The Vdara Death Ray, or Unintended Consequences - <AUTHOR> http://www.lvrj.com/news/vdara-visitor---death-ray--scorched-hair-103777559.html

<comment><USER2> When I was in Nottingham they installed an art installation called the Sky Mirror[1] in the center of town.

Somehow my PhD supervisor (who was a professor in astrophysics at the city's university) ended up get a consulting gig to calculate whether or not there was any danger of it focusing light and blinding anyone.

He ended up doing a media interview, where he explained that carefully placed shields would protect anyone at ground level from being at the focal point, but then he made an off-hand remark that "it might fry a few pigeons". Of course that turned out to be the only line that got repeated in the ensuing media frenzy[2].

I'm not sure that's what they had in mind when they hired him to consult for them, but we found it pretty funny.

[1] <http://www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk/about-us/sky-mirror/>

[2] <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/mar/07/paulkelso1></comment>


Twitter Adds Image Upload Feature - <AUTHOR> https://support.twitter.com/articles/20156423

<comment><USER2> There's validation and then there's being steamrolled. Not all the "tweet an image" startups are toast, but a lot of them are. Instagram will be fine, for example.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, this is why you don't base your entire business on something like images for twitter.</comment>


Ordered atomic broadcast capabilities to Riak - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jtuple/riak_zab

<comment><USER2> This is awesome. I recently played around with riak and thought about using it in a project. What I really appreciate is the simple key-value interface that riak exposes while staying away from assumptions about your data.

It would be awesome if we now could implement strong guarantees like uniqueness using riak_zab in a distributed manner.

</comment><comment><USER3> Relevant blog post from a few weeks ago that talks about the use cases this code makes possible:

[http://nosql.mypopescu.com/post/4633402570/riak-zab- zookeepe...](http://nosql.mypopescu.com/post/4633402570/riak-zab-zookeepers- zab-protocol-for-riak)

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. I'm wondering if this can be used to keep a monotonically increasing guaranteed unique counter? Riak isn't currently suited for that type of thing from my limited experience.</comment>


Why Erlang is among the few true computer languages (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://wordsandbuttons.online/why_erlang_is_among_the_few_true_computer_languages.html <comment><USER2> This is such utter nonsense. I've programmed professionally in both C++ and Erlang and while there are situations where Erlang might shine, there are issues where it completely loses to C++, namely, cases where you need a lower level of abstraction. I don't see people writing video and audio codecs in Erlang as there are no real abstractions for SIMD and no latency guarantees. Erlang supports concurrency in its virtual machine, but no support for real parallelism (e.g. you can't control when context switches occur, or finely control flow control in general). While I was programming in Erlang, I loved aspects of the language, but found Erlang apologists who didn't really understand native programming to be insufferable.

<comment><USER3> This comment doesn't seem to be a response to anything in the article, which is talking primarily about input and output languages (output here meaning error messages) of compilers. The article does not compare anything about C++ and Erlang beyond compiler error messages.

<comment><USER2> Right my point is that the article cherrypicked a single thing and made a general claim about Erlang being a "true computer language" which is what I take umbrage to.

<comment><USER4> Language is something you can conduct a dialog in. In most of the computer languages you can't.

I'm not saying that C++ (or any other) is in any way inferior to Erlang because of human-readable error messages. But this property to communicate back and forth in the same language is definitely interesting.

<comment><USER2> Right but if you make the language as natural as possible for the human, you introduce layers of abstraction that make it difficult or impossible to understand what's happening at the machine level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, both GCC and Clang now can report errors in JSON format, for further processing. But it is more about machine processing, rather than of inability to speak English. Ironically, OCaml, which mentioned in the article, recently put some effort to improve error messages, to be readable for human. And more improvements will come in the future releases.

<comment><USER4> And both things are good news!

OCaml human-readable messages are brilliant! And machine-readable Clang output is very promising, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The error message in every language requires that the programmer know the language themselves.

'bad_match' error in erlang is as much of a enigma to a C programmer as is a 'bad operator' in C to a python programmer.

It is not the error message that makes erlang valuable, rather a synchronous state machine for a single process that is completely independent of every other process which stops errors from propagating to other unrelated processes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why would you want your compiler to give you error messages in code? That's like AutoCAD drawing you a picture when it can't complete a command.

<comment><USER3> A more fair comparison might be AutoCAD showing errors like intersecting surfaces visually, rather than spitting out a list of "bad coordinates".

<comment><USER4> Exactly!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem with C++ is that template expansion doesn't do any validation of the parameters at all. It just keeps going until it generated as much code as possible and only afterwards does it report a large error on the nonsensical code it generated.</comment>


Why Hyperlinks Are Blue (and Other Quirky Web Origin Stories) - <AUTHOR> https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/why-hyperlinks-are-blue/ <comment><USER3> This article is also a wonderfully accurate synecdoche of real life: there is no grand plan. There is no "right" way, even if society really tries to push it on us. What hit me the most when maturing into an adult is the tiny echo chambers that are created inside social circles: family, friends, colleagues, communities each draw very strong, thick lines around what is deemed possible, good, right. The biggest, and scariest, wake up call is that everyone is right, and everyone is wrong.

<comment><USER4> "everyone is right, and everyone is wrong" \-- I know you didn't mean it literally as contradiction but probably expressing moral relativism - <USER2> could be a very difficult claim to support.

There certainly are objective 'right way' and grand plans of actions. As for the plans of action, they are almost never economical thus ignored.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The_ ARPANET. And even after ARPA became DARPA, it was still the ARPANET (or the net), except as a lame joke when the name changed.

And for the rest of the world: it's " _the_ Internet (though it uses internet protocols). Like the Universe there is by definition one (though you can have little local internets).

Oh, and about my lawn: stay off!

</comment><comment><USER6> "Red and green are the colors most affected by color-vision deficiency."

So maybe not the best choice for traffic lights. How did that happen?

<comment><USER7> It's probably a reason to continue maintaining a distinct position for each color in the traffic light.

<comment><USER8> There's one stretch of road in southern Quebec that has horizontal traffic lights that always throw me for a loop, despite not being colorblind. They flash in odd (to me) patterns and have two red lights: [http://i.imgur.com/i7jCi.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/i7jCi.jpg)

<comment><USER9> Two red lights... which are also square (other lights are still round). It's actually a pretty good design.

<comment><USER8> I'm good with the layout, but if I remember correctly the turn arrows flash in the middle while the outer red lights are still lit. So if I've got the green light to turn left, it's flashing in between two red lights, which I think is what made me kind of wary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > It affects 7% of men and only 0.4% of women, but that's still one person in > 13 overall.

No it's not.

Also: the percentage of men who can't tell highly-saturated red from highly- saturated green is way lower than 7%.

<comment><USER11> 'It affects 7% of men and only 0.4% of women, but that's still one person in 13 overall.

No it's not.'

It's not. It's more like one in 25. Thanks for catching that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "More than any single person, Tim Berners-Lee is responsible for inventing the internet." Learn something every day.

<comment><USER13> "and it is the reason other parts of the web are blue – like Facebook, which is blue because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind." didn't know that.

In its early years there was a quite popular Facebook 1:1 clone with the only difference being a red-color theme instead of blue. At one point FB even tried to buy it.</comment></comment>


10 Signs It's Time To Quit Your Job - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20110328/ts_usnews/10signsitstimetoquityourjob

<comment><USER2> Should all 10 apply before quitting? Only the first 3 really apply for me. Some of the other things on the list come and go, but thats how it is with most jobs.</comment>


The First Time I Had Sex on Drugs, I Thought I Was in Love - <AUTHOR> https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/bjq8y3/sex-on-drugs-experience-mdma <comment><USER2> As anyone who's tried MDMA knows, it's exactly like how it's commonly described: you get very strong feelings of love for and connection with others, especially people you're already comfortable with.

As for the sexual side of it though - just be aware that if you're male it's pretty common to get ED while high on MDMA (citing VICE [1] seems appropriate here). Of course, there's plenty of other ways to have enjoyable sexual experiences. But maybe if you're a guy and accustomed to the, uh, "usual way" of carrying about your business you might get a little disappointed.

[1]: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ppa9nm/drugs-and-dicks- pi...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ppa9nm/drugs-and-dicks-pilly-willy- effect-of-ecstasy-cocaine-weed-penis)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for your comment, but I had to ask only 2 things -

1) What's "ED"?

2) "there's plenty of other ways to have enjoyable sexual experiences" \- please elaborate more and list a few good examples.

3) What do you mean by "usual way"?</comment></comment>


Preferred number - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_number <comment><USER2> That must explain this: [http://thingsfittingperfectlyintothings.tumblr.com/](http://thingsfittingperfectlyintothings.tumblr.com/)

<comment><USER3> Possibly more popular with the HN audience:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/perfectfit](http://www.reddit.com/r/perfectfit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A related concept is the "Schelling point" (or focal point) in game theory:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_\(game_theory\))

</comment><comment><USER5> Interestingly, the R5 intervals are quite close to the golden ratio (1 : 1.618).

Also, I often wondered whether the US use different preferred numbers for buildings, because everything just feels a little different and out of proportion to me. However, this could also be due to the non-metric system in the US.

<comment><USER6> The numbers cited in the article are convenient only if the relationship between your units can be expressed with powers of 10.

My biggest petty complaint is with the 8" x 11" (Letter) paper size and related formats like Legal and Ledger. The ratios are all over the place. The European A0/A1/A2/A3/A4/A5/A6 papers all have a ratio of 1 : 1.414 (square root of 2), so two sheets of A _x_ always fit exactly into one sheet of A _y_ where _y_ = _x_ \- 1.

<comment><USER7> You know what's worse than having paper sizes with differing aspect ratios? Having different paper sizes by region. The simple fact that if someone in the US sends me their CV and I print it in London, it comes out looking bad (sometimes even sideways, by some bizarre quirk of some rather expensive printers).

I mean, sure, the paper sizes used in engineering in the US have the property that two smaller ones side by side match the next larger size ([http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/drafting-paper-sizes- d_214...](http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/drafting-paper-sizes-d_214.html)) but it's still a pain because it's all denominated in inches. There's no reason for that at all--it's not like there is value in having engineering drawings printed on physical paper with round-inch dimensions--even if the drawings are in inch scale.

So, US people: step up and abandon your paper sizes, because no one else is going to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This pleases my OCD so much.

</comment><comment><USER9> The feature length in integrated circuits.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this why kitchens feel like minecraft?

</comment><comment><USER11> 1-2-5 should be renamed R3 and every thing above R10 and E12 should just be discarded.

<comment><USER12> Why?

<comment><USER11> Because I said so, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What?</comment>


First App Release Thoughts - <AUTHOR>

Yo! So our team has been testing our app concept for a few months will small groups of people, and changed direction a little to simplify things according to user feedback. Got a few thousand people signed up to download it when it launches.<p>We're submitting to the app store today and I'll make another post next week when it's live :) Just wanted to get some thoughts on getting it in users hands it for people who've done this successfully. I was thinking literally walking up to lots of people everyday and talking to them about it/asking them to try it. Is this scalable? I know word of mouth helps. Thanks for reading! <comment><USER2> Be careful approaching random people in public. Some people might not appreciate it. And if you push too hard you just might find yourself in a scuffle with the police.</comment>


A Brief Totally Accurate History of Programming Languages - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@caspervonb/a-brief-totally-accurate-history-of-programming-languages-cd93ec806124 <comment><USER2> I feel like left-pad should be called out in this article:

March 2016: Azer Koçulu breaks web deployments worldwide by unpublishing an 11 line module "left-pad" used for string expansion. yarn.cache was invented as a result.</comment>


Review my weekend project - Free Twitter marketing tool - <AUTHOR> http://masstwit.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to get feedback from people here. It could be very useful for marketing on twitter, but needs lots of caution at the part of user to be sensible on not spamming, there is a risk involved of twitter account being suspended if you do spamming, so be careful while you use this tool.

</comment><comment><USER2> I tried this out and Twitter suspended my new account quickly. Does anyone know what their general limitation is for duplicate tweets?

<comment><AUTHOR> New twitter account, which mass tweets gets suspended immediately. I would suggest to use a relatively old twitter account. For old accounts, you can tweet around 100 tweets per hour, and 1000 tweets total in a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am pretty sure a lot of people are going to misuse this, inspite of the disclaimer you have put up!

</comment><comment><USER2> This is a brilliant little niche spam, er... communication tool. Really cool idea though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I am aware that this can be misused for spamming, but if used wisely it can do good free marketing. Twitter marketing has been the most effective marketing for us so far.</comment></comment>


Zero Knowledge Proofs - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_knowledge_proofs

<comment><USER2> A great example of this is posted by Ryan O'Donnell on Math Overflow ([http://mathoverflow.net/questions/22624/example-of-a-good- ze...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/22624/example-of-a-good-zero- knowledge-proof)):

> The classic example, given in all complexity classes I've ever taken, is the > following: Imagine your friend is color-blind. You have two billiard balls; > one is red, one is green, but they are otherwise identical. To your friend > they seem completely identical, and he is skeptical that they are actually > distinguishable. You want to prove to him (I say "him" as most color-blind > people are male) that they are in fact differently-colored. On the other > hand, you do not want him to learn which is red and which is green.

Here is the proof system. You give the two balls to your friend so that he is holding one in each hand. You can see the balls at this point, but you don't tell him which is which. Your friend then puts both hands behind his back. Next, he either switches the balls between his hands, or leaves them be, with probability 1/2 each. Finally, he brings them out from behind his back. You now have to "guess" whether or not he switched the balls.

By looking at their colors, you can of course say with certainty whether or not he switched them. On the other hand, if they were the same color and hence indistinguishable, there is no way you could guess correctly with probability higher than 1/2.

If you and your friend repeat this "proof" t times (for large t), your friend should become convinced that the balls are indeed differently colored; otherwise, the probability that you would have succeeded at identifying all the switch/non-switches is at most 2−t. Furthermore, the proof is "zero- knowledge" because your friend never learns which ball is green and which is red; indeed, he gains no knowledge about how to distinguish the balls.

<comment><USER3> Could this be used to prove to the Bible blind the existence of God?

<comment><USER4> Sure. Just find two billiard balls that are indistinguishable unless God exists. Give them to your Bible-blind friend, and try to guess whether he switches them behind his back or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is cool. I remember reading about it a while back, but had forgotten all about it. I have a question about the Peggy/Victor example: why do we need to use the probabilistic method?

Here's my alternative zero-knowledge proof that Peggy knows the word:

Victor observes Peggy walk down tunnel A. He stands at the entrance. A short while later, Peggy emerges from tunnel B. Since we know the only way to go down tunnel A and come out tunnel B is by going through the door with the secret word, Peggy must know the word.

Is there something wrong with that? Assuming what I wrote is correct, I think the hamiltonian cycle example further down the page is a much better one.

EDIT: Perhaps Peggy and Victor would have to walk down tunnel A together at the start, so that Victor can observe that the door really is shut. I don't think that invalidates my proposal though.

</comment><comment><USER6> My Professor was just going over this in class. He links to Manuel Blum's "classic" paper on the subject [http://www.mathunion.org/ICM/ICM1986.2/Main/icm1986.2.1444.1...](http://www.mathunion.org/ICM/ICM1986.2/Main/icm1986.2.1444.1451.ocr.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> There's a nice demonstration of a zero-knowledge protocol here: [http://aperiodical.com/2012/03/using-a-zero-knowledge- protoc...](http://aperiodical.com/2012/03/using-a-zero-knowledge-protocol-to- prove-you-can-solve-a-sudoku-3/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, there is a notion of knowledge complexity the includes zero knowledge:

<http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cis/pubs/shafi/1985-stoc.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER9> Crypto experts of HN - can you point to some deeper resources for beginners/layfolk on zero knowledge proofs?

This is a good start, but I want more! :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't know that every unit of an undergraduate CS curriculum needs to be an HN submission.

It's a bit silly to hear people way that college curriculum is irrelevant and then spend a drawn out period of time cobbling together a college curriculum.

<comment><USER11> The perceived hypocrisy vanishes once you remember that not everyone else on HN is the same person. (And as to your actual point: zero-knowledge proofs are interesting, and that's all the excuse that an interesting topic ever needs.)

<comment><USER9> Also, this community has a lot of smart people with different expertise areas. That means that my basic knowledge of 0knowledge proofs, or other "basic" topic will most likely be heavily augmented when the experts start talking about the deep bits that aren't covered in "cool crypto primitives 101".</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: An On-Demand Scooter Alternative with Showers and Lockers - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm Gilbert and co-founder of Commuto.
Urban mobility is such an interesting problem to work on now especially,when the
amount of cars owners is growing at expense of infrastructure we currently have. We are still decades away before from better algorithms that have a strong accuracy of optimizing routes. What if we could optimize travel through embracing natural means like walking or jogging to our final destinations?
That's what our team came up with an app we calll Commuto.
Commuto is an app that lets people use alternative
means like walking and jogging while connecting them to spots where they can quickly take a shower or keep stuff that they can use before reaching their final destinations.
Traffic congestion costs the world economy billions of dollars annually. Existing solutions have not attracted drivers to leave their cars and walk or cycle to work. This is because people lack adequate facilities close to work for changing and refreshing.
With Commuto, simply book a commutel near your destination to shower and change and step into your workplace well refreshed.
For any questions or feedback please reach out.
PS- some footnotes of things we haven't figured out;
* Your feedback if this would be helpful * Legal issues regarding State Laws on properties(if you know anything ,please reachout in the comment section or whaterver)
Thanks <comment><USER2> Maybe start in a warmer city, so don't have to worry about keeping heat in as much at first. Maybe Atlanta?</comment>


Ask HN: What online communities are you apart of? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> \- This one.

\- Reddit, mostly some specific subreddits.

\- Product Hunt.

And that's about it...

</comment><comment><USER3> For me: HN, Reddit, Indiehackers and a few private Slack groups.

<comment><AUTHOR> > private slack groups

like technology or location based slack groups?

<comment><USER3> One's a school alumni group, and one is a subcommunity of the same group.</comment></comment></comment>


Possibly fake Kiva loans - <AUTHOR>

These two profiles are too similar to be just a coincidence, the text appears to be auto-generated just replacing the numbers, names and specific bits.
Maybe somebody is gaming/abusing Kiva? Or is Kiva itself creating fake profiles? I'll contact them and post any updates.
Profile 1: http://goo.gl/cBytRa Profile 2: http://goo.gl/79re14 Screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/0NUaI <comment><USER2> Looks to me like there are just two women with children in Sierra Leone that run little shops that sell similar items.

I'm sure Kiva has several templates that they use to post loans - you don't think they write each one by hand, do you?

<comment><USER3> Actually, the Kiva field partners do write the profiles, and a team of 300+ volunteers translate them & edit for typos:

[http://www.kiva.org/about/editingprogram](http://www.kiva.org/about/editingprogram)

There's a story of one of the Kiva Coordinators who photographs the borrowers and writes their loan descriptions here:

[http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/fellowsblog/2013/05/25/connectin...](http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/fellowsblog/2013/05/25/connecting- lenders-and-borrowers-memory-kiva-coordinator-extraordinaire)

Of course, when there's lots of loans to process, some of the field partners do have a tendency to just fill-in-the-blank-template.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Search Query "loan in order to purchase cigarettes, drinks, and soap to expand her business"

1\. Helping Through Kiva - Surigao Internet Marketing www.surigaointernetmarketing.com/.../helping-through-kiva?view...id... Posseh requires a loan in order to purchase cigarettes, drinks, and soap to expand her business. She hopes that the extra income from this loan will allow her to ...

2\. Helping Through Kiva - Surigao Internet Marketing www.surigaointernetmarketing.com/.../helping-through-kiva?view...id... Kadie requires a loan in order to purchase cigarettes, drinks, and soap to expand her business for resale. She hopes that the extra income from this loan will ...

3\. Adama - EmmausChurches.org www.emmauschurches.org/index.php?option=com_jfmicro... Adama requires a loan in order to purchase cigarettes, drinks and soap to expand her business. She hopes that the extra income from this loan will allow her to ...

4\. Wakibi - Microkrediet aan Mbalu, Sierra Leone www.wakibi.nl/2-657214/ Translate this page Jan 14, 2014 - Mbalu requires a loan in order to purchase cigarettes, drinks and soap to expand her business. She hopes that the extra income from this loan ...

5\. <社会貢献> シエラレオネ共和国で一般商店をしている起業家 Hawaさん kivajapan.org/entrepreneurs/?k_guid=654331 Translate this page Hawa requires a loan in order to purchase cigarettes, drinks and soap to expand her business. She hopes that the extra income from this loan will allow her to ...

looks like a template

<comment><USER5> Maybe cigarettes, drinks and soap have the highest margins...

<comment><USER6> Yes, cigarettes are often sold as singles in areas around the world where tobacco sales aren't heavily regulated. So a pack of 20 cigarettes that costs $5 can be sold for .30c each one, giving a higher profit. This practice disappeared in the early 90s where I am from but I come across it all the time in developing countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> An update from Kiva: their field partners, who may not have english as a first language, use templates and fill in the blanks. So nothing to be alarmed from.

The full response:

"Hi Juan,

Thanks so much for your email and writing in about these two loan profiles.

I took a look, and while the stores do look similar, and the language is also similar, these are two distinct borrowers.

As you may know, the loan descriptions you see on Kiva's website are written by our Field Partners. To help the staff at our partners, who may not have English as a first language, our team will sometimes provide loan description templates. These templates help make it easier for our Field Partners to draft loan descriptions by allowing them to fill in different facts about the borrower, such as number of children, marital status, etc. Because some of our partners have these templates, you may see similarities in the style of different loan descriptions from the same Field Partner. This may be why you see loans with similar verbiage when browsing the Lend page of our website.

While these similarities shouldn't be a cause of alarm, you may be interested to know that Kiva does use a process called borrower verification to to verify the accuracy of the information included in the borrower profiles posted on the Kiva website.

Hope this provides some helpful context, and if you have any other questions, let me know!"

</comment><comment><USER7> Lets not forget that Kiva profiles are there purely as a way to entice the individual to lend. The money just goes in aggregate to the local lending org. The profile you see is mostly a gimmick.

<comment><USER3> Many (most?) loans are now predispersed, and your Kiva loan backfills it... but they are still individual loans. The repayments come back to you according to that borrower's repayments, and sometimes the borrowers do fall behind or default on the loan, in which case you'll get a short explanation of what happened in their particular circumstance and why they defaulted.

So there is a direct connection between you & the borrower, and even more so on Kiva Zip where you can contact the borrower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't see anything bad about that The text looks the same but those seem to be very different people and shops. The Kiva personnel look for certain types of people to lend money to in order to do economic development and sometimes copy and pasting a bit of text best explains to us from afar what they're going to do with the money.

You'd be surprised how many people need to specifically purchase "cigarettes, drinks, and soap" to expand their business.

</comment><comment><USER9> Could it not just be that there are a lot of people in similar situations getting loans through Kiva and to save time a template is used for the loan description?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe, but they have too much similarities (they want to buy the exact same things, work the exact same time, started their business in the same year, etc). Or maybe it's just statistically not that improbable.

Anyway, I have already asked them, waiting for a response.

<comment><USER3> Have you also tried posting on the Kiva Friends forum? In particular, you might be interested in the Double Loan Listings thread:

[http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,506.0.html](http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,506.0.html)

On page 52 of the thread there's an example of different women being photographed at the same store. So it definitely does happen sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Who writes the profiles? Is it possible that a field partner of Kiva writes the profiles? That might explain the similarity. They might well i) use a template to create the text, and ii) seek out loan candidates who match a very specific set of criteria. That might explain the similarities.

</comment><comment><USER11> According to those pages, they want more than an average year of income for a person in that area, to buy inventory. Isn't that too much inventory to buy all at once?

And yeah it looks like there was a shared template for both of these.

<comment><USER12> Assume:

\- She has a bare minimum of inventory now, as she doesn't have capital to invest

\- Inventory turns are 13 (the 'average' item is on the shelf for 4 weeks)

That would mean she plans her cost of sales to be 13x the average per capita income in that area. That doesn't seem unreasonable if she can get 200 customers to spend 10% of their income in her shop (assuming 50% markup).</comment></comment>


Ford asked government about giving police cars off switch for EV noise rule - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/8/28/17774430/ford-electric-hybrid-noise-rule-law-enforcement <comment><USER2> Why was Ford's name redacted from the comments? Was it a national security issue or part of a terrorist investigation? This is ridiculous. These things should absolutely be part of the public record.</comment>


The Race to a Trillion - <AUTHOR> http://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2018/03/12/the-race-to-a-trillion/ <comment><USER2> Again, history does not repeat but it rhymes.

Dot-com bubble had similar group of valuation leaders whose price would not collapse in enforceable future.

The Four Horseman of Tech in 2000 were Microsoft, Dell, Cisco and Intel. Their combined market cap increased by 94% in few months before the bubble crashed. P/E values were MS 60, Intel 50, Cisco 200. There was no reason to assume that these companies would not be important in 20 years from now.

The stock price of __good__ tech companies will not collapse because they stop making profits, gaining market share or growing. It collapses because they are overvalued.

People simply refuse to understand that great companies can't escape massive over-valuation just because they are great companies. Amazon was a great company in 2000, but it took over 10 years before it's stock valuation recovered to dot-com levels.

Apple probably survives a next crash with much less damage than Amazon just based on their P/E valuations and business models. Amazon is in low profit margin business, Apple is in large profit margin business.

\----

edit: If Amazon long term profit margin is 4%, it must make $1.9 trillion in revenue in the future to to justify current market cap $748 B with 10% ROI.

Retail and logistics are low margin business (~2.5%). Bulk web services will be low margin in the future when the industry matures.

It's very unlikely that any platform business has room, or is allowed to grow, into several trillions per year revenue behemoth before regulators around the world step in.

<comment><USER3> It's a bit of a simplification to call Amazon a low profit margin business -- Amazon is a lot of different businesses each with their own margin considerations. And most of Amazon's businesses we won't know the real margins they'll deliver until maturity a number of years out. There's only a few categories on Amazon (books, digital media, etc) that have already reached maturity and won't see any margin expansion over the next ten years.

<comment><USER2> Most of Amazons business is retail oriented. Retail is very low margin business.

Another main area for Amazon is Amazon Web Services. It will be extremely low margin business as the dust settles. Just like phone and telecom services or personal computers turned into low margin business, large scale Web services will be very low margin bulk and extremely competitive.

<comment><USER3> Depends on how you define "most", "retail", and "business".

Sure, Retail is generally a low margin business, but there are many caveats to that. Selling toilet paper isn't exactly going to give you double digit margins, but selling fashion might, or digital media.

Amazon's retail business is also structured differently than almost all of their comparables. With 90 million Prime members each paying $100 a year, that's $9 billion in free cash flow.

And I think it's probably foolish to think that AWS is going to end up being a low margin business. It definitely currently isn't, and it has a lot of the standard makings of a software business that can sustain high margins like Oracle or Microsoft. The Amazon offerings aren't just a set of simple web services, it's a extremely complicated suite of offerings that can be used as parts to write software tools in alot of different businesses. And given the amount of capital required to write a suite similar to that and the costs of a company would have to actually switch business applications off of something like AWS, I don't see why this wouldn't be a highly lucrative business.

<comment><USER2> >Prime members each paying $100 a year, that's $9 billion in free cash flow.

Massive cash flow and very low margin is the name of the business in retail and logistics.

Amazon will not be the one reaping profits from selling fashion.

<comment><USER3> There's a lot of reasons one could expect Amazon bucks many of these trends. Prime subscriptions, Amazon Marketplace, and Fulfillment by Amazon are all them leveraging their infrastructure for selling additional bottom-line contributions.

Amazon also participates in a huge number of specialty retail businesses that have higher margins as well, like automotive products, beauty products, digital music, games, and video.

I don't think there's any wall street Analyst who would predict Amazon's businesses in maturity wouldn't beat the 3-4% margins you might see at Walmart or Target.

<comment><USER2> Amazon can only grow if it encompasses almost all market segments. Picking retail margins by sub-sector is not helping there will be reversion to mean.

Overall retail margins are very low. 0.5 to 3.5 percent for web-only depending on the sector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The straight-faced comparisons to the inflation-adjusted valuations of the Mississippi Company and the South Sea Company made me chuckle: both of those companies ended up in calamitous crashes!

* The Mississippi Company: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Company)

* The South Sea Company: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company)

None other than Isaac Newton lost a fortune by speculating in South Sea Company stock: [http://www.businessinsider.com/isaac-newton-lost-a- fortune-o...](http://www.businessinsider.com/isaac-newton-lost-a-fortune-on- englands-hottest-stock-2016-1)

By the way, we may owe the use of the word "bubble" for describing financial bubbles to the appropriately named Bubble Act passed by Great Britain's parliament in 1720, during the South Sea stock mania: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_Act)

<comment><USER5> Extra History has a great series on the South Sea company:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1kndKWJKB8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1kndKWJKB8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is telling that 3 out of 4 of the trillion dollar companies are actually oil companies. Just goes to show how dependent we are on the fossil fuel.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oil is part of the composition of so many products. It's also still an essential component to moving things around the planet. So when you decide to have that burger whose ingredients were was transported using gasoline cooked by a staff who drove to work, and the bottled water whose plastic bottle was made from oil and transported with gasoline, a percentage of the money you paid for those items slides into the revenue stream of oil companies. When you have an industry which is able to shave off a percentage of the vast majority of products moved, sold, and consumed in the world you've got a huge financial advantage.

<comment><USER7> Most of those things can be electrified. Even plastics could be electrified (i.e. use electrolysis to produce hydrogen from water and electricity, Sabatier reaction to combine that hydrogen and CO2 into methane, make the methane into various products. Or use electrolysis on the CO2 to make CO and combine that with hydrogen to make methanol and then polypropylene, or just use the Fischer Tropsch reaction to produce synthetic oil from hydrogen and CO as a kind of drop-in replacement for fossil fuels), although I'd bet that we'll just use oil due to the large inefficiencies involved.

So long term, the use for oil won't be for transport (or ought not to be) but for materials.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty happy to accept that, theoretically, any form of energy could be substituted for any other form. So sure, you can swap electricity in for oil.

That doesn't change the present state though, which is that oil is linked to pretty much everything.

And it really doesn't say anything about the economics of the situation. Batteries can store energy for use on demand, but nowhere near as well as fossil fuels. In the short term, I think the difference is something more than an order of magnitude (~1Mj/kg batteries vs >40MJ/kg fossil fuels; I don't feel like looking up per volume numbers but I imagine I'd see the same gap thing).

<comment><USER7> The difference is about an order of magnitude if you include the inefficiency of combustion. But specific power is just one metric. There are many others, which are often (i.e. for commuting and even cross-country shipping) better for battery-electric.

By the way, there is still a gap for energy density (i.e. energy/volume), but not nearly as bad. For instance, Gasoline is 34MJ/liter, but after combustion you get about 8MJ/liter. Tesla's lithium ion is about 2.3MJ/liter, so only a factor of ~3 difference.

We don't all have 1000 mile gas tanks. In fact, in a sports car, you might only have a 300 mile tank. So clearly energy storage alone isn't the only metric.

Wear and tear on brakes is much less. Brakes last for about the life of the vehicle. No oil changes are needed. No fuel filter, engine air filter, etc, etc.

Cost for electric is much less. Typically, I pay about the equivalent to $1 per gallon in electricity. There's also a large reduction in local smog and particulates, which can make a big difference in a large city.

This is why we're seeing a continued transition to electric transport, overcoming a century of inertia and trillions in stake. The only major thing preventing electric from taking over the majority of transportation is battery costs. That's it! And batteries have already decreased in costs dramatically to the point that cost of ownership is roughly break even right now even without incentives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We should be careful with these types of articles and claims. Apple is trading at 18x earnings while Amazon is trading at 250x, as of this comment. Lower P/E ratios point to sturdier valuations in the market. In other words, AAPL is ACTUALLY worth its valuation in the eyes of the market, whereas AMZN would be dumped quickly should something spook investors.

Just be careful on these rapid upticks, and be prepared to bail out if you went in too aggressively.

<comment><USER10> Anyone who thinks that Amazon's P/E ratio is meaningful of anything don't understand how Amazon operates. Full stop. Amazon has the choice between growth or earnings and is choosing growth into new lines of business.

Do not think of Amazon as a large corporation (even though they are). Instead think of it as a network of startups under one corporate umbrella, with a unified management philosophy. That philosophy is reflected in publicly available documents like [https://www.amazon.jobs/principles](https://www.amazon.jobs/principles).

The mature startups spin off an amazing amount of free cash. That cash is reinvested into new startups. The philosophy is that as long as Amazon has a good management structure, and is good at identifying opportunities, their startups will succeed at a higher rate than the general market. You still have to kill a lot of them, but the successes join winners like AWS and fund new ideas.

They can pivot to profitability on a dime by simply killing a lot of their internal startups. They can keep earnings at zero by simply funding new startups.

If you see Amazon's growth stop, or you see them taking profits, then they have shifted to being a different kind of company. Wake up, take notice, and re-evaluate. Until one of those two things happens, their P/E ratio will be ridiculously high and it will not matter.

The two things that I see as long-term threats for Amazon are as follows.

1\. Word about how bad they are to work for becomes sufficiently widespread among prospective top employees that recruiting becomes a challenge.

2\. Some of their mature businesses start to fail, but are embedded strongly enough in the organization to make getting rid of them hard.

Of those, the first seems closer to being an immediate issue. Though it is hard to believe that their reputation could become SO bad that it would really kill them. The second is likely the bigger long-term threat.

<comment><USER3> > 1\. Word about how bad they are to work for becomes sufficiently widespread > among prospective top employees that recruiting becomes a challenge.

I'd say word about Amazon's working environment is heavily overblown. There are many people who have worked there for years on end and greatly enjoy the experience, and their reputation still allows them the pick of the litter of any Comp Sci/MBA graduates.

<comment><USER10> What they are like as an employer tends to be a binary experience. It is great until it is not, and afterwards you don't know how you ever managed to stand it.

Their leadership principles require people to have no defensive behavior. Their actual organization style makes it very easy to create defensive behavior. As long as you and those in your immediate environment are not defensive, the result works very well. However when defensive behavior gets tripped with people who are pretending not to be defensive, things very quickly go pear shaped.

Source, my personal observations from having worked there, combined with many conversations after I left with people who also left. One of whom had not only been there for years, but for most of that time was one of the people who would be brought in to sell wavering recruits because of how loudly he sang their praises as a place to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The 17-18 century companies are of course not adjusted by inflation, they are adjusted by nominal GDP, i.e. as a fraction of the worldwide or their host country GDP.

$7.9T in 1617 means about 20-30 billion UK pounds of the era, which is an absurd amount of money, much more than the total worth of all assets in the world at the time.

<comment><USER12> The same absurd premise that causes people to think eg Rockefeller's peak wealth adjusted should be more like $400 or $500 billion today (when in fact it would be closer to ~$30 billion using an inflation adjustment from the early 1900s).

<comment><USER11> But in a way such comparison makes sense. It shows how much weight a company or a person had in the world or society of the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a pet theory that we've been systematically under-estimating inflation for the past many years, and that all these sky-high market caps are really the result of the dollar not being worth as much as we all think.

Don't really have numbers behind it, other than things like a 12-pack of craft beer almost doubling over the past decade.

<comment><USER14> The [core] CPI very conspicuously omits food and energy costs.

Edit: added [core]

<comment><USER15> Do you know if housing is included? Seems like if you tracked inflation as more of "indexed cost of living" it would be skyrocketing the last 20 years.

<comment><USER16> Yes, rent is included, along with a computed rent for owned homes (they try to separate the housing value from the property value).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > we might never again see a giant stock move like Amazon has over the past 92 > days.

Why not? Why such a pessimistic assumption of decline in ability to quickly create value _for the rest of time_?

<comment><USER18> global warming

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I thought PetroChina was the first Trillion Dollar Comapny(tm)?

<comment><USER20> If you read the article, it mentions that it would be the first US-based company to hit the four comma club.

They even point out that the East India Trading company, when adjusted for inflation, was a 7.9T company.

<comment><USER21> Which still wouldn't be true because Standard Oil, adjusted for inflation, was >$1Tn.

<comment><USER22> Standard Oil is mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER21> Yes, defeating the claim of the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interestingly amzn, goog seem to be doing this on much lower volume than the competition

[https://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/AAPL,MSFT,ORCL,GOOG,INTC,QC...](https://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/AAPL,MSFT,ORCL,GOOG,INTC,QCOM,AMZN,CSCO/view/v1)

<comment><USER24> Considering Google, do you guys(and gals) think that Their moonshot factory and the businesses it created is factored in the price ? or that the stock market isn't good at factoring things at such early stage, but if we have good reason to believe that they'll do well in that area, Google is a good investment ?

<comment><USER3> For the most part, Google's moonshot business have been a negative value to the firm. They've poured billions of capital into a number of these businesses without anything demonstrable to show for it.

If you think that the future might be different in that regard, then Google is probably undervalued to you. But keep in mind that things Google is doing in it's moonshot projects, while they generate alot of press, might not generate alot of cash. Interesting != Valuable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Amazon, google and Facebook..three companies to rule the world. They have been great investments I predict they will remain so for the foreseeable future. They won't suffer from the same sort of diminishing growth and loss of market share that afflicted other large companies. Google dominates mobile advertising and search; Facebook also dominates mobile advertising and social networking, and Amazon dominates commerce and business/e-commerce infrastructure. Microsoft is also a good investment.

<comment><USER26> How will Facebook avoid lower growth? Or are you meaning financials rather than users? They just had a quarter that had some concerning metrics (usage among young people for example) and are surely up against world population limits at some point.

<comment><USER25> They own Instagram, in which in retrospect was a huge success. The financial growth comes from branching out into different industries and extracting more value from existing users.</comment></comment></comment>


Is iPhone 5 the most defective phone ever? - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/106033815554310116556/posts/KgpQr5ebmim

<comment><USER2> How can anyone up-vote this? No argument or facts, just a list of random features. In the comments section the author reveals he isn't an iOS user? So I'd presume isn't an iPhone 5 user.

Breaking down the G+ users' list:

\- "Maps": Yep, the mapping data is basic as it's brand new, specifically the POI data is seriously lacking. This isn't due to the iPhone 5, requires iteration via software. There are alternative apps if not but this is an iOS issue, yes.

\- "scratches": No evidence yet that there's an issue, other than some owners say that you should be careful with the corners of the black model because the band is painted. Being careful with your phone or having a bumper or case fixes this.

\- "camera": I have no idea what this is about? The camera is better, in tests the camera hasn't been able to crack or scratch because of the new lens-cover.

\- "touchscreen & home button - seems VERY serious": Again, I have no idea what this means.

\- "WiFi": Was an iOS issue not iPhone 5, fixed and could be fixed by changing a setting in Settings.app.

\- "antenna": No such antenna issues.

I'm not sure why I've even spent my time discrediting this. Software isn't perfect, every OS has bugs. Some worse than others: [http://www.techieinsider.com/news/15225/android- smartphones-...](http://www.techieinsider.com/news/15225/android-smartphones- vulnerable/)

</comment><comment><USER3> No

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this the STUPIDEST posting on HN ever? It's much more likely that the answer to my question is YES than the posting.

Anti-Apple postings are reflexively upvoted by dopes.

<comment><USER5> "Anti-Apple postings are reflexively upvoted by dopes."

What exactly do you mean here? Your opinion doesn't have to hateful or demeaning.</comment></comment>


Protecting Against HSTS Abuse - <AUTHOR> https://webkit.org/blog/8146/protecting-against-hsts-abuse/ <comment><USER2> FYI re Tor browser:[0]

> 15\. HSTS and HPKP supercookies

> An extreme (but not impossible) attack to mount is the creation of HSTS > supercookies. Since HSTS effectively stores one bit of information per > domain name, an adversary in possession of numerous domains can use them to > construct cookies based on stored HSTS state.

> HPKP provides a mechanism for user tracking across domains as well. It > allows abusing the requirement to provide a backup pin and the option to > report a pin validation failure. In a tracking scenario every user gets a > unique SHA-256 value serving as backup pin. This value is sent back after > (deliberate) pin validation failures working in fact as a cookie.

> Design Goal: HSTS and HPKP MUST be isolated to the URL bar domain.

> Implementation Status: Currently, HSTS and HPKP state is both cleared by New > Identity, but we don't defend against the creation and usage of any of these > supercookies between New Identity invocations.

0) [https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/](https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/) [February 19th, 2018]

</comment><comment><USER3> Why don't browsers just try https first? So if I type "example.com" into the box it tries [https://example.com](https://example.com).

Why is implementing HSTS and preserving the current behavior more useful?

<comment><USER4> HSTS is trying to protect against a specific kind of Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack: when the man in the middle pretends that the website you are trying to access does not support HTTPS.

I believe trying HTTPS first wouldn't help: the MITM would refuse your connection, and your browser will try HTTP after that.

With HSTS, the server tells your browser that it is going to support HTTPS for a while. Now, if your first connection to server is secure (no MITM), from now on your browser will know that this particular domain supports HTTPS. So, it will know something fishy is going on if a MITM tries to pretend otherwise.

<comment><USER5> Trying HTTPS first would still help a lot in other cases, such as the one in the article. None of the super cookie HSTS techniques would have worked in the first place if the browser had just always tried to use HTTPS first.

Probably other unknown vulnerabilities could be averted by just trying HTTPS first too. Not doing so should be considered bad practice, with or without HSTS.

<comment><USER6> Especially there is no reason, if I type news.ycombinator.com in my address bar to expand with [http://](http://) instead of [https://](https://)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _However, the internet is a wide space full of unique and amazing uses of Web Technology. If you feel that you have a legitimate case where these new rules are not working as intended, we would like to know about it. Please send feedback and questions to email@example.com or @webkit on Twitter, and file any bugs that you run into on WebKit's bug tracker._

I appreciate this part. Do they actually respond to these inquiries?

<comment><USER8> The bug tracker and Twitter account are pretty good about responding, from what I've seen. I'm not familiar with the email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Greater use of HSTS preloading is also a good way for legitimate sites to prevent being affected by any sort of privacy crackdowns on HSTS. Preloading at the TLD level is ideal.

<comment><USER10> Preloading at the TLD level is pretty severe, will never be done for .com / .net / .org, and so will never apply to the vast majority of sites people visit. Interesting idea, but unrealistic.

<comment><USER9> Yes, it can't be done retroactively, but it can be done for new TLDs that haven't launched yet.

<comment><USER11> If I remember correctly, Google has done this with the `.dev` TLD they own, so we're already seeing some of it.

<comment><USER9> There are currently eight HSTS-preloaded TLDs with more on the way, including the first available for open registration coming soon.

<comment><USER12> Do you have a list of them? I'm especially interested in the TLD for open registration.

<comment><USER13>
      .app
      .bank
      .chrome
      .dev
      .foo
      .google
      .insurance
      .page

Source: [https://github.com/chromium/chromium/raw/master/net/http/tra...](https://github.com/chromium/chromium/raw/master/net/http/transport_security_state_static.json) (grep for TLD)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think I'm missing something. Why wouldn't this attack work on, for example: bit1.com, bit2.com, bit3.com, etc.?

<comment><USER9> My interpretation was that it can only be set either on the exact hostname that was loaded, or on the second level domain name that was loaded. To set it on 32 different SLDs you'd have to redirect through 32 different domains, which the user would notice.

Note that this is for the page that was loaded only, not for additional resources hosted on other hostnames.

<comment><USER15> Redirecting 32 times could be made less obvious by opening a small popup which closes after finishing it's work. It used to be possible to open a popup in background, that would have made it almost practical.

<comment><USER16> Or just an async script?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What about websites that are on second-level domains? E.g. amazon.co.uk

Would example.amazon.co.uk then not be able to set HSTS for amazon.co.uk?

<comment><USER18> Yes, using pubsuffix+1 instead of TLD+1 would make way more sense.

I've asked here: [https://twitter.com/gsnedders/status/974765437283119104](https://twitter.com/gsnedders/status/974765437283119104)

<comment><USER18> Per the response it is using pubsuffix+1, and hence co.uk is treated as an effective TLD.

<comment><USER19> The public suffix is more correct than the TLD; however the fact that publicsuffix.org accepts private domains at the domain owners request weakens the mitigation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > We modified WebKit so that when an insecure third-party subresource load > from a domain for which we block cookies (such as an invisible tracking > pixel) had been upgraded to an authenticated connection because of dynamic > HSTS, we ignore the HSTS upgrade request and just use the original URL.

Could someone explain this?

<comment><USER21> They just assume that 3rd party shouldn't ever have a need to send "[http://"](http://") link only to redirect to "[https://"](https://") and are willing to stop that feature from working even if it can lead to false positives and just break some sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I feel like I'm missing something but wouldn't this whole brouhaha be avoided by making the website 100% HTTPS and redirecting any HTTP requests to HTTPS through the server itself? This is common practice with Nginx, for example.</comment>


Fedichan: Make Mastodon look like 4chan - <AUTHOR> https://ayanami.ga/fedichan/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some people here are familiar with Activitypub, a decentralized social network with 3,500,000+ users. A friend of mine made a new interface for Mastodon/Pleroma (popular Activitypub applications) that looks like 4chan. I think it's a cute little hack because most Activitypub implementations look like Twitter clones.

Source code: [https://ayanami.ga/fedichan/code.html](https://ayanami.ga/fedichan/code.html)

(Note: I'm not the author; that would be @firstname.lastname@example.com )</comment>


Show HN: Polltab – Create a Poll, because polls are fun - <AUTHOR> http://www.polltab.com <comment><AUTHOR> Let me know if you guys have any questions, or have feedback. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> I created a poll 'Standard chess or chess on half the board'

[http://www.polltab.com/HkAtt0pHl](http://www.polltab.com/HkAtt0pHl)

(thats the only question I could think up....) :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't know there was a half chess game! It's also surprisingly addictive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> can integrate into own site?/popup?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently that is not supported, but I am planning to add it soon.</comment></comment>


Google to re-brand Product Search and eliminate free merchant listings - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/google-product-search-to-become-google-shopping-use-pay-to-play-model-122959

<comment><USER2> I will no longer use Product Search.</comment>


Germany has only 1.9 WiFi hotspots per 10,000 ppl, compared with 29 in the U.K - <AUTHOR> http://skift.com/2014/11/22/germanys-backward-wi-fi-rules-leave-travelers-offline/ <comment><USER2> A side effect of our bullshit laws. This one is called "Störerhaftung", making any public hotspot owner liable for stuff the users do - not only filesharing (which can be reliably blocked), but rather online defamation, libel etc.

The exception is "real" ISPs like Telekom and Kabel Deutschland, which operate a vast load of public hotspots.</comment>


Outbound (YC W15) Helps Businesses Message Customers Over Both Email and Mobile - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/04/yc-backed-outbound-helps-businesses-message-customers-over-both-email-and-mobile/

<comment><USER2> Good question on Intercom, alishiu. Here is how we think about this:

Intercom, true to its name, is a really nice tool for 2-way communication with your users. Here's where it shines:

1) Visibility: It acts as a CRM that auto updates - it automatically shows you what each user has done and lets you build rich profiles from their interactions with your app and your communication history.

2) Conversations: Intercom is wonderful at initiating conversations via email or in-app messages based on what your users are doing. You get a granular sense of what is going on with each user and so it's easy to talk with them about it.

3) Handholding: The lines between onboarding, product feedback and support are very fuzzy. Intercom helps you handhold your users through your product, heading off some support tickets before they happen and helping you understand at a very basic level what it takes to make an active, engaged customer.

Where Intercom is not as strong is: 1) Scaling communication for a large number of users: It's hard to have these 2-way conversations with your users as you scale up. You can do some automation with Intercom but building sophisticated business logic based on combinations of events and user attributes is difficult.

2) Mobile: They don't do native mobile push or SMS, both of which are very important touch points if your users primarily interact with your product on mobile or on the go.

3) Testing and analytics: It's very useful to have deep analytics (not just clicks and opens) and a testing infrastructure, including control groups, that allows you to try things quickly. The key thing here is that it is not enough to know how many messages you send to users and how many users took an action - you need to understand how many users took a particular action BECAUSE they got a message.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey guys, I'm one of the founders at Outbound. We're trying to build the most developer friendly marketing automation solution -- so we appreciate any feedback from the community. Happy to answer any questions.

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks awesome. Going to ping my team to get us set up. How quickly can we integrate?

<comment><USER3> Integration usually takes about 20 minutes. The product will give you copy- paste instructions in various languages once your campaign is setup.

If you're hooked up with Segment.io, it's just a flick of a switch.

And of course if you need any help, you can always write in to support [at] outbound.io and we'll be right on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Product looks great -- definitely agree that the ability to integrate w/ other tools like salesforce would be really useful. How do you guys differentiate vs intercom?

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. Definitely useful since most the marketing automation tools I've used are just email focused. Can we look forward to a Zapier integration?

<comment><USER3> What kind of zapier integration would be most useful? Would it be best if we hooked up with salesforce, or other larger providers? Or just expose zapier hooks for our APIs?

<comment><USER7> Hey Dhruv! The cool thing is if you expose some triggers and actions via an app, your users can decide how to hook it into other apps (like Salesforce, etc.)

Perhaps things like:

\- Trigger when a message is opened

\- Trigger when a message is sent

\- Trigger when a new contact is added (if you have lists)

etc. Happy to answer any questions, you can also shoot me an email. [https://zapier.com/developer](https://zapier.com/developer)

<comment><USER3> That does seem cool. It's a convenient wrapper on our API. I'll check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks very similar to customer.io (though it only send emails currently).

<comment><USER2> Hey this is Josh, the other Outbound founder. Good question, sandstrom. The key difference with Customer.io (other than SMS and mobile push) is that we're built on your event stream: we use events to send messages but also to tell you what effect each message you send has on customer actions inside your product.</comment></comment>


A Long Talk with Pete Buttigieg - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/a-long-talk-with-democratic-2020-candidate-pete-buttigieg.html <comment><AUTHOR> I know this is a political piece but I really think this guy is a different sort of candidate and HN might appreciate reading this interview with him. It touches on topics often discussed on HN such as urban development, tech companies, infrastructure, climate change, and universal healthcare among others.

Also, I think he really embodies the entrepreneurial spirit.</comment>


Show HN: Product Management Search Engine - <AUTHOR> https://find.xyz/map/product-management-search-engine <comment><USER2> Whether you want to learn product management or have a product management problem, that page has the answers.</comment>


Where the fuck should I eat - <AUTHOR> http://wherethefuckshouldigotoeat.com/

<comment><USER2> It's a joke, not a recommendation engine or search engine.

An old joke at that: <http://whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/index.php>

</comment><comment><USER3> Ooh, profanity! Does that mean you're extra edgy?

<comment><USER4> If he's from California, no it's normal. Edit: apparently the consultancy is in the UK so it's "funny". <http://www.coolography.co.uk/>

<comment><USER3> ahh, got it. I don't object to profanity in general, maybe I just missed the joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One side effect of creatives getting a lot more... casual... in their naming schemes: blocked by the corporate proxy.

<comment><USER6> ^^ this. Most of the sites containing such words are classified by Websense as "tasteless".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As of 3:30pm EST, this had 0 Facebook likes, 178 tweets and 228 Google +1's. Personally, I take that as proof of Google's superior social network.

<comment><USER8> I would take it as evidence of an error in the Facebook count.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is probably the best chance I'll ever get to promote my own project, The Recipe Master: <http://3e.org/soup/>

<comment> jack-r-abbit I'd say that is a pretty good start. But I think you need to expand your recipe index. I tried several different sets of ingredients and it just kept telling me to make soup.

<comment><USER10> if ingredients in recipe.ingredients:

suggest recipe

else:

suggest soup

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think you are automatically limiting your audience with the high level of profanity on the site. Don't get me wrong, I like the functionality it provides -- but find a better way to grab the audience's attention. Look to Zappos and some other companies for friendly, engaging copy.

<comment><USER12> You're missing the fucking point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What, no easter egg when I type in "Your Mom"? Come'on!

</comment><comment><USER14> I typed in my zip code and the first result I got was one of the worst restaurants in the area. Not a good sign for a recommender engine.

<comment><USER15> Yeah. IHOP was the second option for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some Fucking Points:

1\. You should already know where the fuck I am, it's 2012.

2\. Maybe you'd really fucking impress me if this was a mobile app. (You'd also know where the fuck I was)

3\. Don't fucking send me to a place across town, what the fuck.

</comment><comment><USER16> I find it a tad bit too minimalistic. Why not use a tagged based search, like "pizza in san antonio texas"?

And the domain name, is too long. People will misremember and mistype it as "wherethefucktoeat.com" or "wherethefuckshouldieat.com" or similiar.

</comment><comment><USER17> My coworking space comes up on the drinking site.

So that's pretty accurate, actually.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is one fucking funny recommendation engine.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not really all that impressed. It needs to widen the search area to a few km and drop the profanity.

<comment><USER20> It's a joke.

<comment><USER6> You mean it's a fucking joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think this was inspired by the original: <http://whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/>

edit: beaten to it!

</comment><comment><USER22> My favorite: <http://www.whatthefuckismysocialmediastrategy.com/>

</comment><comment><USER23> Huh. I half expected it to just say in big letters "PREPARE YER OWN FRAKKIN' FOOD." (Pronounce with a Scottish accent.) A shame it doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER24> I typed in my zip code and got "Can't find shit there. Try somewhere else." Thanks, wtfsie!

<comment><USER25> wtfsie wouldn't be a bad domain name, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How soon is 'coming soon' for the mobile app?

<comment><USER27> How the fuck should I know.

<comment><USER26> touche.</comment></comment></comment>


New Li-Ion Battery Design Allows Electric Vehicles to Be Charged in Ten Minutes - <AUTHOR> https://www.realclearscience.com/quick_and_clear_science/2019/10/30/new_lithium_ion_battery_design_could_allow_electric_vehicles_to_be_charged_in_ten_minutes.html <comment><USER2> A new Li-Ion design _in principle would_ allow EVs and other batteries to be charged 80% in ten minutes, but:

1) its early days

2) deployment at scale of a system which heats batteries internally to 60C has to be tested and understood: heat has to dissipate. This is not a "no cost" change, either in the bill of materials, or the physical engineering of battery systems and containment

3) it is however very cool! (ha) I read a lot of EV websites and a hot (ha) topic is how hard it is getting to plug into public chargepoints because the population of EV owners is rising faster than the deployment of charging stations.

<comment><USER3> Tesla's new generation of superchargers already promises something similar for Model 3. Interestingly, you need to select supercharger in navigation system so it can condition the battery before arrival to get best charging time.

<comment><USER2> As I understand it, this change wraps the anodes in a conductive heater so the thermally efficient region is kept small, so it's potentially bad aspects are contained. It can heat up fast so is kind-of preconditioning, but perhaps less onerous.</comment></comment></comment>


ORDER BY RAND() - <AUTHOR> http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/mysql/order-by-rand/

<comment><USER2> For selecting a single random row with equal distribution and no need to worry about holes, the following might be simpler:

        SET @var = (SELECT FLOOR(RAND() * COUNT(id)) from random);
        PREPARE statement FROM 'SELECT name FROM random LIMIT ?, 1';
        EXECUTE statement USING @var;

I don't know how well this compares in performance to the examples in the article, but it's certainly easier to comprehend.</comment>


Police Civil Asset Forfeitures Exceed All Burglaries in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/39102 <comment><USER2> Keep this in mind when police or politicians push any legislation to give them more power over you, do more surveillance, or have less accountability. Especially as they push it over the "threat" of ISIS. Remember that they do more financial damage and kill more people than any terrorist outfit outside one-hit-wonders like 9/11.

We need to fight civil forfeiture and all legislation like it.

<comment><USER3> Even if you added deaths by police and deaths by terrorists together, it would probably still not be in the top 50 leading causes of death (I'm still trying to find data with all causes of deaths in the US).

<comment><USER4> True, but people fear terrorism because it's something they can't control. Police are also something people can't control, so comparing police deaths to terrorism deaths is a great comparison.

<comment><USER5> I think a lot of people think they can control police deaths. I think a lot of people see a young man killed by the police and think "that would never be me; I'd just do what they ask" or "my son would be polite and not argue so he wouldn't find himself in that situation." I think that is the reason police brutality issues are so hard to solve.

<comment><USER4> That's a good point; I can see and understand people rationalizing like that. It's unfortunate that many will never experience the reality of being a minority in police situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Home burglary is almost dead. What's to steal? Any TV you can carry is almost worthless. There's no market in used desktop computers, or used furniture. Nobody has cameras any more. Few people keep much cash around. Phones are probably in the owner's pocket, not left in their house. And because the economy is down at the low end, pawn shops and flea markets are choked with stuff they can't sell.

There have been single white collar crimes that exceed the value of all US burglaries. Madoff alone stole more than five years of burglaries.

The FBI has their priorities wrong. The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports tally a burglary when it is reported, but a while collar crime only when an arrest is made. This creates the illusion that white collar crime is much smaller than it is.

<comment><USER7> We were burgled last week, and they stole thousands of dollars worth of jewellery, a laptop and two ipads...

...and the spare key for my car, which they used to steal the car.

<comment><USER8> Sorry for your loss, but thanks for the reminder that I shouldn't be keeping my spare key in a visible place when I leave home.

<comment><USER7> I'm thinking that a small safe is probably the best bet, which can also be used to store documents like passports.

<comment><USER9> Make sure it's bolted down too. As a rule, expect it to be about as difficult to remove as it was to install.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any assets seized by police should be counted as revenue, and should go to the general fund to be allocated by the legislature. Separation of powers.

<comment><USER11> Any assets seized by police should be burned in a bonfire.* Anything else causes poorly-aligned incentives.

*OK, maybe I would agree with donated to certain causes, if chosen carefully.

<comment><USER10> I'd actually go further. The 5th Amendment to the US Constitution would appear to ban this activity.

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

Rand Paul has introduced legislation to restore the protection the amendment should provide: [https://reason.com/blog/2015/01/27/rand-paul-reintroduces- bi...](https://reason.com/blog/2015/01/27/rand-paul-reintroduces-bill-aimed- at-cur)

President Obama appointed Loretta Lynch as AG, who has a proven track record of using civil asset forfeiture to advance her career. [http://www.cato.org/blog/loretta-lynchs-worrisome-answer- civ...](http://www.cato.org/blog/loretta-lynchs-worrisome-answer-civil-asset- forfeiture)

<comment><USER12> It is very sad, but our Bill of Rights is getting eroded by horrible legislation. Our founding fathers predicted this bad government behavior by giving us the B.o.R. Now, we are just standing here watching it be slowly taken from us.

Edit for clarity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Out of curiosity I looked up murder stats as well. Roughly 1000 were killed by police in 2014 nationwide, whereas nationwide civilian murder toll reached about 10,000. So at least police aren't killing more people than regular people?

<comment><USER13> > So at least police aren't killing more people than regular people?

They're killing more people than terrorists though:

[http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/youre-nine-times- like...](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/youre-nine-times-likely- killed-police-officer-terrorist.html)

[http://www.globalresearch.ca/increasing-police-brutality- ame...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/increasing-police-brutality-americans- killed-by-cops-now-outnumber-americans-killed-in-iraq-war/5361554)

[http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be- ki...](http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be-killed- police-officer-terrorist)

[http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/youre-55-times- likely...](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/youre-55-times-likely- killed-police-officer-terrorist.html)

Yay?

<comment><USER14> That is primarily true because we are a heavily/overly militarized and protected country. If it were easier to frequently fly planes in to large buildings I think we can all agree religious extremists would be killing a significantly larger number of people in the US. It is *lack of opportunity that prevents this, not a passivity that is greater than that of police officers.

<comment><USER13> How many people are waiting in a TSA checkpoint at busy times, unprotected? And yet, we haven't seen those groups of people massacred.

<comment><USER15> > How many people are waiting in a TSA checkpoint at busy times, unprotected?

None; even outside the "secured" areas, airports are one of the most heavily patrolled places open to the public.

Obviously, that doesn't make attacks impossible, but characterizing that locale as "unprotected" is unreasonable.

<comment><USER16> The security line is almost by definition pre-security, and often includes dozens or hundreds of people.

<comment><USER15> > The security line is almost by definition pre-security

The security screening line is (just) outside of a particular layer of security; the area of the airport outside that layer, including the line, is still one of the most heavily patrolled areas open to the public in the US, it is not "unprotected".

<comment><USER16> Maybe you couldn't get to the screening line with a rifle strapped to your back, but you almost certainly could with a bomb strapped to your chest under your jacket.

<comment><USER17> You could bring one hell of a big suitcase bomb. Weight limits would not apply, and size limits only vaguely. Lug in one of those really big roller suitcases filled with high explosives and nails, roll it right into the security line, and... I'm on a list now.

<comment><USER18> If you want to be really douchy about such an attack, use liquid explosives in 1L soda bottles. Say that you forgot about the regulations and dutifully throw them together into the bin...

(I'm probably on the list already anyway.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> All burglaries are wrongful, but only some unspecified fraction of civil asset forfeitures are wrongful. You need to multiply the first number by that percentage before comparing the two numbers. The comparison in the article is thus nonsense.

<comment><USER20> nope, because they could have been forfeited by a court anyways.

<comment><USER19> Civil forfeiture requires a showing in front of a court.

<comment><USER21> Not actually. It merely requires a cop.

And the state has been known to kidnap your children if you try to dispute the issue.

<comment><USER21> The issue though is that your money, car, etc, is gone instantly and you're on the side of the road hitch-hiking home. No hearing, no evidence even.

The fact that a hearing is part of the process is largely irrelevant because other parts of the system to conspire to keep victims from reaching the hearing or getting justice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wish the body of the article separated stats for _civil_ forfeiture vs. _criminal_ forfeiture.

<comment><USER23> The source number isn't even clearly based on seizures in 2014. At least it's linked:

[http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/crime-and-justice- news/20...](http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/crime-and-justice- news/2015-11-civil-asset-forfeiture-report)

That says that federal account balances from seizures totaled $4.5 billion in 2014. It also says that Madoff and Toyota each contributed more than $1 billion to those accounts.

edit to add: It seems likely that the seizure is only related to the Madoff case, not that it came from Madoff directly, in another comment I linked a BBC article saying the forfeiture came from JP Morgan.

<comment><USER24> Toyota? That's a seizure? In what sense? Are fines considered the same as seizures?

<comment><USER23> Apparently for the purposes of this article.

I got that far and decided I wasn't going to spend any more time looking into the claims as presented in the link and flagged it.

<comment><USER25> Bit off-topic but [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) say flagging is for off-topic and spam, not low quality (they also explicitly request not commenting to say you flagged something).

<comment><USER26> > they also explicitly request not commenting to say you flagged something

They just if you comment nothing else, it's OK to mention it as an aside to a more useful comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Living as an American in Kenya give me a lot of perspective to what the logical endpoint is if certain government practices get put on steroids, such as this.

While in the United States it sounds alarmist to think of this all as a system of organized, police-mandated shakedowns, that's very common here. In 4 out of 5 times I hear folks get pulled over by cops, the driver had to pay a bribe. Police regularly go to businesses demanding regular payments else they shut down the companies.

I wouldn't have give this a second thought before, but after living here, I see what its like living under degraded institutions.

<comment><USER28> In India it is similar.

Also they (Indians) say "if you see a dead body don't call the police, you will end up in prison for murder"

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Washington Post's Wonkblog has more on this with a graph of CA seizuires from 2001-2014. It's staggering (I looked it up doubting the Armstrong blog, ended up verifying it):

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/10/repor...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/10/report- in-lean-times-police-start-taking-a-lot-more-stuff-from-people/?hpid=hp_rhp- more-top-stories_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory)

</comment><comment><USER30> from Cato, [http://www.policemisconduct.net/explainers/civil-asset- forfe...](http://www.policemisconduct.net/explainers/civil-asset-forfeiture/)

and if you time, a detailed report which is 186 pages of PDF [http://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/policing-for- profit...](http://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/policing-for-profit-2nd- edition.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER31> I would like to see these numbers by each and every precinct or branch.

There was a post some time back about some new building and equipment a Florida PD built with their stolen money.

</comment><comment><USER32> Police civil asset forfeitures are burglaries.

</comment><comment><USER33> How much more evidence do people need before we all readily conceed that America is a police state?

Before you can change reality you must first understand the reality that exists.

Police steal and murder without consequence. They are a gang of murderous thugs protected by a corrupt court and legislative body.

<comment><USER14> I am not sure this article leads to that conclusion. Most of this money comes from drug busts. You can argue about whether or not heavily addicting drugs like cocaine should be legal, but that $12 billion was not seized from John and Jane Doe for no reason. Is the rule misused? It sure seems like it is, occasionally. Should we as a nation abolish it? Maybe. but most of the funds are confiscated from drug dealers who would use the money... to sell more drugs. And to buy tigers and mansions, of course, but also to distribute drugs. Also, drug cartels have a penchant to murder a ton of people. Sometimes 20,000+ a year. Leaving the money with them seems like a poor choice.

Money seized in drug busts: [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9149048...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91490480)

Drug cartels and homicide: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign- affairs-defe...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs- defense/drug-lord/the-staggering-death-toll-of-mexicos-drug-war/)

<comment><USER33> Your equivocation of clearly immoral behavior is suggestive.

Is stealing wrong? Yes, yes it is. How many more decades of a failed war on drugs policy do you need before you accept and argue for a change of course?

When bad laws create the incentive which results in 10,000s of murders it is imperative to change those incentives, even the Mexican government is now clamoring for change, but the war on drugs is too convenient for the status quo and justifies all sorts of government empowerment.

But in the face of a murderous institution I'm happy we have some fellow Willing to equivocate and defend senseless murder, torture, and theft, good job dude.

<comment><USER14> Sorry if I came across that way, I really do not think it is that black and white. At all. Nor do I think any person, police or not, is infallible. That said, the US is emphatically NOT a police state. East Germany and the Soviet Bloc were police states. North Korea is a police state. Applying that term to asset forfeiture shows a tremendous ignorance of what it means. You might not think so, but in an asset forfeiture case in the US you do, in fact, have access to courts. Courts where primarily impartial judges sit, that have no connection to the police force. Is the system perfect? Gosh no. But to say 21st century american police officers are like the Stasi is absurd, and seeing people up-vote those sentiments on HN is sort of terrifying.

<comment><USER34> How can you afford legal representation if the police just seized your money (or even house)?

<comment><USER22> In a criminal case, you would get a Public Defender.

In a civil case, there are public-interest agencies who may be interested, or with a strong case a skilled attorney could take your case on contingency.

<comment><USER35> So your answer is "You cannot, but you are free to beg for charity, the state has decided you aren't allowed to hire an attorney with the time and skill necessary to defend you so you won't be needing a trial, here is a public defender who will happily help you agree to a plea deal since we've already decided you are guilty, don't waste our time and money by asserting your 'rights'"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think you mean _other_ burglaries.

<comment><USER37> Asset forfeiture is armed robbery, not burglary. Although it wouldn't surprise me if the police do that too.</comment></comment>


Craig Wright exposed as Satoshi fraud and imposter by Redditors - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hf4xj/creator_of_bitcoin_reveals_identity/d2pfnk6 <comment><USER2> Sincerely, it looks like just another normal day in Bitcoin.

I would actually like to know what percentage of the BTC created everyday are actually being used for legal and technological sound purposes?

We already know that payment processors that offer BTC say that no-one uses BTC: ( _Taavet Hinrikus, CEO of international-payments app TransferWise, "Bitcoin, I think we can say, is dead. There is no traction, no one is using bitcoin. The bitcoin experiment, I think we can say, is over."_ [http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-is-dead-says- prominent...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-is-dead-says-prominent- fintech-executive-taavet-hinrikus-transferwise-bitcoin-experiment- failed-191800988.html))

And we also know that more than a half of the bitcoins used in the real world are used in the Dark Web: [http://www.coindesk.com/dark-web-markets-processed- more-bitc...](http://www.coindesk.com/dark-web-markets-processed-more-bitcoin- than-bitpay-in-2014/)

My guess is that the remaining are mostly just bought by traders playing around in the Bitcoin exchanges and eventually loosing most of their money due to exchange lack of oversight and ease of price manipulation. But I would like some good data on this to be able to form a sound opinion.

<comment><USER3> _But I would like some good data on this to be able to form a sound opinion._

Transferwise is not a payment processor that offers bitcoin. They only deal with normal currencies. Transferwise offer a service (currency exchange) that is threatened (in theory) by bitcoin so I wouldn't necessarily listen to what they say about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reddit did no such thing, or did no such thing first, as outlined anywhere else. [http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig- steve...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig-steven- wright-claims-be-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin)

<comment><USER5> "Reddit Craig Wright exposure exposed as fraud by HN'ers"

Seriously, guys. Just give it a day or two. It'll all come out in the wash. I'm looking at my HN and Twitter feed and I've got 42 pounds of speculation for every one ounce of actual news.

(This doesn't apply to you but to the community at large. Your comment pointed out to me that not only is the gossip machine in full force on this story, I'm starting to see echoes of echoes of actual stories.)</comment></comment>


Cops enter Justin's apartment with guns drawn. Internet pranksters are MESSED up - <AUTHOR> http://www.justin.tv/blog/list/2007-3-21T1:40:0 <comment><USER2> And this is after two days with only 100 viewers at any given point. How is this thing going to scale? It's kind of funny once when some psychotic fan tells the cops that Justin knifed a guy, but how about when some psychotic fan shows up at his apartment with a knife?

<comment><USER3> They're getting up to 350 viewers in the evening now. Not bad for 2 days. Wait until they hit the mainstream media and then things will get scary

<comment><USER4> I'm as optimistic as anyone and hope they do get a lot more attention, but let's not ignore the fact that they're still living off the post-launch high.

It remains to be seen if they can move people from novelty to loyal viewers and how big the audience is for this particular show. I'll definitely be tuning in regularly. Hell, I'd pay if they keep the quality good.

<comment><USER5> I don't think their business model is reliant on THIS show being super- sucessful-- they're building a platform to sell to other folks who want to do live video over the web. Think Paris Hilton and porn (not necessarily two different markets).

<comment><USER6> This is EXACTLY what I've been saying. To me, thats just a testing/proving ground. Get some buzz about the idea, and then try to license it to reality tv shows/celebs/iraq war reporter/hot girls/anything else thats more entertaining than startup founders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Seems like they took the video down, or the archive is broken.

For when it comes back up, it happened just after 1:40AM PST on March 21st.

</comment><comment><USER7> Justin: You guys should put a comments section on your vid clips.

Maybe it's time for Justin to consider hiring a bodyguard.

</comment><comment><USER8> What the hell. Do people not realize they're messing with other people's lives? Sociopaths...

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't see anything...

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice stunt:)

<comment><USER11> It wasn't a stunt; that was all too real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wanted to send the male escourts to their place...</comment>


Former Apple engineers have built a $1,495 oven that can identify your food - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8751947/june-oven-identify-your-food

<comment><USER2> Ongoing discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686466)</comment>


Robotics Showcase – meet awesome robots in SF - <AUTHOR> https://www.robotics-showcase.com/ <comment><USER2> Hi HN, I'm Jen and one of the organizers of Robotics Showcase. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the event!</comment>


Fake Britain: A Map of Fictional Locations in England, Scotland and Wales - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> i think you need to fix this, its not a link

<comment><USER3> Looks like it should have been to [https://londonist.com/london/maps/fake- britain-map-fictional...](https://londonist.com/london/maps/fake-britain-map- fictional-locations-england-scotland-wales) .

"The Island", btw, is where the HMS Troutbridge was based.

Inner and Outer Qwghlm are from The Baroque Cycle series - [http://baroquecycle.wikia.com/wiki/Qwghlm](http://baroquecycle.wikia.com/wiki/Qwghlm)</comment></comment>


API Security Best Practices - <AUTHOR> https://expeditedsecurity.com/api-security-best-practices-megaguide/ <comment><USER2> > Unable to contact the client and with support requests pouring in, they > blocked the client's IP address in Expedited WAF.

> Using Expedited WAF, the team temporarily blocked access to the site from > China and was able to remain online to their business customers.

Most used feature of Expedited WAF.

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely a great resource. I think a lot of the information is a bit too general though. Example:

>7) Cross Site Scripting (XSS). What is it: Manipulation of your API to further spread a malicious script. What you should do: Strongly filter all inputs for both corectness[sic] and script components.

I mean...yeah, but you should do this in all things...

</comment><comment><USER4> Gist is that they provide IP/region block.

> Using Expedited WAF, the team temporarily blocked access to the site from > China and was able to remain online to their business customers.

Rest of it is generic API design advice

<comment><USER5> Yeah recent credential stuffing attacks I witnessed showed that blocking traffic based on AS numbers is very helpful. If your attacker is stupid User- Agent based blocks can be surprisingly effective as well. Beside of that rate- limiting, and if you can, geo blocking can at least slowdown malicious traffic. It's a bit of pity that the internet is no longer a peer2peer network and just client-server. But since you've a lot of server only networks, you can quite safely block them if your API is clients only. You still might see some false positive due a lot of VPN provider traffic. For what it's worth free VPN services now also push a lot of malicious traffic.</comment></comment>


Looking for some developers to help user test our ML platform - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdoYRvp_16_YUjgO_5A1Eig4Hb56acZg7u3p1MJiUan95ajnw/viewform <comment><AUTHOR> The TL;DR; is in the next few days, 1 hour session, going through the docs & guides, and giving your experience. Conducted over Zoom and recorded.

We can offer a $50 Amazon gift card as a thank you.

Happy to also answer any questions.</comment>


Ask HN: Are Web Application Firewalls Necessary? - <AUTHOR> I am operating cloud based SaSS and finding it very difficult to find a good solution that works well with many custom domain names, SSL, etc. I already have SQL injection protection. Do these solutions offer enough security to offset the hassle, potential performance degradation and an additional point of failure they introduce? <comment><USER2> In my opinion WAF is security through obscurity, its worse than useless as it adds extra latency and complexity to your app, along with giving you a false sense of security.

Most of them are just a ruleset of common basic SQL injections that it hopes to detect and block. If it even actually works the attacker just changes a few characters and easily gets past the block.

You are better fuzzing, using the ruleset to test your code in development detect the SQL injections and fix them. Now your code is secure, there is no extra setup, there is no extra latency, there is no extra complexity, there is no way around this security, its secure security.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fix your SQLi problems. In-depth defense, etc.

You might protect your web-facing service, but what about someone already inside your network (RAT)?

WAFs are an additional measure, that you probably can't deploy between each pair of machines that communicate together. Have someone perform a pentest, see how bad it is. Also, they're expensive, more so than a check for weird chars in a comment field.

</comment><comment><USER4> CSP is a good investment. My colleague gave a talk at BSidesSF with (I think) good recommendations on how to enforce better CSP in practice: [https://youtu.be/MNT0O94FYTg](https://youtu.be/MNT0O94FYTg)

</comment><comment><USER5> If your application is coded securely, it should be able to withstand most of what a waf can do. The problem is companies have a false sense of reality by and large: thinking their application is secure, when really its just waiting to be hacked.</comment>