim/pull/1356/](https://github.com/vim/vim/pull/1356/) So if you're using a new enough vim, you shouldn't even need the plugin.

<comment><USER2> And thank you for that, because it works out of the box for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if the results for "I don't use Rust because..." would change if the answer "It would slow development down too much", or something along the same lines, would be there. At least that's my personal reason. I like Rust and I've played around with it, but it's just not the right tool for the job if you need Python-style rapid development.

<comment><USER5> Could they make something like nim for rust?

<comment><USER6> Managing memory manually doesn't sound like it would promote rapid development. So you may as well just use Nim :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't really "manage memory manually" in Rust either, generally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When they ask if an update to a stable compiler has broken their code, what does this mean exactly? I had thought that a goal of Rust was to always maintain backwards compatibility?

I know how hard this is to pull off and I am not trying to say they have done a poor job; I genuinely want to know what others consider a breaking change.

<comment><AUTHOR> In a language that's as strongly typed as Rust, any change can be breaking. So for example, let's say that you had code that looks like this:

        use std::cell::*;

        struct MoveCell;

We then add a new type to std::cell, also named MoveCell. Your code will now fail to compile, as the two structures conflict.

This kind of breakage can still happen, even though we care a lot about stability.

<comment><USER7> Ah that makes sense. I suppose you can't predict naming in everyone's source for their projects. Thanks for the answer!

<comment><AUTHOR> No worries. There is also other things as well, that's just one of the easiest ones to explain. For example, in 1.20 last week, we fixed a bug with include! in documentation tests behaving strangely; that's technically a change in behavior, and therefore, a breaking change. Two crates were the only users, apparently, and so they just wrote a patch and fixed it. Still technically breakage.

The guiding principle is "it should not be painful to update the compiler", and I think we do as good a job as we can making sure that that's true.

<comment><USER8> It would be helpful in these guidelines to make a clear distinction between changes that result in "code not compiling" versus "code behaving differently".

It seems like the vast majority of cases you've enumerated are in the category of "code won't compile". Perhaps some have a knee-jerk reaction against this, but to me this is kind of incompatibility seems much more preferable to the other, especially if the update required to the code is trivial and obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The next survey should ask which nightly-only features are keeping them on nightly. :)

<comment><USER10> From asking around (totally unscientific, but I've been asking this question for a while now), it seems like most folks develop for stable but use nightly for incremental compilation, RLS, and/or clippy. The first two are on the path to stable in the next few releases, and the last one is starting to go in that direction too, but will take longer.

<comment><USER11> Yes, this is exactly how we do it: Our build systems all run stable, but developers use nightly for RLS and clippy.

We did have one developer who was excited about using Rocket (which he said was much better than the other Rust web frameworks he had tried), but we decided that the grief of building production code on unstable wasn't worth it.

(We're also holding off on directly using futures in any major way until the developer ergonomics and especially error messages get better.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Only 75% of respondents feel welcome in the community. That seems bad, considering those who felt unwelcome probably left already and didn't participate in the survey. I would have expected closer to 100%.

<comment><USER13> 23.6% of the rest of the respondents chose "not sure", I wonder what amount of these people just didn't interact with the community at all and chose that response.

Only 1.3% specifically responded with not feeling welcome, which seems quite low to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice to see only 7.5% have had stuff broken by an upgrade. Last time I messed around with it, it was still changing rapidly, which is part of what put me off. May give it another go.

<comment><AUTHOR> Was that before or after 1.0? We do time-based releases, every six weeks. New stuff is still being worked on all the time, like most languages.

<comment><USER14> Before 1.0 :)

Just installed 1.20 now, giving it another try. IntelliJ support helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yeah, that makes perfect sense. :)

IntelliJ's plugin just became officially supported by the company, so let's hope it gets even better from here!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, rust+emacs is pretty easy to setup and provides syntax-highlighting, indentation, documentation, jump-to-definition, etc. out of the box.</comment>


Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces - <AUTHOR> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/ <comment><USER2> Anybody knows about OS lectures that use this and are freely available?

<comment><USER3> There is an Operating System class by the University of Virginia that teaches the course in Rust. The course can be found here. [http://rust- class.org/](http://rust-class.org/)</comment></comment>


C++ value category cheat-sheet [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jeaye/value-category-cheatsheet/blob/master/value-category-cheatsheet.pdf <comment><USER2> Softer entry to the whole concept of lvalues/rvalues in general:

[http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2011/12/15/understanding- lvalue...](http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2011/12/15/understanding-lvalues-and- rvalues-in-c-and-c)

<comment><USER3> And of course there's Strachey's _Fundamental Concepts in Programming Languages_ (1967), which introduced the LValue/RValue distinction. It is very readable and relevant today.

[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Strachey67.pdf](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Strachey67.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is great, but regarding the format I would suggest some options to PDF:

a) markdown with embedded graphviz.

ex: [https://github.com/TLmaK0/gravizo](https://github.com/TLmaK0/gravizo)

b) a jupyter notebook (which also uses markdown blocks). jupyter can embed C++, so you can have interactive blocks that you can evaluate and play with.

ex: [https://github.com/minrk/clingkernel/blob/master/cling.ipynb](https://github.com/minrk/clingkernel/blob/master/cling.ipynb)

Both seem more performant than in-browser PDF rendering.

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked for a number of options and I didn't find anything which could provide me with automatic syntax highlighting, non-html layouts, and quick iteration. That doesn't mean that such a thing doesn't exist!

Thanks for the suggestions.

<comment><USER4> Jupyter notebooks are probably what you are looking for. I highly recommend them. Embedded REPL makes iteration very fast and results can be shared directly through a URL, exported to various formats or shared in websites that support it such as github.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Question: it _is_ ok to initialize a string_view from a string literal, right?

e.g.

      std::string_view sv{ "lvalue" };

or

      auto sv{ "lvalue"sv };

<comment><USER6> Yes, but never use {} initialization with auto.

<comment><USER7> Never give advice without telling why, because it's very likely that people will forget it if they don't understand your advice.

<comment><USER6> Ok.

      auto i{42}; // std::initializer_list<int>

<comment><USER8> No longer applies with c++17

<comment><USER9> More info about this: [http://stackoverflow.com/q/25612262/331041](http://stackoverflow.com/q/25612262/331041)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the biggest issue in C++ is that you don't have to understand this whole mess to be productive in it. This is also perhaps its greatest strength. Where you have Rust which won't even compile a basic toy program without demonstrating a full understanding of its Ownership model.

<comment><USER11> It isn't a strength to allow ill-defined programs to silently corrupt your process.

If you don't understand what you are writing, either the compiler (rust-like) or the runtime (script-like) should complain.

C++ usually does neither. I think that's undesirable. Why it does neither makes sense, but I wouldn't call it a strength.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are there cheat sheets like this for other languages too?

<comment><USER13> Most of them aren't as insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reddit discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/5zzurr/c_value_categor...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/5zzurr/c_value_category_cheatsheet/)

<comment><USER15> I'd love it if someone could shed some light on my question here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/5zzurr/c_value_categor...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/5zzurr/c_value_category_cheatsheet/df2xvbj/)

        int const &f(int const &a) { return a; }
        int r = f(3);

Is the value of r implementation-defined according to the standard?

<comment><USER16> This might answer that [https://herbsutter.com/2008/01/01/gotw-88-a-candidate- for-th...](https://herbsutter.com/2008/01/01/gotw-88-a-candidate-for-the-most- important-const/)

I think this is similar to the std::max/std::min stuff

<comment><USER15> No, that post refers to the lifetime of temporaries held by local reference variables. My question is about temporaries created to pass reference parameters to a function. Is the lifetime of that temporary the BODY of the function? The full expression that calls the function? The enclosing scope of that full expression? (for the record, VS2017 does the latter)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A comment on the document's design: The low contrast of light gray text on yellow background makes it difficult to read. Black text on white, or dark gray text on white is perfectly acceptable.

Another drawback of colored backgrounds is that readers wanting to print out the pdf will consume ink/toner to render the non-white background.

<comment><USER18> I'm pretty sure the author was trying to use the Solarized color scheme: [http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized](http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized)

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/jeaye/value-category- cheatsheet/blob/mast...](https://github.com/jeaye/value-category- cheatsheet/blob/master/src/value_categories/css.clj#L4)

You bet. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Too Cool for PGP - <AUTHOR> https://www.mailpile.is/blog/2016-12-13_Too_Cool_for_PGP.html <comment><USER2> All of this arguing about PGP is just bike-shedding.

OpenPGP is not going to gain any traction if it continues in the same vein it's already been in for years. There's a reason that there's a lot of really smart people writing blog-posts saying that PGP sucks, and the reason for that is pretty straightforward: Using PGP sucks!

The article says we shouldn't completely neglect PGP going forward, and that I agree with, but it's certainly not what I'd call the best path, and most definitely not if it's not receiving traction from the major email vendor that is used for corporate mail: Microsoft.

Like it or not, Microsoft Outlook (and Exchange behind it) is not going away. It's the tool of choice by a large margin in almost every single company I've done any consulting work for -- not a small number.

There are many other things we should be doing. TLS mail should be supported everywhere. Google providing a deadline to stop accepting mail via non- transport-encrypted SMTP would be a good start. The second thing to do would probably be to promote S/MIME. It's not as "good" as PGP, but any level of encryption is a hell of a lot better than none in this instance, and to my knowledge almost all widely-used mail-clients already handle S/MIME just fine.

<comment><USER3> In the realistic world where perfect is the enemy of good, I'd argue that S/MIME is actually better than PGP/GPG for most email users.

The "missing" steps to make it truly user friendly IMO are:

\- a more reliable/user friendly free S/MIME issuing CA. So far the best option seems to be Comodo, but it's far from a great experience.

\- improved client support for setting up keys+certs. e.g if iCloud Keychain would/could sync these items to/from iOS devices, 90% of the hassle with setup would be resolved.

\- defaulting on to display signed mail status in mail clients.

Edit: clarified solution to: CA.</comment></comment>


Air France 447 Thoughts - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/06/09/air-france-447-thoughts/ <comment><USER2> _6 the airplane came apart from being oversped, overstressed, etc._

7 but it all happened so instantaneously that no distress signal was given. An oversped, overstressed plane does not come apart instantly.

8 both pilots of an Air Comet flight from Lima, Peru, to Lisbon, Portugal, sent a written report on the bright flash they said they saw to Air France, Airbus and the Spanish civil aviation authority, the airline told CNN.

"Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds," the captain wrote. [http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/04/plane.crash...](http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/04/plane.crash/index.html)

.

In other words, we don't know. Repeat after me: We don't know.

I've been seeing explanations since the event, from the storm to a "computer glitch" to this, and it's starting to wear on my nerves. Let's get all the evidence in, including the black box, and only then try to figure it out.</comment>


Three libraries, a framework and an API - how ContentTagger got built in 7 hours - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jaggeree.com/post/85891242/three-libraries-a-framework-and-an-api-how <comment><USER2> I still meet people, both in real life and most recently in #startups, who don't use any sort of 3rd-party libraries or frameworks; they hand-code everything. I've been trying to explain for years how completely ridiculous that is for 95% of use cases, but still people fight me.

This is a great example of taking a bunch of existing tools and data then stringing them together to create something new. Granted, we don't have "The next Google" here (whatever that means), but it seems like people who still roll their own everything rationalize it by saying things like "it makes it more flexible" or "blah isn't scalable enough" or "I don't really like the conventions".

These are all pretty stupid reasons. Chances are, you're not going to need that flexibility anyway; if you can't name a half dozen things X doesn't do that you need it to, just use it. You probably won't ever have to worry about scaling, so forget it. And if those conventions save hundreds of hours, who cares?

We have numerous languages now, Python especially, where there is probably a library for anything you need to do. There might even be 3rd-party APIs for all the data you need. Embrace the work that others are doing for you: stop coding and start stealing!

<comment><USER3> Personally, I think your attitude is laughable. Why should I use 3rd-party APIs? I don't even have the time to learn them, because I'm too busy debugging by own private programming language, tool chain, and operating system. I'm surprised I'm even posting this on the internet that everyone uses, as opposed to my completely solipsistic one-person internet. It's really heaven, trust me.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any way to bypass Government's shutdown of the internet? - <AUTHOR> I live in India and run a software tools business for data scientist. Government of India has had statewide internet shutdown in 2 states in the past 6 months (due to domestic issues that I don't want to get into this post).<p>If this were to happen in my state, is there any way I can have a fallback internet connectivity via global satellites or some other means? I am ready to pay yearly fees for this kind of service (as "connectivity insurance" for continued business). <comment><USER2> Technically (well politically) satellite ISPs have to enforce the shutdown as well. You'd need a two-way contract where both upstream and downstream is via satellite, many contracts are cheaper when the upstream is via phone line. Have a look at [https://www.eutelsat.com/](https://www.eutelsat.com/) Too Way (there are various resellers). Expect cost of 500 Euro for hardware, 60 Euro/month for 50Mbit down, 2Mbit up.

<comment><USER3> This is indeed your best option, I used to work with satelite down and through phoneline up. To do the uplink through satelite, hardware costs are involved.</comment></comment>


Hacker Monthly #2 now available in epub and mobi formats - <AUTHOR> https://www.fifobooks.com/Catalog?bkid=ef497e7d-fafd-427d-bf52-ea06ad73f1a7

<comment><USER2> Two comments for the maker of HM:

-It took me a while to figure out what HM was. You should have an About section or something on your website. I needed to click through to the first PDF before I saw the box about HM being a collection of articles featured on HN.

-Is it possible to set up a subscription on MagCloud? I don't see the option anywhere, but ideally I'd like to just have the magazine arrive at my door every month without me having to do anything. Like a "real" magazine. I don't care if it charges my card every month, or for a full year upfront.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone know what it would take to get this on the amazon store in the kindle format? That would get it in front of a huge number of people.

<comment><USER4> AMZ does have a self-publish service, so it would be up to bearwithclaws (who's behind the HN magazine) to do it.

OTOH, he'd have to deal with getting it in the right format himself (right now, we do it as a courtesy for listing it on Fifobooks.com), and he'd get a worse deal in terms of costs, rights, and royalties, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love Hacker Monthly in epub format. I have a sony pocket reader and the pdfs are a little difficult to read.

</comment><comment><USER6> what about pdf?

<comment><USER7> <http://hackermonthly.com/></comment></comment>


JavaScript Promises in Wicked Detail - <AUTHOR> http://mattgreer.org/articles/promises-in-wicked-detail/ <comment><USER2> The situation caused by promises gaining popularity and non-IE browsers refusing to implement setImmediate is really quite ugly. setTimeout's minimum value is defined to be 4ms by the HTML5 spec, so if the browser conforms to that and your app makes heavy use of promises (using setTimeout), now you're waiting multiple screen refreshes for updates – so you don't actually want to use setTimeout. Even though the asynchronous requirement is good for developers using the promise API, it really screwed over implementors.

The setImmediate polyfills attempt a bunch of ugly fallbacks, including (depending on which one you use): yield/generators, MutationObserver, postMessage/MessageChannel, onreadystatechange, and finally setTimeout (the slowest).

IMO the browser vendors should just give in and add setImmediate – if ever there was a need for it, this is it. But maybe they consider ES6 features a good enough substitute, I don't know.

<comment><USER3> This. Ran into this very issue when I was implementing promises in Mithril ( [http://lhorie.github.io/mithril](http://lhorie.github.io/mithril) ). This really makes promise performance a much uglier beast than it needs to be.

I took a less conventional road there: I deliberately violate the A+ spec and let surprises like the ones in the article example happen, in order to get good performance without hacks/bloat. Typically, promise resolution is usually done asynchronously anyways (otherwise, why bother using promises?), so this caveat would only be a problem in some serious case of misuse.

In any case, surprises are fixable in application space (i.e. just move lines of code around), but performance degradation due to some deep implementation detail in the promise API / browsers not playing ball is nearly impossible to fix unless you switch to a non-conformant promise library (in which case, you'd have to fix the surprises anyways - assuming you had any cases of misuse to begin with).

<comment><USER4> A+ doesn't require that you use the browser's asynchronous scheduling mechanism, it only requires that the promise callback is always executed _after_ the current function. There is a really neat hack to achieve this without completely relying on the browser's scheduler by implementing your own callback queue.

      asap(callback);

which will push to an array of callbacks that you need to execute and then call a loop if one isn't currently active:

      function asap(cb) {
        callbacks.push(cb);
        setTimeout(flushQueue, 5);
      }

Flushqueue will run all the callbacks from the queue in a loop, then empty it

      function flushqueue() {
        if (flushing) return;
        flushing = true;
        for (var k = 0; k < callbacks.length; ++k) {
          callbacks[k]();
        }
        flushing = false;
      }

Now if some of the callbacks schedules a new function to execute using asap

promise.then(function first(x) { return alreadyResolvedPromise.then(function second(y) { return y.some.property; }); });

then when "promise" resolves, first()'s execution will push a new function to the queue, changing queue.length, causing that loop above to cause one more iteration - but only _after_ first is complete.

(If you don't nest the callbacks, then the push will happen before flushqueue even starts executing)

The code above is overly simplified but I think its enough to demonstrate the idea. (Huge thanks Stefan Penner for explaining it to me :D)

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately there's no way to remove the need for flushQueue being called with the browser's asynchronous scheduling mechanism (using setTimeout in your example) in the case where it isn't already flushing – that's the issue. Flushing the callback queue to completion is an optimization, not really a fix.

<comment><USER4> Yes, truly asynchronous things which took less than 5ms will now take at least 5ms to execute. But its a stretch to say that for Promises/A+ implementations

"... always require at least one more iteration of the event loop to resolve. This is not necessarily true of the standard callback approach."

as the article states. A fully synchronous chain of 20 operations wont take 100ms - it will only take 5ms

<comment><USER3> >> it will only take 5ms

This is true in the scenario of a linear chain, e.g. `.then(foo).then(bar)`, but the spec also requires that the following should work (for interop purposes, among a few other scenarios):

        .then(function() {return someOtherpromise.then(doSomething)})

So you might incur other harder-to-track-down penalties if you're doing interop between libraries somewhere, or if the promise chain has dependencies on the data provided by upstream resolvers.

<comment><USER4> If someOtherpromise is an already resolved promise from your own library, then it will still take just 5ms - the neat hack here is that asap will simply push another callback at the end of the queue (which is still being processed by the for loop) and the loop will simply get one more iteration straight in the middle of its execution.

If its from another library, then that other library may be using its own scheduler and you will loose those 5ms either way...

<comment><USER3> Yep. I believe the bigger promise libraries (bluebird et al) implement mechanisms similar to asap internally iirc.

My point was that violating the A+ spec instead of getting into the whole rabbit hole of timer clamps is not as unreasonable as one might think, and that doing so doesn't incur delays in any of those scenarios.

<comment><USER4> Maybe it isn't that unreasonable. But personally I do like guarantees, and in a stateful language I especially like guarantees about execution order.

If these guarantees can be offloaded to a library then thats really great, as I don't have to keep them in mind anymore, freeing my brain to think about the specific problem I'm trying to solve. One less thing to check for when debugging too.

There is also the bonus feature that stack overflows wont happen, which enables liberal use of recursive promise functions. (On the other hand, memory usage might still explode, so its not quite that easy... :D)

<comment><USER3> Those are good points. So far this approach hasn't been a problem w/ Mithril. If it turns out to be a bad idea down the road though, it can always be changed to conform w/ A+

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is off-topic, but there seems to be this trend on HN (and probably similar sites) where a post about Topic X will get a lot of comments/views, and the following several days similar posts will appear on the front page, in the format of "Why You Should Never Do X" or "A Better Way to Do X".

What I'm wondering is whether this is some sort of bias on my part (I tend to notice them because my memory of the original post is still fresh), or whether the subsequent stories are upvoted to the front-page because people want to discuss the topic more. And from the author's perspective, whether they are writing it to take advantage of the opportunity for increased page-views.

<comment><USER6> It certainly happens. HN has a lot of self-promotion going on, and a lot of people love to hop on bandwagons. Both reasons are compelling evidence for consuming fewer blogs and more whitepapers; at least when it comes to the practice of developing software.

<comment><USER7> > fewer blogs and more whitepapers

Is there a Hacker News for whitepapers? Because I've heard this comment a few times now, and I'm ready to start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Promises are good solution to tackle call back problems. But once you spend a little time with Functional Reactive Programming, You never want to go back to any imperative solution.

Functional Reactive Programming eliminates every scenario where you need a promise. FRP models "past, present & future" in a sense that you never need to use any "promises" library again. It brings such a higher level abstraction to your "time" dependent code, that you don't have to maintain state in your code. BaconJS is one of the simplest FRP library which brings simplicity & power to your JS projects.

[http://baconjs.github.io/](http://baconjs.github.io/)

<comment><USER9> Scalar variables are a good solution to tackle register problems. But once you spend a little time with Linked List Programming, You never want to go back to any scalar solution.

Linked List Programming eliminates every scenario where you need a scalar. LLP models "beginning, middle & end" in a sense that you never need to use any "scalars" library again. It brings such a higher level abstraction to your "space" dependent code, that you don't have to maintain state in your code. JSClass's Linked List is one of the simplest LLP library which brings simplicity & power to your JS projects.

[http://jsclass.jcoglan.com/linkedlist.html](http://jsclass.jcoglan.com/linkedlist.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Promises/A+ assumption that you'd never want a Promise to return a Promise is really shortsighted.

<comment><USER11> Promises are really Monads for asynchronous results.

A Monad kind of wraps a certain value. For example, we might have a Promise JSON from an API call. The bind method of a Monad (>>= in Haskell) takes a JSON Promise, and a function (JSON -> Promise b for some b), and returns a value of type Promise b. Promise.then is equivalent to bind.

In Haskell you might define them like this:

        data Promise msg val = Resolve val | Reject msg deriving Show

        instance Monad (Promise msg) where
            return = Resolve

            (>>=) :: Promise msg val -> (val -> Promise msg b) -> Promise msg b
            (Reject msg) >>= _ = Reject msg
            (Resolve val) >>= f = f val

They would be used like this

        newPromise = jsonPromise >>= transformJSON

In JavaScript, you would write

        var newPromise = jsonPromise.then(transformJSON)

However, the JavaScript case is slightly different. It is not as strict about types. It is possible (and typical) for transformJSON to return a bare type, rather than a Promise, while Haskell would require a Promise be returned every time. It treats an unwrapped value the same as an already fulfilled promise for that value. But automatically unboxing the promises that are returned gives them the full power of Monads.

<comment><USER10> No, "automatically unboxing the promises that are returned" does not give Promises "the full power of Monads", because you cannot represent a Promise for a Promise for a value. Promises/A+ breaks parametricity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not getting it. How is this?

      doSomething().then(function(result) {
        var results = [result];
        results.push(88);
        return results;
      }).then(function(results) {
        results.push(99);
        return results;
      }).then(function(results) {
        console.log(results.join(', ');
      });

More attractive/readable and superior to this?

      function doSomething(pushEight);

      function pushEight(res){
        res.push(88);
        pushNine(res);
      }

      function pushNine(res){
        res.push(99);
        showResults(res);
      }

      function showResults(res){
        console.log(res.join(', '));
      }

In addition to the anonymous functions I can't reuse elsewhere? Serious question, just asking..

<comment><USER13> Your example is nice because:

\- Your functions are coupled and cooperate on shared mutable state (you can't pushNine and then pushTen). In large projects coupling like that starts to hurt a lot, so you need more isolated functions and store intermediate state somewhere - and closures are convenient for that, but don't nest too gracefully.

\- You don't have error handling. Promises don't make it bulletproof, but at least allow handling most errors in one place (so you don't need `if (err) return callback(err)` in _every_ callback).

But IMHO the `.then()` syntax is just a temporary solution. Promises become really awesomene with ES6 generators or ES7 async/await:

        async function doSomething(){
            showResults([await getEight(), await getNine()])
        }

<comment><USER12> Dont care for the .then syntax. The async/await however I like alot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If anyone reading this is very familiar with the Bluebird promises library, it would be awesome if you could write an in depth blog post on all the optimization strategies used by bluebird to minimize the memory and cpu overhead it achieves.

<comment><USER4> Petka Antonov (the author) wrote this:

[https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/wiki/Optimization-k...](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/wiki/Optimization- killers)

Other than that, I think he also said similar rules of C++ and Java optimization apply (avoid allocations a.k.a. creations of new objects, avoid avoidable work in special cases, take advantage of cache locality etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If a Promise is rejected, what happens to the return value of that Promise's .then() (assuming the onRejected handler doesn't throw)? Is it also rejected (as the article seems to suggest)? Or is it fulfilled (as the spec indicates, if I'm reading it correctly)?

<comment><USER9> It's fulfilled. If you return from the rejection handler, instead of rethrowing, then you have handled the error:

rejectedPromise.catch(e => { return 5; });

is similar to

try { throwError(); } catch (e) { return 5; }

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> i'm at the beginning of a node project and need to choose a promises implementation. it seems like when and q are the most often cited, but then i've noticed someone mentioning this "bluebird" library. it seems like there are a ton of these things. any advice on which one to pick? does it really make a difference since they all conform to the A+ spec?

</comment><comment><USER17> Whoa. We've shifted from the (simpler) continuation-passing style with callbacks to _this_. Is this _really_ worth it? Honestly, I don't think I like the whole idea of promises. What do we gain from this besides technical debt?

<comment><USER18> do the words "callback hell" mean anything to you?

<comment><USER17> As with all language constructs, it's not a problem if you're judicious.

<comment><USER9> Who needs functions. Labelled gotos are not a problem if you're judicious.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


YC Demo Day Session 2 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/19/yc-demo-day-session-2-helion-bitaccess-ubiome-fixed-and-more/ <comment><USER2> > Sliced democratizes access to hedge funds. Even though hedge funds have > outperformed S&P 500 over the past decade, very few investors have access to > them.

Hedge Funds on average do not outperform market indices such as S&P 500. I'm curious as to whether this was TechCrunch's take on the problem, or the startup's?

<comment><USER3> Interesting. If Hedge funds can't event beat a vanilla S&P500 index fund, why would any one want to invest in a hedge fund?

[http://longbets.org/362/](http://longbets.org/362/)

Buffet (S&P500) is leading against hedge funds on the aforementioned long bet: [http://fortune.com/2014/02/05/buffett-widens-lead- in-1-milli...](http://fortune.com/2014/02/05/buffett-widens-lead-in-1-million- hedge-fund-bet/)

Disclaimer: I am on Buffet's side on this long bet. Management fees are the devil. I am all-in for low-fee index funds.

<comment><USER4> It can make sense to invest in hedge funds even if you don't expect your hedge fund portfolio to beat the market on average, if the hedge fund is uncorrelated with market returns. This is a basic result of Modern Portfolio Theory, but the intuition is that sometimes with the stock market down you will have better performance in your hedge funds (and vice versa), so your account will be less risky in the sense of having shallower troughs. If you want to take on the same risk (i.e. have troughs that are the same depth as if you just held stocks) you can invest more of your capital in stocks/hedge funds vs. bonds/cash, which means you are making better returns. It should be noted that the hedge fund universe is extremely broad, and different funds have different risk/return characteristics.

Venture capital is different because it is both correlated with market returns and the average fund significantly underperforms the market,[1] so getting good returns in venture capital is pretty much a question of getting allocations in the top 20 funds, which are persistently the best. They have the best returns in part because they have the best reputations and thus access to the deals that provide the highest returns (top entrepreneurs would take Andreesen Horowitz's money over money from Unknown Partners on the same terms).

1: [http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/research%20repo...](http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/research%20reports%20and%20covers/2012/05/we%20have%20met%20the%20enemy%20and%20he%20is%20us%281%29.pdf)

<comment><USER5> A recent FT AlphaVille article described research which showed that Hedge Funds aren't even uncorrelated from the market, only levered or delevered.

<comment><USER6> Here's the link: [http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2014/08/01/1914342/the-hare- gets-...](http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2014/08/01/1914342/the-hare-gets-rich- while-you-dont-back-the-passive-tortoise/)

And here's the best part: [http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2014/08/Screen- shot-2014-08...](http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2014/08/Screen- shot-2014-08-01-at-10.19.47-AM.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Helion seems unreal. I am not ready up to date with fusion research, but as far as I know there was not even a demo or prototype in lab producing energy for a few seconds (or minutes), and they claim to have a product in 6 years. Can someone tell me what I've missed ?

<comment><USER8> You're probably not missing anything. By my (limited) reckoning, even if they can get their design to work in theory, I think they're grossly underestimating the materials requirements for the fusion reactor.

From what I recall, one of the big problems that any reactor project has is that the reaction has a tendency to destroy the reaction chamber. Not just the heat, but the neutron radiation can completely screw up the reaction chamber walls, which then need replacing. It's one of the reasons the ITER project is so large, to make it relatively robust in the face of such destructive power. I also remember reading a while back that the force from the electromagnets in the ITER project is sufficient to launch the entire reaction chamber off the ground, something like 5000 tons...

Having said that, I think it's cool that they're attempting it and I think that fusion projects have been grossly underfunded in the past. The reason why it's always 30 years away is because they're always cutting the funding!

I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I imagine they'll have unexpected escalating costs surrounding the actual building of a working _durable_ reactor and the company will die before it gets off the ground.

<comment><USER9> It seems like the kind of high risk thing VC money should be thrown at. It would be cool to see more research into cold fusion, too. The well was poisoned back in the eighties and the field never recovered.

<comment><USER7> This is definitely cool, and "if" something come out of it, it will be huge. I am a bit skeptical they'll have a product in a few years, but it is possible that they can find important pieces of the puzzle, that could later be sold and reused by another company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Death begins in the colon" seems to be attributed to an expert (albeit an old one), but unfortunately the adage is mostly associated with "wellness" practices on Google; it seems to be a shibboleth for things like colonics.

</comment><comment><USER11> I realize it's hard to predict what direction a company will take in the future, but is it YCombinator's policy to incubate companies that from the start seem to be competing against each other? It seems to me that ListRunner and Medisas ([http://www.forbes.com/sites/alextaub/2014/04/24/meet- medisas...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alextaub/2014/04/24/meet-medisas-the- company-that-saves-peoples-lives/)) do pretty much exactly the same thing.

<comment><USER12> YC has stated several times that often companies will change ideas after they get into YC. YC thus isn't going to tell them to not do something just because it competes with another YC company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> uBiome may be onto something. I read a study the other day that said obesity may actually be linked to gut flora, which I found very interesting. Excited to see what comes of this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Flynn could really make a dent in the PaaS space, although they seem to have a problem communicating their value proposition. I understand it's something like an open-source version of Heroku? If they take all the hassle out of deployments (everything that happens between git push and bare metal), I see a _lot_ of Heroku users that are sick and tired of paying outrageous 35$ a month could flock over to them.

<comment><USER15> One of the maintainers here, we do agree that documentation and getting our message across a bit more clearer is our primary priority.

One of our major advantages is that we're a bit more ambitious about deploys and we try not to limit you to a certain format: you can deploy any type of application on Flynn, not just web apps, but regular applications and services like databases, mail servers and so on. We then let you connect all of these together via service discovery. Meaning that instead of limiting you to a plugin system, Flynn allows you to write your own "plugins" that behave just like regular apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm really excited about some of these, but particularly ubiome. It's pretty "ew, gross" to think about, but it does seem like an area of medicine and diagnostics which is open for deeper exploration, finally. (disclaimer: I met the team a couple times before in bay area tech contexts and like them)

</comment><comment><USER17> Love the idea of Fixed, specially if it spills over to healthcare charges.

I have observed that hospitals invariably manage to saddle me with ridiculous "processing fees" and suchlike and add around $100 or more to my expected charges every time I visit them. I usually just pay up to avoid the nuisance of dealing with administrators who cannot seem to be able to communicate over email, and possible damage to my credit if I try to challenge it. I strongly suspect this is the case for a lot of middle-class Americans.

I'd gladly pay the same amount to Fixed to act as an intermediary between me and said 70s-era administrators, if only to let them know that someone is looking carefully at their exorbitant charges, and possibly even contesting them.

</comment><comment><USER18> Uber for bodyguards and uber for lawns. Neat!

</comment><comment><USER19> Couldn't Square or some other "big" player come in and implement payments via bank account and simply put Kash out of business? I know nothing of the domain, but it seems relatively straight forward to do, no? PayPal already let's me send money to any individual with an email address (and maybe a PayPal account?), so couldn't they just change their fees to 1% flat for businesses tomorrow?

What am I missing? Thoughts?

<comment><USER20> Sure, a big player could implement this model, but they may not take the risk or make the investment if their current model is successful.

Also, it certainly doesn't mean they'll put Kash out of business if they do (and if the Kash team succeeds). For example, I don't expect Amazon Local Register to put Square out of business.

<comment><USER19> Fair points. I guess I struggle to see the benefit as a user. I just glanced at their site and they do list a few benefits for users including "fast and easy payment, perks and rewards for using Kash, manage spending better with daily limits, no bank fees or interest charges". These could be interesting, but as a user I don't know that the incentives are there for me to stop using my CC which I am already accustomed to. I get points from CC purchases, use Mint to set budgets, and do not see bank fees or interest charges because I pay each month in full. I guess I am just not the target market for Kash.

However, I clearly see the many benefits for the retailer. They are saving money on transaction fees, avoid charge backs (maybe?), get paid more quickly, and is free for businesses charging under $100k.

I think in the back of my mind when I posted my previous comment was the classic chicken-and-the egg problem. Lots of benefits for retailers, but only if customers use it. Possible benefits for customers, but only if retailers accept it. I think that many of the other larger existing players in this space already have most of the infrastructure in place (eg, Square) and have brand recognition to boot. So, I see a very large uphill battle for Kash in this space with their business model. However, as you point out, it isn't necessarily a zero sum game and Kash could exist along side competitors. It will be interesting to see if they can differentiate themselves in some way and/or execute better in some way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> uBiome looks interesting. Has anyone tried them?

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

</comment><comment><USER6> > Sliced democratizes access to hedge funds.

To be clear, Sliced is open only to accredited investors and has a minimum investment of $20,000.

</comment><comment><USER22> Will uBiome run into the same FDA regulatory issues that 23andMe did? If so, I hope they have a great legal team...</comment>


This Is Going to Be Worst Year for IPOs Since the Credit Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/this-is-going-to-be-worst-year-for-ipos-since-the-credit-crisis?cmpid=BBD122016_BIZ <comment><USER2> ... hence very bad for the finances of the state of California.</comment>