Why isn't Bitcoin banned everywhere? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/why-isnt-bitcoin-banned-everywhere-32a2caec90 <comment><USER2> Potentially unpopular opinion: cryptocurrencies haven't been widely banned because they aren't actually all that impactful. The things you can do with crypto that governments don't like (harder to trace transactions, circumvention of asset transfer laws, etc.) have always been possible. If the government wanted to stop criminal transactions, banning cash would be way more impactful than banning Bitcoin. Furthermore, the decentralized nature of a lot of cryptocurrencies is not a good thing for a real currency. Being able to manage the money supply and enforce monetary policy is important. While some governments go bonkers and cause hyperinflation, most do a good job of managing the stability of their currency.

The author's latter explanation, that governments don't really care, is the most compelling. The only ones that do are ones that enforce onerous asset transfer laws (e.g. PRC).

<comment><USER3> Is it really that important to manage the money supply directly? Sure we had fluctuations in value when the US was on the gold standard, but was it really that bad?

I'm not saying we should go back to gold, I'm merely pointing out that a decentralized system can work just fine, it just needs to be reasonable stable. Bitcoin isn't stable because most of the coin owners are speculators and the price fluctuates with market sentiment.

If a cryptocurrency can be made popular for actual transactions but not get overtaken by investors, I think it'll have a solid chance as an alternative currency. I don't know the solution here, and perhaps crypto currency isn't the right tool, but I'm totally down with alternative currencies that don't rely on centralized monetary policy.

<comment><USER2> The gold standard was worse - there's a reason why we abandoned it. And regardless, Bitcoin is fundamentally a lot less stable than the gold standard. Gold production can be managed. Countries hold vast reserves of gold to adjust the money supply when needed. It's harder to mange the supply of gold than paper money that isn't pegged on any commodity, but it's possible. It is subject to manipulation, though, and the French exchanging large amounts of dollars for the stated gold value prompted the US to abandon it.

Bitcoin is a whole different story. Unless there's a mechanism to easily change the amount of bitcoin in circulation, there's going to be perpetual deflation. The thing that a lot of gold standard and bitcoin proponents don't realize (not saying you're among these people) is that the total amount of wealth in the world isn't fixed. As countries industrialize, new more goods are produced, and services are available the global amount of wealth rises. Simply put, there's a growing amount of _stuff_ in the world that can be bought and sold. The maximum number of bitcoins in circulation is fixed at 21 million BTC, so once that number is reached the cost of a bitcoin will (in theory) perpetually deflate.

TL;DR: A fixed supply of currency doesn't guarantee zero inflation. It guarantees negative inflation (AKA deflation) as the total pool of wealth rises. Deflation is widely considered to be worse than inflation, reasons for which we can discuss if so desired.

<comment><USER4> > Deflation is widely considered to be worse than inflation, reasons for which > we can discuss if so desired.

I'd love to discuss it. Questions:

Why is a 3% inflation rate desirable yet 15% is catastrophic?

Why is the 2-3% inflation goal set in stone and unable to be ever changed?

Many developed countries keep targeting this rate despite being unable to achieve it. Is someone going to mention the emperors clothing eventually?

Why is deflation itself bad? Why is cheaper food, shelter and consumer items a bad thing for society as a whole? People save more, consider their purchases more carefully and tend to be more cautious about their money. Some examples of deflationary products are computer hardware and new cars. People tend to take these purchasing decisions quite seriously and research far more than not, is that a bad thing?

<comment><USER2> Deflation doesn't mean cheaper food and shelter. Remember, deflation reduces the dollar value of labor, too. But the dollar-value of all other goods and services decreased tenfold as well so in the end nothing has changed. However, there's one big factor you're missing: debt.

Simply put, inflation favors debtors while inflation favors creditors. Imagine you bought your house with bitcoin, and took out a mortgage of 500 bitcoins to pay for said house, back when bitcoin was $500. Total debt, $250k. Now, the price of bitcoin is over $6,000. Did your loan magically shrink from 500 bitcoin to ~42 bitcoin? No, your loan is still 500 bitcoin. So your $250k mortgage has become a $3 million mortgage.

So inflation hurts people that loan out more money than they owe: mostly banks and rich people. Deflation hurts people that owe more money than the loan out: poor and middle class people. Benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the poor is broadly considered to be immoral. An ideal world might see zero inflation and zero deflation, but predictions are always off so the Fed plays it safe and targets ~2% inflation.

<comment><USER4> > Deflation doesn't mean cheaper food and shelter.

It's the literal definition of it.

[https://seekingalpha.com/article/4085479-food-deflation- hurt...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4085479-food-deflation-hurts- grocery-industry)

> So inflation hurts people that loan out more money than they owe: mostly > banks and rich people.

General controlled inflation doesn't hurt banks at all, they simply put their margin on top and that's the interest rate. In fact people are far more likely to use their services in a high inflationary environment.

"Rich people" and large corporations are far more indebted than the average person, they disproportionally benefit compared to a simple wage earner purchasing a house or running a small business.

Also the headline inflation rate and individual sectors are two entirely different beasts. If wage inflation moves nowhere but overall inflation goes up it's absurd to claim this benefits the poor and workers. It only encourages more people to borrow and speculate on assets in a feedback loop.

Inflation is not some magical gift from the financial heavens bestowed upon the masses to balance out society, in fact it's the opposite.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Magic of Harry Potter Is Coming to a Neighborhood Near You - <AUTHOR> https://nianticlabs.com/blog/wizardsunite/ <comment><USER2> This is going to be the same shitshow as Ingress and PoGo. Niantic has two of the potentially greatest games in modern history but they somehow manage to continually piss of their whole userbase.

Niantic has proven again and again and again that they are completely incompetent when it comes to a) communication with their fanbase, b) development of good content and c) quality control.

They had 5 years and hundreds of millions of dollars and what do we get? A completely stagnant Ingress with no new features in a long time and a completely boring and bug-ridden Pokemon Go which rapidly loses players.

Don't get hyped about anything Niantic is doing, you will just get disappointed even if you already had low expectations.

I really really hope a competent game company picks up where Niantic fails and releases truly great AR games.

<comment><USER3> Serious question, as I am not a gamer: Why are they so successful? Why doesn't someone just do the same real-world-including game style but with scalability? Are they much better at game design than other people? Better at acquiring IP rights? Something else?

<comment><USER4> They got a lot of shit for scalability issues but their initial success just took them by surprise, like everyone else in the industry.

IIRC they had at least an order of magnitude more users than their more optimistic estimations.

It does not excuse everything but their initial scaling issues are pretty understandable

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I live in a tourist area on the southeast Atlantic coast, and I absolutely enjoyed all of the families running around in the streets when Pokémon Go came out. I do hope that Niantic have ramped up both infrastructure and support.

</comment><comment><USER6> Despite my frustration at Ingress and annoyance at Pokémon Go, I'm not too proud to admit it:

"You had me at Hello"

I will be playing on day one. I'm holding out hope they can catch the hype- lightning of Pokémon, the innovation of Ingress, the wonder of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (TM) and add a vital third part the other games lacked: long-term fun.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hopefully this isn't as thin and poorly supported as the Pokémon game. The description makes it sound rather similar.

<comment><USER8> The Pokemon game was itself just a slightly modified version of Ingress!

<comment><USER6> Honestly, you could almost call it an Ingress "theme" or "skin".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really hope this is the future of games, it helps people be more social and get outside of their homes and connect over something very nerdy. I remember being out at 2am and following a huge crowd for catching a Lapras. It was definitely something different and a lot more social than being in front of a computer.

<comment><USER10> I don't see it as any more social to be honest. I live in Hong Kong, and people walking on their phones was already bad enough before games like Pokemon Go came out. It's not fun when you have to weave around people walking at a snail's pace on their phone, or have to bump shoulders with every other person because they don't see you until you're on top of their feet. My personal favourite is when people genuinely stand at traffic lights for 5 minutes because they don't realise the lights have even turned green.

<comment><USER9> I meant more social by comparing to playing computer and video games at home. Actually funny anecdote, the crowd I was in blocked traffic for 5 to 10 minutes by jaywalking (it was that big). I didn't join them but I definitely see your point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's what they should do... Make one game and let users choose their theme/skin. License different themes from companies (Harry Potter, Pokemon, etc). Then whatever mode a person is in when they buy stuff, that IP gets a cut.

And then: make that game fun.

<comment><USER6> That's what they seem to have done. As I remember, my wife's pokestops matched my ingress hubs 1:1. They made the backend on Ingress, and are licensing and skinning it now.

<comment> kyle-rb Well yeah, the landmark location data is sourced from Ingress, but to be fair a lot of that is originally from Google Maps, since Niantic started out of Google.

<comment><USER6> Right, but only ingress landmarks are in pokemon go and I saw no pokemon go landmarks not in ingress. So i'ts not just picking gMaps, it's picking directly from Ingress.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


www.hackerne.ws -- My New Year's gift to YC Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackerne.ws I bought this domain but I can give it to YC without money if they want it.<p>godaddy forwarding is not working so for now you have to use it with alias www. in front of the domain <comment><USER2> _"... Equo ne credite, Teucri. quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. ..."_ [0]

So I log in ( <http://www.hackerne.ws/x?fnid=Ei8X5456V8> \- see login on far right of <http://www.hackerne.ws> ) then you steal my password? I'd be more impressed with some neat hack that stripped out some useful data or re-think the reading process. Not a copy of what I can already use.

[0] Can be re-interpreted as "beware of _geeks_ bearing gifts". The domain should be thought of as a Trojan.

<comment><AUTHOR> actually, I am Greek ;)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just bought this domain but I can give it to YC without money if they want it.

godaddy forwarding is not working so for now you have to use it with alias www.

<comment><USER3> That's a very kind offer.

That said, I think that the news.yc domain name is very intentional- It emphasizes the connection the site has with the Y Combinator application and submission process.

When PG et all review yc applications, they look over the posts that people have made to the forum, and use that as an element in their judgement. Knowing that this is the case encourages people to make thoughtful and relevant posts, rather than just posting LOLcats, and the like.. Essentially, it's reddit, but your conduct matters, if you want to join the YC club.

For that reason and others, I suspect that the YC crew probably prefer the name being predominately tied with the Y Combinator brand.

<comment><USER4> Intentional or not, it's probably a bad idea. I think most hackers would be repulsed by the idea of a community where users try to be on their best behavior, lest the divine hand should pass them by.

This is probably why you don't see many hackers here. PG said recently that he is "cautiously optimistic" about this community. Between the lines, that sounds like disappointment. Old reddit this site is certainly not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good password stealing sir. I had this and about 11 other things open in tabs, plus was AIMing and got confused. Good thing I use Roboform and have randomly generated passwords for each site.

Hey PG, is there a change password function?

<comment><AUTHOR> if you did a simple "dig www.hackerne.ws CNAME" you would see there is a record for news.ycombinator.com thus I don't steal anything.

there is no even server hosting the domain. nslookup could give you a hint

<comment><USER5> Sorry, I don't even know what that means. There should be basic account maintenance functionality anyway though.

<comment><USER6> When a DNS client gets a CNAME record back, it looks up the other name to get the IP address. So anyone who looks up the address of hackernew.ws will end up connecting to an address for news.ycombinator.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> May be we can collaboratively build a new HackerNews app from scratch in _hackerne.ws_</comment>


You don't need domain expertise: Why did we create Venio? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ven.io/why_did_create_venio/

<comment><USER2> Great points Karim. Wish you guys all the best with Venio</comment>


More Men Marrying Wealthier Women - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19marriage.html <comment><USER2> To take it to its logical conclusion: Wealthy men are putting off marriage because of the current divorce laws or are marrying women who are equal or wealthier than them. Wealthy women don't face such problems. Ex husbands generally don't file alimony.

</comment><comment><USER3> This all boils down to one things: in a knowledge economy, women can earn more than they can in a brute-force-and-muscle economy.

There are two bell curves: income of men, and income of women. At one point, the men's income bellcurve was way to the right of the women's: it was a rare woman who earned more than ANY man. Thus, marriages of lower earning men to higher earning women were very rare.

Now, the women's bellcurve has moved to the right, so that it 85% overlaps men's.

There are a lot more possible pairings of men and women where the woman earns more.

This NYT article isn't really news - it's the inevitable outcome of the industrial and information revolutions.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is the trend really "More men marrying wealthier women," or is it simply "More women are wealthy?" A skim of the article would seem to imply the latter at least as much as the former, possibly more.

</comment><comment><USER5> > "We've known for some time that men need marriage more than women from the > standpoint of physical and mental well-being," said Stephanie Coontz, a > professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and research > director for the Council on Contemporary Families, a research and advocacy > group.

My first thought was that's a pretty huge [citation needed], but then I checked out the CCF website.

<http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/>

Actually, the rotating graphic they had that said "CCF is dedicated to..." struck me as interesting and compelling, it's worth watching for a few seconds if you have the time. It's a mix of very traditional family scenes and very modern scenes in the same graphic. Interestingly composed and put together, I feel a little more informed just having looked at it for a bit.

<comment><USER6> The idea that men "need" marriage more than women is sketchy, IMO.

My suspicion: whoever came up with that conclusion picked a few metrics which women value more than men (e.g., house cleanliness, frequency of doctor visits). They determined that men score higher on these metrics when they are married and concluded men need marriage more.

Considering how many men are avoiding marriage these days, and how much effort women spend on trying to get men to marry them, I suspect that this conclusion is false.

<comment><USER7> The usual argument is evolutionary; i.e. men have a biological incentive to embrace monogamy to help prevent the chances of being cuckolded while women do not. I'm not supporting it, as it is an equally untestable hypothesis, just mentioning it for the sake of the discussion.

<comment><USER8> Strictly in terms of different cultures, more cultures have polygamy than strict monogamy. If the advantage was evolutionary, you would not find so many cultures that have a degree on polygamy.

Polyandry on the other hand, is extremely rare which makes complete sense when factoring in the effort required for a woman to raise her children.

[http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/worldcul/Codebook4EthnoA...](http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/worldcul/Codebook4EthnoAtlas.pdf)

      # of cultures - Maritial Composition:
      36 - Missing Data
      186 - Independent nuclear, monogamous
      453 - Independent nuclear, occasional polygyny
      69 - Preferentially sororal, cowives in same dwelling
      18 - Preferentially sororal, cowives in separate dwellings
      344 - Non-sororal, cowives in separate dwellings
      157 - Non-sororal, cowives in same dwelling
      4 - Independent polyandrous families

<comment><USER9> I don't think it follows that polyandry is less advantageous for a woman than polygamy -- more men equals more resources. I think the reason is that most societies are patriarchal rather than matriarchal and this has traditionally led to men being the greater holder of wealth, and the disparity between the rich and poor being what it is, 1/100th of a rich man is worth more than even 100 poor men. That still doesn't mean that a woman wouldn't choose to have 100 men if she cannot have a portion of a rich man, but in a patriarchal society, those women would likely become prostitutes -- the (to men perhaps) more socially acceptable form of polyandry? This might even be preferable to the woman, since I could see multiple men in the same household potentially being much more rife with conflict. I wouldn't be surprised if societies tend to try to suppress polygamy at equal or even greater rates than they do prostition.

Basically I don't think polyandry is rare at all, it's just in the form of uncounted prostitution. I'd lay odds that you'd see more (monogamous) polyandry in societies that are more (very) matriarchal and/or the distribution of wealth is flat, both being rather uncommon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Did I land on 'Cosmo' by accident ?

</comment><comment><USER11> Now to tap into this trend successfully...</comment>


Mushrooms: coming soon to a burger near you - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03855-5 <comment><USER2> I've been living in San Francisco for almost six years now, and only recently discovered that people go "mushroom harvesting" (or mushrooming? How do you say it?), something that it's super popular where I come from (Umbria, Italy - "umbra" means shadow in Latin, as you can guess it's a forest area).

More than eating mushrooms, I think we should all spend some time to harvest mushrooms ourselves, assuming we know what we are doing!

<comment><USER3> There are a number of things you can forage for in the United States, but edible mushroom hunting is generally pretty difficult because of the identification component as well as the time investment. I pick Bolete Mushrooms when I am out, sometimes, depending on where I am. Those are generally easy to pick, but there are poisonous look-a-likes you need to be aware of depending on where you are. I've also had luck with Chanterelles. It's hard, where I live (Southern California), because it is very dry in the mountains here, and even in the Sierra Nevadas. When I was in Oregon a few years ago, we stopped on our way home and picked 5 or 6 lbs. of Warabi from just off of the road at higher elevations.

I think the reason it's not more common is also that you tend to need to always go a little bit deeper in to the mountains or forest than you expected to find what you're looking for, which can turn off the more risk-averse among us.

<comment><USER4> Morels are essentially foolproof. There are things called "false morels", but they really don't look that much alike (certainly not to anyone who's ever seen the two in real life, or even seen good photographs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mushrooms are tasty, nutritious, very simple to grow, and they grow fast. The claims made in the article about the supposed fussiness of mushrooms does not fit with my experience.

We should all eat more mushrooms, not necessarily as a meat substitute, just in general. They can bring their own fantastic richness and flavor to so many dishes, if you venture beyond the boring white button mushrooms. At least go for portobellos or something, they're so much more interesting.

<comment><USER6> Mushrooms aren't all that nutritious. They don't have many vitamins and don't have many calories.

They do have nice flavor and a good mix of calories though.

<comment><USER7> > _Mushrooms aren 't all that nutritious. They don't have many vitamins and > don't have many calories_

The first part is not exactly right, and the second part is a pro.

[https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/278858.php](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/278858.php)

<comment><USER6> They really aren't high in vitamins and minerals. They have moderate levels of a couple of them.

And not having calories might be a good thing, but it doesn't make a food "nutritious".

<comment><USER7> > _They really aren 't high in vitamins and minerals. They have moderate > levels of a couple of them_

That's true for most plants too. It's not like anyone advices eating only or mostly mushrooms, so that getting 100% of your vitamins from them becomes essential.

Plus, nutritional value is relative. Mushrooms are more nutritious than many of the kind of foods they can replace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since we're mostly geeks here, I'll indulge in sharing that the term "plant- based" leaves out mushrooms, yeast, and other fungi. They're a whole other kingdom.

> "Still, mushroom cultivation is not a green panacea."

For one thing, they don't photosynthesize.

<comment><USER4> While the relationship isn't very close, fungi are actually more closely related to animals than they are to plants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> FTA: "research has shown that substituting one-quarter of the beef in meals with mushrooms decreases caloric intake by about one-third"

So what am I missing here? Substituting 1/4 of a burger with air shouldn't reduce calories by 1/3.

(maybe they are talking about the entire sandwich, in which case meat had a relatively lesser quantity of calories anyway?)

<comment><USER10> Perhaps people don't finish a mushroom-burger? :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My son regularly cooks up a meatless dish of squash, mushrooms, zucchini, and enhancers like worcestershire that is crazy good.

</comment><comment><USER12> So Nature, the most prestigious peer reviewed journal in science, might now be running paid articles for Sonic

</comment><comment> bad-joke I don't mean to detract from the scientific discussion, but would like to note that this is a wonderful example of the "submarine piece" as described by Paul Graham:

[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

<comment><USER5> Astute observation, and the cyclical nature of news reporting makes it even more common.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The most unhealthy part of a burger is the bun. This does nothing to help that.

<comment><USER5> No, that would still be the red meat and saturated fat (cancer risk increase and calories).

Carbs have gotten an undeservedly bad rep, due to bro science. But there is still no actual proof of these assertions, only speculation.

<comment><USER14> Saturated fat got a bad rap because of butter. More recently studies have brought it into question how bad it is, and as it turns out, replacing saturated fats with carbs increases your risk of heart disease. Unsaturated fats are better, but saturated isn't necessarily bad for you. It doesn't help that there are hundreds of different types of saturated fat either. Not sure why you think carbs being bad is bro science, simple carbs are almost as bad as eating sugar. Eating carbs (preferably complex) is probably fine with a balanced diet including fats proteins and fiber and all, but most people don't do that. It's worth noting that general Mills basically makes the food pyramid (new and old) and it doesn't agree with modern science

Edit: Decided to grab a quick source online that seems pretty unbiased since this is can be a pretty heated and opinionated topic. Other more in depth sources exist, feel free to dig in [https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying- healthy/the-truth-abo...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the- truth-about-fats-bad-and-good)

<comment><USER5> Carbs have been demonized, just like fats used to be, but both are wrong.

Fats are calorie-dense, which is their primary danger (ignoring trans-fats here).

Simple carbs give you plenty of calories too, and basically nothing else.

People are quick to demonize all carbs, but it's only really the simple ones that are dangerous.

Whole carbs are generally fine in moderation, like everything else.

A lot of people are looking for foods they can binge on, with no guilty conscience, but no such food exists. It's not black/white, good/bad.

<comment><USER15> > "A lot of people are looking for foods they can binge on, with no guilty > conscience, but no such food exists."

Vegetables. Raw.

<comment><USER16> I was thinking that, too, but remember that feeding babies excess carrots actually changes skin color from the beta carotene, and then there are issues with gas and bloating from cruciferous vegetables.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Adulterating food with cheap alternatives is a way to disproportionately screw over poor people. Everyone else will just add beef to their "buy organic 100%..." list of products and pay a premium. If you want to help poeple, help them, educate them, don't patronize them. If you want to help the environment there are economic (hold companies financially responsible for externalities) and scientific ways (additives such as seaweee to cow feed to drastically reduce methane emissions).

It's a nasty and unfair thing to assume that when someone gets a burger, they're "overdoing it" every time. Plenty of people have an occasional burger and just want beef, not filler. For people living in food deserts, and people poorly educated or just poor, how about giving their kids healthy and edible school food? How about heavily subsidizing healthier foods for people on food assistance, and going out of our way to make those options readily available? How about bringing back Home Ec?

<comment><USER18> Why not both? Not everyone wants to pay a premium for a 100% beef burger when they could be eating a cheaper, healthier alternative. Having more options is better not worse.

<comment><USER5> I would certainly buy the 10% cheaper, healthier and less environmentally harmful burger, as long as it tastes as good as the all beef burger. It doesn't have to taste the same, just similarly good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Coming? I think that most of chain burger places around (above McDonald's level) have some sort of burger with mushrooms, I didn't even think it was some kind of novelty.</comment>


"I Am No Einstein" – Space News - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tB3IBXTgEc <comment><USER2> Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The fist 3 minutes is a misinterpretation of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox [1] and the Bell's inequality experiments [2]. (The page he shows is [3].) The experiment don't refute Special Relativity, it only "almost" [0] confirms the current formulation of Quantum Mechanics.

The first theory that joined QM and SR was the Dirac equation for the electron [4].

Currently all the "serious" equations to describe particles mix QM and SR. For more details, see [5]. It's difficult to understand, but each column in the table describe a different kind of particle. All the Greek subindex and superindex means that each equation is compatible with SR. (It's a very nice notation when you are use to it.)

All the calculations in the LHC and other particles accelerators relays in this equations because the particles go extremely fast, so they are very well tested.

Then the video gets worse, but I don't have time to refute each sentence.

[0] I wrote "almost" because I think the "no loopholes" claim is an exaggeration. It closes all the weird and very weird loopholes, but there may be some extremely weird loopholes that no one has imagined. If this were Mythbusters, I think this experiment would be more than enough to put a "confirmed" sign.

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

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

[3] [http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/08/experiment- confirms-t...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/08/experiment-confirms- that-quantum-mechanics-scoffs-at-our-local-reality/)

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

[5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_wave_equations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_wave_equations)</comment>


Show HN: I Built An App to Teach Mind Control - <AUTHOR> http://www.buddhamindapp.com/index.html <comment><USER2> I clicked on the link really excited about learning how to control the minds of my friends and family so I could finally get them to do my bidding but was slightly disappointed to learn it only helped me control my own mind.

But seriously, I'm glad someone took the time to take something as beneficial as meditation and make its impact quantifiable. I'm excited to try it out.

<comment><USER3> If an app designed to help you meditate is getting you really excited, is it a success or a failure?

<comment><USER4> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to ask me any questions, thanks for all the comments. I have a blog post coming up about how I developed the concept using an Arduino and Clojure to measure my meditation. You can read a bit about that over at my blog: [http://www.kpkaiser.com/mindhack/hacking-meditation-with- the...](http://www.kpkaiser.com/mindhack/hacking-meditation-with-the-arduino/)

<comment><USER5> Looking at the heart rate charts on the front page, it seems that the rates during meditation are actually much _higher_ on average (eyeballed at 92 bpm) than the rates while surfing the internet (eyeballed average of 75 bpm) (and while the meditation rates have a lower variance, their mean seems to be in about the same range as the absolute highest heart rates while surfing the web).

As someone who knows nothing about meditation (but obviously I have some background assumptions), this is surprising to me. I would expect meditation to be relaxing, and I would expect to see lower, i.e., closer to resting heart rates (<60 bpm). Can you explain this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, sorry, that part was a bit weird. I'd taken that meditation from after I'd gone running. My normal meditations have heart rate variance between 66 and 96 BPM. Very good eye in observing the higher rate.

And I'm not trying to judge or interpret anything from the data, I'm just giving to users to explore the ways in which meditation changes things for themselves.

<comment><USER5> Great answer, the app / front page both look good, and congrats on the HN front page publicity =). (I don't have an iPhone or a HR monitor myself, sadly, or I'd give it a spin.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Saying this app teaches "mind control" seems a bit disingenuous. Perhaps "heart rate control" (with additional hardware)? Without the additional hardware, the app is simply a meditation tracker.

The Muse promises to monitor brain waves via mobile device: [http://www.gizmag.com/interaxon-muse-brain-wave- headband/246...](http://www.gizmag.com/interaxon-muse-brain-wave- headband/24667/)

EDIT: Apparently there is already such a device on the market: <http://www.neurosky.com/Products/MindWaveMobile.aspx>

I remember a similar but much cruder device in the mid-90s which used a glove and allowed basic control over a ski game via brain waves.

</comment><comment><USER7> Have you considered adding an Amazon affiliate link to the website for purchasing a Bluetooth heart rate monitor?

<comment><USER2> This is an excellent suggestion. By doing more of the work for me by informing me which heart monitors work well with your system removes one of the common barrier with adopting a new system. That is, how much effort will it take to get this set up?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems like a great app. Basically a timer with a heart rate tracker.

Since the most important thing in meditation is respiration, and being respiration deeply connected to your heart rate, I think it could really make a difference in peoples lives.

Would love to give it a try. There are plans for an Android version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I'm developing an Android version, but platform fragmentation is a bit scary. And yes, there's actually a breath bar in App to help you regulate your breathing. It animates in 5 second increments, allowing you to breath in steady patterns. At this point (two months of practice) I breath in 20 second increments (so four bars up and down).

<comment><USER9> Is there anywhere that an interested Android user could sign up to get an email when the Android version is available?

I'd be happy to help beta test, and I'm sure other Android users would be interested in helping out as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, woops, being a single founder of a company means you make dumb mistakes like this. I'll get one up right now.

Edit: Done. <http://eepurl.com/t7DzL>

<comment><USER10> I'm so happy you guys are using a real email address validation software!

I just had to take over yet another person's itunes account this morning because they signed up using essentially my gmail address but with a period in it somewhere.

I don't know where the trend to no longer validate email addresses came from, but it's made my life hell because I was able to get a firstname.lastname@example.com address while gmail was in beta.

I'm looking forward to trying out the android version when you have it available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That seems really cool. Android? Btw meditation is really important. More people should do it.

</comment><comment><USER12> I really feel like the idea for this App is sincere, but it seems to be yet another technological 'tether' to our gadgets and material world.

Meditation should not be 'gamefied' or at least not quantified in such a way... What next, you can post your results on FB?

So wrong ...

<comment><AUTHOR> I've thought a lot about this very problem. In fact, I've spent the past 8 months or so thinking about that very issue.

Here's the problem as I see it, and feel free to debate with me:

Our digital worlds are a much more seductive reality than what we've got in the real world. Our minds simply weren't built to handle notifications everywhere, games which exploit our psychology, etc.

We need new tools to help manage our minds in this new frontier. Because we simply don't get these addictive notifications in reality. And for evidence that this digital world is more seductive, just look at how many people have their faces in their phones.

So what is the first step in helping us manage our minds more effectively? I researched all the data I could find, and it turned out meditation had the most potential.

So I turned to meditation and said how could I improve the experience? This is my first iteration at giving us tools to improve control of our minds. Its a very basic tool, and I'm very aware of the potential downfalls.

I'm willing to hear any advice you or anyone else has on the future of mind analysis with tracking devices.

<comment><USER12> I think some comments mention how this could be useful to track the heart rate (Athletes?Babies?Elderly people?) and surely that seems like a great idea.

And of course I don't think any harm can come to someone using your app. It's certainly 'something' on a wishy washy path to some enlightenment through external means ...

The mindset that a person must acquire in order to meditate and truly benefit from it, cannot be attained with an App, as the very 'thing' is yet another obstacle to detachment.

In any event I wish you all the luck in the world on your own path ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, sorry, I'm not trying to step on any spiritual toes.

I'm just trying to build a platform for people who are already completely lost in the distractedness of our digital culture.

For instance, I initially purchased a heart rate monitor to track my running, to make sure I was getting to 60-80% maximum heart rate for 20 minutes.

After my initial 30 runs or so, I didn't need the monitor anymore, and I no longer run with it.

In the same way, I just view this as a tool, not a path to enlightenment or anything else. Just a tool for people to become more conscious of the way their body and mind works.

And thanks for the wishes of luck. The same to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just bought this and will try it out tomorrow, but I'm a little disappointed to see that viewing previous sessions requires that I create an account. Does that mean the only way to track my progress is by uploading my data to your site?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, for this release the answer is yes. But there will be an update out in the next week to allow you to keep everything private and stored on the device. Thanks for downloading and thanks for your patience!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting idea. Looking forward to the android app.

Though I have to say I'm not convinced that your heart rate can tell you if your meditating 'correctly'. But its interesting data anyways. I would like to be able to upload my data anonymously and look at the aggregate data across many meditators to see if there are any trends.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very cool! I've long thought that mobile devices could make biofeedback, and other medical data monitoring, available to the general public.

The phrase "mind control", however, may have negative connotations.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a fantastic idea burnington! How hard is it to get multiple HR monitors to report to the same device? If it's doable then this style of app would be ideal for elite sports coaches.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not that hard, and I'm already developing some cool stuff in this direction. Check out my blog to see where I'm going with this in the future: <http://www.kpkaiser.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for doing this. I really have enjoyed your blog and your commitment to being mindful about the impact of technology on our attention and more broadly our lives.

</comment><comment><USER18> This isn't compatible with my iPod Touch from July-- I haven't updated to iOS 6 and I don't have intentions of updating.

Any chance it will be compatible later?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, sorry, this is the first app I built, and I kind of pushed it through while dealing with serious impacted wisdom teeth and surgery. It should already work with iOS 5, but I must have set the metadata wrong. I've added that fix to get working for you by the next release.

<comment><USER18> Thanks. I noticed it should work for iPhone 4S, so I thought I'd ask.

Side note: I'm impressed that this is what you did after your surgery. I only managed a couple of small ruby scripts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Excellent! I was already tinkering with building an app to monitor heart rate using this exact sensor. Now I don't have to finish the app.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pretty cool that you launched iOS and Android together. Did you use a cross platform toolkit to do so?

</comment><comment><USER20> Can you provide a link to buy the heart rate monitor/easily see options available?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey sorry, I meant to get that up too. So, during my testing I've found that the Polar H7 is really the best heart rate monitor, bar none.

You don't need any electrode gel with it, it keeps perfect track of your heart, and it doesn't disconnect like some of the other monitors.

Amazon link: [http://www.amazon.com/Polar-Bluetooth-Smart-Heart- Sensor/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Polar-Bluetooth-Smart-Heart- Sensor/dp/B007S088F4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358360344&sr=8-1&keywords=polar+h7)

<comment><USER10> FYI, Polar H7 is iOS supported only. Android/Windows users should not buy one.

[http://www.polar.com/en/support/FAQs/H7_heart_rate_sensor_co...](http://www.polar.com/en/support/FAQs/H7_heart_rate_sensor_compatibility)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> very nice. is there a sdk from Polar? How do you go about writing such apps that talk to HRM?

Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey hariss,

So there isn't an API for this from Polar. Instead, it's a Bluetooth LE device you'll need to find and sync with.

Bluetooth LE is really exciting in that it's the first wireless communication available that is completely open on iOS devices.

If you need help getting started, email me. My email is my username at gmail dot com</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Jailbreak Apple TV 3 - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know if it's possible? I've looked around for a bit. The more famous sites like redmonpie says it's not out yet. A lot of smaller more shady sites says it's possible. So where do we stand? Possible or not? <comment><USER2> I have an ATV3 and I'm curious - would you like to jailbreak it for the sake of "freedom", or to add specific features that it's presently missing? If the latter, what features would you like added to it?

I, for example, would love to have iTunes U on my ATV. iTU's absence is bizarre.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not, that is why the ATV2 goes for as high as it does on eBay/Craigslist/etc (It can be jailbroken). AFAIK there is not anyone actively working on a jailbreak for ATV3, anyone saying otherwise is probably lying to you.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's a mixture of both I guess. While I want XMBC etc. I also would want the ability to do what I want with my own products.</comment>


American Express will give all parents 20 weeks of paid leave - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/12/pf/paid-parental-leave-american-express/index.html <comment><USER2> This is a great step for what's really a sad state of affairs in the US.

My wife and I like to "joke" (it's not really funny) that we know enough to not take a puppy or kitten away from its mother before 8 weeks, yet we make human mothers go back to work after 6 weeks. And that's in CA, other states have lower minimums, or none at all.

To those who don't understand parental leave: it is self-evident that child- bearing is a necessary condition for the continuation of society. We also know that time spent with parents, the mother in particular, during that first year is super important for both mental and physical well-being. Just like we subsidize public schools because we recognize the importance of education for society, we should be happy to "pay for" parental leave.

<comment><USER3> "yet we make human mothers go back to work after 6 weeks"

No, we don't. We don't make them do anything. They are free to pursue whatever course of action they choose to. Many, many parents choose not to go back to work - ever.

I hope it works out great for AMEX and their workers - two private entities that agreed on one detail, among many, of their compensation package. Good for them.

Yes, I do have children - three of them, in fact - thanks for asking!

<comment><USER4> There is a lot if hidden privilege that allows you to think for most people it is a choice.

<comment><USER5> And there's a lot of hidden choice that you are ignoring.

A government mandate requiring companies to provide paid leave _forces_ (i.e. opposite of choice) everyone else to pay for it.

<comment><USER6> That is called society, and as someone who pays a lot of tax, has owned businesses in the past, and plans to do so again, I fully support it. And I speak out in favor of such ideas and plans, to encourage my fellow citizens to support these as well.

<comment><USER5> And once you have enough citizens supporting such ideas and plans, you can force the rest.

<comment><USER6> Well, yes, just like taxes are a thing, and you can't drive on sidewalks or against traffic lights, and we all pay for fire, police, courts, food inspectors, and so on. Turns out the world is full of coercive behavior--if you kill someone, there's generally a consequence, and so on.

Again, that's society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yet again, people who have family responsibilities through no fault of their own (e.g., taking care of a sick parent or sibling) are ignored while companies fawn over people who (largely) choose to pop out more mouths to feed. I'm not saying parental leave is bad, but it's entirely eclipsed the other reasons why someone might need to take time off work to help family.

Saying "I want 20 weeks paid leave and $35,000 to provide hospice care for my brother" would probably result in derision and maybe a pink slip at many companies, even ones that have generous parental leave.

<comment><USER8> > people who have family responsibilities through no fault of their own ... > are ignored while companies fawn over people who (largely) choose to pop out > more mouths to feed.

This is really a regrettable choice of words. There is no "fault" involved in becoming a parent. The point you are trying to get across could have been communicated so much more convincingly if you had checked your attitude. "This is a great first step, but many of us have responsibilities to other family members, also -- sick or disabled parents or siblings, for instance. It would be terrific to see benefits that support those needs as well."

EDIT: It has been (correctly) pointed out that my translation was lossy; I dropped the fact that no one chooses to have a sick sibling, and thus it might be even worthier of compensation / support than parenthood. That was unintentional, and I regret it. I still think there's a less caustic, more productive way to make that point.

<comment><USER7> A key point that I was making (and a point which your rewriting of my comment completely erases) is that parenthood can be planned ahead for (or avoided) to a much greater degree than other situations that require family leave. I could have made some anodyne choice of words that obscures this fact, but I didn't because I wanted to make the point that if we are giving people support for voluntarily taking on extra family burdens, then it's absolutely inexcusable that we don't extend the same support to people who have had similar burdens thrust upon them involuntarily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Their policy is quite generous. Not only does it also apply to men, but they'll also chip in for parents wanting to adopt:

> And employees who wish to have a child will receive up to $35,000 for > adoption or surrogacy for up to two children.

Congrats to AMEX employees!

<comment><USER10> It's not generous, it's normal for a first world nation, and has been for about 15 years now.

It's the US that is really, really lagging behind here. And with many corporations multi-national, Americans should really be asking themselves why that is.

<comment><USER11> It's generous in that it's in no way required of them and is way beyond what all but a handful of companies in the US provide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Enormously positive message. I hate that I have to recruit against them! The real question is will men be able to take the 20 weeks without their mid- management holding it against them. If someone in the C suite takes 20 weeks, then it will be culturally ok.

<comment><USER13> We had this exact same discussion at my workplace (Large, UK-owned engineering multinational) a while ago; turned out a lot of people expected long leaves to have a detrimental effect on their career, but no-one had anything except assumption to go on. My own experience (working in Scandinavia) suggest that at least around here, career and leave is mostly a non-issue.

I am currently staying at home with our nine-month-old daughter; my wife started working again when she was seven months old. I am now on paid leave until May next, and have the following observations:

a) While my leave is of a slightly unusual duration (Father normally takes 10 weeks of leave or so - not 28 as I did), it is not unheard of. My line manager actually claims to prefer longer leaves, and I believe him.

Reason? Much simpler to plan when you know employee such-and-such will be off work for, say, six months rather than just a couple of months. You might even get away with grabbing a temporary replacement from another department or a temp agency, whereas if I had a shorter leave, he'd just be told to split my work load on my colleagues and stop whining until I was back in the lab.

b) To the extent that the top brass ever talks to their minions, anecdotal evidence suggests envy more than derision. My leaves (this being the third one) has come up in conversation with executives on a couple of occasions, and response has been more along the lines of 'I wish I could get away with doing that!' or 'Good for you, I wouldn't last a month!' than 'WTF?'

Heck, during my previous leave, I was even promoted in my absence! (A minor one, but still...)

c) My male colleagues are supportive, though most choose shorter leaves. The most skepticism has come from female colleagues - who, while amused that I take as much leave as I do, worry about what my wife really thinks about it - after all, society is biased towards females taking care of infants, the first year or two of their lives traditionally being seen as the mother's domain. (No-one has voiced any concerns about the children, though - only about my wife...)

<comment><USER14> Whether or not parental leave affects career prospects depends on cultural and employer attitudes. Even after hearing your experiences in Scandinavia, I still think career worries are a legitimate concern for taking parental leave in eg the United States.

<comment><USER15> That's why it's so important to have tax funded (not employer funded) programs that also have allocated days for each parent, quickly making it first _acceptable_ but soon also _expected_ for both parents to take parental leaves. That is - if it's an explicit goal for society to have parents and men in particular take longer parental leaves.

My coworkers and managers would probably start wondering wth my values are if I didn't take at least 4 months with each kid. I'd look like some kind of stone age man to then I hope).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not a solution. Leaving it up to massive cashed up corporations only isn't fair. It hurts small businesses who cannot pay this. It needs to be mandated at the government level, means tested and subsidized. One more advantage to mega corporations and one more weakness for small business, add it next to the health insurance clusterf*.

You also need a huge cultural change in the American workplace, where people act like an employee taking time off will crash the whole company. Theyve hardly even heard of maternity leave contracts here.

</comment><comment><USER17> I read a couple of comments that say this is a step in the right direction to reverse the demographic trend in most developed countries of decreased fertility.

I don't think that we will ever be able to compensate a couple and mother in particular for the cost of bearing children simply because we have made child rearing so expensive. I am not talking about education or housing costs but rather the opportunity cost.

I don't think there is any way to adequately compensate couples for the loss in career opportunities and wages that they forgoe by choosing to instead spend time raising children. The unfortunate thing is that the more financially capable a couple is to raise children the less likely they are to do so probably because of the increased opportunity cost. I am not sure even the most generous maternity leave policies will be able to fix that.

</comment><comment><USER18> Kids are great, future of humanity and all that (at least some of them), but I cannot wrap my head around why businesses should have to fund them directly. I could understand subsidising this in some other way - maybe tax breaks/refunds, or banks providing more lucrative savings/investment options for future parents.

I get that people want everything, and they want it yesterday. They also don't want to have to make choices, and certainly don't want to have to plan too far ahead. But really, if you can't survive on one income for a year, then you're not financially secure enough to support one or more children. The problem that paid parental leave is trying to solve isn't a short-term money problem, it's a long-term, generation-wide pattern of financial irresponsibility. The old 'teach a man to fish' adage sums this up pretty nicely I think.

I'm genuinely in favour of supporting parents and encouraging people to have babies, after all I'm going to need someone to sponge bath me after I soil myself and forget who I am when I'm 80. I just don't understand why this is considered the 'right' way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER19> In Canada every family gets 52 weeks of 55% pay.

This 'progress' is behind the rest of the world, sure its a good innovation or whatever, but why is the USA miles behind the rest of the world in this regard?

Parents being around for their kids is important.

<comment><USER20> Want to spend time with your kids? That's fine, just don't expect to get paid for it.

Here's my all American take on this: you made the choice to have kids. Don't expect companies to subsidize your child-rearing efforts, we owe you nothing.

<comment><USER21> I think you've completely over looked the benefits to the individual, and society, as a whole when you allow parents to spend more time with their new born kids.

It's really easy to say "hey you decided to have a kid, so that's on you". But you do need children to sustain society in the future. It does them a lot of good if their parents can spend more time with them during their infant stage.

Also that attitude is really detrimental to women. Are future mothers supposed to choose over one day raising a kid or their careers? Doesn't society lose out on a lot of potential if we just say "sorry, if you want a kid then you're going to find a new job" ?

<comment><USER22> Im all for societal level support of parents, I just don't think the obligation should be on corporations. I dont think a corporation should be required to do anything but hold your position open for up to 3-6 months as a sabbatical. (I do think we should have a parental unemployment benefit, to make up the pay.)

But it seems fundamentally unfair to impose on the business's ability to function (or other people's ability to get hired/promoted) because _you_ want to have a kid.

So if you want to incentivize parents, do it through social benefits, rather than unreasonable demands and distortions of the labor market.

<comment><USER23> The Canadian 55% mentioned above is an unemployment benefit, so there is some confusion in this thread. The obligation to the corporation is that they maintain your job (or equivalent) for some period, I forget the details.

Corporations are free to offer top up benefit, and many do as a competitive incentive.

<comment><USER24> That's way better than the way people expect it to work in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My kids were born 11 and 13 years ago... can I get a job there and take those 40 weeks retroactively?

</comment><comment><USER26> Every now and then I wonder if I should have stayed in the USA rather than coming back to Canada. I could have made a lot more money. Then someone like you says something like that, and I breath a big sigh of relief.

Thanks, I was due for one of those.

<comment><USER27> Please don't react to a comment with a bad thing in it by turning that into the entire subject and going one worse yourself. That's the opposite of civil, substantive discussion.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160679) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's American Express, their money is made by a bunch of servers in racks, they could put half of their staff on paid leave for an entire quarter and the numbers would be unchanged.

<comment><USER29> Do you know what website you're on right now?

<comment><USER28> It used to be a website where people posed useful counterpoints instead of redundant rhetorical insulting questions.

Of course the ability of a company like AMEX to offer these benefits hinges directly on the fact that a large number of their employees are non-essential to the value producing process.</comment></comment></comment>


Lizard Squad attacks Brian Krebs - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/02/technology/security/krebs-lizard-squad/ <comment><USER2> Big mistake. People who mess with Brian Krebs tend to end up fully doxed and arrested shortly afterwards. You'd think the blackhat world would understand this by now. Krebs is _not_ a guy want to be investigated by.

<comment><USER3> You really think people like Lizard Squad, who called their DDOS attack on Sony and Microsoft "security work", understand how the world works?

<comment><USER4> I don't think they take themselves too seriously. Nor should we.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the past he's also been swatted and had drugs mailed to him, and a flower cross saying RIP Brian Krebs.

<comment><USER6> My favorite might have to be the time when someone cut down a tree in his front yard. [https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/334422653475627008](https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/334422653475627008)

<comment><USER7> I'm at a complete loss as to what cutting down a tree is supposed to achieve.

<comment><USER8> "I know where you live and am prepared to commit crimes" sends a bit of a message, don't you think?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> His latest tweet

      Looks like the Finnish kid Julius aka Ryan/zee was arrested in Lizard Squad roundup http://ow.ly/GFeeM

</comment><comment><USER10> The article says they knocked him offline only briefly, but I'm actually having trouble loading krebsonsecurity.com right now.

<comment><USER11> Its up now. Tops story is about the lizard squad. This is an interesting tidbit:

>These two services, like most booters, are hidden behind CloudFlare

Wow, is cloudflare so poorly run they have no idea they're hosting/caching/accelerating Lizard Squad tools? CF plays up itself as this strong security minded service, but it looks like they're in bed with the blackhats.

I was on the fence with them, but now I think I'm just going to roll my own mod_security/mod_evasive proxy and call it a day. If they dont care about or can't detect these types of clients, then I don't want to do business with them.

<comment><USER12> Cloudflare takes the right approach of being content neutral.

<comment><USER13> Also, if you're selling a DDoS-protection service, it's good business to not work too hard shutting down DDoSers.

<comment><USER14> AKA racketeering.

<comment><USER13> Really nice website you got here...be a shame if anything happened to it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how he tracks them down? And if he can find two so easily (on his own?) how had they not be outed already?

<comment><USER16> Well quite frankly if you've been in the scene for a while, you'd be able to tell using other clues, speech patterns, and reused nicks.

Julius Kivimäki aka zee, aka Zeekill ([https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Zeekill](https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Zeekill)) has an extensive history, he actually has been dox'd and outed numerous times prior to this.

I knew lizard squad was zee by zee's idiotic behaviour. He constantly used the moniker "Ryan" or "Ryan Clearly" the name of another unrelated hacker. Well sure enough he gave an interview to someone using that moniker. Having even the tiniest bit of inside knowledge it was easy to piece together 1 + 1 = 2 and lizard squad is zee, aka julius.

There are other clues too, believe it or not, not too many entities are capable of massing as large a ddos as they were. Those that have the technical capability, normally don't advertise as such.

Zee was a "special" case, in that he had the capability, and advertised it as such, I was astounded the boy hadn't been jailed years prior. As I mentioned earlier he has an extensive history, and was involved in many of the large site take downs and ddos's that have made public news.

<comment><USER17> Zee/"ryanc" has indeed been involved in things like these for many years. HTP (Linode + much more) is just a small part of it.

I'm also very surprised it's taken this long for him to be arrested. He's completely brazen and has committed countless crimes despite knowing full well the general public and law enforcement know exactly who he is.

And if he truly was/is involved in carding, he probably won't get out for a while. I can hold some respect for blackhat groups, and hell, even a tiny, miniscule bit of respect for script kiddies like Lizard Squad, but once they get into financial fraud and theft my sympathy is gone.

<comment><USER18> Just because someone knows who I am does not mean that'll matter when it comes to proving things in court, which in real life isn't as easy as one might imagine.

>he probably won't get out for a while

If only I'd get sentenced in the first place.

<comment><USER19> If you get extradited, you're not going to have a fun time...

<comment><USER18> Well, I live in a country that will not extradite it's own citizens. And even if I somehow did manage to get extradited the US has a legal system where you'd actually have to prove a persons guilt, not just speculate it based on some IRC log of dubious origin.

<comment><USER20> Wow. You have not been following the news lately, and don't understand much about the us legal system.

<comment><USER18> That's a popular view, but I don't think that in real life it's an entirely correct one. At the very least those with money tend to be able to have a fair trial in the US.

<comment><USER20> I think you'd be facing the choice between a trial with a 500 year prison charge plus millions in damages and lawyer costs or accepting 10 to 15 years in prison avoiding the trial.

I hope you have lots of money to guarantee a fair trial, but anyway, I'd strongly suggest you to never ever travel anywhere near the US for the rest of your life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Attacks consisted of a briefly successful DDoS and this:

> the group jokes incessantly about Krebs' hairline and proudly proclaims, > "You can't arrest a lizard."

<comment><USER22> Because clearly his hairline is the deciding factor in whether he can punt their stupidity back where it belongs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What is the actual law that someone that engages in DDOS'ing violates? I feel like we might need one specifically for the activity. It's effectively the internet version of criminal mischief. It's not hacking and all of that, but it's also not something that we should just let go all the time. I'm getting sick of hearing about script kiddies DDOSing random websites, I'd be happy to see some fines.

<comment><USER24> DDOS attacks are generally launched from botnets consisting of computers that are illegally accessed without their owners' permission. While the DDOS itself may not violate any laws, executing it via hijacked computers certainly does.

<comment><USER25> Exactly. Fining them isn't the hard part, finding them is.

Spend $200K on an investigation to find a kid to fine him $10K? Maybe not worth the time and money unless it provably worked as a deterrent.

<comment><USER26> how can you sped $200k to find a kid ?

<comment><USER27> If you employ a certain number of people, it's assumed that they're doing other things. When you have to devote them to a different project, you're doing a few things:

1\. Making your staff work overtime.

2\. Leaving other work undone.

3\. Hiring new staff to make up for this.

4\. Keeping redundant personnel on board in case something like this happens again.

5\. Hiring temporary contractors and services to help you with this specific task.

All of these cost money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone know lizard squad's motivation? Are they just out to get attention, or do they have some grudge against gaming companies? Regardless, their criminal behavior doesn't impress me or strike me as making a lasting impact.

<comment><USER29> It looks like their motivation behind the holiday attacks on Xbox LIVE and PSN was to get following on their Twitter account to advertise their DDoS-as-a- service platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Those attacks have the elegance of a sledgehammer and the content of a plastic bottle washed off on a beach. I am utterly uninterested.

</comment><comment><USER31> > _Lizard Squad ruined Christmas for people around the world_

Come on!

<comment><USER32> My 13yr old brother spent all year saving his pocket money on a deal with dad where dad would put in the rest for him to get his first ever gaming console, an Xbox One. On Christmas he got it, and for 3 days straight he couldn't get it working AT ALL since the Xbone needs XBL to be online to activate, download games (they're all download tokens now), etc.

Christmas was well and truly ruined for him. It was heartbreaking to see that happen to him after all year of working his butt off and looking forward to it.

<comment><USER33> It's saddening to hear that your little brother's Christmas was ruined, but I'd argue that it's more of the fault of Microsoft designing a closed and centralized system with extensive DRM than the Lizard Squad's fault for taking down Xbox Live.

<comment><USER34> This. Seriously: a company makes a product which has the ability to be broken by hackers using a method (ddos), which is widely known and extensively used for over 20 years. And the product is closed source so no one can fix it. So... hackers break it on christmas. Oh no, it's not the companies fault! downvote! downvote! I'm tired of hacker news proprietary loving bullshit (except when the open source can somehow help them build proprietary products).

<comment><USER35> The Xbox can also be damaged by hammers, but could be designed with a more ruggedized case that could withstand that attack. If someone smashed a kid's Xbox on Christmas with a hammer I wouldn't blame the design of the console, I'd blame the creep with the hammer.

Seriously, you might not like MS, proprietary software, their business models, or lots of other things about them, but don't go blaming them for some cretins attacking their systems in a failed ploy to make a buck.

The Lizard script kiddies had a pretty horrible business model too, FWIW, break into a bunch of systems across the internet to DDoS Xbox/PSN servers, ruin a bunch of people's Christmas, and use the media coverage to sell their DDoS as a service scheme.

<comment><USER34> Yes, I will blame them. You make no compelling case otherwise. This is how the internet works. If you run a server with security vunls that are well known and patches available: it gets owned. It's your fault. Same type of situation here.

<comment><USER35> "If you run a server with security vunls that are well known and patches available: it gets owned. It's your fault."

It's not that MS was being lax about properly hardening their boxes, though. You could DDoS the most hardened server out there, or a rack of them, it's really an inherent design issue with TCP/IP that you can DDoS systems. It's completely ignorant to blame MS, they didn't have a single point of failure, they had blocks of auth servers nailed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Brian Krebs is a master of publicity, often a little predictable though.

<comment><USER37> Is that supposed to be derogatory? Don't be peanut butter and jealous.

<comment><USER38> I have to say that Brians recent posts seem a little pissy and childish in his wordings. He also stated facts that are untrue such as that most of Lulzsec are in jail...currently most of them are out and never served much time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Hah, why does CNN have a "Happy Birthday Playstation" message on this page?</comment>


Web Budget API Draft - <AUTHOR> https://wicg.github.io/budget-api/ <comment><USER2> Can anyone summarize how this works and the use case for this API?

Edit: Here's a good summary: [https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/06/budget- api](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/06/budget-api)

Basically, this lets you run low-cost background tasks without a confirmation from the user. I really, really don't like this, and I hope that, at the very least, this is easy to disable in all the popular browsers.

Edit 2: The above is not correct; browsers already allow a limited amount of background work to happen, and this API just exposes the budget information to the developer. Thanks for the clarification, swsieber.

<comment><USER3> No - it doesn't. Quote:

"This specification does not define how user agents establish or store the amount of current budget. It aims to define an API that exposes sufficient information to make the budget useful for authors, while not restricting the implementation details and heuristics specific to a user agent."

So basically, the Push API and Web Background Synchronization actually do that. This just lets pages programmatically find out what the limits are like.

To make an analogy to localStorage - this api is like being able to query local storage for how much space is available, and how often it gets deleted.

<comment><USER2> So what you're saying is that browsers already allow limited things like push notifications to happen silently without user consent, and this API just exposes the budget/cost for those actions? I'm not up-to-date on the background APIs that browsers expose, but this quote from the Google doc seems to be at odds with what you're saying, if I understand it correctly:

"The Push Messaging API enables us to send notifications to a user even when the browser is closed. [...] but the API has one important restriction: you must always display a notification for every single push message recieved."

And later:

"The Budget API, is a new API designed to allow developers to perform limited background work without notifying the user, such as silent push or performing a background fetch."

Edit: Reading through the spec more closely, it appears you are correct in that this is already happening on the browser side, and that this API just exposes the budgeting details to the developer. The Google Developer page's wording is just somewhat misleading. Thanks for the clarification.

<comment><USER4> Push notifications – by spec and by all implementations I'm aware of – must not be sent without explicit user consent: [https://w3c.github.io/push- api/#security-and-privacy-conside...](https://w3c.github.io/push- api/#security-and-privacy-considerations)

<comment><USER2> Sorry, when I said "without user consent" I really meant "with the tab closed". :) Brain fart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone not familiar with WICG (as I wasn't), WICG stands for _Web Platform Incubator Community Group_. Its goal is to discuss new (web) platform features[0]. In participants I'm seeing a lot of Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft names, as well as other tech players like Intel, Apple, and others[1].

[0][https://www.w3.org/blog/2015/07/wicg/](https://www.w3.org/blog/2015/07/wicg/) [1][https://www.w3.org/community/wicg/participants](https://www.w3.org/community/wicg/participants)

</comment><comment><USER6> farrrr out the web is getting more and more complicated!!

it used to be HTML and CSS. With all these developments it's turning into a javascript based operating system working out of browsers.

<comment><USER7> Yeah.

It used to be plain text, now you can make real applications on it and for the most part they run sandboxed and with little privilege.

I think this is a win for both users (who can get full apps without giving dubious software full access to their system) and developers (who can distribute apps that are generally much faster to download)

Plus you can still deploy your 20-year-old HTML and CSS pages. How cool is that? (Yep, CSS is literally 20.5 years old)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This should probably be a schema instance and should probably go through the Oasis standards body. Once the API is defined you can execute upon it however you wish.

<comment><USER9> Could you clarify why you think this? I don't see any connection between this API and the types of standards OASIS works on.

<comment><USER8> Oasis typically standardizes schemas and business logic. I see an API spec as an implementation of rules, which is really what a schema is. Typically schemas are defined in XML and this API is defined with JavaScript code examples for use in JavaScript, but again that is an implementation detail that shouldn't have significant weight on the rules of the API's design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This keeps indicating to me the possibility that chrome is opening and executing javascript from websites without a tab for them open.

Can anyone explain how I can tell how many magic background apps I might have running on Chrome for Android without my consent?

<comment><USER11> They're called Service Workers and you would have had to have given them consent to run. So to answer your question: zero. There are zero apps running without your consent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do any of you know the tool used to generate this documentation?</comment>


Hopefully NPM make this package to be deprecated - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/@straw-hat/npm-packager <comment><AUTHOR> With current needs around Javascript packages, publishing what is on the root is contra-productive sometimes and it is simple to enhance the workflow.

I hope you find it useful. I tried to use as much as NPM internals for do the movement so it should behave the same.

Anyway,

share your thoughts.</comment>


Advice to Aimless, Excited Programmers (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/80.html <comment><USER2> i interpret those kinds of questions as "hey everyone, i learned a new thing -- look at me!", a lot like my comments on HN.

the best strategy (if there's no facility for downvoting) is to ignore them, which is also a lot like my comments on HN.</comment>