Ask HN: Remote engineer or contractor? A nuanced hiring situation - <AUTHOR> Joanne is a rockstar SW engineer in Canada, working as a contractor for several years bringing in ~$150k annually. The Boston-based startup Foobai want to hire her as one of the first few engineers. They've agreed to the following comp: $90k salary, 2% equity. The salary isn't quite enough to support herself financially, so Joanne wants to pick-up a side gig. Foobai agrees to this, as long as Joanne fulfills her responsibilities. Some questions:
1. Should Foobai hire Joanne as a contractor or an employee [1]?
2. Are health and other insurance benefits given to independent contractors?
3. How are those benefits given to international employees/contractors?
[1] https://gusto.com/blog/hiring/hire-employee-or-independent-contractor <comment><USER2> I have dealt with remote issues both as a founder (since ~2003) and for the last few years as an employee for a startup. There are differences in expectations depending on the size of the startup and the funding etc. But I'll assume a very early startup with minimal funding.

1\. Hire as a Contractor. An international employee adds significant difficulties to your company in terms of tax compliance and wages, even an employee in another state can increase costs, reporting and compliance. You should also pay slightly more to the contractor because the contractor is also accepting tax liability when you do this. However that is easily acceptable because it will still be far cheaper than if you tried to setup an employee relationship, especially in another Country.

2\. Benefits for contractors are usually very few if any, but in the case you want/need to provide health care; I would suggest you provide a slightly higher pay and have Joanne source health care locally. Not quite sure for Canada as they also have nationalized healthcare so you'd have to research the expense there some. But IMO, it is always good to provide some small addition to cover local health care. In the U.S. it is not uncommon to have them pick up a local plan and the company pays for it, or at least a portion of it ($200-500/month is fairly common for single people depending on health, age and plan details).

3\. As I suggest you hire as a contractor any/all benefits should be spelled out in the contract. Your standard equity agreement can be used likely but I'd check with an attorney real quick to see if you should also put it in the agreement. As a contractor I'd want it in the agreement as well, just so it was clear. Essentially I'd want a basic statement that says XYZ is being offered 2% equity as defined in the "equity contract document title".

4\. You should also be very specific in your contracting agreement about the relationship, there are some very specific rules the IRS uses to determine if you are just misclassifying someone to avoid paying taxes. [https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs- contr...](https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contractor- designation) is a good start to see what they look at. The fact the person is in another Country is in your favor here where you could likely violate some of the guidance and still be on safe grounds for classification as a contractor (an attorney is best to answer in specific).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is immensely useful. Thank you for taking the time and for explaining clearly/succinctly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> (1) Beware of misclassification if hiring someone full time as a contractor in Canada. In this case the fact that the employee is planning to pick up a side gig is a good indicator they are a genuine contractor instead of a disguised employee. Similarly it helps if the worker provides their own equipment and has responsibility for their own working hours.

(2) Do not offer health and other benefits directly or via an allowance as this is the act of an employer. (3) Instead build them into the total salary e.g. increase salary by 5k.

Lastly if engaging as a contractor make sure it is for a fixed term (e.g. 6-12 months). Towards the end of the contract initial duration both parties can assess whether the setup still works or whether an employed solution might be more appropriate.

This article might be helpful: [https://www.hrreporter.com/workplace- law/39422-independent-c...](https://www.hrreporter.com/workplace- law/39422-independent-contractors-riskier-than-ever/)</comment>


Kevin Rose: What I Learned Building a Product Team - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/586ebe184611

<comment><USER2> This is an impressively content-free article.

<comment><USER3> It's a great headline, but the article is absent. I feel confident in asserting that (excluding misclicks) the users who upvoted this article did so without RTFA.

It makes me wish we could run a quick experiment where "trap" articles would be thrown on the front page with real-seeming headlines, usernames, and apparent votes, but no content at all, as a way to detect users who upvote without RTFA and discount their future votes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After working as a pm, I feel I know a bit of what he's getting at. The appealing solution to scope creep/misalignment/doubt mid-development is to compromise and make everyone happy; Stakeholders, developers, your boss. This keeps people happy in-process but will probably leave you with a mediocre end product.

The thing that was painful was betting on and fighting for your own vision of how something should play out. This requires selling like a mad man, fighting tooth and nail for your idea, which is scary as shit and very draining. Hopefully, it will lead to a better end product though. Either that or having wasted months of dev time and possibly missed the market window, and it's all on you.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the larger problem that is touched on a little here is getting your team to buy into your vision. When the team becomes disinterested or uninspired in the long-term product, all the little problems start becoming big problems. Words like "can't", "useless", "pointless", "too hard", etc start becoming more common place. It tends to also be the point where people start clocking in and out for their paycheck instead of their passion.

</comment><comment><USER6> My motto is "people pay you to solve the hard problems". Our nature during product development is to simplify, cut away and focus. Unfortunately you could start out pointing at the hard problems, but end up solving the easy ones because it makes more sense. Of course no one then cares for the result.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not much?</comment>


Energy is the new new internet - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/22/energy-is-the-new-new-internet/ <comment><USER2> It's a lot like the Internet in the 1990s: we can see that there's a big change coming. Nobody has yet narrated it with the clarity of hindsight. I'm savvy enough about energy to avoid this revolution's version of pets.com, I think, but I can't tell which cleantech companies are ultimately going to print money like Google or fade away like AltaVista.</comment>


Node.js Fundamentals: Web Server Without Dependencies - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bloomca.me/2018/12/22/writing-a-web-server-node.html <comment><USER2> IMHO articles like this played a major role in Node's initial success. After years of working with ever-growing frameworks with huge learning curves, it was so refreshing to get your first thing running in few seconds. Felt like basic in the 1980s or PHP in the late 1990s.

<comment><USER3> IIRC before nodejs+express the req/resp/next paradigm and middleware paradigm had never been so accessible. Other frameworks had it of course, but it was often hidden behind layers of abstraction or little quibbly bits. Express gave you just what you needed for both middleware _and_ handlers:

        app.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
          res.send('hello world');
        })

For comparison, flask:

        @app.route("/", method='GET')
        def hello():
            return "Hello World!"

It's really close, but I find the NodeJS approach even simpler and easier to understand. Need to access the request? use `req`. Need to access the response to set headers or something? use `res`. Is your function actually a middleware? use `next`. It doesn't get much simpler, assuming you understand node's semantics well (as in "return"ing a value doesn't mean it gets sent).

Django/Rails required whole project scaffolds and usually a separate routes and handlers files and knowing a whole bunch of stuff. I'm not even going to get into what frameworks like Spring/Struts required.

NodeJS made it _dead simple_ to get a HTTP server up and running in something like <10 lines of code.

People shit on JS and NodeJS every chance they get, but innovations like the amazing standard library (and express), along with npm's ease of use really pushed the field forward IMO. While I'm praising node I might as well say that node got decent bolt-on (gradual) type system support way faster than the other popular dynamic languages as well, but they got there through transpiling which also looked (is?) ridiculous the first time it became well- known. I find Typescript much more approachable than typed python[0]. Is typed ruby even a thing[1]? I don't keep up with ruby so I'm not sure.

[0]: [https://docs.python.org/3/library/typing.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/typing.html)

[1]: [https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/9999](https://bugs.ruby- lang.org/issues/9999)

<comment><USER4> >Need to access the request? use `req`

Well, I don't see what's especially difficult about this?

        from flask import request

        @app.route('/login', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
        def login():
            if request.method == 'POST':
                return do_the_login()
            else:
                return show_the_login_form()

I would actually argue that this is better, since I have to type "request" only once.

Although I have to admitt, the middleware thing looks quite composable.

<comment><USER5> I'm not a huge fan of decorators since they obfuscate the state of the runtime. What exactly does the call stack look like when login gets invoked? What variables are in scope? I find it difficult to reason about.

I understand that this function will execute when the HTTP server receives a GET or POST request at `/login`. The semantics of the decorator is clear-- I don't particularly take issue with that.

But the second my assumptions about the decorator break down (e.g., I think I've defined a decorator properly, but I have not), all bets are off on how to make it function properly. It's not as simple as going to the source code for the module and see what API's I'm calling.

<comment><USER4> Well, You'll be happy to know that a decorator is literally just a function that takes another function as its first argument.

        @app.route(...)
        def login():
            ...

Is literally the same thing as -

        def login():
            ...

        login = app.route(login, ...)

Hopefully that clears up the air a bit?

<comment><USER5> It clears it up but personally, I'd rather just write `app.route(login, ...)`. Isn't a lot clearer to use more conventional language features? What exactly is this buying me?

I don't know if me saying 'Just, why?' is a good enough reason to throw my arms up and say it's an idea I'm not a fan of. I'm willing to say that it's a rather subjective attitude.

I guess my retort is that, it's far more confusing to have that syntax, then explain what it meant, when I could've just used the conventional syntax.

It's not like it's offering me something substantially simpler. For example, the spread operator that was introduced. It actually allows you to write clearer JavaScript code. This syntax isn't intuitively clear like the rest operator is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not 100% related to the article but koa with its maybe 300 LoC is hardly a dependency. However in general nodejs projects definitely suffer from dependency bloat. I encourage anybody to try for themselves to go through node_modules in their own projects, it's quite englightning to see the scale of the unnecessary, duplicated, reimplementated in different ways crap there. Conscious aim at shallow, minimal or no dependency in packages and end apps is definitely something good; less than 5s installs, code audits, more healthy projects in general. I'm not saying it's always possible or better to trim the code fat, but if you're aware of dependency tree single root dep introduces you're usually able to cut it down a lot.

<comment><USER7> Koa is appreciated to it's true value by the community.

Express was the most popular at the start and after StrongLoop got acquired by IBM it made sense for everyone that express was the foundation of Node.JS.

It's sad knowing how much bloated express is and every single Node.js library uses it from Next to GraphQL server etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I still write little http servlets like this sometimes, especially for something like gluing IoT services together.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great article. Anyone working with Node.js should be familiar with these fundamentals. It also demonstrates the simplicity (and dare I say "elegance", though that's subjective..) of Node.js and its concepts.

These days my favorite library for writing an HTTP server is micro [0] (and a few middlewares). I like how it provides a minimal, functional layer of abstraction.

[0] [https://github.com/zeit/micro](https://github.com/zeit/micro)

</comment><comment><USER10> There are _a lot_ of gotcha's when rolling your own web server based on the http and https packages and I think the conclusion of the article could have gone further in addressing what they are and in what context they might matter. I recently wrote a little zero-dependency NodeJs http/s server[1] with an equally dumb router for some dev tools which could benefit from a simple, promise based api, for most other use cases I'd just pull in express or something more mature.

[1][https://github.com/8eecf0d2/decade](https://github.com/8eecf0d2/decade)

</comment><comment><USER11> Love this. There was this project along the same lines, from the olden days of node:

[https://github.com/Raynos/http-framework](https://github.com/Raynos/http- framework)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's nice to get away from frameworks from time to time. If anyone is interested in something similar written in Java I recently created a couple of examples based on Undertow. They are available at [https://github.com/tofflos/undertow- examples](https://github.com/tofflos/undertow-examples).

</comment><comment><USER13> Performance is also a major advantage. Express is extremely slow compared to a basic "native" API without dependencies. If you check out the results in numbers, you'll be amazed.

<comment><USER14> Please post some citations to back up your performance claims. I haven't found strong numbers online.

<comment><USER7> > Please post some citations to back up your performance claims.

According to TechEmpower benchmark[0],Node.js-MySQL is two time faster than express-mysql.

Others benchmarks of TechEmpower tend to point exactly the same result in terms of performance for express.

[0] [https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r17&hw=...](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r17&hw=ph&test=query)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The crimes of these kinds tutorials:

\- Downplaying the role of error handling

\- Treating the subjects they cover as a black box

\- Not warning that the code examples are not suitable for production

</comment><comment><USER16> you can do the same (except loading certs) with python3 these days thanks to asyncio.

</comment><comment><USER17> But can it left pad a string?

<comment><USER18> JavaScript has come a long way in recent years, but the lack of a comprehensive standard library is still absolutely mind boggling.

<comment><USER19> This is really pretty sad. A standard library is paramount to a stable and easy to develop ecosystem.

<comment><USER20> It may be, but this is a weird thread to bring that up since Javascript has padStart, and TFA is about building a web server with only the standard library.

<comment><USER16> the OP was referring to this incident [https://github.com/stevemao/left- pad/issues/4](https://github.com/stevemao/left-pad/issues/4)

where a very basic package everyone depended on was yanked from npmjs.

azer's original post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340510)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why your desk job is slowly killing you (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39523298/ns/health-mens_health/

<comment><USER2> There is an extensive, instructive, interesting, and useful discussion from a previous submission:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1834671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1834671)

Comments there are closed, of course, so if you have anything to add it will need to be here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I tried searching if it was submitted before, but couldn't find anything.</comment></comment>


Image Completion with Deep Learning in TensorFlow - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bamos/dcgan-completion.tensorflow <comment><USER2> This reminds me of this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT9i99D_9gI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT9i99D_9gI)

It also reminds me of the "two dot" illusion from psychology: [http://i.imgur.com/j8sEFuT.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/j8sEFuT.jpg)

If you close your left eye and look at the left dot with your right eye, the other dot should disappear (you might need to adjust your distance from the monitor). Your eye has a blind spot that uses the surrounding information to fill in the blank space, much like what these deep learning algorithms are doing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those results are seriously uncanny-valley material...</comment>


Will Uploaded Minds in Machines be Alive? - <AUTHOR> http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/rothblatt20091226/ <comment><USER2> That makes the very large assumption that such a thing will be possible in the first place, which is by no means a certainty.

<comment><USER3> Since there are no physical impossibilities involved, it's just a question of time until it is possible to completely acquire and simulate an organic brain on a computer model.

<comment><USER2> How much time though ?

It's only a matter of time before we make contact with an alien civilization. But that doesn't mean we need to go and wonder overly long about how we'd dress for the occasion, it is simply too far off for that.

What kind of an upper limit would you put on this kind of thing becoming a reality?

<comment><USER3> A hundred years, at most. The problem is not the computers to run the simulation, but capturing enough of the state of an organic brain to run a consistent simulation. That is the tricky part.

The brains we simulate today are currently running on clusters of machines designed for word processing. If and when we decide to take brain simulation seriously, we will probably do so on machines designed for that purpose.

<comment><USER2> That's outside the betting territory, too bad!

I'd gladly taken you up on anything less than 20 years, a hundred is far out enough that we might run in to some kind of spectacular development.

10^14th connections is quite an impressive number to map, especially if it turns out that the state is stored at the molecular level (we have DNA as a hint of how dense nature tends to pack information).

Henry Makram is on the record as saying it will take the blue brain project less than 10 years, in a TED talk given the 22nd of July 09.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Though the topic is interesting, this article is rambling and senseless. For example it states that life, by reducing local entropy, violates the second laws of thermodynamics.</comment>


Google+ should integrate file hosting,dashboard,apps,take steps toward social OS - <AUTHOR> http://www.blockread.com/2011/09/google-should-integrate-file-hosting.html

<comment><USER2> There's got to be a typology somewhere for this sort of thing. It's a theme in commentary.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Hacker News biased against new member? - <AUTHOR> I notice here that if you are a new member,People are less likely to read/comment/discuss the article you submit no matter the important of it? Does anyone else notice this? Is HN readers favor old-timers to newbies? <comment><USER2> I don't think people click into everyone's profile before they go to articles, so I don't really think this is true.

It would be different if it showed your total points next to your name at all times.

I think that someone who has been around longer will know the type of things to post to get a response more than a newer person who just posts what they find interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are probably right.Just my observation

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I sure think this is true! Not sure how you get enough upvotes to stay on the front page. To stay "new" means posting at night and on weekends. Just sayin' (Upvote)

</comment><comment><USER4> Not really. Research will tell you it depends on how important the news is. So if you are new and post a mouthwatering post/link, you will get a response.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't take this into account. I use the 'new' link and read the newest interesting sounding articles; I avoid the ranked posts altogether.

</comment><comment><USER6> I sure hope not! What submissions specifically are you referring to?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not particular about any submission. I just notice that old member's submission tends to attract more comments/discussions than new one. Just asking this as my observation.</comment></comment>


Activity Trackers May Undermine Weight Loss Efforts - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/well/activity-trackers-may-undermine-weight-loss-efforts.html <comment><USER2> So...after two years on a low calorie diet and exercising, one group using a tracker and one group not:

> Those who had not worn activity monitors were, on average, about 13 pounds > lighter now than two years ago.

> Those who had worn the monitors, however, weighed only about 8 pounds less > than at the start.

13 calories lost in two years is a calorie deficit of about 60 calories per day. 8 pounds in two years is a deficit of about 40 calories per day.

I don't think that a diet with such a small calorie deficit should really count as "low calorie". That's ordering your Whopper without cheese. That's using "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" instead of real butter on your pancakes. That's getting light mayo instead of regular mayo on your sandwich.

If the two groups ate about the same, so that the difference was entirely due to exercise, then the first group did about 20 calories extra worth of exercise a day. That's about 5 minutes of walking. That's brushing your teeth after every meal instead of just once a day. That's reading for a half hour.

I think it is _interesting_ that the group using the fitness tracker exercised _slightly_ less, but the effect seems small enough that I doubt it has any practical implications for most people who are trying to lose weight or keep lost weight off.</comment>


Free Rotating Proxy API, Free Rotating User Agent API - <AUTHOR> https://www.proxicity.io <comment><USER2> Under the Multiple Locations sub-heading it looks like you misspelled Globe ("glbe" on the site)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your biggest hurdle right now? - <AUTHOR> Right now my biggest hurdle is myself.
I'm not a very good coder. I don't know much about marketing and I don't know if my app will sell once I launch. This worries me. But I'm pushing it everyday. I'm writing code and I'm trying to learn whatever I can about sales and marketing. I'm talking to people and trying to get better so that I can increase my odds.
Am I the only one with so much of self doubt and fear of failure? Do you also feel so sometime? It would be helpful if you can share how you go about deal with it. <comment><USER2> same here except the coding part. I am good at coding but nothing else. Always start something but leave it half way through</comment>


Journalism Needs Government Help  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629804575324782605510168.html

<comment><USER2> It is somewhat shocking to see this editorial in the wall street journal of all places.

I have to say I strongly disagree. Subsidized press will just encourage more conflicts of interest in coverage of politics, will waste taxpayer money, and is unlikely to result in better journalism.

About newspapers losing money, I suspect the main reason for this, and the reason nobody mentions is that newspapers and media companies in general borrowed through the nose to buy out other papers to reduce competition. It is the interest payments for all that borrowing that is causing most problems in the top papers.

Otherwise a paper that gets large viewer ship online should not have any problems funding news gathering.

But nevertheless, it is disturbing to see this in the WSJ. That means it is seriously being pushed. I hope Obama does not support it, there will be no profit for him in it, the right wing papers will use this to once again call him a socialist while still pocketing their subsidy.

<comment><USER3> NPR and PBS seem to have no problem with balanced and insightful journalism, despite being publically funded. Many people accuse public broadcasting of having a liberal bias, but in my years of listening I haven't heard that much if at all. They give fair time to all sides and they rarely favor any administration. I find it very hard to believe that public radio and television are a waste of taxpayer money.

For profit news may be in trouble, but journalism will be okay. Most people don't want informative journalism from foreign bureaus...they want confirmation of their biases from Fox News or MSNBC.

<comment><USER4> _Many people accuse public broadcasting of having a liberal bias, but in my years of listening I haven't heard that much if at all._

The liberal bias of PBS is a matter of what topics they emphasize and which facts they select. One small example of many - Frontline has done several documentaries about atrocities committed by American soldiers. But it has never done a documentary about how ultra-strict (by any standard, of any war, ever) rules of engagement have caused the death of soldiers. I could come up with dozens of similar examples. The only way to realize the extent of PBS's left-wing bias, is to actually read intelligent right wing sources, like Powerline, View from the Right, or Unqualified Reservations. Otherwise you'll never know the stories and facts that you are missing.

<comment><USER5> This. PBS & NPR's selection bias is much more subtle and well-crafted than FOX's bang-you-on-the-head agenda, but it's there for anyone with a wide range of sources to see.

Personally I've always felt publicly financed media is just a bad idea. The WSJ is just looking for a way to survive, and is willing to throw their supposed libertarian/free-market principles under a bus to do so. Can't blame them given that there's been public funding for liberally-slanted news for decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <strikeout>Journalism needs</strikeout> News agencies need government help _because they fucked up_. Royally. Repeatedly. With technology, with competition, with content, with Q.A.. As badly as much of the Media industry has, but they're less entrenched. They have resisted change _so strongly_ they've built up a momentum of _backpedaling_ that probably can't be reversed enough to even reach stagnation.

Capitalism says "die", I say "good riddance", because something will rise from the ashes. As long as people want info on (scandal|war|economic|reader's digest|the history of) X, someone will attempt to provide. Heck, they already _are_ , we just need to lose the horrendous setup we currently have to allow the progressive ones to make enough money to continue and improve.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't think this is the solution, but not because it will negatively impact the 'objectivity' of the press. The BP example is strong, and as an ex-jounro myself who's been around the newsroom, I know that for the vast majority of writers the memory of a free lunch fades by the time you need to write about it.

I think this will fail in the way that all welfare-dependent industries must inevitably fail. If the business model is such that it requires significant, ongoing government subsidies then it isn't sustainable. You can prop up the US Auto industry, some agricultural sectors, and even the media for only so long. If the end result is an inferior product, what's the point?

<comment><USER8> Doesn't the US Postal Service get a ton of subsidies? I rather appreciate them, and the only reason they may be becoming less relevant is not through a fault of their own.

<comment><USER9> The US Postal Service gets virtually no subsidies and is a self-sufficient organization. It borrows money, however.

"Since its reorganization into an independent organization, the USPS has become self-sufficient and has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters. However it is currently borrowing money from the U.S. Treasury to pay its deficits."

<comment><USER10> I don't equate "currently borrowing money from the U.S. Treasury to pay its deficits" as being "self-sufficient".

<comment><USER9> Then you're using a different definition. In this context, self-sufficiency refers to its financial and organizational position within the United States government as an agency to manage its own finances externally from the Congressional Budget Office and has nothing to do with its bottom line. The USPS is currently running a deficit but has also ran a surplus:

"Despite record gross revenue of $60.1 billion, the U.S. Postal Service ended fiscal 1998 on Sept. 30 with a $600 million profit, $100 million more than projected, but leading industry officials were hoping the USPS could at least match, if not better fiscal 1997's $1.2 billion surplus, which was less than the $1.6 billion recorded in 1996 and significantly lower than the $1.8 billion achieved in 1995." <http://directmag.com/news/marketing_observers_fear_end/>

Corporations borrow money, especially when they run a deficit. Yet unless they're a larger part of some organization or the government, most people would call them self-sufficient--the ability to manage their own financial resources.

Sure the most strict definition of "self-sufficient" is to have absolutely no reliance on any external entity for anything, but by that definition then not a single organization in this country is self-sufficient.

<comment><USER11> > ended fiscal 1998 on Sept. 30

Wrong decade. They lost 3.8 billion last year and expect to lose billions more this year [1]. They claim to have operational independence, but the Senate cuts them a check for losses that the Post Office will never pay back because its current form becomes less relevant and necessary every year. Fedex and UPS can do better package shipping, and electronic could take over for almost all documents now.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/11...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/11/16/AR2009111603629.html)

I say close it down. Auction the assets off, pay post office workers a year or two's pay for no work to appease them, and give some kind of buyout to people with pension plans. Keeping the Post Office running to preserve jobs is a farce and massive waste of important resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why not a nonprofit model instead? NPR has been operating successfully on donations for years! News organizations are already basically not making a profit. By reorganizing and paying back their debts, they can go back to focusing on what matters instead of increasing the bottom line.

Why not take the meager revenues that news organizations are currently earning, deposit them into an endowment and supplement with a huge yearly fund-raising campaign, or a one time large insanely public grant from the federal government. If managed responsibly, something like this could sustain a decently sized news organization for a long time. Especially if we begin to rethink and reorganize how it might be done.

<comment><USER10> "a one time large insanely public grant from the federal government"

There is one spot-on word in that phrase: INSANE-ly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be one thing if news organizations were independent entities, arguing for government subsidies to remove any conflict of interest from accepting advertising or corporate ownership. With complete transparency, I would be fully behind this idea.

However, the suggestions of subsidies that some news organizations are beginning to float really boil down to "we're losing money in todays market, and we don't like it.". Aside from keeping their profit margins, it would be business as usual.

</comment><comment><USER14> Standard rent seeking behavior, people don't want our product so let's force them to buy it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Since insolvent businesses (banks, newspapers) keep figuring out ways to get my money using government, I think I need to figure out a way to stop paying taxes. Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER16> Information is a public good[1] so there's a standard case for subsidizing it. To preserve choice and competition other folks have proposed giving everybody a $50 voucher that they can give to the news source of their choice. That would guarantee a minimum level of aggregate news production but not specify the particular producers.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good>

<comment><USER17> Haha - the road to economics hell is paved with public goods.

<comment><USER18> there are many roads to economic hell, others include Monopoly Highway and the once scenic Tragedy of the Commons Express

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If old technologies die out because of newer and better technologies then that's called progress. Why should the newspapers be immune to this? If they can't make a product that people want to purchase then they need to adapt or die.

</comment><comment><USER20> Perhaps there are just too many newspapers? If 2/3 went bankrupt, wouldn't the remaining ones have enough increased readership to become profitable again?

</comment><comment><USER21> I grant the premise that most modern mainstream news organizations would require subsidies in order to survive unchanged indefinitely.

I refute the notion that this is in any way a desirable state of affairs, however. The invention of the modern media institutions has been due to historically anomalous conditions and has largely been deleterious to the quality of news gathering and dissemination. I won't be sad to see these dinosaurs dead and gone, replaced with a cacophony of competing and contrary individual voices serving as mulch for cultivating the capacity for critical thinking and skeptical inquiry of the modern world's minds.

P.S. <http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html></comment>


Windyty – wind forecast - <AUTHOR> https://www.windyty.com/ <comment><USER2> Very nice work. I do think the service could be greatly enhanced by providing plain English translations of the Airmet forecasts.

As a (somewhat out of practice) pilot I can just about translate for my local city, Graz, the current TAF:

TAF LOWG 191115Z 1912/2012 35004KT CAVOK TX11/1912Z TNM01/2006Z TEMPO 1917/2001 4000 BR NSC PROB30 TEMPO 1919/2000 1200 FZBCFG NSC

And it is a very nice day here (CAVOK!).

However, for the layperson something like "Light winds from the north, with clear skies and good visibility throughout the day. A chance of mist and ground level fog in the evening" might be more useful.

I once saw something like this done with an iOS app, so hopefully there's a standard translation library somewhere.</comment>


SQL AntiPatterns Presentation from MySQLConf 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/billkarwin/sql-antipatterns-strike-back?src=embed

<comment><USER2> Fascinating. I haven't finished reading the entire presentation yet, but I already stumbled on something.

The author lists a drawback of the first antipattern ("metadata tribbles"): a table split into multiples to keep its size down requires tricky querying, specifically, it requires a union across all splits (slide 10). It also requires extra effort to keep table structures synchronized (slide 11). Then, in a solution to his second antipattern ("entity-attribute-value"), he suggests doing something quite similar to his first antipattern: creating multiple tables with nearly identical columns and using a union to query across them (slides 27 and 28).

Hello? So to resolve antipattern 2 you just apply antipattern 1? This is why precisely why relational databases for most problems look like square pegs being hammered into round holes.

[EDIT] Not sure if it's worth finishing reading this presentation. Slide 56, a "solution" to the problem of storing a hierarchy in a relational database. Breadcrumbs. Not bad, except that the query now requires a "like" clause. Whoops, can't use an index on that column anymore! (Feel free to correct me if there exists a RDBMS which can use an index on a "like.") Hope the author doesn't mind a nice table scan on that query. He doesn't even mention this problem.

<comment><USER3> Well, certainly in Oracle, it can use an index on a like if it is structured:

        where col like 'str%'

However, doing

       where col like '%str'

Means it cannot use any index. So in the example given, it would be able to use an index because there is a leading 'path' before the %, assuming MySQL can do the same thing.

In Oracle you can do hierarchy query's using the 'connect by' syntax, which means you can structure your table with id, parent_id and get all the rows out efficiently in a single piece of SQL, which is nice!

<comment><USER4> You use a database that supports CTE or at the very least, recursive querying options, then you format your schema like so:

      Comments:
      /</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----\
      |   ID   | ParentID |   etc   |
      |</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----|
      |    1   |   Null   |   etc   |
      |    2   |   Null   |   etc   |
      |    3   |     1    |   etc   |
      |    4   |     1    |   etc   |
      |    5   |     4    |   etc   |
      \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----/

You then use a Common Table Expressions query, like this:

      WITH CommentTree (ParentID, ID, Level)
      AS
      (
        SELECT ParentID, ID, 0 as [Level],
            FROM Comments
            WHERE ParentID = [ROOT COMMENT ID] OR ParentID IS NULL
        UNION ALL
            SELECT c.ParentID, c.ID, ct.Level + 1
                FROM Comments c
                JOIN CommentTree ct ON ct.ID = c.ParentID
      )
      -- Now actually query the data from the CTE Expression
      SELECT ParentID, ID, Level FROM CommentTree
         ORDER BY ParentID, Level, ID

This returns a table with a calculated column called Level.

      /</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---\
      | ParentID | Level |   ID   |
      |</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---|
      |   Null   |   0   |   1    |
      |   Null   |   0   |   2    |
      |    1     |   1   |   3    |
      |    1     |   1   |   4    |
      |    4     |   2   |   5    |
      \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---/

Which of course, would represent this tree:

           Root
          /    \
         2      1
               / \
              3   4
                   \
                    5

</comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with slides 20 - 30 (calling "entity-attribute-value" tables an antipattern). Variable attributes table not only gives you a lot of application flexibility but also helps performance in that you're not polluting your primary table with extraneous metadata columns that are hardly ever referenced. It doesn't surprise me that DB programmer would look at that and be offended that it's not purely referential -- not everything that happens in a database has to be referential to everything else. Sometimes databases are just dumb data stores. Not all problems are solved by "referential integrity"

<comment><USER6> The Entity-Attribute-Value idiom (tuplestores, RDF, BigTable, etc.) is by far my favorite data model. The App Engine 'Datastore' sugar on top of BigTable is pretty goddamn awesome.

RDF would have been great if the W3C wasn't full of idiot blowhards.

There are some application domains that have not lived up to their potential because of RDBMS abuse where EAV would fit perfectly -- Desktop Search for example. All of [Spotlight, Google Desktop, Beagle, Gnome Tracker] use RDBMSs with a pre-determined set of 'attributes' baked in, crippling any creative use. Spotlight at least has the decency to let you add your own non-indexed properties, but it's not very useful. The contents of people's filesystems and metadata about them will never fit into some spec-writer's schema.

Compared to RDBMSs I think sugared EAV is lot more amenable to being abused in the "when all you have is a hammer" way -- they start a bit slow but scale linearly with more resources without getting any slower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was expecting something more MySQL specific, and was pleasantly surprised. It's certainly worth thinking twice before violating any of these.</comment>


Welcome Geoff - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.posterous.com/welcome-geoff

<comment><USER2> Is there anywhere to read more about Geoff's Rocketmail experience?

In _Founders_ _at_ _Work_ , Sabeer Bhatia (who co-founded Hotmail) paints a pretty awkward picture of Four11. According to the interview, Rocketmail started out as a directory service (I guess, hence "Four11"). They were Hotmail's partner, providing them with a searchable directory of other users. But then through the partnership Four11 found out how many users Hotmail was getting and decided to compete directly by making Rocketmail. Things were apparently especially awkward because both Hotmail and Four11 were funded by DFJ!

Anyway, it would be really interesting to hear the other version of events. (Hotmail and Rocketmail were competitors after all.) Obviously, being in webmail rather than directory services was the right call, but how did Four11 decide to switch and what were the interpersonal and business dynamics really like?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know the details myself, but I would take that interview with a grain of salt: [http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2009/02/a-note-about- sa...](http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2009/02/a-note-about-sabeer- bhatias-interview.html)

<comment><USER3> Agree. Knowing all that I have heard about Sabeer Bhatia _beside_ the link you shared, I would take a random guy's word over Sabeer's any day. And I form this opinion after talking with some people who know the guy first hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great news, congrats Geoff!

Having had the pleasure of working with Geoff, I really appreciate his ability to quickly address the flaws in your product, strategy, presentations, etc.

He groks things almost instantly and gives really constructive criticism that might sting a bit at first but adds a lot of value. Most valuable advice isn't what you wanted/expected to hear, but you come away in a better position after hearing it. He's really good at giving it.

He'll be a great addition to the team.

</comment><comment><USER5> Geoff Ralston is the man. He was one of our YC mentors and is now an investor in Earbits. He took the time to meet with us long before any formal YC meeting, simply because he knew we were involved in music. His insights were amazing and he doesn't bullshit you about anything. He's fun to work with and brings a wide array of experiences to the startups he works with. YC just got better - _is that possible?!_

</comment><comment><USER6> Geoff was one of my favorite partners at YC, so awesome to see him come on full time. He has this intensity that really gets to the root of a problem, I learnt a lot from him.

Congrats Geoff and YC!

</comment><comment><USER7> I've only known Geoff for a short while now, but this will be a huge benefit to YC. Geoff has a great eye for product development and can really strip an idea down to its core elements.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ycombinator must really be an wonderful place to be in, with all these smart people around.

I wish I knew how to get there from halfway around the world.

</comment><comment><USER9> Geoff was great during office hours. Very high-energy and he would give really valuable actionable feedback. Once when we complained about the volume of suport email and time spent on customer support he strongly recommended that we invest some time in building out a _great FAQ_. For some reason or the other up to that point we had kept pushing it off, but his advice motivated us to tackle the problem head on.

He would constantly make quick small suggestions like this, possibly even obvious things, but his enthusiasm and excitement when he made the suggestions, encouraged us to carry them out and it definitely helped us out.

Congrats Geoff and YC!

</comment><comment><USER10> Hey Geoff -- that's awesome!

Our company dwells in a weird business that sometimes defies logic. But Geoff had two golden pieces of advice for us after listening to our story for only two minutes in an office hours session. He's a stalwart sounding board. Big addition.

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://ycombinator.com/people.html> needs updating. There are at least 3 people missing.

I would like to know if YC has data mining/analytics specialist that reviews YC applications and helps people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Several YC partners (Robert Morris, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, and Aaron Iba) know something about data mining. Geoff might too; I'm not sure. Aaron in particular has been working on statistical analyses of YC applications themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats to Geoff! We're looking forward to working with him at ImagineK12 to build out our edu product. In two offices hours so far, he's given us some hard hitting feedback about our customer development progress, so we've taken that to heart and "left the building" to talk to our potential users, not just relying on phone/email/social media like we were before.

I hope YC doesn't steal away -too- much of his attention ... =)

</comment><comment><USER13> Congratulations Geoff!

Geoff is an incredible product guy, and an even more incredible person. Every office hours we had with him during ImagineK12 he gave us a good old-fashioned hustling...prepare yourselves, YC.

</comment><comment><USER14> Welcome Geoff, I have nostalgic memories of RocketMail!

</comment><comment><USER15> Can a startup do YC and Imagine K12 in parallel?

<comment><AUTHOR> One is now. It's an experiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was huge fan of Rocketmail as it had a much cleaner interface than Hotmail or Juno. Congrats to Geoff!

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, you guys are on a roll with bringing in new folk! Congrats to everyone

</comment><comment><USER18> My name is Geoff and I've found this to be a strange thread.

</comment><comment><USER19> Grats Geoff!</comment>


The MtGox 500 - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoin.stamen.com/ <comment><USER2> Users 1 and 15's charts make no sense - they have to be special system accounts of some sort. My guess is that #15 is the account that receives trading fees, and #1 represents MtGox itself (or some specific aspect of MtGox, such as its cold-storage).

There're still a lot of points on these plots that don't make sense, though; generally they look like vertical stripes labelled as sets of small sell orders, both far below and far above the market price. User 30 has what looks like a large sell (in Mar 2013) far above the highest-ever price. So either MtGox's order-matching is way more broken than anyone ever knew (unlikely), or these actually represent fees, withdraws, or something similar, and the y-axis position is meaningless.

Also worthy of note is that massive sell order by user 1 in Nov 2013. That's hard to interpret without knowing what the dots on that graph really mean (I doubt they're trades), but it's likely significant.

<comment><USER3> Each dot is a trade. I pulled the columns from the db we generated with the raw info of that one big trade, so you can see what the structure of the source data looks like. Removed the user id of the buyer, but it's trivial to find if you have the dataset.

File|Trade_Id|Date|User_Id|Type|Currency|Bitcoins|Money|Money_JPY|Money_Fee|Bitcoin_Fee

2013-11_mtgox_japan.csv|1384974682548514|2013-11-20 19:11:22| __ __*|buy|USD|1000|610000|60941267.96|0|3

2013-11_mtgox_japan.csv|1384974682548514|2013-11-20 19:11:22|THK|sell|USD|1000|610000|60941267.96|0|0

<comment><USER4> May I ask, where'd you get the dataset?

<comment><USER3> A torrent found on Reddit the day it was leaked. It looks like mods may have removed that thread:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zz9rw/a_message_fr...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zz9rw/a_message_from_a_mod/)

If you find a copy, don't run the .exe file contained within. It contains malware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The biggest take away from this is that bots were driving the price up, and preventing its fall.

"Bots" offer a lot of stability to the market because they don't react to bad news. Though an error can cause "flash crashes" As happened in May of 2010 on the stock market.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash)

<comment><USER6> How exactly did these charts lead you to that conclusion?

<comment><USER5> Look at several places the bots started binge buying when the price started to fall out.

<comment><USER7> What makes you think people wouldn't binge buy when the price started to fall out?

<comment><USER5> People react to news. They might binge buy, but they sleep, and they don't sell as often there after. The Bots were keeping the price steady by buying and selling. If not for the bots, the ups and downs would have been a lot "peakier"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love seeing the mostly red charts, looks like people that mined a lot. check #145 and #180. These people are selling at exponential curves on a log plot... mind blowing.

<comment><USER9> Or it could be a business that is accepting bitcoins for purchases and then immediately cashing those bitcoins into USD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool. Important to realize the graphs are on a log scale... threw me for a loop for a second before I noticed.

Could one of these graphs represent the activity of Willy[0]?

As an aside, I experienced a nice bit of schadenfreude when looking at a lot of the graphs from ~250 to ~299

[0] [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=497289.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=497289.0)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is really beautiful. It's an amazing amount of information to be borne (almost) purely visually.

My favorite is 117. They are the Devon Sawa in Final Destination of Bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER12> Any theories on user 15?

The amount of money lost is a little easier to get your head around when you see so many traders buying at relatively high prices towards the end.

<comment><USER13> Sounds like a bug in the author's graph generation code or some incorrect data in MtGox's database. The price didn't vary that much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How amazing would it be if we had this kind of data for publicly traded stocks?

<comment><USER15> For some classes of investors, we do

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fun stuff. Bryan if this is your site can you add to the plot in the corner a dot with net value change? Assume that all bitcoin "held" are currently worthless, so a holding of 10 btc at the end would be -10*last sale price recorded on the exchange. That would give an interesting idea of which traders "won" the game and which "lost."

<comment><USER17> We started doing this analysis and have the data per user but didn't want to include it in this goaround. Still much to do and investigate with this data set! Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure I understand the difference between the green Selling BitCoins (to get Dollars, presumably) and Buying Dollars (by selling BitCoins, also presumably).

I'm even more puzzled by the rates out of trade: did MtGox allowed traders to agree one-on-one on their own rates? That would allow a lot more laundering than any theft.

Missing too are relative size of the traders.

<comment><USER19> Yes, you used to be able to trade via dark pool in large amounts (at the time, that would be 5+ kbtc) to avoid upsetting the market price. Not sure if they still supported it at time of closure.

This is actually rather scary. Enough people have logged data that these can be dereferenced despite the feeble attempt at depersonalization, but I guess the names will come out in the legal proceedings anyway, depending on jurisdiction.

Then we'll have Newsweek writers at our houses asking how we feel about "losing millions" when our cost basis was really around $10. :-)

To head that off: "Umm, now I don't have to worry about how to declare this on my taxes? 'Miscellaneous Income' was making me nervous."

<comment><USER13> I don't think the (publicly) leaked database contained any usernames/emails.

<comment><USER17> You're right, it didn't. All of the trades data included internal User IDs. More recent data (as of April 2012) included User ID hashes, which Gox users have access to (from their password recovery emails for example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> i want to get married to stamen. the company. they're so awesome.

</comment><comment><USER21> Pretty interesting stuff. Thanks for the dataviz. What kind of coin volume did it take to get in to the top 500?

</comment><comment><USER22> This is incredibly well done. Did you just download all the data and analyze it with some crazy R skills?

<comment><USER17> Thanks! The data was released in a big zip file with a mix of malicious content (malware that stole your btc, personal data on MtGox CEO Mark Karpeles). Trade data was in monthly csvs, and also included some duplicate data which we removed.

Analysis happened in sqlite, python/pandas, csvkit; charts were built in d3.js and exported with phantom.js

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> 1-45 is interesting when compared to 15. Others mentioned this may be a bug in data interpretation or a GOX account, but if you look at all of the high volume traders you can see horizontal striations that correlate with user15.

</comment><comment><USER24> What pattern would most likely represent the Winklevoss pattern? Assuming there was trading prior to raising public awareness?

</comment><comment><USER25> Really cool visualization. I wish we could see similar for retail vs institutional traders in the capital markets.

</comment><comment><USER26> Great use of small multiples.

</comment><comment><USER27> Isn't User 15 proof that the entire market is flawed and the users were scammed?

</comment><comment><USER28> AMAZING!!!</comment>


A Mathematical Model Unlocks the Secrets of Vision - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-mathematical-model-unlocks-the-secrets-of-vision-20190821/ <comment><USER2> This represents the absolute worst kind of science journalism, completely devoid of context and domain knowledge. Virtually every definitive statement in here is wrong. Their explanation of spiking alone is a complete disaster.

Out of all the modalities, vision is easily the one we know the most about. And we do so at a fairly deep level. The discussed work seems fine but it's not the groundbreaking insight it's made out to be. Great PR work from the involved scientists (or their enterprising university marketing department).

<comment><USER3> I don't know a lot about this subject. Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER4> Cognitive scientists have been studying the computational foundations of vision in depth since at least the 1980s (see David Marr's 1982 book Vision), and AI scientists have been using neural networks for computer vision tasks for at least as long. So yeah, I'm no expert, but this probably isn't the ground-breaking work the article makes it out to be.

<comment><USER5> This work is about the very early steps of the primate visual pathway -- retina to LGC to the input layer of V1. Marr's opus is meant to be a much more wholistic view of the visual system. A more appropriate context for this article is perhaps David Hubel's (very accessible) _Eye, Brain, Vision_.

(The book used to be freely available on a website hosted by Harvard Med, but I can't seem to find it anymore.)

FWIW, I work a little bit in computational neuroscience. While I think "ground breaking" is an exaggeration, and I wish the article spent more time explaining the general thinking in the field and why it matters, the content is not terribly written for an article of this type and length. And it should be emphasized that the point of this modeling is really understanding the biology of the primate visual system; what it says about the general problem of vision is a separate question.

Disclaimer: I was not involved in this work, but did collaborate with one of the scientists extensively in the past.

<comment><USER5> Can't edit anymore, so two very minor corrections: "LGC" should have been "LGN" (had "RGC" and "LGN" both on my mind), and "disclaimer" should really have been "disclosure."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "While their model is far from uncovering the full mystery of vision, it is a step in the right direction"

This penultimate paragraph directly contradicts the headline. I know that writers don't have much control over their headlines but this is endlessly frustrating as a reader.

</comment><comment><USER7> > the first model to try and decipher vision in a biologically plausible way.

> Their work is the first of its kind.

No and no.

Shapley has great work in this area -- other biologically-plausible models of visual cortex indeed cite his work -- but this article is making grandiose claims with little knowledge of a deep field of work.

</comment><comment><USER8> a puff piece, seems to have little content or insights that aren't already known. Didn't see any "breakthrough" to justify "unlocks the secrets of vision". Sounds like what they're talking about is fairly well-tread ground. My guess is this was a collusion between Uni and Quanta so both can get attention / headlines.

<comment><USER9> Agree, hard to see how this can get 55 points in an hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, it sounds like the brain is creating a spatio temporal model and that these firings are creating a driving signal, but it has to be phased locked to the model or it falls apart, if enough of these driving signals align, a new model is formed. Is that a correct interpretation? It would also make sense that we create a future prediction model to overcome the horrible lag and the high latency in neural processing. The whole system runs at the 10s of Hz.

A lot could be going on here from an information theoretic standpoint, compressed sensing, error correction, time series prediction all operating in concert to reconstruct a model of the world inside our minds.

</comment><comment><USER11> > These "feed forward" models were easier to create, but they ignored the > plain implications of the anatomy of the cortex — which suggested "feedback" > loops had to be a big part of the story.

Almost 15 years ago, Jeff Hawkins proposed a similar explanation as to why biological neural networks are so much more effective than artificial neural networks. If this paper bears out, it will mean he was right track. His theory was based on 3 criteria that he believed to be essential to understanding the brain:

> The second criterion was the importance of feedback. Neuroanatomists have > known for a long time that the brain is saturated with feedback connections. > For example, in the circuit between the neocortex and a lower structure > called the thalamus, connections going backward (toward the input) exceed > the connections going forward by almost a factor of ten! That is, for every > fiber feeding information forward into the neocortex, there are ten fibers > feeding information back toward the senses. Feedback dominates most > connections throughout the neocortex as well. No one understood the precise > role of this feedback, but it was clear from published research that it > existed everywhere. I figured it must be important.

</comment><comment><USER12> "The job of the theorist, as I see it, is we take these facts and put them together in a coherent picture," Young said. "Experimentalists can't tell you what makes something work."

This is not anything real scientists believe. In science, only experimental data can tell you how something works. Math models are just math models (not to imply they're not useful in understanding how things work, but they certainly don't are not sufficient.

</comment><comment><USER13> Here is a Ph.D. dissertation by Daniel Pineo using a computational model of human vision to evaluate and optimize the perception of data visualizations: [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1739/ad378c5d77b8a09b8ad13e...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1739/ad378c5d77b8a09b8ad13eca2a7fb1d06d2b.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't get it. Aren't they just describing a neural network... Is it even correct to say this is new?

</comment><comment><USER15> Horrible title as some point out. I got a good tl;dr from the first paper related to the article (same authors):

"Comprehensive population models, such as the one we have presented here, seek to link cellular properties and network structure to dynamics and function, the ultimate goal being to use these models to test hypotheses and to suggest future experiments. We propose that for areas of the brain about which there are sufficient data, such as the visual cortex, it is time to move to next- generation models that are more comprehensive, data driven, and dynamic. Such a move would constitute a paradigm shift in computational neuroscience, and the present model is a step in that direction."

Basically they want more than just a simplified mathematical model, something that accounts for all the measured data. I'm not sure this is the right approach, and only some example application would show if it is. I don't think they applied their model yet or whether it can be applied, just browsed the first paper.

</comment><comment><USER16> "New research suggests mathematics is the key."

What could they have possibly thought the key was previous? And is the journalist of preschool intellect, or simply an amazingly ignorant baccalaureate?</comment>


Story of universe : is it possible? Would appreciate your response - <AUTHOR>

As I was thinking about Universe and read about the plank time concept - a thought started troubling me. Is possible that universe is still in its infancy. Is it possible that the core is still in early infancy while the periphery where we live in has aged? This way we still observe constellations and stars moving away from us which according to us is something which happened during the early stages of the universe.<p>What are your thoughts on this. Do you know of any text which I can refer to pursue more research on this subject. <comment><USER2> That idea has been postulated, that the cosmological constant changes over large distances (which would affect our view of things over time).also, time itself may be something we interpret but might not play into the math of physics. I forget who wrote it but there was a paper showing the math works out better if you take time out if the equation. Scientific American magazine runs these kinds of stories, might be a good place to start

</comment><comment><USER3> Hopefully somebody knowledgeable in these questions will speak up.

I am not knowledgeable. Here is where I might start if I had your questions:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmology> Read the page and follow the links outward, according to your questions and interests.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Contents/Portals#Natura...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Contents/Portals#Natural_and_physical_sciences)

Good luck. Report back when you have an answer. :)</comment>


The future of UI/UX- A video by Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0&feature=player_embedded

<comment><USER2> This has been posted many times</comment>


Powerful Tools that You Need (and Probably Don't Know About) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wait-till-i.com/2010/05/16/fowa-dublin-powerful-tools-that-you-need-and-probably-dont-know-about/ <comment><USER2> Anyone else experiencing problems with the video? I can stream it more than 3minuts. I downloaded it and the problems persists.</comment>


Notebook players less keen to adopt USB Type C - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20160726PD206.html <comment><USER2> Notebook "players"?

Can't say I've ever tried getting a tune out of my laptop. Might have to give it a go.</comment>


Bringing Serverless to Azure Kubernetes Service - <AUTHOR> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/bringing-serverless-to-azure-kubernetes-service/ <comment><USER2> Also this virtual kubelet project moved into the CNCF: [https://www.cncf.io/sandbox-projects/](https://www.cncf.io/sandbox-projects/)</comment>


Erlang Search demo of the WAND-max_score evaluation stategy for Top-K Queries - <AUTHOR> http://search.wardbekker.com:8080/?q=hacker

<comment><AUTHOR> This demo search engine allows you to query ~130K articles from the Stack Exchange / Programmers data dump using an Erlang implementation of the WAND / max_score evaluation stategy for Top-K Queries. Original paper can be found here: [http://fontoura.org/papers/vldb2011.pdf](http://fontoura.org/papers/vldb2011.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool, but no links to source code?

<comment><AUTHOR> Site should show a "Fork me on Github" Ribbon, otherwise you can find the source code here: [https://github.com/wardbekker/search](https://github.com/wardbekker/search)</comment></comment>


Unc0ver Jailbreak for iOS 11.0 to 13.5 - <AUTHOR> https://unc0ver.dev/?released <comment><USER2> I absolutely support people's right to jailbreak devices they own and over the years I've jailbroken my phone or ipad for one reason or another.

Having said that, unless there's something specific you're looking for, it's not really worth the effort these days and has potential downsides.

The biggest downside is that you might find some existing apps on your phone can detect that the phone is jailbroken and refuse to start. There are obvious security reasons for apps like banking apps to do this but also many online gaming apps won't run if they detect that the device is jailbroken in order to deter cheating.

There's an ongoing arms-race between app developers and jailbreakers where jailbreakers try to avoid detection and app developers find new ways to detect jailbreaks. So a new jailbreak will probably not be detected until a few weeks or months later when the app is updated.

Source: I used to work for a company that makes phone software that needs to be secure and so would attempt to detect jailbreaks.

<comment><USER3> > There are obvious security reasons for apps like banking apps to do this

This is obviously wrong. It's possible to do the same banking things using the bank's website both from general purpose PCs and browsers on phones for which jailbreak detection is not possible in the browser.

Jailbreak detection is done by testing for the presence of common things that allow the device owner to control the device. The device owner controlling the device is not a problem for banking. Meanwhile a malicious third party wouldn't inherently need to make use of any of those and would have strong incentives to avoid using any that trigger jailbreak detection, so it's no help there either.

And for the same reason it's basically useless for detecting cheating. Because if you jailbreak your phone so you can install some apps from outside the store and then it breaks your games, you might grumble and decide you want to play the game more. But if you jailbreak your phone because you want to cheat at games, your next step is to thwart the jailbreak detection, which is not that hard when you have the game software to inspect to see how it's doing jailbreak detection. And you can also tell when the app is updated and then run the new version on a test machine to see how the new version is doing jailbreak detection.

It's hostile and a waste of time to do this when you're going to lose anyway. You only inconvenience the people who jailbreak their phones for completely unrelated reasons.

<comment><USER4> If banks could secure their web portals to the same degree as their mobile apps, they absolutely would. "Portal A (web) cant be as secure as Portal B (mobile), so don't bother securing Portal B" isn't an acceptable security model. The banks are naturally going to reduce their vectors of attack to the greatest degree possible, and that naturally means that some access points will be more secure than others.

<comment><USER5> I am not sure where you come from, but around Europe banks are the worst when it comes to security audits, and they don't give a damn about it.

From trying to roll their own crypto, to still using legacy ssl to support ie6...everything is shitty.

Even when they are forced by law [1] to integrate modern 2FA, they find ways to implement it in a shitty, proprietary way.

PSD2 is required since September 2019 and every single bank rolled it out in August and waited until the very last moment.

I mean, a photoTAN device with a 120x120 camera resolution? Seriously, what is this? 1999? Why not use RFC 4226 or RFC 6238 [2] [3]?

[1] [https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/payment-services- psd-2-directi...](https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/payment-services- psd-2-directive-eu-2015-2366_en)

[2] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/](https://tools.ietf.org/html/)

[3] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6238](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6238)

<comment><USER6> Banks are usually following the currently "supported" versions. At least the big ones that are all compliance based nowadays.

Windows XP and IE6 have been out of support for quite a while. They've long been dropped in favor of windows 7 (LTS support until 2023) and 10 more recently, which comes with internet explorer 10 or 11.

SSL would be quite easier to keep up-to-date if Microsoft actually upgraded their operating system and applications to support TLS 1.2 by default, which they don't for retro compatibility reasons.

For reference, working at JP Morgan, I can tell you that the company has dropped support for Internet Explorer entirely. Half of the existing internal apps don't even load on IE. Would be nice of vendors to stop wasting their time praising IE support as a feature.

<comment><USER7> > They've long been dropped in favor of windows 7 (LTS support until 2023)

Windows 8.1 has support until 2023. Windows 7 support is over since January 14, 2020. [https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/13853/windows- lifec...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/13853/windows-lifecycle- fact-sheet)

<comment><USER8> There's extended support to 2023 through a paid support program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a Jailbreak app called PermaFlex that I worked with a developer to get made about a year ago. It hasn't gotten a lot of attention, I suspect because it's not especially easy to wrap your head around.

But it allows you to do something magical—permanently hide just about any icon, button, or other UI element in just about any iOS app, all on your phone and without writing code. There are some caveats you should read about at the link below, but overall it works well!

I'm an interface minimalist. Mobile apps are so cluttered these days, and it feels so good to hide all the random crap I don't need.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/bfpso0/release_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/bfpso0/release_permaflex_permanently_hide_elements_with/elfgay6/)

<comment><USER10> Does anyone know if there's an android version of this?

<comment><USER11> This looks like it shouldn't be too hard to do on Android (in native apps, you'd have problems with Unity3D and Flutter apps) with Xposed, but I don't think there's an Xposed module that does specifically this.

It's a nice idea though and I hope someone with experience in it will take an interest in writing this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Remind me what I get for jailbreaking these days? Long ago I wanted to tether, but can't think of what I need today.

<comment><USER13> This turned into way, way too big of a comment, but I'm on jailbroken iOS 13.3 right now and love it. It's not like the Old Days where tweaks often added huge new pieces of functionality, and that seems to make many people say jailbreaking is no longer worth it. For me it's more like a bunch of very small usability improvements that add up to make my phone much much more pleasant, polishing its usability to perfection. My favorite iOS 13 tweaks are, in no particular order:

\- "powerlogHelperdFix": Listing this first because it's the only workaround I needed for a bug in the jailbreak, to fix the Battery stats Settings pane.

\- "AlarmVolume": Custom (read: very loud) volume for my wake-up alarm, separate from the normal volume setting that I like to leave low or muted. Similar to how Android allows separate volume settings for calls / notifs / alarms: [https://i.imgur.com/dV4URQT.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/dV4URQT.jpg)

\- "Mega-Untrusted-Hosts-Blocker IPv4+IPv6": Adblocking hosts file for web content in all apps that works on mobile data or any random Wi-Fi network where you don't have an adblocking DNS server.

\- "TwitterNoAds" \+ "AlwaysLatestTimelineTwitter": Blocking promoted tweets and forcing reverse-chronological feed (as opposed to algorithmically-sorted- feed) in the Twitter app.

\- "AlwaysLow": Make my phone willing to always stay in Low Power Mode instead of turning LPM off once charged past 80%: [https://i.imgur.com/wgn7Lj9.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/wgn7Lj9.jpg)

\- "A-Font", "Noctis Neo", "ColorBadges", "iPadStatusBar13", "Cuboid": System UI customization. No real need; just to keep things fresh by changing up every once in a while. [https://i.imgur.com/7Iy0gUs.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/7Iy0gUs.jpg)

Currently: [https://i.imgur.com/1lbe3I2.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/1lbe3I2.jpg)

\- "Jellyfish": Customizable replacement for the standard lock screen. [https://i.imgur.com/oQSaSl9.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/oQSaSl9.jpg)

Currently: [https://i.imgur.com/kQ0ITWC.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/kQ0ITWC.jpg)

\- "Clean Home Screen" \+ "FDots": Hide tiny UI annoyances like the blue Recently-updated-app dots, the text reminding me that I have to unlock my phone to use it, the text reminding me of what the Notification Center is, etc: [https://i.imgur.com/x34If3d.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/x34If3d.jpg)

\- "StopPlayin12'": Stops the Apple Music app from auto-playing any time a bluetooth device (like my car) reconnects to my phone. I usually use a third- party music app, but iOS only ever wants to start the built in player. I still have to go manually start the app I want, but at least I get to do it in silence: [https://i.imgur.com/90JPuqa.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/90JPuqa.jpg)

\- "System Sound Disabler": Truly disable excessive UI sound effects so I can leave my volume up and not have to hear them: [https://i.imgur.com/nTOrgH1.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/nTOrgH1.jpg)

\- "AskBeforeCalling Too 13": Prevent accidental pocket-dials by adding a confirmation dialog to any action that would initiate a call/text/whatever: [https://i.imgur.com/3vw5fkw.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/3vw5fkw.jpg)

\- "NoAutoStraighten", "NoDNDBanner", "NoLowPowerAlert", "NoMoreSuggestions", "NoMoreSkinToneSuggestions", "NoNCHeaderView", "NoYellowBattery", "AppStoreUpdatesTab13", "Ultrasound", etc: Lots of small single-purpose UI tweaks that often don't even need settings panes.

\- "NoYTNo" \+ "Youtube Tools": Automatically dismiss the constant Youtube Premium upsells when you open the app, re-enable background playback support, block ads in Youtube videos, etc.

\- "NXBoot": Jailbreak my exploitable Nintendo Switch with any boot code using Apple's USB3 Lightning Camera Adapter: [https://i.imgur.com/pySTOVO.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/pySTOVO.jpg)

\- "RealCC": Reverts the Control Center Wi-Fi/BT toggles to their pre-iOS-11 functionality of fully disabling the associated radios instead of merely disconnecting your WiFi until 3AM the next morning like it does now.

\- "DNDMyRecording": Automatically enables Do Not Disturb mode when taking a screen recording so unwanted notifications don't end up in your video.

\- "GoodWifi": Display saved passwords for known Wi-Fi networks, display base station MAC, display true signal values, etc: [https://i.imgur.com/xSVLhFU.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/xSVLhFU.jpg)

\- "DLEasy": Video downloader for all social media apps, including Reddit- style DASH/HLS segmented videos: [https://i.imgur.com/IU1ZFWf.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/IU1ZFWf.jpg)

\- "CopyLyrics" \+ "YTCopyDescription": Allows you to copy the plain text from the lyrics pane in Apple Music or the description of a video in the YouTube app.

\- "Keyboard Accio": Makes the 'Globe' button on the keyboard only switch between the first two keyboards in my list of enabled keyboards, so I can leave several enabled without making it a tedious process to get through them all back to QWERTY. The full list is still available via a long press.

\- "iKeyWi 4": Total layout customization for the standard keyboard without having to replace it with a third-party keyboard. I keep the layout pretty much the same aside from adding a fifth row of keys up top for a permanent number row: [https://i.imgur.com/OQ0ITve.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/OQ0ITve.jpg) [https://i.imgur.com/Nj2UMQ7.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Nj2UMQ7.jpg)

\- "Filza" \+ "Safari Plus": A fully-fledged graphical file manager that makes a great pairing with a tweak that gives Safari a native download manager: [https://i.imgur.com/IoWrHKn.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/IoWrHKn.jpg)

I'm sure most (if not all) of these probably sound unnecessary to many people, but I love feeling in control of my own phone instead of the other way around :)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the list. My favorite has to be mikoto by angelxwind. I will have to test it on 13.5.

[https://cydia.akemi.ai/?page/net.angelxwind.mikoto](https://cydia.akemi.ai/?page/net.angelxwind.mikoto)

Another great one is Flex 3, which allows you to sort of disassemble functions of installed apps and patch the functionality. It even has a simple community sharing/cloud aspect to find cool patches for a selected installed app.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/flextweak/comments/17z57c/mod_what_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/flextweak/comments/17z57c/mod_what_are_the_capabilities_of_flex_or_is_this/)

Old repo, but has description:

[http://cydia.saurik.com/package/com.johncoates.flex3/](http://cydia.saurik.com/package/com.johncoates.flex3/)

New repo:

[http://getdelta.co/](http://getdelta.co/)

<comment><USER13> Karen is great, but I've come to dislike and avoid "kitchen-sink" type bundles of tweaks like mikoto. I find it way more straightforward to back up and reinstall a "NoWhateverAnnoyance"-type single-use tweak that needs no settings, and it lets me avoid situations like when I first jailbroke iOS 11 and half of mikoto's features were broken on it.

<comment><USER14> I understand that. I think mikoto is fully configurable, with sensible defaults, so any feature can be disabled independently of others. Of course, there is something to be said for single purpose tools which I also like. That's what I like about jailbreaking. It allows people to have a preference. Stock iOS is just not for power users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone have any technical information about the (0day?) exploits used by this new jailbreak? The source code on github seems to be very out of date.

Will Apple delay the release of macOS 10.15.5, which is expected this week? (Curious to know if the same exploit applies to macOS).

</comment><comment><USER16> Remember when Comex released JailbreakMe 2.0, when jailbreaking was only a webpage + "slide to jailbreak" away?

Those were the days.

</comment><comment><USER17> Went to do this for extra iPhone X I have. Made me download an app, supply Apple ID credentials, and provide my system login/password to a dialog. I want to use it, but I won't touch it without a VM and a six foot stick.

<comment><USER13> You don't need unc0ver at all to jailbreak your phone! Everything older than and including the iPhone X has a hardware-level bootloader exploit known as "checkm8". You can use a jailbreak called "checkra1n" via that hardware-level exploit with just a USB/Lightning cable and any computer running macOS or Linux (Windows support Real Soon Now™): [https://checkra.in/](https://checkra.in/)

unc0ver is necessary for newer phones that need a software entry point to jailbreak. It should work just the same on your phone too, but the hardware exploit is way way easier and should automatically* work with any new iOS updates as they are released.

[*] Any tweaks you have installed may of course be incompatible with a major OS update

<comment><USER18> Doesn't checkm8 require re-jailbreaking on every boot?

<comment><USER13> To stay jailbroken, yes. The phone will still boot fine by itself, however, just in the normal unjailbroken state. Same limitation as unc0ver except without the conveniently-portable app entry point. I prefer using the hardware entry point that doesn't depend on Apple's goodwill to let me sideload since I usually get at least a month or two of uptime anyway. My recent record has been 66 days, then I rebooted intentionally for something: [https://i.imgur.com/l9tL9dw.png](https://i.imgur.com/l9tL9dw.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I remember the JB scene during the early days, iOS 3-6. Those were good times...

<comment><USER20> Yep. I loved rooting droids and jailbreaking iPhones back then. It almost seems like it ain't worth it these days. I can't think of much I can get in JB that I can't have anyway

<comment><USER21> at one point i had the original iphone running android. it was a hot mess usability wise but still kinda marvelous in a way.

<comment><USER14> Have you tried any of the Project Sandcastle builds?

[https://projectsandcastle.org](https://projectsandcastle.org)

<comment><USER20> Thanks for sharing this! I just decommissioned an iPhone 7 and I think this is the perfect project for it.

<comment><USER14> It's definitely interesting! I think the iPhone hardware is amazing, and Android is the only alternate OS I would consider running so it's just a great match. Fun project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So it sounds like sometimes jailbreaks use known vulnerabilities, but this one uses a 0day

[https://twitter.com/Pwn20wnd/status/1264258454610259968](https://twitter.com/Pwn20wnd/status/1264258454610259968)

</comment><comment><USER23> > Utilizing native system sandbox exceptions, security remains intact while > enabling access to jailbreak files.

This is not very clear to me. Does this only mean that other security protections remain for apps that respect the restrictions? After jailbreaking, any malicious apps (even the ones that get through App Store reviews, not just the apps from Cydia) can get wider access to resources, right?

</comment><comment><USER17> Isn't a theoretical large reason for jailbreaking (not your main phone) to be able to read the contents of all installed apps, say, via SSH? I don't know of another way to do this.

<comment><USER24> It technically is, but iOS apps are compiled ARM64 so decompiling them isn't trivial. It's often easier to find the app's config files and mess around, or to use an app like Flex that allows you to override return values for an app's methods.

[https://twitter.com/flextweak](https://twitter.com/flextweak)

<comment><USER17> Super interesting. I suspect Ghidra might support reasonably well.

<comment><USER25> Ghidra doesn't do a great job of decompiling Swift and ObjC which most most iOS apps would be written in now days. You are better off with something like Hopper. Hopper does a better job of decompiling Swift and ObjC but its decompiler output is no where near as good unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> are there any good firewall apps for jailbroken iphones? something that works more holistically than at the dns level (like IP addresses, stateful packet inspection, etc). there used to be "firewall iP" but that seems long abandoned now.

that's the one thing i'd love to jailbreak for. and a UI tweak or two can be nice too.

<comment><USER27> I would so eagerly jailbreak for something like Little Snitch for iOS.

<comment><USER17> You definitely don't need too! Charles Proxy is really impressive on iOS.

<comment><USER23> How does it compare to Little Snitch, which on the Mac asks the user to check the connection attempt and allow/disallow each one based on some patterns (domain, port, etc.)? I don't think such a functionality is possible on non- jailbroken iOS. Charles Proxy seems to be targeted at just examining traffic, and not prompting the user for connection attempts and controlling them.

<comment><USER28> You can't ask dynamically, but setting up filtering rules is not out of the question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wish Android had such a hope for it. Getting root to do basic kernel level tasks like working with networking or uhid is some extreme bizarre exploit special to most every device. It's so detestable.

This device is my device. It needs to be trusted & manipulable by me. But these manufacturers, they look on users & what they would do as the enemy, as power they grant only to themselves. It's sad being in this post-general- purpose computing age, maligned by my own machines.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've had an iPad that's been locked for at least a year (forgot pin) and I don't have a computer that runs iTunes to plug it in to and unlock it. Would this get past that?

<comment><AUTHOR> > _I've had an iPad that's been locked for at least a year (forgot pin) and I > don't have a computer that runs iTunes to plug it in to and unlock it._

If you have the proof of purchase, an Apple Store should be able to unlock it for you.

<comment><USER31> Are you serious? People are okay with this? What's the point of encryption if Apple can unlock it? If the same thing happens on an encrypted computer you won't be able to access the data, but at least the device isn't bricked.

<comment><USER32> You misunderstand. Apple can erase the device and let a new user set it up from scratch, but they can't read the data off it. The feature is called Activation Lock and it exists to discourage theft.

<comment><USER31> Thanks for clarifying. The only part missing is being able to do this yourself instead of having to involve a third party.

<comment><USER32> Activation Lock is only enabled when you have the "Find My" service enabled. I'm pretty sure the device asks you during setup whether you want it on or off. You can toggle it in settings whenever you want.

Users only need to get Apple involved if they forget their iCloud credentials.

<comment><USER30> Not true. You can have your iCloud credentials but no device that runs iTunes. The iTunes requirement is the catch here for me personally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's 2020 and ppl are still forced to jb their own phones.

<comment><USER34> You're going to hate 2030...

I think by then macOS will need a jailbreak if you want to disable SIP and have genuine root access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can you downgrade iOS if you jailbreak?

<comment><USER13> Downgrades are possible on certain older models, but as far as I know it requires a bootloader exploit and the boot may be tethered i.e. requires a PC to poke it before it will boot.

32 bit devices can use coolbooter: [https://coolbooter.com/](https://coolbooter.com/)

And I've not used this tool but am aware of it: [https://github.com/MatthewPierson/Vieux](https://github.com/MatthewPierson/Vieux)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This doesn't work without a $99 developer certificate when you get to the Cydia Impactor step

<comment><USER13> You can use AltStore to sideload it for free: [https://altstore.io/](https://altstore.io/)

And if you have an iPhone X or older (iPhone 8, 7, etc) you have a hardware exploit and can jailbreak using checkra1n with just a computer and a USB Lightning cable: [https://checkra.in/](https://checkra.in/)

<comment><USER37> I tried this, it doesn't seem to work, unless I am missing the obvious somewhere along the line.

<comment><USER13> Tried which one, sorry? I haven't used AltStore much myself since I have an older model with the hardware exploit, but it did work the one time I tried it. It's just a heck of a lot jankier than the old method of using Cydia Impactor (Computer-based) or ReProvision (iOS-based) to sign the app for seven days with your personal free dev account. Apple changed something on their end and broke those apps.

Here's a video demo (not mine) of how the AltServer method should work for you: [https://twitter.com/InvoxiPlayGames/status/12129681066095656...](https://twitter.com/InvoxiPlayGames/status/1212968106609565697)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Can one unlock carrier locked phone with that tool?

<comment><USER39> No. Different chip.

<comment><USER40> I believe the carrier lock is now handled in software. The modem itself is never carrier locked and the lock is enforced at the activation step by sending the SIM details to Apple for validation, so I believe once you're jailbroken you should be able to bypass that behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Anyone know what the best ad blockers are for iOS?

<comment><USER36> I use NextDNS, works pretty well.

<comment><USER41> Does this block ads in apps?

It looks like I may have not had to jailbreak after all. I assumed it was a necessary prerequisite.

<comment><USER42> Yes. I only still see ads in the YouTube app (stopped using YT on my phone for that reason), and some websites that do some clever ads reinjection after the page ha aliases still have ads too (but that's really a minority of websites and they're not very good anyway son or using them much)

Otherwise it blocks all ads in every other app (especially free to play games that are unusable with ads)

Nextdns will also work on your tv and block all ads (hello Samsung) and telemetry too (there is a smarttv block list you can select at the end of the choices on nextdns)</comment></comment></comment></comment>