#BHUSA: Android Phones at Risk of BlueRepli Bluetooth Attack - <AUTHOR> https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/bhusa-android-risk-bluetooth/ <comment><AUTHOR> anyone else getting hit with rogue bluetooth devices connecting to your own devices/computers? i found this article from a cursory search after observing an attack on my mac (i'm doubtful it's the attack on my machine though).

with apple's concerted push over the past few years, i now begrudgingly leave bluetooth mostly on, which admittedly is a security risk.

but only recently have i had a real, known issue crop up. in the past few weeks, i have had a OnePlus 7T device (or at least claiming to be so) continuously connect to my macbook pro (2015 15", mojave 10.14.6). the first couple times, i just disconnected and assumed it was a mistaken mispairing.

but this morning, i've been monitoring this device as it repeated connects. it can pair with my mac without user interaction and will re-pair if i disconnect it. i'll then force remove it as a known device, but it's still able to pair again. once i force remove it a couple times, it changes MAC addresses and then starts the cycle all over again. these don't show up as bluetooth devices on my iOS devices, but do show up as a bunch of "Misc" entries on my (older) android device. i live in a medium density area so it's very possible this is someone else's device leaking over.

does anyone know what this is and how to counter it? i'm guessing it's a worm of some sort, but have no obvious way to delve deeper.</comment>


Air France crash 'due to pilot & technical failure' (Final report on 2009 crash) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18720915

<comment><USER2> The fact that airbus AVERAGES the control inputs, with no indication of conflicting inputs, when one pilot is pulling back and one pilot is pushing down is just a perfect example that even at the most critical points, where the stakes are the highest, we as engineers and designers fail to think through the implications of bad design.

<comment><USER3> But would adding an extra caution light / sound to the already-stressful situation have helped? I agree that averaging the inputs seems like an imperfect solution, but what would the alternative be... ignore both or ignore just the Captain/First Officer's inputs?

 _edit_ : Re: physically-linked controls (à la Boeing), with one pilot pulling back as hard as he can Vs. the other pushing fwd, isn't the result still (approximately) an average of the two inputs? Obviously they'd feel that the controls weren't moving, but that could be attributed to a number of factors (e.g. icing of the control surfaces).

<comment><USER2> an alternative would be to move the sticks together, the way non-fly-by-wire planes work.

<comment><USER4> They could also make the sticks move together even on fly by wire planes (Boeing does it) using force feedback. That is one thing that Airbus really should have done instead of providing no physical feedback. The expectation is that you would use your eyes instead, but the visual channel is already heavily loaded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was an interesting discussion on here about this nearly a year ago, after the data recorders turned up.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3327202>

<comment><USER6> That HN submission links to a Popular Mechanics article that goes over the last 10-12 minutes of AF447's voice recorder, line by line. It's a very detailed read and worth the time. It will also chill you to the bone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wrote an explanation of how flight instruments are powered that is germane to this discussion (and IMO helps clarify what happened).

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595230>

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't imagine the horror of knowing you're going to die in a couple of minutes when the plane crashes.

<comment><USER9> Fortunately you can't be sure. On average around 2/3 people die in a plane crash and you can improve your chances a lot by sitting in the right place (near the aisle, a couple of rows from the back is safest if I remember correctly) with seatbelts on. While still terrifying, I was surprised about those chances of survival and so were most of the people I talked to about it.

<comment><USER10> Really? I can understand how the front of the aircraft (as it collapses) can cushion the impact if you are in that position, but after that you still have to avoid being killed by hypothermia or drowning (if you hit water) or fire (if you hit land.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The root cause was Technical failure, not pilot error. The instruments were wrong and the burden of accuracy on such a technically complicated machine is on the aircraft.

But that's too easy to sue for so the manufacturers of the systems press to blame the dead crew.

This is standard corporate culture.

<comment><USER12> The fact that the pilot ignored the continuous audible "Stall! Stall! Stall!" alarm and kept the control stick pulled fully back (the opposite of what you want to do in a stall) suggests to me that it's legitimate to place some of the blame on human error.

<comment><USER13>
      > The fact that the pilot ignored the continuous "Stall! Stall! Stall!" alarm
      > and kept the control stick pulled fully back

The fact is that the black boxes recorded this behavior. Can we be 100% certain that the copilot actually did this? My concern is that we're still trusting the output of a system that has proven to be suspect.

<comment><USER12> Other than the airspeed sensors freezing up, I'm not aware of any other known malfunctions. What makes you say the system was "proven to be suspect"?

<comment><USER13> I'm quoting Wikipedia's summary of the Report:

      * The stall warning deactivates by design when the angle of attack measurements
        are considered invalid and this is the case when the airspeed drops
        below a certain limit.
      * In consequence, the stall warning stopped and came back on several times
        during the stall; in particular, it came on whenever the pilot pushed forward
        on the stick and then stopped when he pulled back; this may have
        confused the pilots.
      * Despite the fact that they were aware that altitude was declining rapidly,
        the pilots were unable to determine which instruments to trust: it may have
        appeared to them that all values were incoherent.

Personally, I'm not sure whether to believe that the copilot simply made an amateur mistake .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can we clarify the title to " _2009_ Air France crash 'due to pilot and technical failure'"?

The way it is now makes it sound like there was another crash.

<comment><USER14> The crash was in 2009. This story is from 2012 -- today, in fact.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Fireplace, a Hearthstone Simulator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace

<comment><AUTHOR> Over the past few months, I've been hard at work on a simulator for the Hearthstone game by Blizzard.

This turned into a full-blown reimplementation of the game logic pretty fast.

As it turns out, working on this has been the most enlightening and rewarding experience I've ever had in programming. Hearthstone is a very well designed game with very few hacks (much unlike other Blizzard games) and extremely logical rules it has a lot of respect for.

Working on this, more than anything else, has been the most _fun_ I've ever had working on a project. While it is still incomplete, I'm hoping it is of interest to someone as I would love to welcome others to the project. I'm available to answer any questions about it or the Hearthstone's internal design.

Edit: For those looking for an entry point to what this all looks like, since this is very much programmer-oriented for now, the docs I wrote on the wiki ([https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace/wiki](https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace/wiki)) and the tests ([https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace/blob/master/tests/te...](https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace/blob/master/tests/test_main.py)) are the best ones.

<comment><USER2> Is the end goal to implement AIs and try to come up with interesting decks via something like genetic algorithms? Because that does sound like a fun project.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a lot of end goals! This is something that did cross my mind, yes. I think Fireplace is more of an enabler for this kind of thing. Writing an AI that would directly interact with it would be easy and I'm also posting here so that if anyone has a cool idea for something they want to do with it can poke me and I'll accomodate!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One immediate idea that comes to mind is the ability to create and share quick puzzle games for other HS players. You could define parameters like "clear the board", "find lethal", "minion x must survive", etc... Some players have already been trying to make them by hobbling together screenshots, but they're not as effective.

</comment><comment><USER4> Could you document the rules of the game somewhere?

Blizzard doesn't make it clear. I was going to embark on a simulator just like this, except I had a hard time figuring out the weird interactions and edge cases.

For instance, I just played a game last night where there was an enemy mad scientist on the board. I play a madder bomber and it kills it, playing a secret for the mage, which turned out to be mirror entity, proccing that secret, and the board was left with me and him having a madder bomber.

I wanted to make AI for hearthstone to test and simulate things, but these weird interactions was preventing me from making a simulator like this.

<comment><USER5> so one thing is that battlecries trigger before the "summon" effect, and it's a stack, so you do one effect, resolve those consequences, and then go to the next effect. In the case of multiple effects being added due to one effect, it goes by seniority (cards that have been on the board longer trigger first).

There's a decent amount of noted rules on it, but you get some strange things like Kel'Thuzad ( which was completely borked on release, not sure about it now). I think the general rule is "the code is the spec"

<comment><AUTHOR> Battlecries happening before the summon is a popular opinion but I have strong reasons to believe it's wrong. However, I wrote above the series of events that leads to the CARD_PLAYED event to happen after the Mad Scientist is dead, so Mirror Entity indeed summons the copy after the battlecry has happened.

So basically, battlecries in this case have precendence over secrets so to say. But the minion is already on the field. This is important because, say you had a Cult Master that ALSO had a "deal 1 damage" battlecry and you played it, killing one of your own minions with it: it would see the death, as it is already on the field.

Regarding Kel Thuzad, we're again talking about ordering issues. What could have happened is something such as the aura/internal tag it was setting disappearing a tad too late after its death as during end of turn, if killed by an END_TURN effect, the aura would trigger before it disappears. But all of this is extremely internal. If the designers believe it's a bug, then it's a bug. That's why I'm not touching Warsong Commander yet. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome dude. I actually found it via your hearthstone-data repo yesterday since I'm working on a related application (obj-c app to screen- capture arena and tell me which card I should draft), I'm excited to play around with this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Ping me on github if you need anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool! Have you looked into the legal issues, for example ToS and copyright? I wonder if Blizzard would be within their rights to force a takedown of the code whenever they want.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have, to an extent. I've been working with Blizzard games for almost ten years (I worked on reverse engineering in WoW before), and Blizzard tends to be very cautious with this sort of projects.

In this case, it would be relatively easy to implement a server on top of Fireplace which would communicate with a slightly modified Hearthstone client. This would be a huge no-no for Blizzard and they would try their best to shut it down, so I'm not doing that.

You'll also note that the game files I am reusing in fireplace are actually in a separate repo (hearthstone-data submodule) so that I can take it down separately, should Blizzard request it.

Edit: Part of me also hopes that Team 5, the team behind Hearthstone, is a bit different. They have been incredibly close to the community, much closer than Blizzard has with other games, and I'm hoping that if issues arise, we can work them out peacefully.

<comment><USER8> >In this case, it would be relatively easy to implement a server on top of Fireplace which would communicate with a slightly modified Hearthstone client. This would be a huge no-no for Blizzard and they would try their best to shut it down, so I'm not doing that.

Besides doing something like this, how else would you go about testing this kind of thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Black box testing, much like the Wine project does. You can see my battery of tests here:

[https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace/blob/master/tests/te...](https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace/blob/master/tests/test_main.py)

Also, the game has excellent debug logs which I could always generate in Fireplace and compare the two or some such. And if all else fails, I can always peek at the Hearthstone protocol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is cool. I only wish it didn't require quite so cutting-edge Python features; a lot of systems are still running a bit behind Python 3.4, even if they're running Python 3. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I understand. This was a project for myself mostly and I needed IntEnums so I decided to just go with it.

On the other hand, it has zero other dependency than python (with an optional dependency on pytest for better test output).</comment></comment>


Term Sheet Manners - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/06/term-sheet-manners.html <comment><USER2> Good point, and I think it makes sense for any contract negotiation.</comment>


Ask HN : trying to remember name of open source project  - <AUTHOR>

based in Finland which models bank/credit/money as network graphs.. uses java/javascript/canvas.. it was posted as a response to someone asking for what to do next as a beginner programmer.. does anybody know/remember ? thanks in advance <comment><AUTHOR> FOUND IT !! there was a jar file sitting in my crashed-recovered-desktop folder. thanks to revorad . thanks to all those who upvoted me ! the project is FNA : <http://www.financialnetworkanalysis.com/> (no wonder I had trouble googling for it - such a generic name)

</comment><comment><USER2> Neo? - <http://neotechnology.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> umm nope. this project, if i remember right, was headed by someone from finland who had written papers on the topic [ analysing money flows as networks] and had a UI that worked on the browser ... canvas, I'm thinking.. I came across it in HN comments, read it ,bookmarked it, I think, then my</comment></comment>


Why are so many men pregnant? Data entry mistakes in the health industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.straightstatistics.org/blog/2012/04/06/why-are-so-many-men-pregnant

<comment><USER2> Curious. What's the best method of modeling a relational DB structure to enforce the rule that only:

Gender=F and isPregnant=True

combinations are allowed?

I know application layer can handle this. Also triggers. But is there any RDBMS that allows enforcement at DB level for rules like this?

<comment><USER3> If you feel resentful toward your coworkers or are planning on quitting your job soon:

You could have Male, Female, and Transgendered tables, each of which point back to the Patient table. Only the Female table (and perhaps the Transgendered table) would have an isPregnant column.

<comment><USER4> 'Transgender'? You know that's not just one big lump of people? There are trans women and trans men. Also it would inaccurate (and possibliy) illegal to refer to a trans man as anything other than male in some cases (ditto for trans women).

<comment><USER3> Agreed!

"Male" isn't one homogenous lump of people; neither is "female". And, as you mentioned, neither is "transgender(ed)"[1].

[1]: [http://www.paulinepark.com/2011/03/glaad-is-wrong-on- transge...](http://www.paulinepark.com/2011/03/glaad-is-wrong-on-transgender- vs-transgendered/)

<comment><USER3> [I can't respond to your comment directly. This is a bit off-topic, but I think it's interesting!! Here goes.]

 _> It is true that "not all men are the same" (and "not all women are the same"), but splitting into "trans male" and "trans female" is probably more accurate than lumping all "trans people" into one category.

> After all, it would be silly to have only 2 chategories "trans" and "cis" > (trans:cis :: gay:straight)._

My original post was in jest—in fact, it was inspired by some _holy-crap-I- can't-believe-it's-real_ database schema I've had to work with. Someone made an effort to hyper-normalize things and saddled us with a disaster: Every query required seven or eight slow joins, and there was duplicate data sprinkled everywhere (in my example, the same patient could inadvertently have records in both the Male and Female tables). The "architect" quit a few weeks after it went to production.

Anyway, I consider (biological) "sex" to be a sliding scale: one end being female, the other end being male, and the middle being intersex. I consider (social) "gender" to be where one self-identifies on that scale. Others might disagree, but I think this is a useful distinction.

Upon reflection, it's obvious that my schema isn't even remotely helpful! My inclusion of the "Transgendered" table implied that the three tables were genders, not sexes. Gender, being a self-identified trait, has nothing to do with whether one can get pregnant.

So if we wanted to hyper-normalize our schema and indicate that only certain patients can get pregnant, we should clearly have a "Uterus" table. In fact, it would probably be wise to have tables for every body part, and inner-join on all of them whenever we need to grab a patient's information. Or we could use check constraints... but our schema diagrams would be much less impressive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Before anyone get's too excited, note that according to _a comment on_ the same article 96% of those men where under 1 week old - and thus legitimately males with midwife episodes.

edit: apologies, that was from a comment on the article.

</comment><comment><USER6> Also check this: <http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/06/sex-and-gender/>

</comment><comment><USER7> As a cultural note: hospitals have to code stuff, they are then paid by a Primary Care Trust based on the coding. Thus, there's a financial incentive to mis-code, or to "code harder". This is, obviously, fraud and the NHS fraud unit investigates and punishes it.

The other worry is that this data is potentially used for clinical research, so let's hope people know about the error rates.</comment>


Linus on Linux: The Linus Torvalds Interview Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7314

<comment><USER2> Those advertisement pages drive me nuts, but I enjoyed the article. It's nice to hear how the 'big pros' are doing things, and what they think of particular technologies.

I also agree that git seems a little overwhelming, but you only end up using a couple dozen commands at most. I love git.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know why I clicked, but I'm glad I did. The points about "governance" emerging as an accident, a mistake even, were particularly perspicacious.</comment>


India racked by greatest exodus since partition due to coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/india-wracked-by-greatest-exodus-since-partition-due-to-coronavirus <comment><USER2> Sad to see a former tea-vendor could not Recognize/Comprehend on sufferings of Common man in India [http://archive.vn/KqDZA](http://archive.vn/KqDZA) [http://archive.vn/zXvad](http://archive.vn/zXvad)

Or is it Sadism (pleasure in suffering of others) manifested from Bigotry [http://archive.vn/DnUav](http://archive.vn/DnUav)</comment>


Show HN: Rmf. Diacap. Stig. Scap. CCI. Poam. Rar. Crosswalk - <AUTHOR> Https://cyber.trackr.live <comment><AUTHOR> DoD Cyber Security Compliance requirements present an ever-changing target that needs constant management. Simplify your compliance processes with the latest DISA and NIST security requirements in an easy to use and searchable format. Research security requirements for stigs and scaps, and compare the data dumps over time. Compile your scan results (stig, scap, acas) into easy to use spreadsheets.... Ready for dissemination and importation.</comment>


First Do No Harm: Four Things You Should Never Do with Elasticsearch - <AUTHOR> http://blog.qbox.io/important-things-never-do-with-elasticsearch

<comment><USER2> The author probably should have expanded upon the point about sizing. Having even an incidentally undersized cluster for ES is dangerous.

I worked with ES for a while with a pretty reasonably sized cluster and what I considered to be a pretty reasonably sized data set. I frequently ran into cases where ES nodes, and the cluster in general, handled resource overflows in an utterly brain-damaged way.

Doing bulk loading? Don't let your request be larger than 200MB -- Jetty will crash and hand off corrupt and incomplete data to the loader, which will happily load it. You'll never notice unless you look at the logs.

Trying to fit a little less than half as much data as you have space on disk? Better hope none of your nodes ever have a connectivity problem -- automatic shard replication will attempt to replicate a shard to a machine that doesn't have enough space to hold it, will fail to recognize that shard replication was incomplete, and half your requests will go to an incomplete and corrupted shard. You won't notice it unless you're staring at the logs when it happens. If you don't catch it in time, the corrupted shard itself could be replicated. The only fix is to wipe the entire cluster and reload.

Trying to save space by using java's default memory pre-allocation sizes? Better hope you don't have very much data. When ES gets bigger than your -Xmx setting, it won't die -- it'll just slowly begin to corrupt all your shards, and happily serve corrupt information from corrupt shards.

Basically, if using ES, make sure you have _many many_ times the resources as you do data, and be _very conservative_ about using those resources, because running out of any single resource means ditching the cluster and reloading all data from scratch.

(These experiences occurred in ~2011 and in ~2013. It's possible that some of these problems have been fixed. However, at the time, Shay Banon's position on most bugs of this type is that running out of resources is the user's problem and ES has no responsibility to mitigate the damage -- a general policy of wontfix on anything to do with failure states involving running out of resources.)</comment>


Snowflake: Graphical SFTP client and terminal emulator with helpful utilities - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/subhra74/snowflake <comment><USER2> Looks decent at a glance, but like many people, I've been using WinSCP for several years and would need solid reasons to switch - I'd really like to see a comparison to WinSCP in the readme.

<comment><USER3> From what I gather from my initial use of the tool, I think the main advantage of this tool is reduced window proliferation.

You basically have a bunch of commonly used tools that exist in one window (file browser client, terminal, rudimentary text/log viewers, etc.)

Depending on your preferences, this might have a lot of value if you're constrained by screen real estate (i.e., laptop users).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi,

Snowflake author here.

The main difference between Snowflake and WinScp or Cyberduck or Putty is that they are built mostly for a single task, either file transfer or terminal emulation. Where Snowflake can do both and more. Purpose is to provide a friendly GUI for common tasks, like killing processes, or rename with sudo.

Its kind of similar to web based admin panels like webmin or ajenti, though they are more tend to be used for veteran sysadmins. But these admin panels needs to be configured and installed on the server, where snowflake works from the local computer without any configuration or installation on server side.

More details can be found on: [https://dev.to/subhra74/how-to-make-you-life- easier-on-remot...](https://dev.to/subhra74/how-to-make-you-life-easier-on- remote-linux-servers-ssh-g7m)

</comment><comment><USER5> For Windows and Linux.

Am on a Mac so cannot test, but what is the advantage of this over WinSCP, Filezilla and Cyberduck (IIRC the "old guard" FOSS SCP clients)?

<comment><AUTHOR> on mac you can use it with 'java -jar snowflake.jar'

<comment><USER6> It works great on mac, I'm really enjoying this tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It incorporates JEDIterm, a reworked version of JCTerm and GriTTY, apparently. But the default terminal type that it passes over SSH is "xterm-256color". It is, of course, _not_ identical to XTerm.

* [https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html#xterm_...](https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html#xterm_generic)

* [http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/TERM.xml#MIS-...](http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/TERM.xml#MIS-CONFIGURATION)

</comment><comment><USER3> I just installed it, it's nice. The UI is simple ("webby" is how I'd describe it), and it seems adequately responsive.

Being able to switch between the file browser and terminal is very handy.

The one thing I would like to see is the ability to set the editor for the remote files instead of relying on my system defaults.

I'm not quite sure it's ready to replace WinSCP for me yet, but I'll definitely give it a chance and see how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER8> For a similar workflow, at least for terminal and editor, is the Remote SSH extension for VS Code... really been enjoying it for a one-off server that is running on a VPS.

I haven't tried dragging or pasting into the file section (which works on local resources), so can't confirm file transfers actually work.

<comment><USER5> Except that VScode runs a Node on port 3000 of your server, and doesn't care if you already _have_ a node server on port 3000.

Easy to solve once you find out why, but when some dev connects with VSCode and the production server goes down... not impressed.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure you're mistaken... I ran the following locally and on the remote system and not seeing anything on port 3000

        sudo lsof -i -P -n | egrep -i '\b3000\b.+LISTEN'

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

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms- vscod...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode- remote.remote-ssh)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is very useful. Note though that all of the following doesn't work unless you have ssh access to the server: \- search \- terminal \- monitoring (cpu & memory) \- report of used/available disk space \- system information

</comment><comment><USER10> Mixing SFTP for file transfer with raw commands for remote file operations seems like an interesting concept. Are there other tools which have done this?

<comment><USER11> MobaXterm comes to mind as an incredibly complete solution in this niche.

Possibly one of the only pieces of software that I enjoy paying yearly fees for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not a great choice of name given the existence of [https://www.snowflake.com](https://www.snowflake.com)

<comment><USER13> Coincidentally, it's also the name of a famous, early graphics demo (1960s), compare [https://www.masswerk.at/snowflake](https://www.masswerk.at/snowflake) (URL redirects to an emulation on the same site).

<comment><USER14> CuriousMark has a PDP11 video that has some of these demos running on the original hardware: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EWQYAfuMYw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EWQYAfuMYw)

His videos are surprisingly addictive; they've restored an Apollo guidance computer, Altos and tonnes of other ancient kit.

<comment><USER13> I'm actually a great fan, highly recommended!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> didnt work for me... I can connect all day long to some personal servers I have via filezilla (port 21) and in snowflake I just get a spinner and then it fails (and I do modify the port)... I _WANT_ this to work as I like it.. but so far no bueno.

Anyone else with this same issue?

<comment><USER4> you are using ftp (file transfer protocol). Snowflake works with ssh/sftp servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it possible to define jump hosts?

edit: if not, does someone know a decent software alike which supports this, for macos?

<comment><USER17> Doesn't the mac console support jumphosts? ssh -J

<comment><USER16> Yes, of course. But I'd be happier to be able to manage this in a combined GUI (like snowflake) as well.

<comment><USER17> I've found that some graphical systems will pull config from your .ssh/config

You might try it and see if anything you use works with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How does it compare to Cyberduck?

</comment><comment><USER19> seems nice at first glance at least</comment>


Technology Fallacies That Need to Die - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/05/four_technology_fallacies_that_need_to_die_first_the_tech_business_is_not.html

<comment><USER2> Misleading title. The article is Technology _fallacies_ that need to die.

</comment><comment><USER3> ugg..</comment>


Tezos founder Arthur Breitman opens up about the company's troubled past - <AUTHOR> https://decryptmedia.com/2018/11/01/tezos-arthur-breitman-interview-blockchain/ <comment><USER2> At the mercy of the SEC now by the sounds of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> no idea they had some guy squeezing cash out of the foundation</comment>


How to stop killing people with your public speeches - <AUTHOR> http://drnicwilliams.com/2011/11/11/how-to-stop-killing-people-with-your-public-speeches/

<comment><USER2> When you hear the death knell of my life-sucking talk, that iPhone of yours is right there enticing you to throw a few more chunky chickens across your tiny screens. Sometimes I wish I could actually kill people with my crappy talks, but it is not to be.</comment>


Journalist Matthew Keys sentenced to 2 years in hacking case - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/13/matthew-keys-sentenced-under-cfaa/?ncid=rss <comment><USER2> So... basically because anonymous was involved in some fashion they threw the book at him? 2 years in PRISON for this seems MORE than a _little_ silly. What do you get for graffiti? Because this is just slightly less offensive than that. A spray painted billboard can stay up for weeks before someone fixes it.

<comment><USER3> When a very active graffiti writer sentenced in the U.S. it is often pretty extreme as well. Here's an example that comes to mind: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFONE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFONE)

<comment><USER4> Sharing info that directly leads to defacement of a website does not nearly equate to painting all over various surfaces over the course of multiple years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I follow Keys on Twitter. He has been surprisingly positive since he was arrested (and through subsequent court dates). I hope he has a bright future.</comment>


Elon Musk: Next Six Months Crucial to Tesla's future - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428882/elon-musk-next-six-months-crucial-to-teslas/?ref=rss

<comment><USER2> Elon Musk, I forbid you to let Tesla fail before I can afford to buy a model S.

<comment><USER3> If he knows it's going to fail, he should consider putting a death ray on a militarized Model S with bullet proof windows. Maybe with optional retractable VTOL (Tesla's last patent) side lifters. He could probably sell it to the US government and save Tesla.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure that Bruce Wayne would buy one, maybe two.

<comment><USER5> I thought the minimum order to disguise the purchase was 10,000?

<comment><USER5> (Obscure _Batman Begins_ reference)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's stopping Elon Musk from working with Shai Agassi at Better Place? Doesn't Shai have an open offer for a $3-4 billion contract for a US automaker to produce an electric car that works in their battery-swapping station network?

I realize the offer is to a major US automaker which is much different but it just seems like a brilliant billionaire like Elon Musk and an amazing entrepreneur like Shai Agassi (who has raised $900MM+) could pull it off.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's a creative idea to partially solve the charging problem. Have people buy the fast chargers for their homes, and then get listed in a database where people could stop by and pay for a charge on their travels. It would be like AirBnB but for charging electric cars.

<comment><USER7> Why would I buy a fast-charger for my home? It will never pay for itself in fees, and you don't need one at home – overnight charging meets essentially everyone's needs in that case.

Edit: just to be clear, I support people sharing their chargers. But _fast charging_ is overkill.

<comment><USER8> IMO, the whole idea of electric vehicles is a waste of time unless the government (or at least a dominant market player) steps in and standardizes battery sizes for fast replacement at existing service stations. It should take _less_ time to recharge an EV than it does to refill a gasoline tank, not _more_.

Anyone who has ever exchanged a propane cylinder for their backyard barbecue should understand why this is the only conceivable way to make electric vehicles work. I can't begin to imagine why I'm the only person who actually thinks that way.

<comment><USER9> Most people don't drive their cars 24/7. Even on road trips it's more like 12 or 18 hours.

Once battery capacities reach the point where you only have to charge it at night for a full day's drive, you've solved the problem and you don't need to swap.

And, while the price tag is high, the 300 mile claimed range of the highest trim Model S gets a substantial part of the way to that standard.

<comment><USER8> _Once battery capacities reach the point where you only have to charge it at night for a full day's drive, you've solved the problem and you don't need to swap._

Perhaps that's true... once batteries get about 2x as good as they are now, owners of cars like the Tesla won't have to worry so much about whether there will be power available at their destination.

My impression is that the next 2x improvement in battery tech is pretty far over the horizon, though. Plus, we simply do not have the grid capacity to replace most Americans' automobiles with rechargeable EVs. Not even by charging them at night. Once 80% of the houses in your neighborhood plug in an 8-kw load at night, this inconvenient truth will become obvious enough.

Exchangeable batteries could be charged anywhere, anytime, not just where and when they are needed. That's a big win regardless of what happens with the core technology of power storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I appreciate Musk's honesty. I've seen many critical situations where leaders fudge to make things seem more stable than they are. I'm rooting for Tesla's success.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think he may have just tanked his chances. People buying cars in that price range 1) expect to have mechanical service available for the foreseeable future, and 2) don't like to be associated with losers. You don't want to drop $90k on a cool new car and then six months later have your friends roll their eyes or pity you when you roll up at the party.

<comment><USER12> Are you familiar with the Tesla strategy mentioned by him in a some interview?

Their goals are:

\- High price low volume car.

\- Medium price medium volume car.

\- Low price high volume car.

They seem to be on their way.

Also the article claims he said 'It's going to be tough.' He has always been pretty straightforward with that. Check out any of his interviews.

Check out his interview after Falcon 1 failed <http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa>

An excerpt from that:

 _"Wired.com: At the end of the day you're still zero for three; you have so far failed to put a rocket into orbit.

Musk: We haven't gotten into orbit, true, but we've made considerable progress. If it's an all-or-nothing proposition then we've failed. But it's not all or nothing. We must get to orbit eventually, and we will. It might take us one, two or three more tries, but we will. We will make it work.

Wired.com: How do you maintain your optimism?

Musk: Do I sound optimistic?

Wired.com: Yeah, you always do.

Musk: Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work."_

<comment><USER13> Considering the next 2 launches where successful I think he had reasonable expectations at the time. As CEO your in a strange place of needing to be advertise and create a positive image without creating unrealistic expectations so people trust what you say in six months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is the issue: charging times & price point.

To sell units beyond their first adopters they need to address key issues with electric cars (and I am all for EVs). What they need to do is license their technology to Ford and GM to get mass market appeal and to help build/develop EVs in the $20k range. As the article states, "It projects selling 20,000 cars next year, which is a relatively high number among luxury brands."

This is really what is going to happen: the will be acquired by a larger brand.

<comment> at-fates-hands "It projects selling 20,000 cars next year, which is a relatively high number among luxury brands."

Actually this is quite low. BMW sells around 110K units a year in the US alone - <http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html>

Although I do agree the best bet for the survival of the technology is to get bought by a larger brand.

<comment><USER15> BMW has 10 different models, and their best-seller--the 3 series--has a considerably lower base price than the Model S.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _The base price is just under $50,000 after factoring in a $7,500 tax > credit. But models with a large enough battery to allow for a 300 mile range > will be priced at $87,900 after the tax credit._

Great. So American taxpayers are essentially subsidizing luxury automobiles.

<comment><USER17> We should subsidize things that are already affordable instead? Um...

<comment><USER18> Or rather we should subsidize things that need to be affordable. Luxury cars are explicitly _not_ meant to be affordable, so his point stands. What both of you have missed is the actual reason for subsidy, which is the fuel efficiency.

<comment><USER16> I can't speak for others, but I didn't miss the fuel efficiency aspect. If electric automobiles are ever going to make a significant environmental impact, they will need to priced for the masses.

<comment><USER7> You do know that that's _exactly_ Tesla Motors' stated goal, right?

[http://elonmusktesla.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/truly- affordab...](http://elonmusktesla.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/truly-affordable- tesla-electric-sedan-to-launch-in-2015/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems to me that the critical period for persuading people to buy them, is down the metaphorical road a bit. At the moment it appears from their web site that they are still selling "reservations". There is a nice video on their web site celebrating delivery of some cars - which I think implies they aren't just handing them over to willing buyers yet.

The hard part starts when all that is past: when they build enough cars to have them sitting at dealerships, either being bought or not.

(For that matter, if they really want revenue, why not keep churning out the Roadster? Surely there would be a few thousand more people willing and able to buy one.)

<comment><USER20> Demand is not an issue. There were 12,200 reservations as of July. That's enough to keep busy for the rest this year and into Q2 of next year. If demand were truly an issue, we would see some sort of advertising spend. When was the last time you saw a Tesla TV commercial?

The next six months are critical because it determines whether or not Tesla can be a profitable venture. Can they make a profit with full production? If they have any unforeseen expenditures they are screwed. If there are any recalls, they are screwed. However, I am pretty confident Tesla will be able to pull through given their track record.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The big challenge no one speaks about is the auto workers' unions which will change the cost structure to produce these cars. This cost increase is coming in the next few years.

<comment><USER22> I disagree, although it may be potentially a problem in the future. It seems like Tesla however isn't using manufacturing techniques/processes that the rest of the industry follows. Most of the assembly is done using advanced robots, the cost increase seems to be the support and the development of these robots.

The reason I appreciate tesla, is because it doesnt have all the legacy and baggage a traditional car manufacturer has, and thus they have the ability to try bold things. On top of it, they are doing it all in america.

<comment><USER23> Most car manufacturers have production plants in the US. I live in Alabama there are Mercedes, Honda and Hyundai plants. BMW is in South Carolina. Toyota Prius is built in Mississippi.

The land and power are cheap, the wages are reasonable and there is not a lot of union activity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wouldn't buy a car if I expected the company might be dead in six months. Who'll service my car then? This isn't a well-known and old brand with independent service centers. Did Elon Musk just told me not to buy their cars? Thanks for the tip.

<comment><USER25> A fair concern but probably unwarranted since a larger company would snap it up at some price. And then you might actually have better (more, at least) service options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Heard on NPR that batteries on EV's can only be charged around 500 times. This came from that Berkley professor that was a global warming skeptic until the recent conclusion of a research study -that he participated in- indicating that most of global warming was caused by fuel burning. Of-coarse the study was funded by the Koch brothers and proposed that the world move to natural gas. It wouldn't surprise me if the Koch brothers have large investments in natural gas. Does anyone know if the battery charge comment has any validity?

<comment><USER13> The electric cost of a charge is ~2$, and you get ~250 miles a charge x 500 = 125,000 miles for 1,000$. Assuming 3.5$/G gas + 30MPG + 125,000 miles costs 14,500$. That leaves ~13,500$ to pay for the next battery pack and the overhead charging.

PS: The real issue is it's not a smooth transition, but if you assume the 2nd battery pack is not worth it you get 250,000 miles including 1 replacement pack.

<comment><USER27> The battery pack costs more than that, alas. The price may come down as the scale of recycling (and hence, the amount recyclers can pay for used batteries) goes up. The price per Wh for Li-ion has also been falling at a fairly steady rate. And of course, gas prices may go up.

We should also consider the depreciation of components in a conventional car that the electric drivetrain replaces. They should depreciate faster because they are less efficient and must deal with the additional heat they dissipate. They require an intake and exhaust system, complicated transmission, pumps, valves, lubricants...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> They should launch in Europe earlier, we spend a lot more money on cars here, have shorter daily routes (guessing!) and care a little more about fuel costs (more expensive here).

</comment><comment><USER29> This might seem obnoxious but I'm sure Mr. Musk has a number of celebrity acquaintances. Surely their help would put him well on his way to 20,000?

<comment><USER30> I suspect they're having no trouble selling cars; the only question is whether they can manufacture the cars they've already sold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I work with a car dealer and he said that one cannot import a Tesla to Canada. Anyone know why? Thx

<comment><USER32> Are you sure about that? Seems like it is becoming possible.

[http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/canadian-pricing- out...](http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/canadian-pricing-out-i-am- tears)

Also: lol at the price. I get why it's that expensive (tariff, taxes) but wow, I can't see them moving many.

<comment><USER31> Maybe he meant "at a reasonable price"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If gas prices do not rise, Telsa will be in trouble.

<comment><USER34> Not necessarily. What Tesla is proposing is a better car. The Model S is safer, more comfortable, and more practical. The demand is clearly there, at this point it is a question of if Tesla can deliver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ctrl-F "Friedman Unit"

0 results.

HN, I am disappoint.</comment>


Two-step verification is here - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bitbucket.org/2015/09/10/two-step-verification-is-here/ <comment><AUTHOR> Took 3 years (see [https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issues/5811/support-two- fa...](https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issues/5811/support-two-factor- authentication-bb-7016)), but finally there. Now it's time to find security bugs in this implementation.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. If it took that long it certainly sounds overcomplicated to me considering with the right library a TOTP and QR setup for Google Authenticator can be written and tested in a day.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the downvotes but with speakeasy [1] and something like node-qrcode [2] I have done exactly this.

[1] [https://github.com/markbao/speakeasy](https://github.com/markbao/speakeasy) [2] [https://github.com/soldair/node-qrcode](https://github.com/soldair/node- qrcode)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Excellent! Kudos to the Bitbucket folks for implementing two factor auth.

</comment><comment><USER4> Next: FIDO U2F! [https://www.yubico.com/applications/fido/](https://www.yubico.com/applications/fido/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad they finally implemented 2FA.

</comment><comment><USER6> (awyeah)</comment>


We've updated the radios and checkboxes on GOV.UK - <AUTHOR> https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2016/11/30/weve-updated-the-radios-and-checkboxes-on-gov-uk/ <comment><USER2> they missed a trick by not making all those radio buttons on the explanation page actually functional so you could see what changed each time i.e. the hit area.</comment>


ZNAPS – The $9 Magnetic Adapter for your mobile devices - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1041610927/znaps-the-9-magnetic-adapter-for-your-mobile-devic

<comment><USER2> Backed. However, is ZNAPS signed up with Apple's Made-for-iPhone/iPad (MFi) licensing program. Otherwise Apple might try to sue for making unlicensed accessories for their products. [https://developer.apple.com/programs/mfi/](https://developer.apple.com/programs/mfi/)</comment>


TalkTalk Acquires Blinkbox and Tesco Broadband - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/01/08/talktalk-acquires-blinkbox-tesco-broadband/ <comment><USER2> I always found the diversification by the supermarkets into car insurance, broadband and mobile phones distasteful. At least with mobiles, though, it was because customers were buying talk time in the store for other providers.

But streaming services is not where they should be. Tesco, in particular, has a poor security approach.

They even tried getting into the Used Car business but couldn't secure a supplier.

The problem for food sellers is that growth is constrained - they have managed to make plenty of people fat but even then, there is a limit.

The pressure to grow has ended up damaging Tesco but I doubt it will be much of a lesson to others.</comment>


The Imaginative Reality of Ursula K. Le Guin - <AUTHOR> https://www.vqronline.org/interviews-articles/2018/03/imaginative-reality-ursula-k-le-guin <comment><USER2> I love the plain-spoken poetry of her writing. She had an amazing gift for immersively describing the natural world and the day-to-day business of living. It makes her stories feel more real to me than the majority of "fantasy" literature.

A few favorite passages in here:

[https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1322014-the- farthest-s...](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1322014-the-farthest- shore)

[https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/215093-the-other- wind](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/215093-the-other-wind)

<comment><USER3> Some of them feel more real to me than most main stream lit. too. Especially The Dispossessed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ursula Le Guin was the daughter of anthropologists Alfred L. Kroeber and Theodora Kroeber. Her parents are best known for documenting the life of Ishi, the last member of the Yahi tribe. Kroaber Hall on the UC Berkeley campus was named after Ursula's parents.

I believe this is why Ursula Le Guin is able to write empathetic descriptions of disparate cultures. Science fiction was a medium for her explorations.

<comment><USER5> Theodora Kroeber wrote two excellent books on Ishi.

 _Ishi: Last of His Tribe_ is a fictionalized narrative of his life (told as a novel).

 _Ishi in Two Worlds_ is a non-fiction account of his life from the time he first came into contact with Alfred to his death. Covers a great deal about his people's culture as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not a sci-fi or fantasy reader but had heard so much about "Left hand of darkness" that I gave it a try. It was just okay for me, sort of underdelivered on a great premise.

If I read one more LeGuin, which one should I take on?

<comment><USER7> [http://www.mccc.edu/pdf/eng102/Week%209/Text_LeGuin%20Ursula...](http://www.mccc.edu/pdf/eng102/Week%209/Text_LeGuin%20Ursula_Ones%20Who%20Walk%20Away%20From%20Omelas.pdf)

<comment><USER8> I see this story as a kind of thought experiment about the way in which societies treat minority groups. There have been many societies that felt the oppression of a minority was justified, or even necessary, in exchange for the greater good of the society. This story takes that idea to its logical extreme: a perfect society, with unlimited health and happiness for all, in exchange for the complete and utter oppression and degradation of the smallest possible minority -- a minority of one. Is it still justified? The people who feel it is not are "the ones who walk away from Omelas."

<comment><USER9> > There have been many societies that felt the oppression of a minority was > justified

"have been"? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, I was just reminded the Ursula Le Guin died which in turn reminded me that Diana Wynne Jones also died not too long ago. Bittersweet, but at least serves as a reminder to go and re-read a couple favorites.</comment>


Wealth is what you don't spend - <AUTHOR> https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/gains/ <comment><USER2> This is really disingenuous because inflation is not telling the full story of why people spend more. Living _costs_ more. Healthcare has outpaced inflation blisteringly, and employers provide for it less. IIRC a typical child birth can cost $10,000 in medical bills. How long does that take to save up on $60k/year with a mortgage and a car payment?

Don't get me wrong, I don't feel like I'm having a hard time in life at all. I feel like I am compensated fairly and I am able to save money while having fun. But while I am living well now, I grew up in a family where nothing was guaranteed. We'd been homeless at a time. That was with dual income.

A household income of $60k just does not budget well today. Period. Comparing this to obesity is, again, imo pretty disingenuous because the _reality_ of obesity is that the exercise helps very little _at all_. Exercise without diet does almost absolutely nothing. Diet without exercise however can work just fine.

At the end of the day every analogy has limits but I think this doesn't pass the smell test.

<comment><USER3> > IIRC a typical child birth can cost $10,000 in medical bills.

Assertions like this — there'sa similar one about hip replacements being more expensive in the USA than flying to Spain for the op and living there for two years — always make me wonder why health tourism from the USA to basically anywhere else isn't more common.

<comment><USER4> There's a pricing/information problem. Say you hear that the hip replacement is $10k in the US and $2k in India. But there's also a place that's $1.5k in India and a place that's $2.5k in India. Which place is good? You haven't a clue. Do you take the risk? Are you going to end up with a hip that lasts shorter than you want it to? That'll be bad for you.

And then comes the fact that insurance pays for most people so the price is hidden. You don't actually pay $10k. Instead everyone pays slightly more than they should for insurance.

<comment><USER5> Except you do actually pay that $10k, just in the form of money taken out of your pay check to pay for insurance. Insurance which you are likely not wanting to take advantage of because even with insurance you pay out of pocket (albeit subsidized by insurance).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Love this summary point: "Money is often a negative art. It has a lot to do with the actions you don't take and things you avoid."

Applies to a lot of areas in life and business, not just money!

</comment><comment><USER7> Totally unrelated to the topic, but I really like this style of writing/speaking, where you open with a story that serves as an extended analogy on a familiar topic, and then dive into the (usually more complex) actual topic.

Does anyone have any tips on how to do this effectively? Any time I try the story portion ends up feeling overly drawn-out or irrelevant.

<comment><USER8> 1\. Start with a bullet list of the points you absolutely have to make (the meat).

2\. Make a second level to the bullet list where you fill in the gaps between the meat where you can add color and make the topic digestible (the vegetables/fiber).

3\. Make a third level of the bullet list with all of the nice story points you'd like to add but are not necessary (the dessert).

4\. Delete all those nice to have story points. If they're really needed, then they would have been added in step 1 or 2.

Don't add any more words for dessert -- the real treat is how concise you can be while still being interesting. If it's a long form article, skip step 4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The collective level of risk aversion on HN is ironic given the focus on startups, new age tech, and venture capital. Mention any investment vehicle that isn't a high interest savings account accruing 2% and you get downvoted into oblivion.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Hand-me-downs were acceptable clothes. A 983 square foot house was an > acceptable size. Kids sharing a room was an acceptable arrangement. A tire > swing was acceptable entertainment. Few of those things are acceptable > baselines for most households today.

Hand-me-downs, room sharing, tire swing (or sidewalk games in our case), these are all features of my family's life now (as a fairly typical dual- professional household). My house is 1500 square feet, more than the typical for the 1950s, but the big difference is what that 1500 square feet cost to purchase and costs to maintain today.

> The average new home now has more bathrooms than occupants.

Most of the population lives in existing homes, not new homes. Housing cost these days is far more directly correlated to land value, which is itself correlated to location and access to "public" amenities like safety, transit corridors, "good" schools, job opportunities etc.

I'd wager that most people are actually getting by using many of the same strategies employed in the 1950s, and that people chased status by spending just as much back then as today, but that the game has changed dramatically due to a number of secular changes in the economy. These include effects of technology and automation, and globalization, which while they have increased the size of the global pie, have also reduced labor's (AKA most people) share of that pie.

</comment><comment><USER4> The truth is that post-war America was blessed by ridiculous growth for that half-century across all industries. That's not going to happen again. We have true global trade now and labour is fungible.

Reality is different now, guys. There's competition. And they're fucking good at what they do.

<comment><USER11> Alternatively, we can look to our fellow workers overseas and realize we have a common interest to not be exploited. We can work together towards a new system where we do not allow the free movement of capital to mercilessly exploit workers.

<comment><USER4> It's been 172 years since the workers of the world were asked to unite. They've realized in the intervening period that not only does the roofer in North Carolina share less in common with the road layer in the Philippines than the roofer business owner in NC but also he doesn't want to share more.

I, for one, don't care to shore up the race to the bottom. It's a physical law. I'm just going to aim to be wealthy enough that I'm not at the bottom. That will do.

Systems that require "if we all do this, it'll work" will not work and life being limited, I'm going to optimize elsewhere.

<comment><USER11> This is really sad and defeatist. It's not a physical law, but we will be reduced to serfs if this continues. The people of the Philippines are bravely fighting, including in armed conflict against the Duterte regime and have forced some concessions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Quick question:

How much do you spend each year?

Follow up:

How much is discretionary and could be cut?

In my experience very few people can answer that, regardless of whether they are rich or poor.

The fact that I have friends--grown adults!--who don't know how much money the spend each month or year... is just astonishing!

No wonder the author came to their conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER13> The comparison between food/exercise and income/expenses is analogous, but not equally challenging. It's easy to make $250k a year and only spend $50k because the diminishing return of spending money-- a single person can live a reasonably decent life on $50k. Compare this to earning $60k, spending the same amount, but spending less. Exercising completely wipes the diminishing return of food, albeit temporarily. Food tastes better and you are hungrier after a workout. It is easier to exercise financial constraint than dietary constraint.

</comment><comment><USER14> You could also say Wealth is the value you build for others. If you build a lot of value for others you get very wealthy. That does not mean you saved money, you invested money to build value for others.

<comment><USER15> It's very important to note that in this context the notion of "value" is weighted according to wealth. Feeding a starving kid creates zero "value" because the kid has no money. Owning a house in an area where other people are doing great things creates loads of "value," because those other people _do_ have money.

Wealth is the value you build for wealth-weighted-people, not the value you build for people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Once people do start saving and investing, a similar truism applies:

"You get what you don't pay for."

Jack Bogle popularized this statement. It means in investing, small differences in expenses make a huge difference over time. You get what you don't pay for.

</comment><comment><USER17> Income and wealth is like speed and distance. It's not hard to have high income with no wealth, and no income with high wealth.

Unfortunately, a lot of people conflate income with wealth.

<comment><USER18> You'd have to be really trying, in order to have no income with high wealth. You'd have to purposefully not lease your properties and try and keep all your money somewhere you can't make interest and also refuse to invest in even the most risk averse prospects.

<comment><USER19> It is trivial to profitably invest wealth while producing no income: invest in companies that don't issue dividends, whether public or private. You can achieve excellent investment returns solely on appreciation.

I know more than a few people with excellent investment returns and quite a bit of wealth that realize almost zero income from that wealth in a typical year. It is a common strategy, particularly if you do not _need_ the wealth to produce income.

<comment><USER20> I think the person you are replying to considers investment gains to be income (as do I). It's unrealized income, but income nevertheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> exercise should increase metabolism, but yes the problem is you still have to eat less or at least the same as you did when you didn't exercise, and when you don't exercise you should eat even less then when you normally do

</comment><comment><USER22> In 1955 the family income was usually only one salary. On the other hand you had a person full time cooking from raw ingredients, taking care of children and mending your clothes. So you didn't pay for eating out, daycare, or buying new clothes all the time.

<comment><USER23> Real Median Personal (not household!) income is also up significantly:

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> That would be the accountant's perspective.</comment>


Algorithms At Dead-End: Cannot Squeeze Knowledge Out Of A Pixel - <AUTHOR> http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2008/02/algorithms-at-d.html <comment><USER2> Just musing bit: I wonder about the power of narrative.

I do not mean the narrative style of TV shows like CSI and NCIS where they can "enhance" a single pixel into a recognisable face or number plate - rather the narrative of a sequence of transactions. Can a sequence tell a story that leads to comprehension - or at least to reduced false positives?

We know that Bayesian SPAM filters need to keep track of the new stories arriving in our email in-boxes as the SPAM and fraud "pitches" evolve over time - seems to me we should be able to do something similar with transactions - we just need to find a narrative (or some other less than perfect understanding) in any given sequence.

<comment><USER3> Sequence can be essential. Ever see a picture on a camera and not be able to place it or decode it ... then if you look at the pictures before it and after it. Then sometimes this is the context you need? Yep - just like that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jeff Jonas has actually done some pretty cool stuff related to information gathering over time. Worth checking out.

<http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3470.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the link to the podcast, Peter!</comment></comment>


ObjC2Swift: Open Source Obj-C to Swift Converter Written in Scala - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yahoojapan/objc2swift <comment><USER2> Nice, now to see how this compares to [https://objectivec2swift.com](https://objectivec2swift.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> In my experience it's a lot better, less picky.</comment></comment>


Some in Silicon Valley wonder if Facebook has grown too influential - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-election-media-20161109-story.html <comment><USER2> The article starts off stating that Hillary Clinton was the choice of nearly every newspaper editorial review board, and that despite those endorsements it didn't matter. Does anyone else find this incredibly tone deaf, particularly after last night's results?

To be clear, I did not vote for Trump, but my rejection of his candidacy was certainly not based on the stance of the LA Times editorial board. To be honest, with the amount of biased and sloppy journalism I read from even the venerated newspapers like the LA and NY Times, I'm not sure why the author assumes anyone should listen to the suggestions of their respective editorial boards.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it is tone deaf. It is a very valid point. People that working politics and research it as their job heavily recommended one candidate over the other. It is getting easier to ignore the opinion of an expert and instead find a source that agrees with how you feel. People are looking for reasons to discredit sources that they don't agree with. Sloppiness and bias will always happen, but at some point you have to realize that a source like The Wall Street Journal is better than Brietbart and that blog posts and opinion pieces should not be given the same weight as investigative journalism.

<comment><USER4> As an aside, while the WSJ may have some credibility it's not that far away ideologically from Bretibart. In particular I was reading an article there recently about the Wells Fargo scandal and despite it not being an editorial the entire article was essentially a defense piece for the executives. By no measure was it even an attempt at even-handed journalism, it was straight-up advocacy masquerading as news.

<comment><USER5> Like, oh, this? " _Wells Fargo Receives Laughable 'Punishment' for Massive Criminal Fraud_ ": [http://www.breitbart.com/national- security/2016/09/29/29-sep...](http://www.breitbart.com/national- security/2016/09/29/29-sep-16-world-view-wells-fargo-receives-laughable- punishment-massive-criminal-fraud/)

Breitbart is most certainly _not_ part of the Establishment that _The Wall Street Journal_ is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This fear is rooted in a continued misunderstanding of the election result by people in tech. Voters didn't vote for Trump because they read some fake news story on Facebook, they voted for him out of economic desperation. They weren't tricked or mislead into it.

<comment><USER7> The data does not support the idea that Trump voters are worse off economically than Clinton voters:

[http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of- trumps-...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps- working-class-support/)

<comment><USER8> There are several problems with this analysis.

First, it's based on the same older self-reported exit polling that led 538 to completely mispredict the election, so you should immediately be skeptical of the data.

Second, it only takes into account self-reported _current_ income blocks, not change in income over the last decade or so, which is what many Trump voters are angry about. For example, making $70k today might seem ok if you look at the table and see median state income is only $65k, but that means nothing to someone who made $90k in 2007 and has never been able to get income back to that level.

Third, it also ignores future predictions based on current state of affairs for voters. It's not very comforting if you make higher than the median income in your area, but your job is on the chopping block. Trump picked up far more non-college educated voters, for whom future job prospects look worse and worse every year, even if they have gainful employment today.

<comment><USER9> Do you have some useful research you could share?

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately I do not. It's very hard to find cohort-type labor stats at a large level among the typical wage and unemployment indexes. BLS does have the NLS study [1], but it doesn't quite cover the right things. Mostly what you get is individual stories like [2], which add up to a picture that at least many people believe, even if it isn't 100% true.

[1] [http://www.bls.gov/nls/](http://www.bls.gov/nls/) [2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/us-factory-workers-used-to- li...](http://www.businessinsider.com/us-factory-workers-used-to-live-pretty- good-lives-but-not-anymore-2012-10)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's funny how if HRC had won they would be praising FB for spreading the word. Obama was probably the first candidate to really use technology and social media effectively and was also praised for its use. Now that Trump has won FB is bad.

I saw a person on my FB feed the other night say that she knew Trump was going to take away her right to vote now that he won, and her post was like by many. Trump is flawed in many ways, but that is absurd.

Most(all?) of us here know to go and fact things we read, but this is not a new thing. The media has always been this way. The nightly news shaped the public by what stories they told and _left_ out. It's not a FB problem, but a people problem who surround themselves only with groups that confirm their already existing opinions, and stop questioning.

<comment><USER11> >I saw a person on my FB feed the other night say that she knew Trump was going to take away her right to vote now that he won, and her post was like by many. Trump is flawed in many ways, but that is absurd.

Is it? The Voting Rights Act is being gutted as we speak. [https://www.aclu.org/feature/voting-rights-2016-whats- stake](https://www.aclu.org/feature/voting-rights-2016-whats-stake)

<comment><USER10> Once again, the hyperbole does nothing but make people think you are making things up. No one is taking away a womans right to vote. Period. Whether you or I agree with the issues listed there, some do have a valid other side.

On its face, nothing is wrong with wanting to make sure a voter is who they say they are. Requiring an ID could also be too much of a hurdle though. There are reasonable and valid to sides of that argument.

Early voting is sort of a hit and miss. People voting too early may mean they miss important facts leading up to the election. But then, it can be hard to vote on the day of.

The problem is that even getting to vote has become too political because in general higher turnout is good for the Democrats and lower turnout good for the GOP. I wonder if some stat came out saying people who early voted for Trump really wanted to change after they learned more but could not, would the ACLU change their tune on early voting?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apparently they don't believe that social media worked in HRCs favor? I've seen many posts comparing Trump to Hitler . I don't think this article would have been printed if Hillary won, because she was the choice of most media outlets. When would Facebook stop with the moderating/fact checking? Would they allow personal false stories, but not official ones?

<comment><USER11> > I've seen many posts comparing Trump to Hitler

Trump wants to register and record all Muslims in a database. You can't tell me that doesn't smack of Nazism / fascist policies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This smacks of a journalist frantically attempting to remain relevant, similar to CNN saying:

        Remember, it's illegal to possess these stolen documents. It's
        different for the media. So everything you learn about this,
        you're learning from us.

Maybe if they didn't suck, people would still go to them for news. But as it stands, journalists with that "proclivity for fact checking" that the author mentions universally failed to see Trump winning. Their echo chamber is no better than most peoples' Facebook feeds these days.

<comment><USER9> Those are baseless assertions about made-up facts (including a fabricated quote). That's the difference between random information on the Internet and serious journalism.

The former is sensational and provokes an emotional reaction, but those don't indicate truth. IME when professional communicators, like political leaders and news sources, increase the former, it's a very good sign that they lack the latter.

<comment><USER14> What fabricated quote are you referring to? I hope not the quote in the comment you're replying to: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_Wtu8Pzvd4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_Wtu8Pzvd4)

Was there a fabricated quote some other time during that segment that you're referring to? I'm finding your comment difficult to parse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There seems to be a flurry of these anti-Zuckerberg articles today.

The Verge: [Mark Zuckerberg sidesteps blame for Trump presidency, says we should all 'work harder']([http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/10/13582008/mark- zuckerberg-...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/10/13582008/mark-zuckerberg- facebook-trump-president-statement))

Insinuating that he is in fact to blame. The article doesn't make an argument that he is (other then repeatedly mentioning that he didn't say who he voted for), but intent of the headline is obvious.

<comment><USER16> I wonder why Zuckerberg (and the people behind Twitter) weren't as equally _blamed_ when the Arab Spring started. As far as I remember both FB and Twitter were heralded as pinnacles of democracy back then by some of the same journalists who now decry how "social media is helping spread bullshit facts".

<comment><USER17> It's the double-edged sword with a lot of tech and you see it also with Tor and Wikileaks.

It's great when it's being used against your opponents but you hate it when it's being used against your own side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Program or be programmed" \- Rushkoff said it best.

In a world where your Rushkoffs[1] go unread, we are spiraling into some sort of local maxima where social media is realized for what it is, and the problems associated with social media are epidemic.

The crux of the issue lies in the fact that nobody knows what social media is, or indeed cyber. "Cyber" as it stands now is some far off place, in a William Gibson fantasy, but infact operates in the world seemingly un-noticed by the smartphone equipped masses.

As I said; it's not long until people realize they've been played and their eyeball hours and data exhausts are being sold to the highest bidder for hard cash. It makes me wonder why smartphones even cost so much. Surely they should be 'free' given how much data can be gleaned from a smartphone owner?

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

</comment><comment><USER19> I have had this feeling for a year but I think FBs decline has started. Facebook Inc always presents growth during their quarterly report, but the truth is that its growing in "3rd world" countries but dying in the western world.

I admit I do have a facebook account, but its only used for events and messenger. I havent posted for like 4 years now. The few times I check FB its filled with memes, autoplaying videos and few individuals who seems to be very noisy.

The gut feelings is that facebook.com will become less valuable, but I still think facebook inc will keep growing. They have acquired Whatsapp and Instagram so in a way they have maintained a significant section of the people who "left" facebook.com.

I would love to hear the opinion of other people on this matter.

<comment><USER20> I went through and unfollowed every single person and group on my facebook, life is far more pleasant. Boy the unimaginable amount of people basing their lives off sharing memes and untrue articles was just plain unbelievable.

<comment><USER19> If I may ask, how does FB.com fare with your closest friends?

<comment><USER20> I have a few close friends and a plethora of acquaintances. A lot of my closest friends aren't particularly politically motivated so we don't talk about it much, but plenty of my acquaintances are. Now I don't argue with them anymore and read books instead. Much preferred.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's a squishy headline. That Facebook is too influential (both directly in terms of the impact of their policies, and indirectly in terms of its power as a misinformation amplification device) is abundantly clear.

Not to say that I have a solution for it. Anything I can think of has its own problems. But, we should accept as a truism that any centralized service with that much sway over multiple hours of hundreds of millions of people's days is "too influential".

<comment><USER22> > Not to say that I have a solution for it

I do.

Regulators should shutdown or deny fb many of the privileges it currently has; consumers should minimize or avoid Fb altogether. Its doable, I stopped using Fb regularly two years ago and now I only check my page twice or thrice a year. Fb is not in any way essential for daily living.

<comment><USER23> > I stopped using Fb regularly two years ago and now I only check my page > twice or thrice a year.

This is not "stopped using". This is "using less frequently".

> Regulators should shutdown or deny fb many of the privileges it currently > has

What privileges do they have?

<comment><USER24> >This is not "stopped using". This is "using less frequently".

Not OC, but I deleted my Facebook account about 6 or 7 years ago and I'm still quite happy with it.

My university course communicates 99% over WhatsApp or Signal or Email/Git.

It's certainly doable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"Technological change is mostly inevitable ... I don 't think we could have avoided what's happened. Often when technology causes a problem, it also hands you a solution. I'm hoping that will be the case here. But I'm damned if I know what it is."_

I think these are common cop-outs, easy irresponsibility by people in our industry (in fact, I'm omitting the speaker becasue my comment is about the industry and not to pick apart the words of someone who spoke off-the-cuff in a moment). They only work because outsiders exalt us and don't question us (yet), and insiders don't question these ideas because they serves our interest and we hear them so much that the ideas have become normalized. But let's look at them with fresh eyes:

* "Technological change is mostly inevitable" is just really a way to rationalize doing whatever you want without the burdens of accountability and responsibility - 'there's nothing I can do, it's inevitable!'. It's similar to 'God made me do it' or 'I was following orders'.

* "Often when technology causes a problem, it also hands you a solution." As I understand the implication, the premise is that the problem is unanticipated and the solution a reaction. But that again avoids responsibility: Many problems of tech, especially the consequences of spreading misinformation widely, can be anticipated and dealt with proactively. Also, it assumes that some god, Technology, is giving and withholding things - again it's out of our hands.

* "I'm damned if I know what it is." That's another rationalization to avoid responsibility, a common one: a claim of helplessness. People in SV pride themselves on solving the impossible; probably these words wouldn't be heard if solving the problem was a priority.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd like to see Facebook add an 'Unverified' reaction button. I know people can post rebuttals in comments but making it easier and more visible may help people report factually unsupported stuff.

It could have an question mark icon to emphasize that there are questions remaining around a post.

Facebook might eventually use this to lower visibility of articles that are widely marked as 'Unverified'

<comment><USER26> I'd almost rather Snopes have an open API social networks could use to automatically mark these posts "debunked".

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Some in SV wonder if the people have too much choice"? Is that what you said?

</comment><comment><USER28> So, in other words, the people of America are not capable of interpreting information when it is not tightly controlled by a small number of outlets. Therefore we, the elite that know better, need to manage this medium so that they get the information that we deem correct.

Clearly nothing has changed since Tuesday.

</comment><comment><USER17> Trump had Facebook and HRC had Twitter.

Hyperbole aside, we're probably better off using this as a tipping point for teaching people to think critically.

For every online platform that controls political messaging there will be an alternate platform that allows it to flow. It's the nature of the web, you can't put it back in the bottle now.

edit: not that bubbles don't exist - suggest you expand your own bubble. Relevant preview from Adam Curtis' new doc:

[https://streamable.com/qcg2](https://streamable.com/qcg2)

<comment><USER29> > and HRC had Twitter

Did she though?

You're trying to pin Trump as using Mom and Pop level tech to convince the uneducated while Hilary was using good and honest woke tech for intellectuals.

If that were the case why did Trump have a following on Reddit ten times the size of HRC?

HRC may have had Twitter in the liberal tech echo chamber you follow but America is bigger than just that. The Trump campaign used social media highly effectively (often in awful ways) and it wasn't just taking advantage of senile old Facebook users like you seem to be trying to sell it as.

<comment><USER17> > Hyperbole aside

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> No it's not. People just in general have a herd mentality. If social signals are important to you, if your need to fit in is more important than having your own opinion then no amount of "fixing" the algorithm is going to change that.

Furthermore those 40% comes from all sorts of papers but all but one was against Trump. Yet he won.

Fake news is only useful to fuel your anger if you have already decided. The reason why people are swing voters is exactly because they weight in many factors not because they let themselves be fooled by fake news IMO.

Furthermore the beauty of networks like Facebook and Twitter is that they are self-correcting. The lie doesn't travel faster than the rebuttal of that lie.

Lastly I am not sure the article has a very clear idea of what actually constitutes a lie since a lot of those lies are really just different interpretation of the same things. And FB is actually quite good at having related articles of something which often will have different views in them.

Facebook is one of the places where you actually meet most people of dissenting views to yours.

<comment><USER31> 'Facebook is one of the places where you actually meet most people of dissenting views to yours.'

I think Facebook has a strong motivation to tailor the newsfeed algorithm to keep you longer on Facebook, see more ads, generate more clicks and revenue etc, so there might be a case to be made in order to engage you more, the algorithm should show you more content you like or tend to agree with than ones you would not want to engage with (remember Facebook doesn't have a dislike button), so I think its not really a great place to meet most people of dissenting views to yours, I would actually speculate that its probably the other way around, Facebook is one fo the places where you meet most people sharing the same views as yours.

/0.2$

edit: typo

<comment><USER32> > I think Facebook has a strong motivation to tailor the newsfeed algorithm to > keep you longer on Facebook

I agree, though you take that to mean they must want to show the user things she likes. Me personally, the best way to keep me on anything is to show me someone making an almost good argument but with a few crippling flaws. I'll spend hours on the rebuttal.

That said, I believe you're right that Facebook skews towards your likes over intelligently tailoring the stream for us argumentative folks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> so it basically says you need some censorship into the social media? who is going to censor the content then? maybe consult with some countries that are good at censorship.

or just develop some new AI algorithm that does fact-check with a colored button, the darker it is the more fake it is, or something like that?

</comment><comment><USER34> Yes, but not for the reasons the author thinks.

</comment><comment><USER35> Some wonder if click-baity FUD has grown too influential.

</comment><comment><USER36> On the contrary, Facebook is the one place where people get pushed out of their filter bubbles regularly.

You know your racist family member you see sharing conspiracy theories on Facebook? That's reality, that's something punching through the filter bubble.

It's precisely because Facebook is full of hometown and family connections that it lets these ideas leak across. It makes Facebook feel pretty bad sometimes, because filter bubbles are very pleasant.

<comment><USER37> I respectfully disagree - after the election, my liberal friends filled my timeline with screeds about the death of America and minorities, while my conservative friends messaged me privately in celebration. I didn't see a single pro-Trump post all day.

As a centrist, the level of vitriol was very shocking, and it did not come from the party you'd expect.

<comment><USER38> > my liberal friends filled my timeline with screeds about the death of > America and minorities, while my conservative friends messaged me privately > in celebration. I didn't see a single pro-Trump post all day.

This is an example of "preference falsification". The energy (in "the ability of a system to do work" sense) of aptly-named social media is social pressure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The FB propaganda effect is easy to measure. Just look at how 'surprised' Dem Facebook were that Trump won, vs the same with Repub users.

The level of surprise should be identical among both groups, but that's very obviously not the case. Facebook feeding its users biased news isn't the only reason Trump won, but given how many hours per day folks spend on the site (compared with traditional media) it was clear a huge contributing factor.

<comment><USER12> Oh c'mon. Do you really believe Facebook is stacked with Republicans? Don't you remember the controversy over Facebook censoring conservative views? If anything, the company was pro-Clinton

<comment><USER39> Facebook's pro-Clinton bias is why Trump won. Clinton's supporters were completely insulated from reality, and many were celebrating their victory before the election even happened.</comment></comment></comment>


Donald Rumsfeld's Snowflake Poetry (unknown knowns till now) - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/27/donald-rumsfelds-snowflake-poetry-is-exactly-what-america-needs-right-now-216534 <comment><AUTHOR> there's beauty in them texts here :)</comment>


Apply HN: Tryshop – Amazon with real fitting rooms - <AUTHOR> Problem: Online shopping is just like gambling, as we occasionally receive wrong-sized or poor-quality items. Returning a purchase isn't so easy, because at the very least we have to deal with USPS and then wait upwards of several days for our refunds. On the other hand, offline shopping is very tiring and time consuming. The choices are limited and it's difficult to compare prices.
Tryshop: You can order clothes online and try them on in a real fitting room. Of course, it's completely free of charge. You can even order multiple sizes of the same items.
How: Behind the scenes, we work with brick-and-mortar stores and operate like Instacart. We collect the orders from local stores and deliver them to our fitting rooms or to your home. You can then try them on. This way, we can benefit from the best features of both online and offline shopping. In other words, all the stores in your city connected by one online shop with one fitting room. As for the fitting rooms, we can use the fitting rooms of local stores or we can open our own fitting rooms.
Demo: http://www.app.tryshop.co Built with Meteor, which I am a huge fan of. You will be automatically logged in to a demo account and can experience the checkout process. Please let me know if you encounter any problems.
About me: I am a physicist and a JS developer who had worked on a technicolor model for a few years until the Higgs boson was discovered. However, I don't regret choosing that model instead of the Standard model because I think it was a good gamble. I'm a solo founder and planning to launch the app in May. If you have any questions, comments, feedback, or interest in the project, be sure to reach out to me. Thanks.
Some useful statistics:
67%- The conversion rate of customers who try on clothes in real fitting rooms. 69%- The percentage of people who look up products online, but then choose to buy them in a physical store. 62%- The percentage of online shoppers who were unhappy with fit. <comment><USER2> People who buy from stores after trying on are sometimes not happy with fit either. I don't see a comparison statistic there. You cite 62% of online shoppers as being unhappy with fit, but how does that compare to IRL shoppers who are unhappy with fit?

Lots of people have trouble finding anything at all that fits well. I think mass customization may be a better solution to that issue. Let people input their measurements, then make the garment based on the measures they gave you.

I also think online stores need a great deal more basic information, such as materials that the garment is made from. When I have shopped online, trying to determine if it is, for example, 100% cotton has been challenging.

I have upvoted you, because I think this is a great problem space to tackle, but I really don't know if this is a good approach or not.

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally i simply dont shop clothes online, but i think its a interesting concept. I assume you heard about Zalando? They are a huge clothes retailer here in europe and their business model is based making the return process as easy as possible so customers can try it on at home, they got huge very fast and a lot of people love this service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback herbst. That's what I'm trying to to do. Make shopping more easier. I noticed that I keep a lot of clothes even if I were unhappy with them because of the return process. I wouldn't have bought them in the first place if I had tried them on before buying. What do you think about offline shopping? What is the thing that bothers you the most?</comment></comment>


How Spoil (YC W15) avoided paying for the word 'gift' during the holidays - <AUTHOR>

As a startup that curates and delivers gifts we wanted to avoid bidding and paying for clicks on the word gift. That competition would be way to expensive this time of year, and we need to be as frugal as possible. What we did was approach a bunch of companies here in Montreal and offered to be their official secret santa provider. This allowed us to get free exposure, orders and even if companies said no, people still found out about us and ordered gifts individually. If you guys want to send out some awesome gifts this holiday season, check us out at https://spoil.io!
Any feedback on the experience would be super appreciated. <comment><USER2> Er, are you actually YC W15?

If so, this is an incredibly terrible way to announce your affiliation. Spamming HN? The batch hasn't even started yet!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry you feel that way. I don't mean to be spamming, but I wanted to take Paul Buchheit's advice that he posted on our Google group today. I thought I had an interesting story and wanted to share with you guys. Didn't mean to come of as spammy, honest mistake if I did. Still learning the ropes around here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks really sleek! Too bad your service isn't available in Europe :<.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words! ya sorry about that, we wish we could open up in Europe but impossible for now :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Loooove the service. You _actually_ deliver the experience you promise. Props.

<comment><AUTHOR> many thanks! ya we are always trying to improve the experience people have with us. Started off pretty rough lol, but as of late people are loving what they are getting</comment></comment>


Remove unused css - <AUTHOR> http://addyosmani.com/blog/removing-unused-css/ <comment><AUTHOR> What's amazing about gulp-uncss is that it fires up phantomjs to run the javascript, so it would hopefully work with angular as well.</comment>