New order of animals discovered? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=man-discovers-new-life-form-at-sout-2011-04-26 <comment><USER2> From the submitted blog post: "It was only recently that it was discovered that mice sing to each other. It was not so very long ago that it was discovered that clouds are filled with bacteria. What else remains to be known? Nearly everything."

That's the take-away idea, that there are still unexpected discoveries to be made all around us. The excitement with that idea seems to carry into the author's writing in the blog post.

<comment><USER3> David Baltimore won a Nobel Prize for discovering reverse transcriptase, the enzyme that allows HIV to work. In a talk he gave at my high school, he stressed the same message, saying that "the frontier of knowledge is nearer than we expect".

Growing up, we learn everything throuugh books which seem to present all that is knowable about a subject. It's hard to unlearn that perspective and appreciate how much there is that humanity doesn't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> According to Wikipedia:

"Mantophasmatodea is a suborder of carnivorous African insects discovered in 2002, originally considered to be a new order, but since relegated to subordinal status, and comprising the single family Mantophasmatidae."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantophasmatidae>

</comment><comment><USER5> Am I just sensitive today, or was that a really poorly written article?

<comment><USER6> Actually I thought it was exceptionally well-written for a blog post since it totally held my interest throughout. Don't confuse poor writing with good writing that just needs a little love from an editor.

<comment><USER7> That was the drama the author threw in. It was cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> OK, so what makes it so different? That's all I was looking for.

<comment><USER9> Me too. And I wanted to know why it was different than a praying mantis specifically.

<comment><USER10> I agree, but the answer to your question is that it has no wings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> well, nice article, it's funny to see this listed as a discovery, I'm african and have seen this insect before and probably many others in my country, and I am also sure many local folks know about this insects, too bad, they don't know it's a great discovery for science.

<comment><USER12> The discovery, as the article pointed out, was that this Was something un- catalogued and in fact an entire new branch of life that was not recognized. Not that the bug was unknown, but unrecognized for what it was.

Having seen it and not recognized it as a new order of life, is the tragedy. Because, honestly, we are almost all ignorant of biology beyond human biology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> OT: I usually dislike if something pops up when I hover over a word. The implementation on this site is different though. Select a word and hover "learn more" for a while, or click it. I still don't know how I feel about that but the ease of use to get to a Wikipedia article, images or videos is nice.

<comment><USER14> Things you never notice if you read on an ipad...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't there a "scientific Google Goggles version"?

Wouldn't it be as easy as photograph all archived specimens and let Google's photo search filter out duplicates of known animals. What remains needs names...

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting article. It's strange that over the last 100,000 years no one in Namibia or other parts of Africa had discovered any of these insects.

Or had they.

</comment><comment><USER17> This reminds me of something I noticed about economics and the Nobel Prize. Every other year or so, when the Nobel for economics is awarded, very often I notice it's awarded for something that I already knew or considered obvious, or figured out independently. Yes, yes, I know the differentiator is that the person in question wrote academic papers about it, had influence within the field with formal citations, and often "proved" it (or explained it, formally, as much as one can in a soft science like economics), but it wasn't a fundamentally world-shaking or new breakthrough. Unlike say most of the physics prizes. When I first heard about the theory of relativity I wasn't like, "Duh, obvious!", or quantum mechanics, etc. But that has happened a lot with economics.

Anyway this article made me think of it, because it started from the position that someone had discovered something totally new and unknown to mankind, only later to reveal that actually lots of people knew about it, they just didn't have an official academic name & categorization for it, formally, within the academic field in question. But it wasn't truly new. And strains the common meaning of what should be a powerful term: breakthrough.

</comment><comment><USER18> Fokken' Prawns.

<comment><USER19> Was that a reference to the movie, "District 9"? I don't see much resemblance beyond the "unknown insectoid life" theme...

<comment><USER20> You know how it is, if South Africa is mentioned, someone brings it up.</comment></comment></comment>


Cap Ethereum Total Supply, Says Vitalik Buterin - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/960 <comment><USER2> This is in response to the 'medium of exchange' problem, which posits that if your token doesn't have a sink built into it, it will slowly lose value over time.

See this post: [https://vitalik.ca/general/2017/10/17/moe.html](https://vitalik.ca/general/2017/10/17/moe.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Stop digging for more diamonds, says DeBeers.

Buterin has millions in Eth[0] and the influence to make that digital asset worth more by preventing it's supply from increasing. If it starts increasing, it could even turn into a bubble (as people buy it based on its price increasing).

In short, this man is not an unbiased person to promote such an idea.

[0][https://www.quora.com/How-much-Ethereum-does-Vitalik- Buterin...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-Ethereum-does-Vitalik-Buterin-own)

<comment><USER4> Wondering why this is the top comment here.

He publicly sold a very good portion of his holdings at $6, it eventually reached $1000.

Not just Vitalik but many of these people are self funded for life and could easily walk away from the shitshow that has become cryptocurrency without a care in the world. But they don't. For all the scams and degenerates that have overrun the industry, there's plenty who persist purely on principal and the knowledge it can help someone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish this hadn't been raised on April 1.

</comment><comment><USER6> Oh good. It's my favorite day of the year.</comment>


Fanning the flames of the Git vs. Mercurial debate - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zacharyvoase.com/post/147813314/why-mercurial-git-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-censoring

<comment><USER2> "Applications written in higher-level, dynamic languages (like Python and Ruby) are always going to be more 'intelligent' than those written in low- level, static languages (like C and Java)."

He positions this as a given, and moves on with his only justification being that websites feel "smoother to use" when written with Django or Rails.

"One has nearly 10 times as many files, and 10 times as many lines of code as the other. Can you guess which one?"

In addition to being snarky, I think the lines of code written as a metric for software quality is as about as useful as selling software with "smoother to use" printed on the box.

<comment><USER3> Actually, the justification is given later on: tools like these, which do a lot of the commonly-repeated work for you, make it easier for you to focus on the purpose of your application as opposed to overcoming the limitations of the tool itself.

<comment><USER4> Zack, I'm directing this straight at you since I see you're the author of this post.

Honestly, posts like this are just detrimental to both communities. They're immature and show a complete lack of understanding of software development. Choosing the right tool for the job is rarely easy as "high level" and "low level".

Git was created to solve a specific need: Distributed development of the Linux kernel. The fact that it's been adopted by so many developers outside of the Kernel community shows that it is at _minimum_ an adequate tool for the job. I'd go ahead and say, for those developers, Git > Mercurial. That's why they choose it.

For the developers who choose Mercurial, Mercurial > Git. That's why they've chosen Mercurial.

Please, before you publish stuff like this, remember that we're all on the same team. Next time, advocate Mercurial by talking about how it's improved your workflow. Talk about why Mercurial is better than Git for _you_ , perhaps talk about the technical differences of the underlying implementations on a conceptual level.

That way, maybe you could help someone make an informed choice about what to use, instead of basing their decision on something as silly as the language it's written in.

<comment><USER5> Contributing patches is an option, too. There's a shortage of people in the open source world who are good at UI design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I never get these Git vs. Mercurial debates. I don't see why they matter. Pick something you like & are comfortable with & can use well - and then learn that tool well.

Linus certainly doesn't care if you think Mercurial's better than Git. He doesn't agree. He wrote a tool to help him manage the Linux kernel source trees, something it does well. His goals never have been making the most elegant or intelligent software, but making good software that works. And it's a strategy that's succeeded.

And the Mercurial devs probably think the same regarding Git.

As an aside, I wonder what would have happened had not Linus popularized distributed version control systems. I doubt we'd even be having this discussion. I certainly hadn't been exposed before hearing about the BitKeeper debacle.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. I am a _huge_ Python fan and have contemplated giving Mercurial a go just because I know I could hack it myself if need be and that'd be cool. But I've gotten to the point where I know my way around Git well enough that I can't justify it. Besides familiarity with the commands, I've also gotten used to the workflow, which I'm sure differs under Mercurial.

<comment><USER8> "I've also gotten used to the workflow, which I'm sure differs under Mercurial."

Yes and no.

The workflow for managing branches is different, because you usually just clone an hg repo to do a branch, and then merge as needed.

The workflow for more complex things isn't quite as different as most people seem to think, though; mainly the difference is that in hg the answer is "use a patch queue". Operations on patch queues are somewhat lower level than, say, git's rebase, but all the power is still there (and there's a rebase extension which will let you do it all in one go if that's your thing).

What's been interesting to me is seeing the evolution of the "popular" git workflow over time. Originally, people hyped things like rebasing and editing commit history, but gradually the emphasis has shifted away from that and the best practices have solidified around using those features only when they're necessary, which is much less often than a lot of folks originally believed. And, amusingly, that's _very_ close to the way hg has always been used: you _can_ do lots of fancy stuff, but you should have a good reason for doing so (and should typically never do so after you've pushed to other folks or they've pulled from you).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the fine article:

        In a spirit of irony, ohcount has been rewritten from Ruby to C.

Wasn't it the whole point of high level languages to be able to prototype quickly, and then perhaps re-write selected parts in lower level for better performance and portability? This even happened to Hg; parts of it (diff, IIRC) got implemented in C later on for better performance.

<comment><USER5> Actually, a pretty big feature of high-level languages is being reminded _over and over_ that you never need to re-write the vast majority of most programs. For many tasks, two lines of awk or half a page of Python is quite sufficient. (And when something is a legitimate hotspot and benefits from being rewritten in C, it's not _selling out_. Where the heck did that idea come from?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What puts Git in a class of its own is the astonishing efficiency of its implementation. It is one of those rare instances where a quantitative difference becomes a qualitative one and in my opinion makes Git an engineering masterpiece.

Obviously this is related to its being a C program. The OP's error in comparing code sizes is the implicit assumption that all other things are equal.

</comment><comment><USER11> Under this bullet-proof logic the best applications would be written in AppleScript (spoiler alert: they're not).

Seriously though, the idea that Linus designed a sub par interface for git because he was _sooo_ busy mallocing and freeing is laughable.

</comment><comment><USER8> I just like hg because it has -- in my opinion -- a saner interface and a more useful branch strategy for the types of stuff I'm usually doing.

The fact that it has a good Python API (courtesy of being written in Python) is a nice bonus.

<comment><USER2> This could be included in a list of more acceptable arguments for Hg. Along with a list of interface comparisons for common actions that points to a "saner interface", an explanation of the branching strategy differences would make for a blog worthy article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Clearly the guy who wrote this has never had to deal with a corrupted repo before. I have never used Hg but it happened to me enough times in Subversion to convince me to switch to Git. The lines of code metric is silly. How about who /wrote/ those lines? I'm very happy entrusting my version control to the same guy who wrote my operating system, thank you.

<comment><USER13> How would git be better at dealing with (or avoiding) a corrupted repo than hg?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A lot of the commenters need to read <http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html> (the section titled 'The Blub Paradox' is particularly relevant, but the entire essay is fantastic). In addition, the concepts of essential complexity and accidental complexity are addressed quite comprehensively in Fred Brooks' essay 'No Silver Bullet' (Google it).

</comment><comment><USER14> Just use bzr instead.</comment>


Report: Peter Thiel mulled creating conservative cable network – Axios - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/report-peter-thiel-mulled-creating-conservative-cable-network-2522410928.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic&utm_content=1100&utm_term=technology <comment><USER2> How Fox News contiunes to be the sole example of a mainstream right-leaning news network is beyond me.</comment>


Show HN: Hyphen – A beautiful, powerful, and robust eBook Reader for iOS - <AUTHOR> http://hyphenreader.com/ <comment><USER2> This looks really good. I'm not reading anything epub length on my phone but if I were, I'd give this a shot. Big thumbs up for a great product page as well. So many people screw this up. Two problems I noticed with the website:

\- No way to see the price of the app without clicking on the App Store button. Maybe this was intentional?

\- "Personalize your reading experience" part has three different screenshots showing three different styles. White on black and black on white styles show the same part of the book while white on blue (is that the name of that color?) shows a different part. No one will probably notice that, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to point out.

Any plans to make a Mac version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello dombili!

Thanks for the feedback. :)

\- App price not on site: Not quite intentional, no. I plan on changing that.

\- Screenshot inconsistency: Hmm. Oh - actually, that is the same part of the book, roughly, I believe the paragraph margins changed, however. Something to fix.

\- Mac version: Yes, actually. Right now I'm stabilizing Hyphen, but once I've done that and implemented Syncing, there will likely be a Mac version.

<comment><USER2> My pleasure! Great to hear that Mac version is a possibility. Is following you on twitter the best way to get notified about that?

Good luck with the app, I hope it does well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, @HyphenReader ([http://twitter.com/hyphenreader](http://twitter.com/hyphenreader)) is the best way to stay updated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I tried the full version and like how the app looks and works so far. The app seems to support ePub3 also (Marvin only supported ePub2 and Gerty is too social to my taste.)

I have few feedbacks:

\- I wish the page doesn't fade when switching chapters. It interrupted the reading flow more than quite a bit.

\- Would be amazing if the app could support CJK's vertical layout and page orientation. (I have never seen ePub reader app that did this right.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello sim,

\- I'm in the process of making more page turn modes available: [https://github.com/hyphen-reader/hyphen/issues/4](https://github.com/hyphen- reader/hyphen/issues/4)

\- I'll look into CJK support. If you could offer examples of where you see it handled well, etc., that'd be great.

Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER3> About CJK, at first I think there need to be a proper support for vertical writing layout and support for turning pages from right-to-left[1].

Hyphen currently seems to be handling vertical writing quite fine (but it is using default sans-serif font, which is less than ideal.) However page turning currently seems to be strictly left-to-right.

One of few apps I've seen to be doing well is Kindle (but unfortunately not ePub) and Bookwalker (has their own file format, although also has partial support for reading ePub file). My current solution for reading Japanese ePub books is to throw them into Bookwalker… which is kinda like second-class citizen in the app.

There are few public domain Japanese novels available in ePub3 format if you wish to have some sample ([http://aozora.wook.jp/](http://aozora.wook.jp/) click on "ePUBダウンロード".)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is perfect, thanks! I've added it to the issue tracker: [https://github.com/hyphen-reader/hyphen/issues/9](https://github.com/hyphen- reader/hyphen/issues/9)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it me or is it odd, that a reader called "Hyphen" doesn't seem to offer hyphenation? Especially as the screenshot shown on the page shows rather large spacing used for block setting the text.

<comment><USER3> There seems to be Hyphenation support but not on by default. (I downloaded and tried.)

<comment><AUTHOR> There is absolutely hyphenation support - you can toggle it on or off in settings, but it is off by default.

<comment><USER5> It's odd that your first and most prominent screenshot has such bad typography:

      regulation       the       circulation.

Bad typography is my main quibble with the Kindle app. It's been awful for years.

Have you looked into a better flow algorithm, such as the Knuth/Plass [1] algorithm from TeX?

[1] [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/spe.4380111102/ab...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/spe.4380111102/abstract)

<comment><AUTHOR> That screenshot has justified text, you can use left, right, and center alignments as well.

<comment><USER5> That's not really a solution. That will create an awkwardly ragged right margin. Justified text is more readable and makes text look less messy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the Knuth/Plass technique as well, it creates much more uniform and visually appeasing line margins. The reason something like it would be so difficult to implement is that it requires heavy geometric processing every time the content reflows, which would impact Hyphen's performance a lot. Another issue I see is that it would pollute an ePub's DOM more than I'd care for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really don't like how this app uses its own typography for the UI. Including wobbling bouncy menus. It just doesn't do it for me. I prefer consistency with other apps that I use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi st3fan,

Sorry to hear that. What consistencies are you referring to?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow. I've been wondering why an ereader like this didn't already exist. Gets rid of all the flashiness and chrome and colour. I hate ereader apps because they have so much going on, finally one figures it out.

Well done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'm glad you think so. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very nice. A few dollars well spent. Great experience on my 6S+.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Johnny!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks cool (just downloaded the free version and am playing with it). A tip for the free version specify what the limitations are more clearly in the description.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Matt, a bug report - [http://imgur.com/QMDeGvr](http://imgur.com/QMDeGvr)

Note where the charge indicator is at.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yikes. Is that an iPad Pro? If you could share more details that would be great. There's also the issue tracker you may be interested in: [https://github.com/hyphen-reader/hyphen/issues](https://github.com/hyphen- reader/hyphen/issues)

<comment><USER10> iPad mini, iOS 8.3

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello! Quick question: what triggered this bug for you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The only thing I miss in books is the ability to sync page turns in e-pub acquired outside of the app-store.

How does this one do in that regard?

<comment><AUTHOR> Syncing is not supported yet, but will be soon. Follow Hyphen on twitter for updates: [http://twitter.com/hyphenreader](http://twitter.com/hyphenreader)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does this compare to Marvin, which was a decent successor to Stanza?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Marvin is great. However, imo, Hyphen differs quite a bit, and offers a more - deeper customization options, Goodreads integration, ADE pages, metadata lookup, emphasis on speed and ease, and so on.

Take the free version for a spin and let me know what you think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How does one define 'robustness' in this case?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm aiming for _" strong and effective in all or most situations and conditions"_ :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there a way to import my iBooks library into Hyphen?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is, sort of, but iBooks makes this difficult to all but the most stout- hearted.

If you visit `~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books/` on your Mac, you'll find extracted versions of your `.epubs`, if you've downloaded them into your iBooks Library. The problem is, that in order to be valid ePubs they'd need to be archived again (as a .zip renamed to .epub, which is all ePubs are).

Also, iBooks uses DRM on paid(?) books downloaded from the store, making this more complicated even then.

So, yeah. I've plans for a desktop client that _might_ make importing from iBooks possible/easier, but I'm a little afraid to go barking up that tree.</comment></comment>


A 100k Botnet Turns Home Routers to Email Spammers - <AUTHOR> https://blog.netlab.360.com/bcmpupnp_hunter-a-100k-botnet-turns-home-routers-to-email-spammers-en/ <comment><USER2> Is there any easy way to check if your router is vulnerable/compromised? Or instructions for disinfecting it as well as patching it?

Like, based on actually being exploitable or compromised, not firmware versions or whatever.

I actually suspect mine is compromised, it's been behaving funny for a month or two, needing to be restarted a lot. (Which, ironically, is a signal of a _buggy_ compromise, your router of course be compromised and you'd never know it if the malware was well-behaved enough to stay out of the way of your usual use).

I can (painfully) update the firmware... but I don't trust that the vendor's most recent firmware actually solves it. Nor do I trust that once compromised a firmware update is enough to eliminate the malware.

For such a widespread compromise... we could use more user-friendly (or even relatively techy but not a network engineer user-friendly) instructions for... what to do.

I guess the reality is that most (non-techy) users will, if they notice at all (due to malware that buggily causes things not to work well for intended uses, instead of staying out of the way), will just decide their equipment is "broken", throw it out and buy new stuff... that hopefully won't get compromised again. Which I guess works for the consumer network harder vendors.

<comment><USER3> If I were you I'd check to see if your router can run one of the several open source firmware packages like OpenWRT, dd-wrt, or Tomato. In my personal experience the OpenWRT/lede team is on top of security issues, and the router web interface and tooling is completely fine.

I'd be confident that flashing your device with modern open source firmware would solve the problem, but if you're paranoid just recycle the device and get a new one. In any event, I don't see a solution for you that doesn't involve some homework.

<comment><USER2> In general, I am cautious of running my own open source thing without being an expert in the relevant area (or interested in becoming one) -- having to put something together (and maintain it) yourself seldom, in my experience, ends up _more_ secure or _more_ maintainable, when you don't know what you're doing.

However, routers may be an exception. Apparently the industry has basically no business motivation to keep consumer-grade networking hardware secure, at all. Irrelevant to their profits or reputation.

I'll consider it. When I bought my router I intentionally got one that can run OpenWRT, but never ended up installing it, cause, who's got time for that? But perhaps there isn't really an alternative, unless you want a bot-net-ed router. Which honestly, and with shame, I'd just ignore the botnet sending out spam to other people if I didn't think it was compromising the functionality (and security) of my router for me. Last thing I wanna do is spend time becoming a network engineer after a day of getting paid to write software, but i guess that's where we're at.

(Oh crap, I just realized it could be my DSL modem instead of or in addition to my (wired and wifi) router. I know even LESS about that thing. I think none of these consumer products, owned by people who know a lot less than me, are ever gonna be protected, if even I am intimidated by trying to figure it out).

<comment><USER4> You're going to have to upgrade your firmware _anyway_ , so why not upgrade to something that actually cares about basic functionality?

Some people unused to open source solutions sometimes have this idea that all software developed by enthusiasts by necessity is hard to use or require tinkering, but that's not a fair picture. When developers share your interests, that's when software gets usable. That interest might not always be UI, but sometimes it is.

OpenWRT (and friends!) is clearly much easier to use and delivers richers functionality than any of the software it replaces. If your router is listed as supported, go for it.

<comment><USER2> The good reviews of OpenWRT help. The caution is mostly because it's unclear to me how hard it would be to switch it back. But yeah, probably will.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention the idea that you might Bork your router during installation and have no internet therefore no way to install the old fw version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Universal Plug-n-Play

And, like so many other attempts to "simplify" supposedly complex configuration, in addition to being a massive security hole to attackers, it's almost useless to the home users for whom it was meant because it only works under a very narrow, mostly undocumented set of assumptions and if any of those assumptions are invalid, it fails silently.

<comment><USER7> I disabled it after this post, but it appears Plex switches to 'indirect' mode (it goes out to the Internet and back in) without it; i.e. I am using UPnP.

It's not clear what the solution is - update firmware? I am on the latest. Use OpenWRT (or whatever it's called these days)? Every time I look into it (I really want to!) I stop at the simple 'I want to do this, I will happily buy a new router, which one do I buy and know it works well and will continue to work well with updates?'

<comment><USER8> Plex has had a major forum breach for basic user data including IP addresses [1], around the time of the botnet's first discovery in 2017, which has me greatly wondering if Plex may have been an inadvertent bootstrap vector for this attack?

Worrying, if that's the case.

[1] [https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#Plex](https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#Plex)

<comment><USER7> Usually a problem for things like Plex, ISPs with double NAT actually do users a favour here.

<comment><USER8> UPnP wouldn't exist without NAT. The underlying root cause of UPnP is NAT (and the slow deployment of things like reliable mDNS implementations). Admittedly, Plex would have different security problems without NAT, given its model, but arguably those security problems would have simpler solutions in a world without NAT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it's time for windows, and ios, and firewall / antivirus companies to scan for info about the routers used and alert people that their network is easily hacked, may already be hacked, and is in danger of being used by criminals to attack other countries and companies.

Extra info such as, the router you are using has not had any available firmware updates for 3 years and likely needs to be replaced.

It's obvious we are not going to get this info to most people from the IOT manufacturers.

This could be quite beneficial for those who hook up thier phones to different wifi networks as well - a pop up showing that their router / internet gateway model has been shown to be used in at least 100,000 other malware exploits, and should not be trusted like your cell connection -

It's time to start shaming and naming - the bad guys already know how to get this info, we need to make it easier for the end users to become aware.

A service that will email you when firmware is available for your equipment, or your equipment is listed on shodan, blackhathacksrus, or other places may be beneficial as well. Set it up to take serial numbers scanned with an app, and give notices on recalls and physical theft recovery.

We obviously need something, and possibly many things tp help with this.

I can't believe a certain router company a few years ago did not offer to send a rebate if I returned their no-longer-updated-hardware when I emailed them inquiring about a published exploit and lack of updates. I no longer use that brand or suggest it. They could of kept a customer and made things better, they did neither.

<comment><USER10> We actually offer such a monitoring service at Shodan, though it's largely aimed at companies so you need to use the API. Here's an article on how to setup a real-time monitor for your network:

[https://help.shodan.io/guides/how-to-monitor- network](https://help.shodan.io/guides/how-to-monitor-network)

<comment><USER11> How would this work for a consumer network which doesn't have a fixed public IP?

<comment><USER10> In that case you're probably better off w/ a cronjob that checks Shodan for information on your IP once a day. Doing direct IP lookups is free so you wouldn't need to pay. You won't get the immediate, real-time feedback but it's fairly straight-forward to do a daily IP lookup.

You could also change/ update your private firehose every day though that would require a bit more technical skill. You could basically do:

        MYIP=`shodan myip`
        shodan alert create home-network $MYIP
        shodan stream --alerts=all

That would create an alert for your current IP and then subscribe to any events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And OpenWrt users everywhere feel totally superior once again.

Seriously though: this is why you don't let your device run unvetted firmware by vendors who don't provide updates.

Load it with a Linux-distro you can update yourself to keep it rolling and secure.

<comment><USER7> I keep looking into it and keep stopping at 'what should I buy'. I'm willing to / assume I need to buy new hardware. What do I buy that will run it well, and continue to?

<comment><USER13> Buy the Archer C7 version 2, and install the optimized version of openwrt: [https://github.com/infinitnet/lede-ar71xx-optimized- archer-c...](https://github.com/infinitnet/lede-ar71xx-optimized-archer-c7-v2)

This build gets ~750 mbps NAT speed as opposed to vanilla openwrt, which is around ~300 mbps.

<comment><USER7> Is that v2 as in >v1, or is there a v3+ that I don't want?

That is, can I just buy from Amazon [0] with a fairly safe assumption that a new C7 is OK?

[0]: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-AC1750-Dualband- Zertifizier...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-AC1750-Dualband-Zertifiziert- Generalüberholt/dp/B00BUSDVBQ)

<comment><USER14> So, 2 or 3 years ago I did just that.

And it was flakey as f*ck. It rebooted itself roughly once a day, and would stop routing traffic to my fibre modem and need manually rebooted at least once a day.

The Openwrt support forums were... not helpful.

All this was such a shame, because the Openwrt feature set is so much capable than the stock firmware - I so wanted it to work, but had such a bad experience I haven't gone near it since and it will likely stay that way.

<comment><USER12> You have to be specific about the hardware you buy.

Throughout my time I've bought around 2 or 2 routers with the naive assumption "oh it will probably work out fine", and that's definitely not how it works. That has certainly left me with disappointment.

IME it pays off greatly to upfront research the specific model (and revision) and buy exactly that. Like in this case, the Archer C7 v2 (of which I've recently bought two).

It's running OpenWrt flawlessly and I would have zero issues recommending that particular model to anyone.

<comment><USER14> Ah, I got confused - it's a stock TP-LINK AC1750 Archer C7 that I have _now_ , and it was an older TP-LINK I'd tried OpenWrt on. I forget the model, but I had been specific about the hardware I bought, making sure it was in OpenWrt's list of supported devices.

Strangely, the C7 I have now advertises itself as 'v2/v3'!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, what is the most secured option for the moment? Buy a x86 box and turn it into a router? But it consumes more power than a low-power router, and buying more network adapter is not that cheap.

I am currently using the open source tomato firmware. However, since there is a bug/feature in the router so that I cannot flash an image too large, or otherwise it would not work. Also, the configuration is limited to 32 KB, if configure too much, then the configuration file will become gibberish and some random feature in the router would be missing, and required a factory reset to fix. So, I am stuck with an older version of tomato which guarantee some kind of vulnerability is not fixed.

Not sure what I can get in the form size of a router. Raspberry pi may work but too few ports available. I heard that the CPU would get hot for intense network traffic.

<comment><USER16> For something really small the ubiquiti edgerouter devices which run their EdgeOS are a good choice. If there's a serious security vulnerability on the WAN-facing interface it will be patched. They run a fork of Vyatta. Ubiquiti employs most of the old Vyatta development team, who did not go to Brocade when Vyatta was acquired.

Or build a really small low power x86 system with a few Intel gigabit NICs in it and run open source VyOS.

<comment><USER17> So the ERLite-3?

[https://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgerouter- lite/](https://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgerouter-lite/)

<comment><USER16> the $48 ER-X is much faster than 99% of peoples' residential last mile broadband connections, it's good for up to about 750 Mbps of NAT and default route outbound to a gateway.

<comment><USER17> I have a gigabit fiber line with no PoE from the fiber box. Between the 2 I think the ERLite-3 should work better.

<comment><USER18> I have no problems with a gigabit symmetrical line on ERLite-3. UniFi Security Gateway is the same hardware but in a nicer interface that works with UniFi APs & Switches if you want to go that route but you have to also host a controller. You can also upgrade to a ER-4 for a much faster CPU but I don't think you need to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How many home routers _aren 't_ compromised or have known vulnerabilities? It would interesting if a study looked at a random sample of the population of home routers to determine this. Go to people's homes and actually check. These articles always seem to look at it from the "how many compromised routers have we found so far" angle. I suspect that if the story was "90% of home routers have known unpatched vulnerabilities", these security issues would be taken more seriously by the companies responsible for them. And if they don't act, regulate them out of existence.

<comment><USER20> > And if they don't act, regulate them out of existence.

Sounds easy but doesn't work IRL. The service providers don't build the units and rely on the supplier. The supplier might have patched it but wants money, the ISP doesn't want to pay. Maybe the patch breaks something else and the ISP don't want to put that on all their users.

Also, not all vulnerabilities are equal. Some are more serious than others and require patching urgently, others less so.

And not all ISPs can push a patch so how do you tell everyone to update and what happens when it doesn't work and 1M people are calling Customer Support?

<comment><USER21> Comcast has functionality where they will email and/or text you if your connection has botnet or other nefarious activity on it and will disconnect you until it's resolved. Not a fan of them, but it's something they get right.

[https://i.imgur.com/cYKXtII.png](https://i.imgur.com/cYKXtII.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Germany is a nice white spot on the map because they all run their Fritz boxen, which seem to be unaffected by BCMPUPnP_Hunter.

</comment><comment><USER23> I must be missing something, but why are all these routers publicly listening on port 5431?

<comment><USER24> Ports 5431 and 1900 are used for UPnP.

I can't think of any good reason they should be listening on an external interface, but maybe the port scanning is happening on the inside.

<comment><USER23> That's the thing, it looks like they _are_ listening externally: [https://www.shodan.io/search?query=Server%3A%20Custom%2F1.0%...](https://www.shodan.io/search?query=Server%3A%20Custom%2F1.0%20UPnP%2F1.0%20Proc%2FVer). I tried a couple of those IPs and can reach all of them on 5431.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> They are currently talking about creating a cyber civilian corps that would be under the Department of Homeland Security. The purpose would be some yet to be defined "assisting businesses and state / local governments in crisis".

However maybe we should have them knocking on doors having ppl set up their home network.

Obviously a lot of responsibility is being pushed back on companies to make this easier, but still we have all these old devices out there humming along.

[https://www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity- initiative/reports/...](https://www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity- initiative/reports/need-c3/3-a-us-cyber-civilian-corps-how-would-it-be- organized-and-staffed/)

<comment><USER26> It's been talked about for years under DHS. I was part of one of the early iterations of it called NetGuard. I have zero hope for any such initiative after the experience despite thinking its sorely needed.

</comment></comment><comment> black-tea It's interesting to me that "pwn" has entered the respectable lexicon. If I were to talk about "haxxors" or "warez" I don't think I would be taken very seriously on here. I guess it's because "pwn" occupies a meaning not fully encompassed by any other word. There is "root" which is itself a slang term but it's too specific, I suppose, and "compromised" is just too long,

<comment><USER27> I can say "pwn" is not something I would ever write in a serious document, but I'm also an old fart.

<comment><USER28> It depends on the age... usually for the board, we use 'compromised', because every one of those guys is scared of compromising pictures coming out (snorting milk powder off a friend's breasts for example)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've said it before: it shouldn't be that hard for someone handy with a soldering iron to "harden" their router:

Look up the Pinout for the flash chip, find the write-enable line, and put it on a switch to lock firmware updates.

This won't protect you against non-persistent malware, but it will prevent malicious updates.

One could attach a bit of logic and an LED to this line to switch on when a flash is attempted. Then you know something bad is in the stream.

<comment><USER30> What about non malicious security updates?

<comment><USER29> Flip the switch when you want to allow them (but why accept random OTA updates?).

The LED logic should signal you when there's an update coming in OTA, and you can verify for yourself if there's a legitimate update (and possibly load it yourself).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How exactly does one go about buying a router that is not going to turn evil? Is there some company with open source software and easy setup, or some other easy solution?

</comment><comment><USER32> What if someone did that, but to use the routers for some charitable distributed computing project?

Or mining crypto currencies and giving the proceeds to the router's owners?

Or perhaps a globally distributed weather prediction system that automatically detects network enabled weather stations and predicts weather everywhere for free?

Or a distributed P2P social network?

<comment><USER33> It's morally wrong.

You don't suddenly have the right to use someone else's personal belongings as you see fit just because they left a door or window unlocked.

<comment><USER13> What if the router was being unused? What if the power usage was minimal? I think it is unethical not to utilize resources that are being wasted.

<comment><USER34> I hope your parents taught you to ask before invading somebody's personal property.

Are you okay with XYZ Tech Company snooping on your private messages, emails, or credit card transactions? The impact that you'd see would be minimal (aside from more targeted ads, perhaps), and it's data which would otherwise be "wasted" if nobody was mining it.

<comment><USER13> I hope your parents taught you that too, thanks. Anyways, no its not okay for XYZ because they are invading the privacy of people's lives as a means to make more money. In the other circumstance, you would be using unused resources, not invading privacy, and contributing to projects such as Folding@home, which hopes to solve hard protein folding problems in order to better humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The kind of subject I love...!!

</comment><comment><USER36> pwn: the second derivative of getting owned

</comment><comment><USER37> A much better, more thorough analysis, complete with affected router model numbers, graphs, charts, and area affected map are at the source post:

[https://blog.netlab.360.com/bcmpupnp_hunter-a-100k-botnet- tu...](https://blog.netlab.360.com/bcmpupnp_hunter-a-100k-botnet-turns-home- routers-to-email-spammers-en/)

<comment> mark-r I think you just killed the site. I get a 504 error.

<comment><USER17> [https://web.archive.org/web/20181112153533/https://blog.netl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181112153533/https://blog.netlab.360.com/bcmpupnp_hunter-a-100k-botnet- turns-home-routers-to-email-spammers-en/)

<comment> mark-r Thanks for that! The usual Google cache wasn't working for me in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Reminds me I haven't updated my pfSense router in awhile. Nor have I ever heard about a flaw like this for them as it were.

But also, can we stop with "pwns" in a serious website? Almost makes me think the comment section would start with someone saying "First!".</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best VoiP service for startups? - <AUTHOR>

I work at a startup with five full-time customer service team members, and 10 other people with phones in our office.
We all use the same VoiP provider, Vonage/Vocalocity, but the service is terrible (calls drop, static, etc) consistently.  We've had our IT team configure the settings, upgraded our Internet to a T1, but believe it's our VoiP provider.
I'm looking to see if anyone can recommend another VoiP provider they've had experience with 5+ phones connected and heavy usage.
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> I have heard from friends that Jive is good.

[http://jive.com/small-business/](http://jive.com/small-business/)

However, they do not have a faxing capability.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are in UK Foehn provides good service

[http://www.foehn.co.uk/hosted-telephony](http://www.foehn.co.uk/hosted- telephony)

</comment><comment><USER4> Take a look at [http://ringcentral.com](http://ringcentral.com)</comment>


Judge Jim Gray on The Six Groups Who Benefit From Drug Prohibition - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6t1EM4Onao

<comment><USER2> It makes me want to cry out of frustration.</comment>


Are ClinicalTrials.gov p-values clustered around .05? - <AUTHOR> http://www.statwonk.com/blog/are-clinicaltrialsgov-p-values-clustered-around-005/

<comment><USER2> My hypothesis is, that there is a stronger publication bias in psychology journals than in reported clinical trials. And the latter aren't really "publications" in the sense of a peer reviewed, published paper.

There is certainly a publication bias in publishing the results of the clinical studies, but this database registers the trials long before any such publication. And some are never registered.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's a good hypothesis. It appears the mechanism of registration and reporting helps. I wasn't aware of that process when I started; very much still exploring the database.

What do you make of the single hypothesis vs. alternative stuff? That blew my mind.</comment></comment>


The war Microsoft should have won - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@christianhern/the-war-microsoft-should-have-won-65d836aa2358#.5r1at79wm <comment><USER2> I think the article is a nice summary of why Microsoft lost, but it doesn't fulfill the promise of its title. "Should have won" implies that there were steps Microsoft should have taken to overcome the difficulties it faced. Let's explore some:

Lack of vendor trust, not wanting to get locked in with Microsoft like PC- makers did. No easy solution there.

Hampered by success of cash-cows like Windows/Office. Shouldn't Microsoft have been focusing on its strengths? Hindsight is 20/20, but those strengths are still doing well for Microsoft. Who's to say throwing more resources at Windows Phone would have gotten a better result?

Even difficulties that seem like they had obvious solutions, such as lack of mobile web, may have been very hard to do, technologically, pre-2008, with smaller screens and lack of mobile bandwith.

The article points out that Windows Phone never got above 15% share. Why was it entitled to win? Or, to rephrase, why should it have won?

<comment><USER3> They had just the same opportunity to do mobile web as Apple - CE devices could run a real browser. Unfortunately, that browser was IE.

I think Apple's real innovation was the App Store, combined with a usable (non-resistive) touchscreen. Prior to the App Store, it was _remarkably_ hard to get apps onto phones. You were dependent on the mobile carrier, whose levels of customer gouging made Microsoft look like newbies. And they were usually terrible when you did start them, so few bothered.

The other problem was that the CE UI was not adapted for mobile; its look and feel was the same as the desktop. Too many tiny click targets. "Metro" was the attempt to fix this (too late). Apple also brought in the pinch-zoom gesture system and dynamic rotation.

<comment> Const-me > Apple's real innovation was the App Store

The app store only launched in July 2008, same time when iPhone 3G launched.

It was more than 1 year after the original iPhone launch.

The original iPhone was a marketing success even being merely a feature phone by today's standards: no app store and no user-installable apps at all.

> other problem was that the CE UI was not adapted for mobile

HTC launched its first touch-oriented windows mobile phone almost 1 month before the first iPhone. They called it HTC Touch and included custom touch- optimized WinCE shell. Nobody cared, and people just bought iPhones instead, the sales figures for that year was 2M devices HTC, 6M Apple.

Because better and touch optimized browser, and also because unlimited data plan. Back in 2007-2008, you couldn't buy unlimited mobile data for any other phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Single major innovation in iPhone was ability to perform reasonably high precision user interaction using grossly imprecise input method, i.e. Human thumbs. My theory is that people in WinMo team didn't used iPhone when it came out because everyone carried WinMo in their pocket. I think most people just didn't believed it was perfectly possible to use touch keyboard with thumbs with reasonable precision. So the reaction to new design was slow. Once Verizon told Microsoft how they were bleeding customers over iPhone, people realized the significance of what had happened. But then there was long battle for how to evolve. Should old WinMo code be modified or do we need new OS or do we combine desktop and mobile OS? This would have been difficult decision in itself because you also need to support vast number of existing WinMo customers. This struggle took years to resolve and by that time ship was sailed. If there was one person in charge who understood what was going to hit the world and gave order to unify entire army behind creating new mobile OS without worrying about compatibility or merge with desktop then we might have had different story. Of course, in hindsight every thing looks crystal clear about what should have been done but if you were sitting in Ballmerd chair with data you had in hand your call could have been the same. On the other hand Android chief realized what was going to hit them and they turned around their execution overnight which was possible because they didn't had legacy OS used by millions or desktop OS diverging from mobile. Anyway, this is just my theory. I have no insider information like the author.

<comment><USER5> The capacitive touch screen is a major factor however I believe it was Steve Jobs ability to break carrier control (in the USA, where the iPhone was initially launched) was critical. I had worked for a while in the telecoms business and noted this at the time. In fact I bought Apple stock on the day the iPhone was announced specifically because it had a visual voicemail feature. This was something we had built years before but could not get it on phones because the carriers liked to charge for the air time to listen to and delete voice mails. He also got AT&T to provide a reasonably cheap data plan. At the time you could either have a cheap plan with services the carrier had complete control over, OR you could have IP connectivity at a much higher price. This isn't something I'm rationalizing after the fact: I saw it happen, opened the Schwab web site, bought stock and made a nice profit. I had no notion of apps or nice browsers or decent touch screens being key at the time. There were no apps on the iPhone initially but they had long existed for WM Nokia BB etc.

<comment><USER6> The data plan was insane. Year before I had a Palm and it cost $45 vs. $20 for the iPhone. Sure it was 2G, but the things you could do were so compelling.

Being on the road, starting a download for an app at one stoplight and being able to use it by the time I got to the next stop light... that was an epiphany.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They lost because their ultimate strategy was "All Roads Lead to Windows." This is what handcuffed all their talented developers and product managers into creating extremely inferior products. The ones that had freedom from the Windows ecosystem, like X-Box, did relatively well in terms of competitiveness.

Steve Ballmer was stuck in his dinosaur thinking and couldn't see the writing on the wall. The break away from the Windows monopoly is one smart thing Nadella did, and hopefully it frees up all these talented developers from creating better products.

<comment><USER8> Microsoft hasn't really given up "All Roads Lead to Windows." They are pushing very hard in the VR/AR space for Windows to be the prime OS, partnering with Oculus, creating HoloLens, adding Windows Universal App support for AR devices. And XBox no longer has the independence it once had -- it must also run a standard offering of Windows.

<comment><USER9> If that's true, they're just going to get screwed in exactly the same way iPhone screwed them. Mobile VR is going to be substantially more popular than VR-plugged-into-a-giant-expensive-Windows-box. The subset of people who want to maintain a PC is dwindling. New-to-computing users basically go straight to mobile. Untethered VR is better for social (no cords to tangle, we each control our own device), and that's not even talking about what's going to happen when AR hits. AR tied to a PC makes zero sense outside of industrial uses.

Microsoft better have a dedicated VR-centered mobile skunkworks going, or they're just going to repeat this entire "Two Windows' In One!" fiasco all over again. Except now it's going to be three Windows'.

You know Apple does. They're going to come out swinging hard with dedicated VR hardware, a dedicated VR OS and I suspect dedicated VR silicon too. With some kind of VR Facetime, VR iMovie, and partnerships with some major iOS app makers. Samsung is already shipping. Microsoft is already struggling not to slip into 4th place, in terms of profit. And Valve is, for the first time, in a position to offer a complete Microsoft-free platform of their own. While Microsoft is trying to compete with Apple at their new game, Valve is gunning hard to out-Microsoft Microsoft at their old game (an open PC platform).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can see the seeds of Microsoft's failure in Ballmer's response to the iPhone question. He talks about how the device can "do email" and "do web". They were check off items. Apple didn't say "our device can do email" they said "you can get your mail wherever you are." They weren't the first to offer that _by far_ but they talked about the customer: the end user.

Ballmer also talked about his customer: the enterprise CIOs (and for the phones, the carriers, not the end users).

Apart from the money-losing Xbox division I am not sure Microsoft really has ever had an end user orientation. Not surprisingly, given Ballmer's background, they are a 20th century industrial concern, more like a car company than anything else. That served them very well when the field was young and the companies that were computerizing needed all the help they could get -- and so were willing to be dictated to.

By the way I also liked the buffoonery of saying that they have a "respectable position" in the "high end" music player business. In another appearance he touted their strength in the "hard-disk based music player space." It reminded me of Steve Jobs claiming that NeXT was dominant in the "business workstation space". Let's define a niche and fill it...backwards!

(Ironically Zune _did_ have a number of interesting features (dare I say "innovations") but the customer base was too smart to care about specs. By focusing on gimmicks they ignored the hard work of making a product that people actually wanted to use.

</comment><comment><USER11> I started writing Android programs in 2011. With Android:

       * I can develop the apps on Windows, Mac or Linux
       * There is a lifetime developer fee of $25
       * The source code is available

To program for the Windows phone, I believe I'd need a Windows setup which I don't have. "A small barrier" some might say, but a barrier nonetheless. I believe the Windows Store fee was $100 a year or something like that. Not much for a seeded company looking to build apps, but it might discourage a student looking to release an app.

For all the hassles of Android's ever-changing API and such, they do try to make it painless for developers to get onboarded.

<comment><USER12> This is true, but Apple has the same model - you need an OS/X machine (note: much more expensive than a basic windows machine) to develop for iOS, and I believe the app store fee is also $100. It doesn't seem to have hampered iOS at all. (although the argument to be made is that because they were the first to get big, the barrier to entry didn't matter much).

<comment><USER13> True — but it's also why neither I nor the companies I've worked at have worked on iOS apps (of note, the Android apps we've built have been internal corporate apps, not consumer-facing apps, where iOS's consumer base would be an asset).

I as a developer very much don't want to use Windows or macOS. Why would I want to use either of them when I can use Linux? I know there are others who think otherwise; it's great that we all live in a world where we can direct our destinies.

<comment><USER14> This makes no sense. In what kind of backwards company are internal apps targeted based on the software devs' platform preferences? The determining factor is what phones the people who need to use the apps have. If many of the people that need to use the app have iPhones, you'd be forced to write them for iPhones. If many had Windows Phones, you'd be forced to write them for Windows Phones. Your development-platform preferences be damned.

<comment><USER13> The hoops of developing for iOS were why the _company_ didn't develop internal apps for iOS; the hoops of developing for iOS are also why _I_ don't develop for iOS.

I am not a slave; I can choose where I work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can't lose." – Bill Gates.

<comment><USER16> See also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_disease) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why are the charts that old? (2011, 2012) With newer charts from 2015/2016, it's clearly visible that Microsoft lost the mobile war, with less than 1% market share. Not that grim, but bad as well is the XBoxOne marketshare compared to the allmighty PS4. And the Win10 marketshare is half of what Microsoft expected one year after launch, almost another Vista - from a consumer perspective the privacy leak makes it worse than Win8 and Vista combined, but that's another story some will say - well the users aren't dumb, they choose the better alternatives every day, and Microsoft looses marketshare. Think about it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have bought a Lumia just to play around with the WinRT platform, as was positively impressed by the SDK and Visual Studio tooling, versus the usual chaos of Android releases specially for NDK users.

The C++/CX + XAML experience feels like Visual C++ finally catching up with C++ Builder and finally becoming _visual_.

Also the component model allows for an easy interaction between .NET, JavaScript and C++, similar to Objective-C++ / JavaScript Core on iOS.

So I really like the WinRT model.

But alas, with all the mid-steps specially the last one of ditching the 512MB Lumias, Microsoft should just drop WP from the UWP supported platforms.

</comment><comment><USER19> Main reason: capacitive touchscreen display. They were last to understand how they were enablers of a new way of interacting.

</comment><comment><USER20> I do still miss that keyboard. I still don't type nearly as fast on a phone, and considering that these devices had no autocorrect, not nearly with a quarter of the accuracy.

Apart from the resistive touch-hostile technology and stylus-centric interface, HID has taken a substantial step backwards in the years following the decline of CE devices.

</comment><comment><USER21> Corporate smart phones, sure.

Consumer smart phones are a very different prospect.

</comment><comment><USER22> Way to have a typo before the article even begins.

<comment><USER23> I thought it was a typo as well, but author continues to write 'loose' in place of 'lose' so maybe English isn't his native language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> tl;dr:

Ex. micro-softie laments all the ways ms failed in the mobile space, while completely overlooking the elephant in the room:

MS, in the mobile space, did not have an already entrenched monopoly upon which to leverage other market share.

<comment><USER25> Is this a fair analysis, though? It's not like Apple or Samsung had monopolies that they leveraged to their advantage to drive mobile share.

Unless this is a subtle commentary on Google's use of their search monopolistic power to drive adoption of Android (which drives further adoption of Google products) -- if so, then kudos to you.

<comment><USER26> > It's not like Apple or Samsung had monopolies that they leveraged to their > advantage to drive mobile share.

The iPhone was a natural progression from the iPod, which dominated the music player market since the turn of the millenium.

<comment><USER27> I don't buy that. If the iPhone was 'just an improved iPod' at release, reception wouldn't have been as mixed as it was ('brilliant' vs 'flop')

The iPhone was a small battery powered box you can hold in your hand and it could play music, just like the iPod, but at the time the iPhone debuted, that's about where the similarities ended.

Also, because of its price ($500 plus a two-year contract) the iPhone targeted a different audience.

<comment><USER26> > The iPhone was a small battery powered box you can hold in your hand and it > could play music, just like the iPod, but at the time the iPhone debuted, > that's about where the similarities ended.

iPods had just become colour when the iPhone came out, so the main differences were interaction (touchscreen vs "touch wheel"), screen size and connectivity. It wasn't long before the iPod touch came out, with a big touchscreen and apps; basically a non-phone iPhone, giving that different audience a clear transition path.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Finally: Brainfuck is ready for the mainframe/enterprise - <AUTHOR> After a long hack-session I finally got a Brainfuck interpreter written in COBOL working (https://www.vanheusden.com/misc/blog/2016-05-19_brainfuck_cobol_intp.php ). So you can finally run your Brainfuck programs on your COBOL enabled mainframe! (e.g. ibm esa/390, tandem nonstop, etc) If you don't want an interpreted code, you can use this program https://www.vanheusden.com/misc/blog/2016-05-19_brainfuck_cobol_compiler.php instead which translates/compiles the Brainfuck code to COBOL code. <comment><USER2> In a most ideal world I'd end up contributing to this project while listening to serialised Mozart played on didgeridoo.

I would be so happy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Everyone else can now go and put away their toy languages!

<comment><USER3> Why is a straightforward joke being down voted? Obviously I'm not really saying to not use any other languages. The wiki page on Brainfuck even says itself "is not intended for practical use, but to challenge and amuse programmers."

<comment><USER3> Okay, I just discovered all jokes are bad on HN. It would have been nice to discover that sooner.

<comment><USER4> Bunch of grumps here.

<comment><USER5> Because somebody thinks its hilarious- and builds a converter from a "serious" language.

And is a stand alone guy in some forsaken company- and converts it all to brainfuck. And leaves and takes the "real" source along. And the next guy finds it years later and has to do with it.

Lots of "jokes" become running gags, and the running gags - long after being funny, have some poor guy having to keep those gags going. The poor guys venture on Hacker News in there spare time - and try to cause a abortion to the next generation of Franken-Frames being cobbled together.

Random Trivia: The guy who wrote brainfuck also contributed to the sauerbraten cube2 game engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My startup is using Intercal on Interstates [http://www.intercaloninterstates.org/](http://www.intercaloninterstates.org/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Some call it Brainfuck. I call it RISC

</comment><comment><USER8> Now this is real hackery.

</comment><comment><USER9> Man! That is just awesome, and badass! My respects!

[Orson Welles clapping GIF]

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice!</comment>


ZestCash is Not Good. - <AUTHOR> http://jasonfager.com/934-zestcash-is-not-good/ <comment><USER2> I'm really sorry that Prosper didn't prosper, because I thought that P2P lending would be an excellent alternative to payday loans. It made huge sense to me that if one person in a community has money and one person in a community needs money, then if they trust each other, one guy pays a modest APR and everyone walks away happy.

As it turns out, Prosper couldn't beat the payday loan companies because the people who need payday loans are atrocious credit risks and they collectively relieved us lenders of hundreds of millions (cough, not a typo) before we wised up about this.

<comment><USER2> Incidentally, if someone wants to brave formidable regulatory barriers, beat Paypalian levels of fraud, and spend their days dealing with the problems of the underclass, this is a multibillion dollar opportunity and you'd create more wealth for the poor than anyone since Walton.

<comment><USER3> Lending Club? (I've invested in both Prosper and Lending Club)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From details on ZestCash's website, there are four fairly substantial ways in which they are different than payday loans, which the original author seemed to dismiss.

First, ZestCash is charging a substantially lower APR than payday loan shops (280% versus 480%).

Second, ZestCash allows partial repayment. This is critical, as requiring full repayment is a major factor in forcing payday loan customers to rollover their loans, incurring additional fees and leading to additional loans. Partial repayment is far more likely to result in a customer who can actually pay off their loan and is not trapped in a cycle of debt.

Third, ZestCash further increases the chances of repayment by allowing flexibility in both amount and length of the loan.

Fourth, as the Center for Responsible lending points out, most payday loan employees are minimum wage and not trained to help customers in any way. Anyone approved at ZestCash gets a personal representative who will work with the customer 1-on-1 for the life of the loan.

Time will tell whether the ZestCash team is able to generate positive change for the underbanked -- full disclosure, I've worked with Douglas and think he's very sharp -- but I certainly think their story is a lot more balanced than the original article would suggest.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do dismiss those.

 _First, ZestCash is charging a substantially lower APR than payday loan shops (280% versus 480%)._

You're cherry picking one of their lowest rates and putting it against the assumption that someone's going to roll a payday loan 7 times. If you actually click through and read the CRL report they're quoting, you'll notice that they're misusing the statistics. ZestCash claims that the CRL reports that 80% of payday loans are rollovers, but when you click on that link, the CRL page you're taken to doesn't give that statistic anywhere. I've only skimmed the full report, but I haven't been able to find where they're getting that number from. I'm left highly dubious of the claim that the average payday loan is rolled over 7 times, though, given that the report _does_ explicitly state that the average number of transactions _per borrower who takes out more than one payday loan_ per year is only 9 (and 20% of people who take out payday loans only take out 1 per year, and aren't counted in that group).

 _Second, ZestCash allows partial repayment. This is critical, as requiring full repayment is a major factor in forcing payday loan customers to rollover their loans, incurring additional fees and leading to additional loans. Partial repayment is far more likely to result in a customer who can actually pay off their loan and is not trapped in a cycle of debt._

But they also require a minimum of a two month term, and I can't find any indication on the site that they let you pay off the loan early to avoid additional interest accrual.

 _Third, ZestCash further increases the chances of repayment by allowing flexibility in both amount and length of the loan._

That's what they claim. Hard to state it as fact just yet. And if the chances of repayment are increasing, shouldn't the APR be going down? The justification for such high rates is supposedly that these are such high-risk loans.

 _Anyone approved at ZestCash gets a personal representative who will work with the customer 1-on-1 for the life of the loan_

A part of what makes me so mad about this site is that they're posturing themselves as a caring, responsible alternative that's going to hold your hand through this process. If you care and are responsible, you're not going to charge such usurious rates. Period.

<comment><USER5> > If you care and are responsible, you're not going to charge such usurious > rates. Period.

So you'd prefer that economically viable rates are only offered by people who are irresponsible and/or uncaring.

I fail to see how that would be an improvement.

<comment><AUTHOR> _So you'd prefer that economically viable rates are only offered by people who are irresponsible and/or uncaring._

No. I'm saying that only irresponsible and/or uncaring people offer those rates, that the act of charging those rates demonstrates you to be irresponsible or uncaring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > ...ZestCash's own rates, which run between 242% and 462% APR (not a typo)...

Yeah, and a 5% APR on a 30 year mortgage would look ridiculously large if you quoted it as an MPR (Millenium Percentage Rate).

The only utility of using a standard such as the APR is to compare loans with _the same term_. Quoting a one week, single payment period loan in terms of an APR leads readers to compare its magnitude with that of other much longer term loans; this is a wholly disingenuous attempt to appeal to emotion over basic mathematical reasoning.

<comment><USER7> Basic mathematical reasoning actually pushes in the opposite direction: that one should generally prefer to maximize long-run return (or minimize long-run interest payments), so the lengths are only relevant insofar as they change the risk. That does change things, but doesn't make them completely incomparable, and APR is as good a standard measure as any.

If you look at most "normal" debt markets, debts of quite different terms compare on reasonably similar APR scales: a 1-month piece of corporate paper and a 30-year government bond all fall within a few percentage points APR spread. It's not like nobody's ever thought of the idea of an APR curve before!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> APR is pretty irrelevant for payday loans. If my math is correct, even at the highest quoted 462% APR, a £100 loan for 10-days would have a fee of ~£5. Compared to ~£16 for the rest of the payday industry, that's not too bad.

In reality they're an awful source of funds if you've got other options, but that's the point, they're for people who can't get a traditional loan, and whom are most likely high-risk.

<comment><USER9> Even 1 day paper uses annual rates.

<http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/cp/>

When your cost of money is 30000 basis points, it just means that you're shifting default risk from the landlord/doctor/drug dealer to a speculator, aka "loanshark". That's why it's not so predatory as it seems. Would you rather people shaft the dentist or some asshole?

<comment><USER10> I work in the (junk) bond markets. There's a clear distinction between Yield- to-Call paper (which is priced so that different bonds are priced based on the yields they offer) and paper that trades on a 'price basis' (i.e. recovery rates in default are a very major consideration).

For the 'price based' bonds, the APR (or IRR) is a nonsense measure : because it is only considering the best outcome (payback at maturity). Most people don't understand that the high IRRs exist partly because people are bundling the price-effect of the downside case into the single 'yield' number of the best case.

I don't want to defend payday loans really - just point out that Treasury Bonds and (say) Lehman bonds are two very different animals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Early in my marriage, when I had a couple kids and 2 student loans to pay, I was having trouble stretching between pay-checks and used payday loans several times. They are a nightmare, because you are stealing from next month and you have nothing to show for the money spent on fees. It's a black hole when you have limited resources. Saying that, banks are as bad or worse with their $20-$30 per transaction 'convenience' overdraft fees, which, if you lose track, can pile up on one and two dollar debit card purchase.

I don't know if I'd go so far to say they don't exist, but I do have a lot of sympathy for the borrowers.

</comment><comment><USER12> > The Center for Responsible Lending, which is frequently mentioned on > ZestCash's website at the time of this writing, supports a 36% annual > interest rate cap.

I used to think this way until I met a guy who was doing research into opening a payday loan shop. Taking a bit of risk and being blunt, I said to him, "Hey dude, you know, I like finance. I get finance, it's good. I'm not a person who just bashes finance because I'm ignorant... but c'mon, aren't payday loans, like, totally fucking evil?"

He took it in a good spirit and answered. Here's his take:

The first thing he said is that payday loan shops don't charge a huge APR, they charge a flat fee for getting a payday loan, often $20 or $40 on a $500 loan.

That's 5% to 10% of the loan amount, however, if you average that to APR you get a crazy %, something in the low thousands, like 1000% or so.

So I said, "Well, dude, yeah, 1000% is evil. Right?"

He says, and I'll never forget this, "What do you think the default rate is on a payday loan?"

I said, "Well, jeez, I dunno..."

He said, "Okay. It's _really_ high. Many of them don't get paid back. And it's a shitty business to be in, nobody likes selling payday loans. The price of a payday loan is what it is considering the default rate and the unenjoyableness of the business. If someone found a better system or enjoyed it, they could get in with lower rates. Traditionally banks don't want anything to do with it, since it's such a high risk and unpleasant business."

I said, "But... isn't that taking advantage of people?"

I won't forget his second quote either - "People only go get a payday loan when, for whatever reason, they can't get money _anywhere_ else. If payday loan places didn't exist, there'd be no emergency credit for people. Mind you, these are the worst borrowers. These are people with no savings who no one trusts enough to lend them 500 bucks for two weeks. Do people abuse it to go drinking a week early? Yeah, sure, _like anything else_. People abuse eating fast food, drinking too much, tobacco, all sorts of things. I don't approve of that. But for other people, a payday loan is a lifeline. If you regulate it so you can only charge $5 for a $500 loan, there won't be payday loan shops any more. They won't exist. And that'll be bad for people who desperately need credit and can't get it elsewhere. The people that complain about this aren't doing anything to help people, they're not opening a shop to compete with more fair rates, because they'd go out of business. They just like to talk about how unfair it is, but haven't thought about what to do after they drive all these shops out of business with their regulation."

He explained some valid reasons for people to get a payday loan - car breaks down and they need to replace it, emergency expenses... he said under those conditions, it can make sense to get a payday loan. And with the huge default rates, the payday shops need to charge a large amount to stay in business. Later he went on to say that people really like making money by lending, so if they thought they could beat a CD or bond rate by lending for low amounts at payday shops, they would. The reason it doesn't happen is because of the default rate and how unpleasant the business is. (No prestige, in fact it's anti-prestigious, and not fun working conditions either)

Changed my view on the industry. Still don't like the business, would never go near it personally. But it puts it into context some.

<comment><USER2> Payday loans probably are superior to some I-can't-believe-it-isn't-credit options in terms of APR: for example, if you're about to miss a utility payment, get the power turned off, and get hit with a $50 fee for getting it turned back on again N days later, then a payday loan strictly dominates the implicit APR of getting credit extended by your utility company _and_ the lights stay on _and_ you suffer no social embarrassment. You could come up with similar examples for automobile breakdowns (best alternative to getting a loan: losing your job), bouncing rent checks, paying overdraft fees at a real financial institution, etc etc.

I still would go back to cleaning oil pipes with a toothbrush prior to working for them, though, regardless of how much money they were prepared to throw at me. Like Thomas mentions below, they are a loathsome industry.

I strongly believe there is an opportunity here: just like FICO and credit cards made short-term loans effectively free for much of the middle class or like how competition and technology has brought the price of remittances to Mexico to below the cost of a Big Mac, I think there is some combination of technology and innovative products which should bring the cost of short-term loans down by more than an order of magnitude for the poor. Maybe it resembles a credit union account. Maybe it is something weird, like cell phone companies moving further into the consumer credit space. (It might not be obvious, but cell phone contracts are economically equivalent to an extension of credit, and they're made to work profitably among populations that no sane financial institution would touch.) But we can do this better.

<comment><USER13> You cleaned oil pipes with a toothbrush?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, when I was a high school student, to save up money for college I got a job under the table from my sister's friend's father. His business was in processing scrap components (everything from buttons for factory machines to the aforementioned oil pipes) and reselling them. This involved a lot of manual labor sorting e.g. a pile of 10,000 switches into functioning and broken ones, then sorting by color, or in cleaning oil pipes using a toothbrush and some solvent (motor oil, as I recall).

I learned an important lesson from that job: when someone tells you he doesn't want to have you on the books because of "OSHA and the IRS and all that rot", that is a leading indicator you can use for "not someone you want to work for" prior to getting a 20 lb oil pipe thrown at your head close enough to move your hair.

<comment><USER14> I think crappy jobs correlate with awesome people. Lots of successful people I know washed dishes, cleaned pipes, did construction, or something equally "blue-collar." It builds character and makes you yearn for a better life.

<comment><USER15> How many people you don't know washed dishes or cleaned pipes all their life and never went beyond that, though?

<comment><USER14> Billions? What does that have to do with anything?

<comment><USER16> It suggests that the awesome people with backgrounds in crappy jobs got out of the crappy jobs because they're awesome, rather than being awesome because they did crappy jobs.

<comment><USER14> If you only look at the set of people who work in white collar jobs, I would wager those who previously had blue-collar jobs exhibit some positive characteristics.

I don't think that the set of all people who have had or currently have a blue-collar job is particularly relevant to the argument, other than as a backdrop for speculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's easy to think payday loan shops are evil until you know someone who owns one. The people running them typically aren't getting rich off of it. A high percentage of loans don't get paid back. Fraud, forgery, and outright armed robbery are a constant threat. Your employees (who have to be willing to work in a place that will be robbed, at gunpoint, on a monthly basis) aren't much more savory than the customers, and theft amongst them is rampant.

Shit happens, and a lot of time when it happens to poor people, they have no alternative. It's sad that society is structured in such a way that they are forced to turn to a source of credit that charges them so much, but the payday loans do provide a valuable service.

<comment><AUTHOR> In this particular case, we're talking about an online service, so no unscrupulous employees to get ripped off by or physical dangers to navigate. They also claim to be using advanced models for approving borrowers, and putting in place a bunch of methods to ensure higher payback. All of that implies lower risk, so why aren't the rates themselves significantly lower?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's not clear why the author decided to compare a ZestCash loan with credit cart debt when they're clearly different products. And while ZestCash's rates of 242% to 462% are high, they are, under certain circumstances, competitive. For example, in Washington state, MoneyMart charges in the 300s.

Source:[http://www.moneymart.com/MM/_includes/templates/StateRates.a...](http://www.moneymart.com/MM/_includes/templates/StateRates.asp?pdf=WA_CTP&state=Washington&st=Money+Mart)

<comment><AUTHOR> The point about credit cards was made because it's advice given to middle class consumers. I assume if 30% is too high for people with money, it's even more so for people without. From the perspective of the business making the loans, of course they're different models. I don't see that as the most important perspective, though.

And the fact that ZestCash is competitive with other usurious lending companies really does nothing to improve my opinion of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is pretty crazy how many media outlets will publish articles written by companies without even fact-checking them.

<comment><USER20> For them it doesn't pay to fact check. In the media business it is all about getting a breaking story out there quickly, and if they waste time fact- checking they are losing readers who are getting the story elsewhere. Clearly this isn't good, but it is the price that we pay for demanding fast, instant news.

<comment><USER21> At the same time it seems like those who would actually fact check would have a story that no one else has.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is what was lost when blogs overwhelmed journalism. Fact-checking, accountability and misaligned curation but I am hopeful blogs will evolve over time to incorporate them back.

<comment><USER23> They already have. You're reading the fact checking right now.

News corporations may be more consistent, but do you really think they're more trustworthy?

<comment><USER24> Who's watching the watchmen? How do you know that this blog has their facts straight? Have you read any rebuttals to this post? (Already, certain issues that seemed outrageous have been deflated by other commenters.)

*For the record, I feel like being "evil" means to prey on human weakness, for which it seems like the site in question and PayDay loans generally fit that bill.

<comment><USER23> _Who's watching the watchmen? How do you know that this blog has their facts straight? Have you read any rebuttals to this post?_

I can't answer those questions any better than you already have:

 _(Already, certain issues that seemed outrageous have been deflated by other commenters.)_

<comment><USER24> I liked this answer enough to upvote it, but my honest question (the parent) has been downvoted. Could someone share some insight why? I switched from Reddit to HN because I thought this community was less prone to stuff like that, but maybe I'm being too sensitive?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I gather that the default rate for payday loans is several percent per month, so you'd lose money charging 30% APR (2.2% / month).

Can anyone point to a good article on how the industry works and who their customers are?

<comment><USER26> Here are a few articles I've read that you might find interesting. The first is NPR's brief look into the payday loan business as a whole and the second demonstrates the wild rate at which these loans are being issued (£1.2 billion issued in 2009 and estimates of £3.5 billion by 2014).

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1272205...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127220540&ps=rs)

[http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5h5YQz...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5h5YQzdFD_fFbk8hxhJYGlOaTb1ig?docId=N0234131286895626812A)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The main reason why society does not like pay day loans, is that there is more harm than good in lending money to people who cannot reliably pay back. If you don't have $500 to repair your car and do not have good credit history -- then probably you would be better off without car, because you won't be able to take proper care of that car anyway. And without payday loan it's harder to get drunk/drugged, so society benefits from not having payday loans.

On the other hand it does not make sense to criminalize payday loans, because as gcheong mentioned -- the alternative is broken kneecaps by loansharks.

The result: payday loans are neither prohibited, nor supported by government, and are booed by society.

<comment><USER28> Without that car, that person can't get to work. Loans are a valuable service to people all across the wealth spectrum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Even VentureBeat did a positive "review":

<http://venturebeat.com/2010/10/12/douglas-merrill-zestcash/>

</comment><comment><USER30> They offer $500 for 6 months with $33.5 weekly payments.

So you will end up paying 33.5 * 52 / 2 = $871 ($145.16 per month).

Isn't it cheaper to get something like this on Prosper or Lendingtree?

<comment><USER31> The people who get these will never qualify for a loan on Prosper or Lending Tree due to low credit ratings, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hate to see entrepreneurs acting like predators. I like to think we are in it for noble reasons - advancement of humanity, crucial innovation - you know, changing the world. But cold hard cash rules for many.

It makes a certain kind of sense that a guy who left Google for BMG would be capable of such a scummy company.

<comment><USER32> Easy to say it's predatory but I'm not convinced. These are high risk loans so who's to say that the interest rates and fees charged aren't reflective of that risk? On the other hand I am willing to entertain the idea that if the people who most often used these places don't have access to these loans at all maybe they would be better off.

<comment><USER14> Who's to say crack isn't fun for some people? You're still a criminal and a drag on society if you sell it.

It's not that I don't think the rates reflect the risk... it's that I think these rich bastards are saddling poor people with loans, and they expect a good portion of them to drown in the loans.

They charge these rates so they can recover vast losses... in the end, the honest people get screwed and even the dishonest borrowers get buried in a tar pit of debt.

<comment><USER32> Your analogy with drug dealing is quite apt. Because what happens when people can't get what they want through legal channels? Black market. Loansharking. Broken kneecaps. Payday loans may seem to reflect the worst of our society but in actuality they are a step up from other alternatives.

<comment><USER13> Your argument is that loansharking would be just as prevalent as payday loans, once payday loans are outlawed? You can get a payday loan within walking distance of most every block in the city of Chicago. You can't even legally _be_ a loan shark.

<comment><USER32> I don't know if it would be just as prevalent, maybe not but I don't think the criminals are going to pass up a proven market opportunity so I think loansharking would increase from where it is now. I do think that for the people who use payday loans today, if they didn't have the option legally, then life for them could be worse overall either by having to deal with loansharks and/or because they end up in some pit that could have been avoided if they had the legal loan option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In India Micro-finance companies are collecting _52%_ interest. [http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/oct/14/slide- show...](http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/oct/14/slide-show-1-mfis- come-under-the-lens-as-30-suicides-rock-andhra.htm)

</comment><comment><USER33> Govt regulate these loans unless they are willing to share the risks & responsibilities.

</comment><comment><USER34> i know we are not supposed to judge a book by it's cover, but man does the ZestCash CEO look like a snake oil salesman: [http://gigaom.com/2010/10/12/zestcash-judges- creditworthines...](http://gigaom.com/2010/10/12/zestcash-judges- creditworthiness-with-data-analysis/)

also you know it's a scam, when the site's page rank, alexa rank and compete rank are set to private.

<comment><USER35> I know Doug Merrill personally and he's one the smartest, most forthright guys you'll ever meet. You're dead wrong to judge him otherwise on his picture or anything else.

<comment><USER36> his alexa rank is not "set to private". what are you talking about??? <http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/zestcash.com#> didn't check the rest.

<comment><USER34> I use a special plugin that tells me all those numbers automaticlaly...maybe it considers an alexa rank of 4,343,216 too high to fit in the space.

but that number is horrendous...it's like 10 hits a month

<comment><USER37> If it's a new site, what the hell do you expect? No wonder there's no pagerank or alexa rank yet, it's too early.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>