Infectious Theory of Alzheimer's Disease Draws Fresh Interest - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/09/645629133/infectious-theory-of-alzheimers-disease-draws-fresh-interest <comment><USER2> Another theory is that Alzheimer's is a vascular disease [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6], i.e. atherosclerosis of the brain.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12480752](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12480752)

[2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24489130](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24489130)

[3] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23239205](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23239205)

[4] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20695015](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20695015)

[5] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15699381](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15699381)

[6] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23204143](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23204143)

<comment><USER3> This would make sense. HerpesVirus has been shown to cause atherosclerosis as well, in humans. The connection? Herpes binds to the APOE gene sitting on cholesterol-carrying LDL particles ....

[https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the- me...](https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the- messenger-a3f5dfeba09)

I spent 3 years in one of the nations top alzheimers centers. It is still shocking to me how some of the seasoned veteran professors in the field are both unfamiliar with the 20 years of viral literature behind Alzheimers, but that they also completely write it off as being unlikely. Curing alzheimers starts with curing the old dogma pervasive in the field.

Incidentally, the time is now for young hackers to get into biomedicine. We need you.

<comment><USER4> Sadly, the requisites to enter in biomedicine research are overhelming.

<comment><USER3> Nada - most hospitals really need computational help. If you come in and have machine learning chops, you can do can even do better financially than most bench biologists.

Starting your way in IT and working into a data science role is definitely possible, regardless of credentials. It's all a matter of finding the right lab and project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Microbial theories of Alzheimer's don't change the amyloid cascade hypothesis picture - that the disease begins with high levels of amyloid aggregates, then proceeds to high levels of tau aggregates enabled by the amyloid, and it is the tau that causes the real harm. That persistent infections raise amyloid production - because that amyloid is a feature of the innate immune system - is a way to try to answer the question of why only some people have raised levels of amyloid. If you can point to chronic infections that are present in 10% or 20% or 30% of the population (but not much more than that), such as some herpesviruses, this sounds plausible.

The other problem is that there are people with high levels of of amyloid who don't get Alzheimer's, so you need other factors as well. That may be obesity / metabolic dysfunction, hence the view of Alzheimer's informed by metabolic syndrome, diabetes, insulin.

The further challenge is that chronic inflammation in immune aging is clearly an important factor, as is vascular aging. A third of Alzheimer's patients also have some degree of vascular dementia, and the decline in blood flow and capillary networks are clearly significant in neurodegeneration considered as a whole.

Another point to consider is that a competing hypothesis for the microbial increase in amyloid levels is the progressive age-related failure of cerebrospinal fluid drainage to remove buildup of aggregates as it does in youth. This has just as compelling a set of supporting evidence at the present time.

Alzheimer's is a condition with many significant contributing causes. The amyloid cascade (with the various reasons as to why there might be more amyloid), immune aging, vascular aging. All the causes may be real, and about as important as one another. It is a condition that results from many discrete items, most of which may have to be addressed to produce significant gains in the patient population.

<comment><USER6> this is likely true.

I have always wondered why some folks w/ amyloidosis or cerebral amyloid angiopathy don't show AD pathology or symptoms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Alzheimer's is the cruelest of illnesses and the loved ones of the victims suffer as much as the victims. The allure of this theory, in my view, is that if you could somehow turn this into a treatment, people would give you whatever money you demanded for it. You want $200,000? We'll find it, somehow, just make Mom remember who I am, please.

<comment><USER8> > The allure of this theory, in my view, is that if you could somehow turn > this into a treatment, people would give you whatever money you demanded for > it. You want $200,000? We'll find it, somehow, just make Mom remember who I > am, please.

Experts please correct me if I'm wrong, but even if this theory were to be proven true, how could it help anyone once the damage is done?

<comment><USER6> IT may be more like - give mom the ability to re-learn who I am. Once AD hits, the memories are destroyed, so if things get restored, it may very well be a new a different person. Albeit one with the ability to learn and retain memories.

<comment><USER9> _Is_ that something we actually know, that it's the storage area that's damaged and not the retrieval pathways?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cortexyme is starting a phase II trial for their drug COR388 soon which is a targeted anti-microbial for a specific organism which they have identified as Alzheimer's related and believe is the cause of Alzheimers. They should have some results in the next year or so. See here for more info.

[https://www.cortexyme.com/news](https://www.cortexyme.com/news)

</comment><comment><USER11> So, NPR _still_ doesn't link properly from the data protection choice page to the plain text site...

Here is the plain text version:

[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=645629133](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=645629133)

</comment><comment><USER12> Prior discussions _(not the same link)_ on HN, posted for reference because they touch on the past research that was previously posted here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446016)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540512](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540512)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540094) (this is the parent link for the antiviral risk reduction study -- a good read, comments and source article)

There's a decent amount of reading when scholar-googling:

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=hsv1+alzheimers](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=hsv1+alzheimers)

I can't find it now, but there's also a past HN discussion about a week prior to the HSV/HHV causative study that points to the function of beta-amyloid as potentially to tangle and disable Herpes in the brain, leading one to believe that β-Amyloid overproduction and its associated side-effects may _potentially_ be a trade for substantially longer life and a slower passing versus a more immediate exit through e.g. encephalitis from an active infection.

[https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(18)30526-9](https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273\(18\)30526-9) (study link)

There's also research pointing to sleep's function as helping clear out plaques such as beta-amyloid.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16026655](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16026655)

Finally, there's at least a bit of research pointing to boosted susceptibility of herpes viral infections when carrying ApoE4:

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=hsv1+apoe4](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=hsv1+apoe4)

The novel conclusion from all of this, which I suspect is being actively investigated, is that there's a potentially complicated interplay of an enhanced viral infection (HSV/HHV enabled by ApoE4) + evolutionary defense going into overdrive (β-Amyloid) + sleep deprivation keeping the body from clearing out the residue -> disease.

\---

I'm particularly motivated to track this research because of its prevalence in my family background and because, from what I can tell, I've thus far managed to avoid the environmental trigger-pull. I can already tell you I'll probably go on (val)acyclovir lifetime if I'm ever diagnosed with any particular strain, as it looks like active infection, with outbreaks, is what's likely to act as the first domino to tip.

<comment><USER13> How would you know if you had HSV? My impression was that a lot of infections are so mild that those with them don't realize they had it.

<comment><USER14> > How would you know if you had HSV? My impression was that a lot of > infections are so mild that those with them don't realize they had it.

That's true. There's a blood test you can do, though.

<comment><USER15> My understanding is that the (old?) test is sensitive to both HSV1 (oral cold sores) as well as HSV2 (genital) because their protein coats are similar... so if you have cold sores you'll test positive even if you don't have HSV2. Of course their effect on the brain could be similar... although more than 50% of people have HSV1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Crohn's is another inflammatory disease that has long been suspected by some researchers to be infectious. The company RedHill Biopharma just showed that a combination of generic antibiotics could be as effective as Humira, the highest gross-selling drug in the world, at treating the condition.

[https://www.redhillbio.com/RedHill/Templates/showpage.asp?DB...](https://www.redhillbio.com/RedHill/Templates/showpage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=178&FID=1384&PID=0&IID=8179)

I keep seeing news about severe impacts of chronic infections that we aren't good at testing for, and aren't good at treating. Gut microbes that cause cancer, only just recently deciding that HPV's cancer risk to men was significant, and chronic Lyme disease are some examples.

This article cites the historic example of peptic ulcers, which the medical community didn't believe were caused by an infection, until after Barry Marshall infected himself with H. pylori in 1984, developed disease, and treated himself for it with antibiotics. Marshall and his partner won a Nobel Prize for this work.

</comment><comment><USER17> Lots of information out there. I feel as though my mother who I love dearly might be starting to experience the first stages of alzheimers. She's healthy, but otherwise not doing anything to take care of the condition. Given the current stage of research/etc, what could I do to best protect her? Should I be pushing her towards certain docs or clinical studies? Any direction would be appreciated. We live in Seattle.

<comment><USER18> Eat more curry is one.

[https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/909678/dementia-cure- curcu...](https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/909678/dementia-cure-curcumin- turmeric-stop-memory-loss-alzheimers-uk)

<comment><USER17> Thank you.

<comment><USER19> Curry is anti-inflammatory. There are studies on how the Mediterranean diet helps protect against brain inflammation. They are usually about depression, not Alzheimer's, and they typically claim that consumption of olive oil and fresh fruits and veggies are big factors.

Those might provide clues for you to start your search.

When my dad had Alzheimer's, I think they also gave him a children's aspirin (or possibly some other otc med) daily to help reduce his issues and help keep him more manageable. That might be another thing you could look up.

I recall seeing a remark on HN about Bill Gates, Alzheimer's and walking, though I can't find a citation. I recall someone saying something like "It would be great to be able to tell my mom to walk more because Bill Gates said so."

Walking is something I know to be hugely beneficial to various things. I would absolutely look for research that connects walking and protection against dementia if it were me.

Best.

<comment><USER17> Thank you, appreciate that a lot! My mom already eats pretty healthy and exercises regularly, but I'll try to point her to specific foods. I am somewhat surprised with all the research about that there's no prescription drugs or similar items that may be beneficial.

<comment><USER19> "Life is chemistry"

"Let your food be your medicine"

I started with anti-inflammatory medication for my condition and inferred that an anti-inflammatory diet might help me get off the drugs. It did.

I think an anti-inflammatory diet is a superior solution

Best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So does this throw the type three diabetes theory out the window?

<comment><USER21> Nothing is out the window- Alzheimers is still extremely mysterious. There are fungal, infectious, prion, plaque, vascular, diabetes etc. etc. etc. Theories that are all remarkably reasonable. The only thing thats really changed recently is that the most recent frontrunning treatment, an amyloid-related drug, didnt help.</comment></comment>


Changing time to Jan 1, 1970 will permanently brick 64-bit iOS devices - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/458ao3/discussion_changing_time_date_settings_to_jan_1/ <comment><USER2> There are already 17 posts of this story:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=1970&sort=byDate&dateRange=all...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=1970&sort=byDate&dateRange=all..).

<comment><USER3> Interestingly enough, none have made it to the front page. It's no surprise people keep reposting, due to the Apple fanboy flagging to prevent visibility to this issue.

Edit: And this post has been flagged away.

<comment><USER4> There is no evidence of "Apple fanboy flagging" on those stories. Please don't make groundless accusations of such behavior on HN—it's uncivil and tedious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just let the battery drain. [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/02/64-bit- iphones-and-ipad...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/02/64-bit-iphones-and- ipads-get-stuck-in-a-loop-when-set-to-january-1-1970/)

<comment><USER6> I wonder how long it takes to drain a fully charged phone when it is stuck in this state?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ideas to manage DB correctly - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm currently working on a project that requires working with data and do some processing. I've been reading about software architecture and I think that the best design is use a separated database server. My current plan is to use a Python Flask app to create a REST API that saves the data to a few Google Spreadsheet. Is this a good solution?
Another question is how do I test this? I was thinking in create some tests to try to write some data using the Flask app and "assert" that the response codes are correct.
Is this a good approach in general?
Summary: I'm using a Python Flask app to access the data in Google Spreadsheets. Good? Bad? Opinions?
Thanks :) <comment><USER2> Depends on the use case, but at the end of the day Google Sheets is not a database engine. If you're storing any serious volume of data or doing a high volume of processing, I am guessing you'll need a real db like Postgresql, or something of that ilk. If you don't want the hassle of installing and managing a database engine yourself, you could look at Amazon DynamoDB or Amazon RDS, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks mindcrime! I'll read about them :)</comment></comment>


Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/technology/electronic-security-a-worry-in-an-age-of-digital-espionage.htm

<comment><USER3> It surprises me how many security precautions taken sounds more like superstition to me than an educated understanding of protecting your data.

Cut and paste instead of typing -- really? We all know the clipboard is equally insecure. This is logic that seems to come from a child-like understanding of how computers work.

Why don't more organizations have their own secure token system? Then add a layer of secondary authentication over access to any sensitive data? Security is more about creating reasonable inefficiencies that ensure the right people are accessing information than it is about protecting your passwords from key loggers.

<comment><USER4> Copy/paste protects from purely physical key loggers, they can be hard to detect by visual inspection if you do it right and they wont go away even you wipe the laptop. You would have to do something more complicated to capture clip board data purely in a physical manor.

But he says software keyloggers, so that's pretty moot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _He connects to the Internet only through an encrypted, password-protected > channel, and copies and pastes his password from a USB thumb drive. He never > types in a password directly, because, he said, "the Chinese are very good > at installing key-logging software on your laptop."_

Apparently he didn't realize that it's also trivial for snooping software to monitor the clipboard content.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention access everything on the external drive. Relying on one-factor authentication when the system may be (well, _is_ ) in the hands of the enemy is just asking for trouble.

Use a token or smartcard in addition to your password.

<comment><USER7> I've found it surprisingly easy to start using two-factor authentication using Google Authenticator: <http://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/>

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't rely on Google Authenticator to secure my logins from a "government national security" level attacker.

If they're capable of installing keyloggers at customs inspection, I suspect they're also capable of imaging my phone at the same time.

While I'm _reasonably_ confident the crypto in the app is probably done right, the truth is I've got barely 13bits of entropy in my unlock code for Authenticator - and I could easily work out how to brute-force it given a realistic "government security agency" sized IT infrastructure. (Hell - <USER2> spinning up 10,000 EC2 instances for long enough to crank up the android simulator and try all possible 4 digit "PINs" one at a time would probably only cost "nice dinner out" kind of money…)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not just the Chinese that people are worried about. Travelers also wipe their cell phones and laptops to avoid giving up sensitive data to the customs inspectors at the U.S. borders.

<comment><USER10> Very true, I would bet that often times a govt such as the US will take precautions against the very same technological espionage that they themselves are performing, as they will figure if they built something and are using it, so is somebody else (china).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Weren't most of the laptops being discussed originally manufactured in China?

It seems strange to consider the devices to be contaminated if privately inspected by Chinese officials, when there were plenty of previous opportunities to root them at the factory.

<comment><USER12> There's a big difference between your negotiating counterpart quietly alerting Customs to do a special job when you pass through tomorrow, and _rooting every laptop your country makes and sells to everyone in the world_.

<comment><USER13> The better attack vector here is to champion an encryption technology that you a) have a backdoor too or b) have the computing resources to crack within a reasonable time, or c) both a) and b). :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _"The Chinese are very good at covering their tracks," said Scott Aken, a former F.B.I. agent who specialized in counterintelligence and computer intrusion. "In most cases, companies don't realize they've been burned until years later when a foreign competitor puts out their very same product — only they're making it 30 percent cheaper."_

Isn't cheaper stuff better for consumers in the long run? Besides, how do companies know that their foreign competitors didn't legitimately reverse engineer and/or independently reinvent the product in question, especially if the product comes out years later?

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how often these loaners that are known to be clean before entering China are actually compromised when they're brought back?

<comment><USER16> Seems like a good opportunity for a honey pot.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I'm scared of losing GMail access. Do email protection laws exist? - <AUTHOR> Hi, HN. The older I get, the more frightened I am of losing access to my GMail account. My trust in Google to do the right thing has diminished over time.
In the event Google decides to arbitrarily terminate my Google account, are there any email protections for me as a citizen of any country?
So much of the developed world digital life revolves around email usage. I don't believe citizens of any nation have, in any government jurisdictions, any protection from businesses cutting off access to their email accounts. Am I wrong about this?
If not, how can I protect myself from suddenly being cut off from such a highly critical aspect of communication? The many institutions of the world intermingle government, financial, educational, utility, and other service access with the concept of an email address.
Once upon a time, GMail was a revolutionary product. I now find some of Google's practices anti-consumer and a few business decisions of theirs a liability. <comment><USER2> Your fear is rational. It's happened to other people. I would suggest going to a paid provider like Fastmail and checking their terms of service. I don't know of any protections that exist by law at the moment.

My horror story:

I have a mentally ill relative who only logged in every 6 months. He got treatment and wanted to resume using his email account. Guess what? Google thought his activity was "suspicious" and permanently locked him out. We went through an infuriating loop of proving his identity, then getting a message saying a human was reviewing it. Then we'd go back to proving his identity. This went on for 15-20 cycles over the course of 8 months.

The only way to get out of it was to contact my friend who works for Google. Otherwise my relative had lost gigabytes of irreplaceable data. We would've gladly paid $1,000+ for the privilege of talking to a real human about it, but that's impossible.

<comment><USER3> That's infuriating. Something similar happened to my friend a few months ago. He couldn't log in to his Google account for weeks because the company took forever to verify his identity.

The fact Google doesn't have a way for people to talk to a human during a crisis is moronic. That's why I've moved off Google with as much stuff as possible.

I don't think I'd have the patience to deal with something like this and rely on automated systems to deal with my problems.

<comment><USER4> I logged into an old hotmail email to recover a related account, and it had deleted all my messages because I hadn't been active for 12 months.

The more I think about it, we really do need a more distributed architecture. The whole concept of "the cloud" really sucks

<comment><USER5> Email is about as distributed as it gets. How would you consider it can be more distributed? If it's about the ability to backup messages, you can do that with any MRA (Mail Retrieval Agent) program like mbsync/isync[1], or offlineimap[2].

[1] [http://isync.sourceforge.net](http://isync.sourceforge.net)

[2] [http://offlineimap.org/](http://offlineimap.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am guessing you are scared because:

(i) you won't be able to access importing accounts e.g. bank accounts where your email is your gmail account.

(ii) you won't be able to see your old emails.

Solutions

(i) Buy a domain name and use that for your emails. Forward those to GMail initially but you can forward them to something else if you ever lose GMail access. Update all your accounts to this new email address.

(ii) Use Google Takeout to download all of your Google data, including your GMail.

<comment><USER5> (ii) You can also download all your mail via IMAP(S). MRA (Mail Retrieval Agent) programs like isync/mbsync, offlineimap, and others do this. They sync, so you can run them regularly to download just the new mails and keep your backups updated. Whereas using Google Takeout would give you the whole thing everytime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The interesting thing about Gmail for me, is that I lost the ability to log in to my primary Gmail account quite some time ago (well over a year I think) and yet I still have a device that remains logged in and showing me new mail even though I don't have the password, can't send mail, and can't reset the password by any means.

I am beginning to think it is a notable security hole, as Gmail shouldn't, and surely does not in general, allow a session to last for years without timing out or requiring re-authentication.

<comment><USER8> Are you sure the password isn't saved somewhere in the mail client on the device and sent up regularly?

<comment><USER7> Possibly, although it won't send. And, you know, Google is often pretty aggressive at locking devices out if it thinks they are insecure. This is a 1st gen Kindle Fire, and I'm pretty sure it is very obsolete and not getting updates for a while. So even if it is still _trying_ to log in, that doesn't make it expected in my mind that it would continue to work.

If it were sending the password (out over WiFi to my tethered phone) is there a way for a bear of very little brain to MITM it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> a) Make frequent backups via google Takeouta b) forward all your mail to a secondary account c) don't use a consumer account (@gmail.com) but pay for your domain and use firstname.lastname@example.com

d) use your gmail account only for gmail and do YT, adwords etc from another google account so that if you run afoul of Terms of service on one product your gmail is not terminated also.

Only c) allows you to keep your email address after losing access to gmail. a) and b) just protect your data.

But based on anecdata, Google is unlikely to kick out users unless there's some bad behaviour (which may seem innocent to you)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Google is unlikely to kick out users unless there's some bad behaviour > (which may seem innocent to you)

I don't believe I've ever violated any terms of service Google has ever outlined. In practice, I have nothing to worry about. This concern of mine primarily revolves around legal protections, and rights as a "digital citizen" of sorts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a good example of why everyone should have their own domain. Using @gmail.com or any other "mass" email domain is just not a great practice. IMHO, of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have the privilege of doing this, and have professional contacts utilize such an address. For the layman, this would take considerable effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Need to use a cloud synchronization AND a backup service/scheduled app, or switch email providers such as setting up your own domain and email server in a country like Sweden, Iceland or Ukraine.

\- [https://www.cloudhq.net](https://www.cloudhq.net)

\- Make periodic backups of Gmail using IMAP [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gmail+backup+migration](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gmail+backup+migration)

<comment><USER2> Ukraine is not safe from Russian influence and could possibly be annexed in coming years.

<comment><USER11> You're wrong because you're not applying nuance and you're trying to prognosticate. It depends on which part of Ukraine. All of Ukraine is extremely unlikely to be annexed because Putin is fairly contained by a multiplicity of international pressures. More likely, if at all, a portion of one of the Baltic states or a region around the Crimea would get take, but that's unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was thinking of basically using gmail as a filter. Get a custom domain, forward all email to gmail then read via another service.

</comment><comment><USER13> Do you not know there are other e-mail providers that will take your money in exchange for services?

<comment><USER2> Gmail was revolutionary because it was, for most of its history, _better_ than even paid email services.

OP might know that paid services exist, but many of them have a reputation for having worse search and fewer access options than Gmail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Don't use google. Use fastmail and use the backups. Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER15> switch to an email host that you trust. Consider paying for it</comment>


Nine Deadly Startup Diseases—and How to Cure Them - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/article/nine-deadly-startup-diseases

<comment><USER2> They forgot #10, putting a 1 page article on 2 pages to increase pageviews and then throwing a popup ad in there for good measure so that your site visitors never want to return...

<comment><USER3> No popups or page breaks: <http://www.sitepoint.com/print/nine-deadly-startup- diseases>

(and much cleaner layout)

<comment><USER4> I automatically hit the print link on most news sites these days: Clean layout, single page, readable font.

<comment><USER5> I can't believe I never thought to do that. Awesome idea, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Each point was probably refuted in practice by one or the other successful entrepreneur. When something fails, these are the causes that people intuitively come up with, but they don't necessarily always cause others to fail.

#1: Most software that's interesting is "useful to practically anyone".

#2: Mostly agree. But if you don't get the small distractions (like taxes) out of the way ASAP, they pile up and could still kill you: a mounting big honking stinking pile of annoyances that you know you'll have to face some day. It depends on the personality but for some it's easier to focus once the unimportant small fry is still sorted out.

#3: With the right people skills (I don't claim I have any), is there such a thing as a "wrong hire"? Sure you couldn't "build up" just about anyone without outright malicious intentions?

#4: Agree.

#5: One of those non-fatal delusions. Whether you're great or not, "stealth mode" won't hurt or help you much. How could it?

#6: This should be typically noticed early enough in the development cycle to be able to switch. How could you suffer through months before questioning your platform?

#7: I have yet to meet a great entrepreneur who didn't "suffer" from this. The key is probably self-management and discipline, not magically getting rid of a "personality trait" that brought you to whatever you're doing in the first place.

#8: Steve Jobs, anyone?

#9: Yeah... harsh but probably true :)

<comment><USER7> > #3: With the right people skills (I don't claim I have any), is there such a > thing as a "wrong hire"? Sure you couldn't "build up" just about anyone > without outright malicious intentions?

Probably, but that would take time and energy, and some people probably can't be 'built up' quickly, either. So they might make fine employees in other kinds of companies, but maybe not in a startup, although there are probably always exceptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a very credible (and succinct) startup list. Unfortunately, I've been through most of them.

A recommended read and not yet-another-one-of-those-lists.

<comment><USER9> This is just the sort of comment I really appreciate. I was on the fence as to whether or not to click through to the article and your comment helped me decide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> #6 Wrong Platform -- this one gave me pause. It's correct, but only in a more specific case than stated by the author.

Unless you're building an exotic application [1] choose a platform in which you are very productive and that is used by many other people for similar applications.

If you choose such a platform, commit to it. You may find that the ORM layer you thought would solve all your problems doesn't, or that the auto-generated URL routing doesn't do what you want, or a variety of other problems. But you'll find the same average number of problems with the other platform that's tempting you with its promises of superiority. Don't switch. You're just trading problems, and losing all the work you've already put in and expertise you've already gained.

If you don't choose such a platform and start hitting roadblocks, reconsider your platform. Ideally make this mistake very early.

1a. You're not building an exotic application. 1b. If you are building an exotic application, you probably shouldn't be.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like this article but #6 the wrong platform is a rare mistake and not worth including on this list. Good programmers can figure this out without much trouble.

<comment><USER12> I worked for this company who implemented a product in Delphi. They knew it was the wrong but the fastest way to get the product to the market. After making a big profit the time came to rewrite the product and everyone knew that C++ was the way. Because of political manipulations Delphi was chosen again and it was back to square one after few months of development.

Wrong platform is a common mistake...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> #10 - Having a business plan of collecting eyeballs and "monetizing them later". Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER14> No mention of the deadly mortgage & spouse disease.</comment>


The Ownership of and Issues with the ColecoVision Trademark - <AUTHOR> http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-ownership-of-and-issues-with.html <comment><USER2> ColecoVison is so old it should be public domain by now.</comment>


Spiel Des Jahres Nominations for 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/89902/spiel-des-jahres-nominations-2019-just-one-lama-an?mc_cid=def710965a&mc_eid=92893bc0be <comment><USER2> Interesting that all 3 nominees this year have such a relatively mediocre bgg rating

<comment><USER3> I'd hypothesize a self-selection bias. Casual players (the targets of the SdJ) are probably less likely to rate games than connoisseurs (who have their own category, the Kennerspiel des Jahres).

Notice that the Kennerspiel des Jahres nominees have higher ratings.

<comment><USER2> I didn't notice that or even realize the other category was for the more serious gamers, thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> fyi, Spiel des Jahres means Game of the Year.

Seems a bit early in the year?

<comment><USER5> From the article:

[T]he jury focuses solely on games released in Germany within the past twelve months. From my understanding, a game needs to be available in a German edition prior to the end of March to be considered.

<comment><USER4> Interesting, I think this might actually be better than calendar year. In video games there's a very quick zeitgeist, but with board games it's much slower. So this is less "games released in 2019" as "games you can play in 2019".</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Civitas – An empire-building game written in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sizeofcat/civitas <comment><USER2> I opened an issue on Github over missing images. Anyone else try running this yet? Setting up was super easy but there appears to be a missing /images/assets directory where most of the UI is stored... I was very interested in trying this out.

</comment><comment><USER3> it looks very nice. I'm on my phone, I'll take a look at the code soon as I sit down on my computer.

any particular reason you didn't make a live version?

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you do this as a full time job or is this a side project? the pace of work on this is really impressive.</comment>


Recurrent Independent Mechanisms - <AUTHOR> https://openreview.net/forum?id=BylaUTNtPS <comment><USER2> On ArXiv: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.10893](https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.10893)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting so I jumped to the experiments. The bouncing balls example as in Fig 3 looks rather unconvincing. When collision occurred in +12, LSTM has no problem learning the bounce-off, its trajectory is a little off compared with RIM.

This reminds me of anther paper[1] which addresses a very similar problem.

[1] Srivastava, N., Mansimov, E., & Salakhudinov, R. (2015, June). Unsupervised learning of video representations using lstms. In International conference on machine learning (pp. 843-852).

EDIT : They use exactly the same bouncing MNIST dataset as in [1]. I'm surprised they didn't cite this paper.</comment>


NYTimes: A Letter to Our Readers About Digital Subscriptions - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/opinion/l18times.html

<comment><USER2> The Times announced digital subscriptions today. Good move. The pricing - backwards as all hell.

NYTimes.com + Smartphone = $15/month NYTimes.com + Tablet = $20/month NYTimes.com + Tablet + Smartphone = $35/month (WHAT?)

First, how does one differentiate the value add between a smart phone and a tablet enough to charge the sum of those parts, not an incremental addition?

Two, if you go with the cheapest print option (weekday) at $14.80 a month delivered to your house, you get all access across all devices. As one of my friends noted: how could they not look around and be inspired by digital companies that have millions of users on a few dollars a month on drip....but no. They still think of themselves as a print provider. Name another service we pay $15 bucks a month to access from our smartphone.

This seems like a print centric decision.

<comment><USER3> $14.80/month for the weekday-only print subscription is a 50% off deal that lasts only three months. You'll be paying ~$30/month after that.

Which is, of course, still cheaper than the web+smartphone+tablet plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, the pricing seems incredibly steep. I'm used to thinking twice before subscribing to magazines, since $12/year per magazine adds up. But they are talking about $8+ a _week_ \- wow. Good luck getting enough people to pay that. And before someone starts talking about lattes, I don't buy lattes, for the same reason. And I have a really good income.

<comment><USER5> For comparison, a major national newspaper delivered to my door was just offered for $1.50/week - six issues per week.

So: dead trees delivered to my door, six times per week: $1.50/week.

Bits which I have to go fetch myself, paying rather usurious bandwidth rates: $8.75/week.

Hmmmm. Something seems off here.

<comment><USER6> The major source of revenue for press is ads. The difference in pricing may be reflection of lower income from online ads, itself result of lower impact of those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't find any mention of whether advertisements will be shown to paying customers. The "no-pay-but-view-ads" vs. "pay-with-no-ads" model has been a mainstay of most freemium websites, but NYTimes looks like it's going to keep ads no matter if you pay or not.

At $3.75 to $8.75 per week, I'd expect ads to be gone. Not that they need to be. It's just what I've come to expect.

The news publication industry is changing (along with the rest of the publication industry). I like the direction NYTimes is going in -- "For quality content, you should expect to pay real money" -- but the model has so much bad baggage attached to it that it seems doomed to failure, with The Times (London) being the most recent NYTimes-scale example.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice. For only $15 dollars a month I can get the latest updates on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and the virtues of warrantless wiretapping. What a bargain.

<comment><USER9> Thank you.

It isn't free news that killed the newspapers.

It is their own so called news, which are mostly put there by pr companies or else are outright lies by politicians.

<comment><USER8> To be fair though, the reason mainstream newspapers are mostly propaganda and advertising is because they are free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you have _any_ home delivery, then you get all the digital stuff for free. Here's how the prices compare for delivery in my zipcode (Boston):

Daily Delivery (7 Days), $29.60 per four weeks

The Weekender (Friday–Sunday), $20.80 per four weeks

Sunday Only, $15 per four weeks

Weekday (Monday–Friday), $14.80 per four weeks

All Digital Access, $35 every four weeks

NYtimes.com + Tablet App, $20 every four weeks

NYtimes.com + Smartphone App, $15 every four weeks

So getting a weekday subscription at $14.80 gets you the $35 digital deal. I'm sure they won't mind if this drives some extra dead tree subscriptions.

</comment><comment><USER11> I find it strange that no one seems to be talking about what his does to NYT's google-juice/clout in the link economy. NYT peddles influence by being widely read/the paper of record, but doesn't putting up a paywall directly mitigate that? Ad-supported model seems to (for the most part) complement that; a paywall opposes it.

<comment><USER12> This only affects people who read more than 20 articles/month. So the content is actually all still there and linkable to the open web.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Interesting how the prices (from [http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp0145.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp0145.html\)are) rated at "every four weeks" rather than "per month". A chance to squeeze out one extra payment per year?

<comment><USER7> They just seem to be following their print model for some sort of mental connection in buyers used to paying for weekly newspaper subscriptions. It's confusing to me to figure out as someone who prefers monthly installments (UK rent is figured per week as well, then multiplied by 52, then divided by 12 for the monthly rent… so convoluted), but it's not totally bizarre for NYTimes to bill this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Their pricing seems too straightforward. $15 for .com and smartphone. $20 for .com and tablet. $35 for .com, smartphone, and tablet. 35 = 15 + 20...

.com, smartphone, and tablet should be less than the first two combined. Incentivise people to pay more by making it seem like less.

</comment><comment><USER14> Seems fair to me. Eventually, freeloaders (myself included) will be relegated to reading al-Jazeera, BBC News, NPR, and some random combination of AP/Reuters/UPI via Google News.

Or, you know, some of us may pay.

<comment><USER12> BBC is paid for by the British taxpayer. Al-Jazeera is funded by the Qatari royal family. Reuters news is a loss-leader for their financial services business.

News is expensive! Don't be fooled that because commentary on news that others have gathered (e.g. HuffPo) is essentially free that it doesn't cost real money to send a reporter to some faraway place for 6 months to do some investigative journalism, then fact-check it and write it up...

<comment><USER15> One tiny modifier to your comment.

The BBC is paid for by the British television license payer, not the taxpayer. Otherwise, spot on. Journalists need to eat, too.

<comment><USER12> In practice there is no difference between the license and a tax. It's like you can't own a car without paying for your MOT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The real issue here is the the Times is just trying to find a way to pay for their nice big NYC downtown tower. That and other typical newspaper-related overhead, which used to be well within their operating budget, before the internet.

The newspaper industry is the dying industry of our time, and desperation set in a while ago. The NYT took a bit longer to appear desperate because of it's generally more loyal readerbase and large coffers, while most small dailies & weeklies have either drastically reduced overhead or completely packed up already.

<comment><USER17> The Times already cashed out of much of their stake in the headquarters building: <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123660214438270341.html>

And many newspapers still turn a reasonable profit, it's just that the major metros can't earn enough to pay off all the debts left over from the major consolidations at the start of the decade. One reference to that effect: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-aaron/consolidation- is-n...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-aaron/consolidation-is-no- cure_b_180356.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Although I think this long overdue, and I support the move in this direction, NYT is makings a big mistake by charging too much. The price should be $5.95 per month (perhaps a discount for seniors and students).

The problem is that they can't charge that little compared to the paper delivery. Indeed, they must cut the paper cord and _think digitally_ , small fee will multiply exponentially, worldwide.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wondering what this means for the constellation of links to old NYT pieces now embedded in blogs around the world.

Assuming that following one would count against the 20 free articles per month quota they've established, and that they're not planning an apocalyptic sweep of millions of inbound links.

</comment><comment><USER17> The most interesting sentence is: "For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles." The question being which search engines is The Times cutting deals with...

</comment><comment><USER20> Here is the letter sent to current digital subscribers. <http://www.stanford.edu/~allison/nytimespaywall.html>

</comment><comment><USER21> So, can Firefox extensions fiddle with referrer info? I think I just got an idea for a new one.

</comment><comment><USER22> I hope this works; if it does, it will be the best thing which has happened to news in a long time. Companies produce product which is beneficial to their customers; if those customers are large corporations buying advertisement, their product will be beneficial to large corporations. If their customers are you and me, spending $8 a week for news, they will produce product beneficial to us.</comment>


Help choose a sort order for the Stack Overflow homepage - <AUTHOR> http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/69571/help-us-choose-a-sort-order-for-the-stack-overflow-homepage

<comment><USER2> Crowdsourcing: these guys know how to do it.</comment>


Ask HN: Concerns about Realm DB - <AUTHOR>

I've been evaluating RealmDB for an iOS app and found that they use a proprietary DB Engine.<p>Is this a red flag? In other words, what prevents them from going FoundationDB way? <comment><USER2> Hi, Tim from Realm here. We've spoken about the topic in previous HN threads and have an official statement in our FAQ [1]. If you need more info or have more questions, we do our best to watch HN & Twitter, but the best way might be to email us. I'm VP Product at Realm and always happy to chat: email@example.com

[1]: [https://realm.io/docs/objc/latest/#faq](https://realm.io/docs/objc/latest/#faq) — applicable to Android as well: [https://realm.io/docs/java/latest/#faq](https://realm.io/docs/java/latest/#faq)</comment>


Used iPads Selling Quickly Online - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/first-generation-ipad-reselling-quickly-online/ <comment><USER2> Can you put the Android OS on an iPad?

<comment><USER3> I know it's been done with an iPhone, so at least theoretically it's possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apple hardware has always held its value extremely well. I've never had trouble selling my old Macs on Craigslist for a substantial fraction of their purchase price after upgrading to the latest model.

<comment><USER5> Can you describe the process? I'm looking to sell my late-2010 MacBook Pro 15-inch, but I'm apprehensive about being scammed.

<comment><USER6> The best way to get absolutely top dollar for your used machine is to offer a high value package of hardware and software and advertise it in a persuasive and aesthetically pleasing listing. I've had tremendous success with this method selling my old Macs.

First you'll want to clean the machine: Remove all the dirt, dust, and hand oils. Make sure that the hardware is as clean and close to new as you can make it. Of course, you've probably already overwritten the drive by mounting it in target disk mode and using Disk Utility. When you reinstall the OS, name the user "Admin".

Next, take some well composed, focused and tightly cropped photos of the machine against an uncluttered background. If you have any accessories you can include in the sale (which will really help differentiate your listing on Craigslist) be sure they're clean and photograph them too. Host all your photos somewhere you can hotlink to from Craigslist, so that your prospective buyer can view them in glorious hi res. Be sure to photograph any scratches or dents.

Write an easy to read, factual and persuasive ad describing the main features and benefits of the package you're offering, and the general history of the machine. Include details about its warranty and repair history. Point out any damage, scratches or dents. Include the original retail value and purchase date. Link your images. Price it a little higher ($50-100) than you're comfortable asking. Post!

Write up or download a simple bill of sale to use for the transaction.

It's best to screen your buyers through email and then speak to the motivated ones on the phone. Get a feel for if they're serious, and whether they have the cash on hand. I prefer to agree on a price before meeting (another reason for the hi res pics), and will usually knock off that extra 50 or 100 bucks over the course of negotiating over email. Accept only cash, and meet in a public place like a cafe for the sale. Ask to see their license when they sign the bill of sale, and show them yours too. Bring a nice shopping bag in which they can carry their new used computer away.

Bottom line: Most listings look like crap, many machines sold are dirty, and some buyers are insecure. Take some time and you will get both a good price and make someone's day by providing a good value and experience!

<comment><USER5> What's a bill of sale? I assumed the transaction was just "you give me the cash, I give you the laptop".

<comment><USER6> Its a form of receipt that is typically used between individuals when buying and selling relatively expensive items. It has the names and signature of both parties, a serial number and description of the goods sold, the form of payment, the date of the sale, whether the seller is providing any warranty, whether the transaction was witnessed and by whom, etc.

IANAL, but the purpose of it is to provide some protection to the buyer from fraud. (E.G. the computer/vehicle/aircraft you sold me doesn't match what you advertised). It can also protect the seller from potentially frivolous claims and provides some proof of non-ownership should the goods you sold be used in a crime.

[Edit:] There are lots of examples available online, and you might try looking for something from Nolo Press, my favorite source for easy to understand law reference materials.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also, Sellout.Woot has had an iPad 16 WiFi today and at least one WiFi+3G model during today's WootOff. People looking for sub-400 iPads are in luck.

</comment><comment><USER8> Protip: If you find someone to buy an iPad, don't delay giving it to him till the day of the launch. Lesson Learned :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Where do these devices go when purchased by these sites like Gazelle and eBay instant?

<comment><USER10> To people too cheap to get a new iPad, like me.

<comment><USER9> I meant: where do these units get resold?

<comment><USER11> Gazelle says they resell on eBay / Amazon. Probably works out better for everyone, since who buys expensive electronics from a low experience seller on eBay?

<comment><USER12> I sold a Nokia phone for $280 with 0 ebay experience. [http://feedback.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&#...</a></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spaces: Scalable Object Storage on DigitalOcean - <AUTHOR> https://blog.digitalocean.com/introducing-spaces-object-storage/ <comment><USER3> Using AWS's simple calculator[0] for S3, I get a figure of $97.82 for 250GB storage and 1TB data transfer out per month. DO's price is $5. I know AWS is considered more expensive but that's a huge difference - is my calculation wrong here?

[0][http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html](http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html)

<comment><USER4> Yes Digital Ocean / Linode bandwidth is 40x cheaper than AWS. Amazon also charges extra for a support plan so you can open a ticket, and inform them of their bugs. And we have found bugs in AWS infrastructure that still remains unfixed, because we have a disproportionate amount of IE users. They essentially forced us to stand up a linode proxy infront of s3 & create our own CDN, since theirs did not work for our users. In the process we saved 4,000% on our bandwidth.

<comment><USER5> how could you save more than 100%?

<comment><USER4> What I should have said is its 40x cheaper.

But I guess if you factor in not losing customers due to obscure IE problems on AWS, we could have saved over 100% ;) by not losing customers.

Some businesses don't need to worry about obscure IE problems, and AWS will make sense, for us it didn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has anyone ran any benchmarks on this yet? Latency is always an issue with using these for production static file serving over HTTP (even if it's just feeding a proxy network).

Another feature it would be nice to see is accidental deletion protection of some kind. S3 does this with versioning, and it's an important feature lacking on most of the alternatives:

> Versioning allows you to preserve, retrieve, and restore every version of > every object stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. Once you enable Versioning for a > bucket, Amazon S3 preserves existing objects anytime you perform a PUT, > POST, COPY, or DELETE operation on them. By default, GET requests will > retrieve the most recently written version. Older versions of an overwritten > or deleted object can be retrieved by specifying a version in the request.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting pricing: Base $5/month for 250GB storage and 1TB outbound traffic. No cost for requests. Additional storage is $0.02/GB/month and additional outbound traffic is $0.01/GB.

Compared to BackBlaze B2: $0.005/GB/month for storage and $0.02/GB for traffic, plus tiered API call fees (see [https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud- storage-pricing.html](https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage- pricing.html))

So Spaces is better for serving assets (lower traffic cost) and B2 is better for archiving data (lower storage cost).

<comment><USER8> Actually I'd say that managed OpenStack Swift is a better solution than B2, if only marginally more expensive.

Take e.g. OVH's Swift pricing[1], which is $0.011 per GB (stored and outgoing). I found Swifts latency (at least on the OVH cluster, with the OVH CDN) to be much better than B2. Swift also satisfies my paranoia about having a remote storage system I could setup on-prem.

Also, more storage regions, much better network infra, actual access to software running on the cluster (Swift, not some proprietary API).

YMMV

[1] - [https://www.ovh.com/us/public-cloud/storage/object- storage/](https://www.ovh.com/us/public-cloud/storage/object-storage/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder what the next add on piece will be. There seems to be a progression here to position themselves as an AWS alternative for budget minded customers.

They already have a sort of "cloud formation" like API for provisioning nodes, a load balancer, and now object storage.

Maybe a managed database offering? Or managed K8S? Or a more clear "region / availability zone" strategy?

<comment><USER10> I'm hoping for managed database offering next. Not being a sysadmin/devops, always scared launching any kind of side project because of security concerns, if DO adds some managed/context specific nodes to their lineup, will make it much easier to wind things up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congrats on the launch! Love using DO for VMs and this really rounds out the offering.

Since Google started offering strong consistency that's been a really tempting feature. We often want to upload something for another user to immediately access, and having that extra delay or potential 404 with other services sucks. But Google's pricing is nowhere near B2 or now DO's Spaces.

Any thoughts on eventually adding strong consistency to Spaces?

</comment><comment><USER12> From the introduction document: [1]

> Spaces currently supports v2 of pre-signed URL functionality. Tools and > libraries that only support v4 of pre-signed URL functionality will not > work.

I had really hoped this would be in place for the launch, but I guess this wasn't a priority. Looking forward to this + EU locations!

[1] [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an- introduc...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an-introduction- to-digitalocean-spaces)

</comment><comment><USER13> With no costs for uploads and $5 per every 250GB it sounds like this is actually probably a pretty nice deal for personal archiving. Of course if you're also downloading a bunch of that stuff you'll hit that 1TB transfer ceiling pretty quickly, but it sounds to me like it could be a reasonably cheap backend for a backup solution – or am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER14> Somewhat off-topic but: What is the cheapest cloud storage out there? I don't care about multi-region or extreme durability, I would just like to store encrypted blobs containing easily re-creatable data. I need reasonable download speeds however.

<comment><USER9> OVH's object storage offering is probably worth looking at: [https://www.ovh.com/us/public-cloud/storage/object- storage/](https://www.ovh.com/us/public-cloud/storage/object-storage/)

Storage: $0.0112/month/GB, Outgoing traffic: $0.011/GB

<comment><USER15> Do you have experience with them? What about latency?

<comment><USER9> I have experience with OVH, but not with this product. They do have a terrific network, ddos protection, etc, as compared to other low budget dedicated server vendors. Their support, though, isn't terrific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting offering. I'm wondering how people feel about the $5 minimum? At 250GB storage and 1TB traffic, plenty of people using much less than 250GB and 1TB traffic would be better served with a pay for what you use model.

<comment><USER17> As an individual, $5 is easily worth it so I don't have to pay attention to how much I have in S3 and how much I download. I don't have to worry about getting a huge bill at the beginning of the month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love this company and this new offering. Such a pleasure to work with - <USER2> both a developer and customer perspective.

I only wish the other regions would roll out quicker(sfo please!)

</comment><comment><USER19> Any experience/data on rate limits? I heard B2 rate limits a lot. I need to pour data in at will at a moment's notice without limits.

</comment><comment><USER20> Curious why they would publish tutorial for Transmit 4 and not Transmit 5. It says Transmit 5 tutorial will come later but not when. One would think they would have the tutorial for 5, and then later release one for people still on Transmit 4. Unless Transmit 5 doesn't support it yet?

Also a bit weird you have to use S3 to connect to it even though it isn't S3, unless this new feature is S3 but wrapped in Digital Ocean interface?

<comment><AUTHOR> (DO employee here) It's S3-compatible. Agreed that it's a bit strange in Transmit and other clients to have to first select "S3" when connecting to something else entirely... but that's the world we live in.

Spaces isn't working with Transmit 5 yet. I don't have the technical details, but it's a known issue that's being worked on. I'll write a Transmit 5 tutorial as soon as it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone know what this uses under the hood? The reference to erasure coding specifically reminds me of Minio..

<comment><USER22> Or Tahoe-LAFS, although Tahoe's encoding doesn't leave any keys with the provider, but only with the uploader.

<comment><USER21> Right, I guess I assumed they would use something that already natively supports the S3 API, which Tahoe doesn't AFAIK?

<comment><USER22> Actually! (Full disclosure: I sell access to a Tahoe-LAFS grid.) The Tahoe team has recently been working to merge the "cloud-backend" branch, which would open the door to storing shares on grids by interfacing directly with S3, GSE, etc. This technology's been battle-tested by Least Authority Enterprises, and at least Matador Cloud has indicated a desire to adopt it as well. Other Tahoe vendors are probably sitting up and taking notice too.

<comment><USER21> Um, you're talking about using s3 as a storage backend (I think?) whereas im talking about exposing data over an s3 compatible API (like minio does)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This looks like a much cheaper way (than AWS S3) to use Arq to backup my MBP.

<comment><USER23> I'm currently using rclone with backblaze B2

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> what is differance beetwen cdn and object storage?

i thiink cdn is more cheap. am i wrong?</comment>


Eulers vs. Quaternions in Blender (Humane Rigging Chapter3 / Video4) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRD0PgsY3pU <comment><AUTHOR> This is the best description of quaternions I've ever seen in my life. I generally prefer text, but this youtube-explanation is part of a greater tutorial in Blender (the 3d program).

The previous tutorial, Chapter3 / Video 3 ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaSrOS2foL4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaSrOS2foL4)) goes over Axis-angle and Euler representations of angles. It defines "Gimble Lock" and other issues that are found in the simpler model.</comment>


Show HN: Dictionaryga.me – A trivia game about cool and unusual words - <AUTHOR> https://dictionaryga.me/?ref=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Source: [https://gitlab.com/mousetail/dictionaryga.me](https://gitlab.com/mousetail/dictionaryga.me)</comment>


Macho oil rig workers got in touch with their softer sides, got safer workplace - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/481887848/the-new-norm <comment><USER2> They got brainwashed n lost their identity!</comment>


Ask HN: End of Hackintosh or macOS on Raspberry Pi 6? - <AUTHOR> Hackintosh - macOS running on non Apple hardware.
Hackintosh community has some of the extraordinarily talented developers, who has over  the years developed sophisticated tools and methodologies to run vanilla macOS on non Apple hardware[1] or on AMD CPU with custom kernel.
Apple so far hasn't explicitly indulged in sabotaging hackintosh scene(Only those who sold pre-built hackintosh hardware incurred Apple's wrath), in-fact some hackintosh specific kexts where whitelisted officially in the macOS few iterations back when kext signing became mandatory.
Apple's blind eye towards hackintosh made sense as besides increasing penetration for macOS, it provided access to iOS app development in markets where price of Apple hardware was the primary barrier to entry unlike Android development.
But, interest for hackintosh seems to be declining steadily[2] since it's peak in 2008(snow leopard 64bit?); may be because tools for hackintosh are very stable now, macOS hasn't undergone major architectural change until now (or) is it economic uptrend around the world which makes entry level MacBook a promising investment for iOS development.
Anyways, things have changed today;  macOS Big Sur is the official transition of macOS to iOS with better mouse and keyboard support. Would apple lockdown MacBooks further to the level of iPhone/iPad that, macOS upgrades wouldn't be available as separate package on Mac AppStore? I don't see a reason why it wouldn't in the future.
macOS upgrades available as a separate downloadable package is crucial for hackintosh, without it accessing macOS would amount to piracy.
Would this rekindle the hackintosh development to support other ARM hardware(RPi 6?) for macOS or will Apple doubling down on lockdown kill the hackintosh scene for good in this decade.
[1]https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/73-developers-corner/
[2]https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=hackintosh <comment><USER2> I think the "hackintosh" (as we have intended it since Apple's transition to Intel in 2006) effectively died yesterday.

The idea that "Macs" will be relatively generic _x_ 86-64 machines made by a specific company to run its OS preferentially is gone. Macs' inner workings will go back to being comparatively exotic, as they were in the PowerPC days and before: incompatible with the prevailing _wintel_ hegemony, which for Apple has the pleasant side-effect relieving them of many competitive forces (but I digress).

In future getting macOS to run on non-Apple hardware will be far more difficult. The A _x_ series SoCs are _ARM-based_ but contain loads of Apple- specific implementations and additions. Think of the T2 chips and the _Secure Enclave_. Those won't be turning up on commodity silicon before the relevant patents expire!

Look at it the opposite way: how successful, really, have efforts to get Linux running on Apple's iPad, iPhone, and AppleTV platforms been? Why? Because it's undocumented. That's what ARM macs will be like in the future.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm more interested in running a non-Apple OS on Apple hardware than the other way around. After seven years of running MacOS on Apple laptops I want to ditch the walled-garden and MacOS.

</comment><comment><USER4> They're making custom boards for the Mac, the pi wouldn't be compatible at all. I also doubt we will see a price drop either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Logic board for Mac was under same premise, ofcourse SoC would be much more tightly integrated and current Pi wouldn't be compatible; I'm interested whether hackintosh scene would evolve into supporting one in future.</comment></comment>


Hand out the CEO's phone nr. for support: a trend? - <AUTHOR> http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2010/11/25/4831/another-awesome-support-direct-phone-number

<comment><USER2> Auspex did this in the late '80s, they were about the first to sell NAS.</comment>


Smoking with David Hockney - <AUTHOR> https://www.1843magazine.com/upfront/the-1843-interview/smoking-with-david-hockney <comment><USER2> My mom died a few months ago, she just turned 63, from the damages of smoking, even slightly like she used to, and stopped 6 years ago. It was rapid, painful, suffocating, and unstoppable.

I was already before that not a fan at all of cigarette fumes, since then, it just strengthened my hate for cigarettes

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like a cool old dude.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting quote in the article from Hockney

"I forgot one thing – Hitler was the biggest anti-smoker. Doesn't that say it all?"

Yes indeed it says something - your opinions are worthless.</comment>


Creating and remembering good passwords. - <AUTHOR> http://craigquiter.com/post/8668237043/creating-and-remembering-good-passwords-plus-some

<comment><USER2> Use Password Gorilla: <https://github.com/zdia/gorilla/wiki>

Then you don't have to remember the unique site passwords, just your master PWGorilla password.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I'd hate to lose that file/db. I guess I could keep it in my dropbox...</comment></comment>


Request HN: Show notification for replies - <AUTHOR> I miss out on responses on my replies because I don't know if someone responded without navigating 3 levels deep from the main page. Is it possible to add an asterisk against my username on the home page when someone responds to my comments? <comment><USER2> You can click on your profile page and then the "comments" link to see if anything has changed. Currently that's what I do, but I'm thinking of automating it.

There used to be a service called "HNNotify" which gave you the option of being emailed whenever someone replied to you. It was brilliant.

I think I remember seeing something from the mods, or paraphrasing the mods, that said something like: "We don't want people to get only involved in their own conversations, and we are concerned that a notification system will bias people towards not reading widely, and just reading things they've directly contributed to."

My memory may be faulty, and that might be wrong, but I seem to recall something like it.

Personally, I used HNNotify and lament its demise. I'm idly considering scripting a personal replacement- for me it wouldn't be worth the significant investment in time and effort to make something robust enough for general use. Perhaps someone might create a new version.

 _Edit: I see the comment[0] from dangrossman[1] mentions a replacement for HNNotify - I might give that a try._

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12309551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12309551)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dangrossman](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dangrossman)

<comment><USER2> And now I've subscribed to HNReplies - we'll see what happens. But regardless, thanks @dangrossman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can get an e-mail whenever someone replies to your comments with [http://hnreplies.com](http://hnreplies.com)

<comment><USER4> I use Dan's service as well and recommend it. The emails come quickly and include the full text.

I've always what kind of volume you do in terms of number of users or notifications?

<comment><USER3> You can see those stats below the signup form

<comment><USER4> Very cool. Thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing I like about various of the alternative, JS-framework demo, front- ends for HN is that they highlight new comments since the last time you viewed a thread. They probably do horrifying things with cookies or localstorage that the main site shouldn't do, but that is a really convenient feature, compared to rereading everything.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can't you just click "threads" at the top and look for changes?

<comment><USER4> It works really well for short discussions without a lot of nesting.

Finding the new reply in a thread like this post I made the other day becomes a little tiresome: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12302154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12302154).

If you use Chrome, Hacker News Enhancement Suite includes this feature.</comment></comment>


Is Modern DevOps TOO Complex? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XwbSUYhNPc <comment><USER2> This guy is basically calling git DevOps and saying it's too complex. I thought he would be talking about some of the real complexity related to CI, automation frameworks etc but no, he just complains about J2EE and then says git is too hard while mislabelling it DevOps.</comment>


Rust application that converts C++ libraries to single self-contained headers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SuperV1234/unosolo <comment><USER2> At first I thought this was something like bindgen for Rust, but it appears to convert cpp libs into a single hpp file.</comment>


Why you'll probably regret using Tailwind - <AUTHOR> https://johanronsse.be/2020/07/08/why-youll-probably-regret-using-tailwind/ <comment><USER2> I find tailwind to be a pointless step in abstraction. Adding classes for every single thing is the same as writing CSS so why not learn CSS in the first place?</comment>


The A-EON Amiga X5000: An alternate universe where the Amiga platform never died - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/the-a-eon-amiga-x5000-reviewed-the-beloved-amiga-meets-2017/ <comment><USER2> I loved my Amiga 500 and, in many ways, it's still my favourite computer of all those I've owned, but I can't help feeling rather sad and wistful every time I read recent Amiga announcements and articles. There's always this sense of them trampling over my rose-tinted recollections of adolescence.

I mean, is the X5000 _really_ an Amiga? The thing with the Amiga was that in the 1980s it was _streets_ ahead of pretty much anything else that was available at the time, albeit only for a relatively short period. It had all this super cool custom hardware and a great OS. Whereas the X5000 is a kind of mid-tier desktop computer with _somewhat_ interesting hardware (a point in its favour Amiga-wise, especially that loopy custom chip, granted) and a whopper of a price tag.

I like the idea of a widely available computer with a different hardware architecture and operating system than the currently available choices (which basically boils down to PCs... and expensive PCs that run OSX) but, as the X5000 stands, what would I _do_ with it? Where is the software? How could I do my job with it? Where are the games (a big draw on the original Amiga)?

I hate to be a downer because I _really_ _loved_ the Amiga but, guys, it's over. It just is. It's been over for decades. And it makes me sad but it's not going to change without, for one thing, a much better capitalised company behind it, as well as an end to all the trademark nonsense.

<comment><USER3> _Where is the software?_

I think you just answered your own question about whether it is really an Amiga. If you really want to relive the Amiga glory days, isn't that part of the experience?

When I bought my Microbiotics 8-Up! card from the local Amiga dealer, they rang my order up on an IBM PC that they used for accounting and inventory tracking and such. I asked if they couldn't do that on an Amiga, and they enthusiastically said they were looking forward to that "just as soon as the software is available".

<comment><USER2> Haha - yeah, I think you nailed it there. Although in the early 90s I certainly never lacked the software I needed: programming, games, music making, word processing, bitmap graphics, vector drawing and CAD, ray tracing, fractals, basic utilities, even a bit of DTP. Picked up so much stuff from magazine cover disks back in the day (I was still at school so had very little cash).

That being said, my requirements as a GCSE (and somewhat as an A-level) pupil are perhaps a bit different from what they are today. In some ways they were perhaps greater and more demanding, in others less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I long for an alternate universe where tired and stupid Amiga trademark battles are ancient history. A universe where the Amiga OS and tech is open- sourced and cared for by the community itself.

</comment><comment><USER5> The "mysterious" XMOS part looks like this:

[http://www.xmos.com/products/silicon/xcore-200](http://www.xmos.com/products/silicon/xcore-200)

If it had a DDR3 interface, it'd be cool if it were the CPU. It'd be more Amiga-like.

<comment><USER6> > up to 32 logical cores

Wait, are there a bunch of real, independent cores on this thing, or are they doing heavy amounts of SMT?

<comment><USER7> The specific chip in use here has two actual cores each with up to 8 hardware threads ("logical cores" in current XMOS marketing parlance). The hardware executes instructions from the active threads in a round-robin fashion. Due to pipelining, there has to be at least 4 clock cycles between two instructions from the same thread, so maximum per-thread speed is 1/4 the overall clock speed and you can execute up to 4 threads on each core with no further slowdown. Also, the hardware cores don't share memory and communicate only via message passing, and the threads generally communicate in the same way. It's an interesting architecture which no-one's really made any use of on AmigaOne hardware for the whole 5 years it's been shipping with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the Vampire 2 FPGA acceleration card for the Amiga 600 deserves to be mentioned: [https://youtu.be/8S3B8a8N83k?t=871](https://youtu.be/8S3B8a8N83k?t=871) It seems a lot of fun and is much cheaper (250 Euros).

<comment><USER2> I've always thought stuff like this is cool, and I love the fact there's still this fairly big retro scene around, well, not just the Amiga, but lots of old systems. But what do people _do_ with hardware like this? I mean, after you've set it up and played around with it, and realised it makes your machine loads faster, what do you use it for?

<comment><USER4> Play games, explore and use simpler software, and lots of "maker"-y things. Using brand new WiFi 232 boards to get back onto the re-growing BBS scene is a lot of fun, too. Everyone there is totally into it.

You use it how ever you want.

Much of what we like to do (except the internet as we know it today) is right there. If you like retro gaming and productivity software, it retro-computing can be a ton of fun. For many, just getting the hardware maxed out in various ways is very rewarding.

Example: I have an Amiga 1200 that uses a 4GB CF IDE hard drive. It also has a mild CPU upgrade. I also have an Amiga 2000 with 8GB of RAM and a torqued CPU (25 Mhz, which is more than 3X faster than the day the computer was born) and 2GB chip RAM. That all sounds laughable, but it boots in about 14 seconds. How about yours? If it didn't have the hard drive it would only take a couple of seconds. And as soon as I'm looking at the desktop (Workbench) I can launch a program off its new 4GB SCSI HD in a couple of seconds and jump right in. And this is all off the original OS, 1.3.

It's a passion and a hobby. "What do you use it for?" I use it for fun and entertainment, and I connect now to BBSes more than Facebook. It's just so much more interesting.

I'll take my machine(s) over these new hybrids any day. I don't need emulation except in a worst case scenario (like, if I'm traveling). But to each his/her own. There's no "right way". Just your way.

FWIW I don't use the Vampire cards. I mostly use accelerators that were available in the late 80s and early 90s.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, that's interesting. I think part of me just wishes I had the time to tinker, but my tinkering tends to be writing new versions of old arcade games, and that's pretty time-consuming on its own. I do often have videos like 8-Bit Guy's stuff on in the background when I'm working - he's become one of my favourite YouTubers, actually. I find it sort of gets me in the zone and can be quite motivating when I don't feel like doing much.

I do like the idea of getting back into the BBS scene though. Certainly to me that's a lot more interesting than, as you mentioned, facebook - I imagine the people involved are a lot more self-selecting so plenty of interesting stuff going on rather than the bland diet of shared posts on FB.

<comment><USER4> > but my tinkering tends to be writing new versions of old arcade games, and > that's pretty time-consuming on its own.

Well, frankly that sounds bad ass. Next to my 2000 is a mint C64. I use it almost daily for PETSCII specific BBSes. In any case, there is still a very interesting game dev scene for it. My most recent favorite is Bear Essentials, by Graham Axten. You can read more about it here, if you're interested. [https://amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=238](https://amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=238)

Disclaimer: I wrote the article, and it's my commodore shrine/site.

<comment><USER2> Haha - thanks, that's kind, but whilst it might sound bad ass what it actually means is I spend as much time performance optimising game loading so people don't click off the page before they've had a chance to play, or doing SEO [1], as I do writing the games (which is by far the most fun bit).

No disclaimer needed either: I really enjoyed the Bear Essentials post, so thanks for sharing. I found the comment about pixel perfect movement particularly resonated with me. I find most web games, and particularly Flash games (I used HTML/JS/CSS), fail quite badly in this sense, with characters/sprites often feeling quite detached from the backgrounds they're running or flying over.

[1] If I didn't do these rather soul sucking tasks nobody would ever play the games, so whilst they're kind of a drag, this does keep my motivation to do them reasonably high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does the protected-mode version of the OS do interprocess communication? The original non-protected version passed pointers from one process to another.

<comment><USER2> I have no idea in truth but, if I had to guess, I'd say that this could be made transparent to existing applications using a decent abstraction layer in between. You'd still pass something around that looks like a pointer, and you could use it the same way, but the OS would know it's not really. Of course, that's still potentially open to all kinds of abuse, not to mention a turtles- all-the-way-down counter-argument, so it really is just a guess.

<comment><USER9> Apparently AmigaOS 4.1 (2008) doesn't have memory protection between processes, despite what the parent article says. No good way to make it backward compatible.[1]

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2008/09/amiga...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2008/09/amigaos41-ars/2/)

<comment><USER10> IIRC in the late pre-10 macos days, there was some kind of memory protection retrofitted to the platform, with some kind of permissions system allowing certain programs to break out of this when it really was required.. that could still presumably be done.. unless e.g. there are hardware restrictions (software expects processor to run in some 'mode', which it is not still in).. even then, that could probably be soft-faulted to an emulation shim in a modern full-featured CPU

<comment><USER9> The AmigaOS did, and does, interprocess communication by passing pointers across process boundaries. Access to the transmitted data is a simple memory access. The OS has no idea what data is supposed to be visible to the other process.

The original MacOS didn't do that. Originally it only ran one program at a time, with some hacks to allow "desk accessories" to steal some cycles.

The history of computing might have been quite different if the Motorola 68000 had correct instruction continuation after a memory access fault. (This was fixed in the 68010, 3 years later.) Then an MMU would have been possible sooner. Motorola was very late in producing a good MMU for the 68K line, and it wasn't until 1990 that they had an on-chip MMU.

<comment><USER11> The 68030 had a great on-chip MMU in 1987, three years after the 68020 and its off-chip 68851 (which added a wait state).

You're thinking of the 68040, which brought the FPU on-chip as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Windows S announcement and a new Amiga X ... let me drag up this [http://drupal4hu.com/future/freedom](http://drupal4hu.com/future/freedom) seven year old blog post of mine. Especially because:

> Microsoft can [...] make it so that any new app needs to be sanctioned.

which came to be true with Windows S.

The other half of my prediction where free PCs become "cool, obscure and expensive" computers like the Amiga X series has not yet come to pass. Not yet.

<comment><USER13> That's a nice post, thanks for the link. Some may point to various coding apps available in walled gardens, but that means allowing 3rd parties to define what the general-purpose computer is and set its limits. Who are they to say where curiosity begins and where it should end? I want the freedom to run native code on the CPU, and the freedom for others to easily run what I make without jumping through any hoops.

I'd like to hear your opinions about the Raspberry Pi and other cheap computer boards where you can load Linux and just plug in a keyboard and screen. I see a future iteration of that as my next PC in a few years. The Raspberry Pi 3 is good enough to run Ubuntu MATE (I was blown away), and if it had more than 1GB of RAM I would start using it full-time today and save myself some money on the power bill while I'm at it :-)

<comment><USER12> Want to hear the doom and gloom version? All it takes is one of these to be found in a terrorist backpack and they will be banned. Consider that 16 years ago one guy tried to smuggle a bomb in his shoe and to this day hundreds of millions of passengers take off their shoes in answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> IMO, util someone does some kind of "qemu+wine"-like for running Amiga applications and disk images as normal Linux desktop applications, the periodic "new Amiga hardware" will never end :-)

<comment><USER15> Doesn't MAME run Amiga ROMs?

<comment><USER16> Well, there's UAE: [http://amiga.technology/](http://amiga.technology/)

TFA argues that the experience of running emulated software on this new "Amiga" is substantially better than running it via UAE on Linux/Windows/whatever, though. (For what they're charging for the new hardware, I would say it'd better be.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This badly needs the A1200/A500 form factor to be even worth considering. That and a lower price. :-)

<comment><USER18> There's a lower end motherboard in the works, "Tabor" (which will be released as the A1222). It's still a PC form factor, but much smaller (mini ITX afair) so it could potentially be put in an box not unlike the A1200.

I'd expect it won't be available until next year, but they've said that the cost of the motherboard will be around 450€ which is pretty nice.

<comment><USER7> The problem with Tabor, as I understand it, is that its instruction set is not compatible with the existing PowerPC Amiga code and hardware because for some reason they used a chip which doesn't support the standard PowerPC floating point instruction set at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Has there been a device like the Amiga since it came out? A device that was so far ahead of the competition, yet completely overwhelmed by that competition into obsolescence?

<comment><USER20> I'm an Amiga fan, but the X68000 was released 2 years after the A1000 and was definitely a step up in power.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X68000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X68000)

For comparison, here's the Amiga port of Super Street Fighter 2:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMNTcG4OvqE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMNTcG4OvqE)

Here's the X68000 version:

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

To be fair to the Amiga, there are fighting games with better graphics than the SSF2 port, but I'd say sacrifices were probably made to improve the gameplay speed.

<comment><USER19> I can't believe I never heard of this computer. Very interesting though.</comment></comment></comment>


The Forest for the Trees - <AUTHOR> https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/the-forest-for-the-trees.html <comment><USER2> I don't know if I agree with the transformative justice ideas of the article, but it is a delight to read an excellent post by someone with very different values from my own. The article reveals the thought process, and why they believe in their system without exaggeration or polemics.

Most anarchist/socialist writings that get passed to me are bogged down in vocabulary specific to them, or have hidden assumptions that don't make sense to me, and difficult to understand. This piece was extraordinarily clear, and shows the advantages and disadvantages of their system. It certainly made me re-think my concept of justice. I would like to think mainstream society could learn a lot from the author.

<comment><USER3> I know you intended this as a compliment, but it reads to me as a backhanded insult to every other anarchist writer.

What you are saying comes across to me like: "It is a delight to read an excellent post by someone from the Muslim world. Most Muslim writings that get passed to me are bogged down in Arabic vocabulary, or have hidden assumptions that don't make sense to me. This piece was written in English, and shows the advantages and disadvantages of Muslim philosophy."

I don't mean to jump down your throat, but I just find it really frustrating how many pro-capitalist demand that every idea be translated into _their_ metaphors and _their_ models and _their_ experiences while putting no stock whatsoever in the fact that entire societies function perfectly well under different value systems. The "you're wrong until you can prove it to me" attitude really bugs me because I think we could advance society so much faster if we worked collaboratively to discover the truth.

I get the sense that you do truly appreciate this essay, but you'd never do the work to try to reach across in the opposite direction. That works fine for you because your ideology is the dominant one, but I think it is an abuse of power.

<comment><USER2> You're absolutely right, I won't work to understand you. Sorry. I don't have infinite time in my life, and obscure political ideologies require too much of an investment for me to benefit from it. I don't have time in my life to learn arabic, socialist-speak and anarchist-speak, and even if I did, who would I talk to about it? I don't know anyone who thinks like that. It's bad enough being the only technology person I know in the real world. I started learning french because I was around enough speakers to extract value from it.

You're going to have to do the work for me if you want to win, because you already speak the language. But hey, if you don't want me, that's ok, I'm pretty happy serving the neoliberal economic beast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11910543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11910543)</comment>


Padding Oracles: An Animated Primer - <AUTHOR> https://dylanpindur.com/blog/padding-oracles-an-animated-primer/ <comment><USER2> If you want to see a good real-world case, look at OpenVPN and it's use of compression which allowed an oracle attack: [https://openvpn.net/security- advisory/the-voracle-attack-vul...](https://openvpn.net/security-advisory/the- voracle-attack-vulnerability/)

</comment><comment> awinter-py possibly stupid question: how is the penguin jpeg still square after encryption? wouldn't compression mean that _even_ with a weak cipher, jpeg segments will be of variable size and therefore take up varying # of blocks?

it seems like this example relies on the image being a bitmap without even run-length compression

<comment><USER3> The other comment explains that in fact a JPEG is not what's actually used in the Tux ECB demo, yes, it's a specific type of uncompressed bitmap data that was easiest to do the demo on.

However, since you brought it up - JPEG data probably doesn't work how you think it does if you're surprised a JPEG is "still square". In fact if you smash random bits near the start (as would happen if you just tried to feed an AES-ECB encrypted JPEG file through a decoder) it's just not a valid JPEG any more.

But if you were to leave a valid header, the images are damaged in a predictable way because of how JPEG compression works. There aren't "variable size segments" instead JPEG cuts everything into blocks made of 64 pixels (8 by 8) and then it handles each of these blocks separately, in effect the "lossy compression" of JPEG consists of throwing away some of the information within each such block.

<comment> awinter-py Ah, didn't know JPEG blocks were consistently 8x8. But I'm assuming storage size of each block is variable-length?

BMP wouldn't be decodable either; header gets mangled, right? This is a some kind of rendering of the cipher text. But in the 'block cipher on simple bitmap' case, the blocks map well to pixels; with any compressed format, that wouldn't be true.</comment></comment></comment>