Wi-Fi hack creates 'no iOS zone' that cripples iPhones and iPads - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/22/wi-fi-hack-ios-iphone-ipad-apple <comment><USER2> > Victims in range cannot do anything about it. Think about the impact of > launching such an attack on Wall Street, or maybe at the world's busiest > airports, or at large utility plants. The results would be catastrophic.

While I can certainly agree it would be annoying, a nuisance and productivity- hindering, calling this "catastrophic" is probably overdoing it a tad much.

Catastrophic means by definition that it's related to or involves a catastrophe. iPhone-users not being able to use their iPhones hardly counts as that, no matter where on the planet that happens.

With all that said: Neat hack. Now I feel like reproducing it :)

<comment><USER3> Please do try to reproduce it - the company that is responsible for this "discovery" also happens to be selling a product that is supposed to prevent this attack, and the tone of their PR has got my BS-detectors ringing.

An example of the sort of thing that gives me doubts. They refer to another supposed demonstrated attack called "Wifigate", which no-one has been talking about, except for themselves. And when you read the details, they claim that iPhones come preloaded with a bunch of WiFi SSIDS that the phone will automatically connect to. mostly telecommunications companies. Up until recently I used to work for one of those listed companies, and I have owned iPhones continuously since the iPhone 3G. I can tell you categorically that iPhones do _not_ automatically connect to SFR wifi hotspots like this company claims. This fact destroys an important part of their claim for this current "attack", that you can be affected even if you've never connected to a Wifi hotspot.

So that's one guaranteed example of exaggeration right there, which seeing as it's the only piece of information in the article that I'm capable of verifying myself, makes me very distrustful of the entire article.

<comment><USER4> > When combined with an earlier vulnerability, named "Wi-Figate", which lets > attackers force a device to automatically connect to a given WiFi network

I'm not fully up on exploitable iOS tricks, but it sounds like they're spoofing a BSSID to be one that the iOS device has already connected to (because iOS devices broadcast this when scanning for networks IIRC?), but has RADIUS authentication with a specially crafted server certificate that manages to crash the network stack.

<comment><USER5> > (because iOS devices broadcast this when scanning for networks IIRC?)

Not anymore, Apple fixed that in recent iOS versions. Probe requests are not divulging SSIDs anymore. However WifiGate uses common SSIDs and network operators preloaded ones as honeypots.

<comment><USER6> Seems that wasn't fixed reliably. Still seeing lots of probe requests. Is there a [https://support.apple.com/HT..](https://support.apple.com/HT..). talking about it?

<comment><USER5> Not aware of anything from Apple about this issue. It was just an assumption, sorry. What I did is test up to date devices (i think i even tested an up to date iOS 6) and couldn't get any specific SSID. The probe requests were still there, but SSID parameter was always set to Broadcast.

However I did see a lots of probe requests WITH a SSID parameter set but those were not coming from my devices :). I assumed they were not up to date.

I am very interested to know if the probe requests you're seeing are also coming from unknown devices: if they aren't, could you provide us with the iOS version you're using/testing with?

<comment><USER6> The devices I know are several iPhones 6/6+ running iOS 8.3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's something very off about this story, especially since it doesn't even attempt to mention obvious scenarios like "what if I have WiFi turned off?".

 _If_ iOS would actually try to find WiFi networks with WiFi turned off, that would be a much bigger story than some exploitable vulnerability. This whole story smells of sensationalism over facts.

<comment><USER8> Not necessarily. Android has an option (which is on by default) where Wi-Fi off really means off except for location assistance. If iOS has something similar and the issue even affects that passive scanning, it could be a deeper problem. I wouldn't say that's likely, but it is possible.

<comment><USER9> Do you have any source for this?

I'm pretty sure wifi needs to be on for location assistance (Google Maps complains about this all the time).

<comment><USER10> [http://imgur.com/fIFCLNi](http://imgur.com/fIFCLNi)

From 4.3 you can have Wifi "off" but still allow location through WiFi.

<comment><USER11> Just wanted to say thanks for posting this. I wasn't aware that this was the case on Android. I've now turned my WiFi "completely" off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I right in thinking that the user has to have attempted to connect to the network before the bug has triggered (I'm assuming so, since AFAIK iOS doesn't randomly download SSL certs from WiFi APs). If that is the case, calling it a 'no iOS zone' seems a bit much. The title makes it sound like some kind of iOS Specific "Cyber-EMP" ;)

<comment> jay-saint Carriers pre-populate iOS 8 phones to automatically connect to their wifi signals. This hack involves spoofing official AT&T and Sprint wifi hot spots that the carrier has forced you to trust.

This earlier bug called WiFiGate has a list of pre-populated trusted wifi networks. From the same group [https://www.skycure.com/blog/wifigate-how- mobile-carriers-ex...](https://www.skycure.com/blog/wifigate-how-mobile- carriers-expose-us-to-wi-fi-attacks/)

<comment><USER13> I don't use any iOS devices anymore but I have many friends that do, is there a convenient way to disable these preconfigured wifi hotspots permanently?

Edit: according to the article you linked (under the consumers section), iOS has no interface for doing this. I find this pretty appalling.

<comment><USER14> Yes, it does. You just choose the SSID and tap 'forget this network'. You can also disable the 'automatically connect' functionality.

I 'forgot' the attwifi SSID long ago, and I have never had my phone try to auto-connect to one, even though they are everywhere.

The article ignores this because it weakens the headline.

<comment><USER6> Only possible when the wifi is in range.

<comment><USER15> So first you need to spoof the SSID ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a whole lot of FUD coming from this company. Obviously it's a marketing ploy for attention. They should have waited to go public after Apple made a fix. By pre announcing the existence of the flaw they've helped miscreants point their fuzzers at a target, potentially putting users at risk.

</comment><comment><USER17> Surely if you had a decent crash bug in iOS's SSL handling, you'd look to escalate that to some kind of exploit e.g. arbitrary code execution? This doesn't smell right.

<comment><USER18> Not all crash bug can lead to remote code execution. A null dereference bug is a good example of that. No mater the context, you won't be able to do anything other than crash the software.

<comment><USER19> That's not quite right. NULL pointer dereference can be exploited:

[https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/much_ado_about_null_e...](https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/much_ado_about_null_exploiting1)

[http://tk-blog.blogspot.com/2009/01/exploitable-userland-nul...](http://tk- blog.blogspot.com/2009/01/exploitable-userland-null-pointer.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Blog post about it from the company that discovered the bug: [https://www.skycure.com/blog/ios-shield-allows-dos- attacks-o...](https://www.skycure.com/blog/ios-shield-allows-dos-attacks-on- ios-devices/)

<comment><USER20> A bit breathless there:

"We knew that any delay in patching the vulnerability could lead to a serious business impact: an organized denial of service (DoS) attack can lead to big losses."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> And this is just one reason why I always switch on 'Ask to join networks'.

<comment><USER13> Seriously. This should be the default setting on all devices. Accessing random open networks is generally not a good plan for many reasons...

Edit: (See below comments) I actually have the equivalent of what you are talking about disabled on my phone (android), as it creates a popup context menu that is too easily pressed 'accessing random open networks'. You want the user to have to open the wifi settings and select a network they know / have preconfigured, not some open network that the phone is eager to join.

<comment><USER22> An iOS device will only connect to known networks. By enabling "Ask to Join Networks" it will list networks and ask if you want to join any of them – but only if no known network is in range. This is actually less safe, in that you're just a button press away from "accessing random open networks" instead of having to go into the settings and choose a network – so it makes sense to have it default to off.

tl;rl: iOS will only join known networks – toggling this setting will make it easier to join networks when no known networks are in range.

edit: Link to the relevant section in the manual: [https://help.apple.com/iphone/8/#/iph1b489c85f](https://help.apple.com/iphone/8/#/iph1b489c85f)

<comment><USER23> Here's the problem:

If a device will "only connect to known networks", that means that it sends out an ARP request. In a nutshell, the phone shouts wirelessly «HEY! IS _BILL WI THE SCIENCE FI_ AROUND?»

You can very easily set up a system that will respond to every single ARP request and then 'broadcast' that SSID. If you broadcast the SSID, with no password, and the device sees it, then it will connect to this 'known' network.

That's a big problem

<comment><USER24> > If a device will "only connect to known networks", that means that it sends > out an ARP request.

You seem to have confused IP address resolution with wi-fi access point discovery. ARP requests don't happen until after a device is associated with a wi-fi access point.

It is possible to arrange for a device to scan for wi-fi networks passively, so the device will not be detected until it actually discovers and attempts to connect to a particular network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Loosely related: iOS devices are very talkative about seen Wi-Fi networks albeit Apple started to address such privacy issues with iOS 8, see [http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2uyw50/wifi_privacy...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2uyw50/wifi_privacypolice_prevents_your_smartphone_or/cofucmk)

<comment><USER5> It doesn't seems to be iOS 8 only. Recent versions of iOS 7 seem to be fixed as well. (Tested my phone earlier this week)

<comment><USER6> How long did you test? I'd recommend sniffing for at least a few hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My house is about to become a no iOS zone... hehe

</comment><comment><USER26> Can this be implemented in schools to curb use of digital devices (which in my opinion should be completely banned in every academic environment from kindergarten through university)?

<comment><USER27> What? Search engines, online encyclopediae, and educational software are each an absolute boon to learning.

<comment><USER15> Yes, because there's nothing on the internet or available via a smartphone that can distract from school based education at any time, it's inconceivable. /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I use to make my own firewall on a spare pc. It is well known in my public and private life I have a strong anti-Apple bias. So much so that my teenage daughter rebelled by picking up an iPhone when she was 15.

My firewall always limited usage by OS. Linux and my desktop had the full fire hose. Everything else 75% and Apple products had 10% and video played at only low quality.

The only way people could get the 75% was to connect with their iPhone to my guest wifi Apple_Evil and type in the password applesucks. Great funs, but this hack, you get to personally own up and see their faces and not break stuff.

<comment><USER29> I was waiting for that story to end with "… and then I turned 12 and outgrew this".

What ever happened to promoting OSS by making it better? Forcing people to play juvenile games seems like a great way to turn everyone off on Linux permanently.

<comment><USER30> Look at the bright side: if his children rebel by buying Apple products that's relatively harmless. Maybe they will consider that rebellion enough and refrain from the more dangerous actions.

<comment><USER28> Exactly. Plus we always laugh about it than I give "the stare."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


TrueCrypt 7.0a's Performance, Analyzed - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/truecrypt-aes-ni-encryption,2899.html#xtor=RSS-182

<comment><USER2> I really, really wish more reviews would use real-world scenarios (file copying/moving, boot-up time, application load times, game level load times, etc) when benchmarking hard drives instead of almost useless theoretical tests or benchmark suites that give you a large number at the end that means nothing. All this review tells me is that hardware decryption is faster than software decryption.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, would be great to get that statistics/benchmark as well, because now that does not making huge clue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Question: would adding another hardware RNG to feed the random queue significantly boost performance here?

<comment><USER4> No.

<http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/random-number-generator>

The RNG pool is used for creating: the master key (for encrypting the data in the volume), temporary secondary key (for generating a pseudorandom stream to initially overwrite a volume's empty space), salt (for passphrase hashing, using pbkdf2), and (optionally) a keyfile.

That is all limited to the process of setting up a volume, and so the RNG pool is not used for typical operations on a volume after that volume is created.</comment></comment>


How the American economy conspires to keep wages down - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/13/american-economy-wage-suppression-how-it-works <comment><USER2> "Economists will tell you that wages generally increase with productivity"

This is one of the biggest furphies/lies/trick..

humans can only do say 8hrs hard work every day.. that's it.. there is not, and never was a possibility of a "productivity increase" unless you were lazy.</comment>


Boaty McBoatface may not be name of new polar research vessel - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/18/boaty-mcboatface-may-not-be-name-of-new-polar-research-vessel <comment><USER2> When bureaucrats won't accept the outcome of a vote on a trivial matter, is it any wonder that people no longer feel motivated to participate in more serious political issues? What this comes down to is that the minister and his deputies don't want to deal with the momentary political embarrassment of officially launching a boat with a silly name, so ministerial ego requires snubbing thousands of people who voted in good faith, notwithstanding the somewhat childish humor on display.

I actually think it's a good name; Thomas the Tank engine has been a rather successful global cultural export for Britain, and Boaty McBoatface could have done the same for British scientific endeavor. After all, Charles Darwin made many of his intellectual breakthroughs while sailing around the world on a ship named after someone's favorite breed of dog (HMS Beagle). If a ship with a silly name was good enough for King George IV it's good enough for today.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like their idea of going with a different name, but making a children's education book with Boaty McBoatface. Not bad.</comment>


Taut (FKA BetterSlack) is back - <AUTHOR> https://taut.rocks <comment><AUTHOR> Taut is the Refined GitHub of Slack. It has been taken down by Slack in August [0] and is back live since September.

[0]: [https://g3rv4.com/2018/08/bye-bye- betterslack](https://g3rv4.com/2018/08/bye-bye-betterslack)</comment>


Australia's raids on journalists signal an authoritarian turning point - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/06/06/banana-republic.html <comment><USER2> Whilst the recent events are absolutely appealing, and Doctorow's central thesis is correct, there are a few things I feel the need to correct as an Australian:

Firstly, 'Australia is a politically unstable state whose governments routinely fail' is either a gross exaggeration or a misunderstanding.

No government has 'failed' in such a sense since 1975 --- a change of Prime Minister is not the same as an impeached President or a Parliament that falls apart. It is true we've had five PMs since 2013, but _the government_ has only changed once. That is, Labor lost the election in 2013 to a legitimate alternative in the Coalition. Everything else is internal shenanigans --- neither policy nor implementation change measurably.

Secondly, 'The country's elites rely on voter suppression and other antimajoritarian tactics' is also a misreading of the political climate. 'voter suppression' doesn't really work in a nation with compulsory voting and a turnout of 92%.

I'm usually the first to point out that we have an issue with media concentration, particularly in regional areas with only one daily masthead, but the reality is much less stark than the one Doctorow paints here. Murdoch is Murdoch, not the China People's Daily. Tellingly, one of the journalists raided was a News Corp editor, and The Australian Newspaper is in as much of a flurry about these raids as anyone else.

EDIT: Sorry, I don't want to sound like a parochial whinger with a patriotic glass jaw, but this is a seriously important topic, and context is king.</comment>


JSON Web Tokens - <AUTHOR> http://self-issued.info/docs/draft-ietf-oauth-json-web-token.html

<comment><USER2> > The claims in a JWT are encoded as a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) > object

BRB going to the atm machine and putting in my pin number</comment>


Ask HN: Tips on Moving/Getting Hired into the Denver/Boulder Tech World - <AUTHOR> I'm a NYC based product manager who is trying to figure out the best way to move to the Denver/Boulder area. It seems that the Boulder and Denver startup weeks would be good networking events, what other events or knowledge might be helpful as I work toward finding and making connections within the tech Colorado tech world. Thanks! <comment><USER2> There are a ton of start ups here in Boulder, Denver and the outlaying suburbs. Even Fort Collins (FOCO). If you are physically in Colorado, there are ton of meetups. I would recommend New Tech Denver, New Tech Boulder. (These are are great networking events, usually 100 people.) I host the CoFounder Lab in Denver.

Denver startup week is in the fall, and Boulder is I think right now? I have found these weeks to be best for networking and maybe partying.

I don't know much about product manager positions, but you try talking to a recruiter, at least to get the lay of the land.

Lots of cannabis start ups as well. I would also check [http://angel.co](http://angel.co)

Hope that helps.</comment>


Sparklines component for React - <AUTHOR> http://borisyankov.github.io/react-sparklines/

<comment><USER2> Looks really nice under Chrome. But does not render any of the example except Simple and Customizable under my IE11.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can it be used in ClojureScript?</comment>


Compass and straightedge geometry meets HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://cautery.blogspot.com/2012/05/compass-and-straightedge-geometry-meets.html

<comment><USER2> Thanks for all the views. As I mention in the comments in this blog entry, I've got a better version of the engine hiding at the very bottom of [http://cautery.blogspot.com/2012/06/four-ways-to- construct-p...](http://cautery.blogspot.com/2012/06/four-ways-to-construct- pentagon.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Really good post, can't believe I'm the first one upvoting that submission after all this time. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4316831></comment></comment>


How Many Hours A Week Do You Work? - <AUTHOR>

Answers on a postcard please.<p>I'm feeling like I don't achieve much per week and need validation! <comment><USER2> I'd say 25 hours a week.

But what does that mean? Are you looking for actual work towards your company's product? And what does THAT mean? Time spent coding a feature? Research? Professional development? Or are you looking for just time spent at work?

Revised, I spend probably 25 hours at work. Maybe 70% is added value to the company. Maybe half of that is actual coding.

How are you determining your 'I don't achieve much per week'?

</comment><comment><USER3> I work 45 hours per week</comment>


Abolish the Police? Survivors of the Chaos in Seattle Aren't So Sure - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/us/defund-police-seattle-protests.html <comment><USER2> I really hate that in typical US manner this issue gets pushed to the extreme so in the end a reasonable discussion can't be had but it's only a fight with everybody digging in and not listening to each other.

Abolishing the police was always nonsense but there are plenty of areas where police is overused and too aggressive. In my view there shouldn't be police in schools or hospitals. The drug war causes a lot of unnecessary arrests and aggravation with a lot of neighborhoods. Bad cops often stay in the force without consequences for clearly bad behavior. Cops don't have enough training so they aren't prepared for difficult situation . The list goes on and on.

Addressing these issues would be good for cops, citizens and also public budgets. But instead the country chooses to have this stupid fight where the interested parties spend a lot of time distorting other views. Reminds me of the typical healthcare discussions. It's very sad.

<comment><USER3> I think the thing you're missing here is that the distortion (see the use of the word abolish here, the proposal is defunding) is completely deliberate.

This divide didn't happen by accident, it's the product of decades of deliberate political choices.

<comment><USER4> Social media algorithms amplify the most engaging content, and extreme versions of political statements are very engaging. I don't think it takes deliberate messaging tactics by one side or another for our current political climate to emerge.

<comment><USER3> The strategy has been in place since the 1960s. Read up on the history of anti-abortion in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Abolishing the police combined with the protests (or riots) and the move against the NRA creates a very uncomfortable environment for probably half of the United States.

All in an election year no less.

Does no one remember 2000,2004 and 2016? Perhaps the DNC could write a book called "How to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory"

<comment><USER6> You should be aware that I've talked to liberals in rural areas who feel physically threatened by far-right rhetoric. I.e. the "the only good democrat is a dead democrat" video, conservatives guarding voting locations with guns, the president encouraging both these examples, etc. A couple of them have taken up gun ownership _specifically because of this fear_. I absolutely sympathize with both sides, but being "very uncomfortable" is nowhere near one-sided.

<comment><USER7> I have never once encountered "far-right rhetoric. I.e. the only good democrat is a dead democrat", sounds more like authoritarian propaganda to me

<comment><USER8> Trump retweeted it. And yeah, it certainly does sound like authoritarian propaganda.

<comment><USER7> He retweeted a supporter video in which the person clearly said "Dead Politically" that was taken out of context by the media and other perpetually offended left wing people ironically in the exact way the person in the video said it would.

The cancel culture of the perpetually offended is simply insane

<comment><USER8> Sorry, what cancel culture? Who got cancelled here? Did you "never" hear him say the words "the only good democrat is a dead democrat," or are you actually familiar with the video that was originally mentioned that you previously denied the existence of?

And what does "politically dead" mean, anyway? Does it have anything to do with cancellation?

<comment><USER6> I know you're forming a rational argument, but of course what it "means" is obvious from the video: It's just the arbitrary punchline in the typical bit: "I'm going to support [murder|violence|hatred|oppression|racism|sexism] against my political enemy - but it's _just a joke_! If you criticize me you're dumb!" He could have chosen anything for the "it's just a joke!" part - he happened to choose a strained analogy.

However, note well that, aside from his obviously being immoral, it doesn't ultimately matter what he "meant" as much as what his crowd heard, and how they reacted. This particular crowd's lust for killing democrats is above board, and this may be a tiny sample, but it mirrors the stream of hatred and desire for violence that we normally only hear in such undisguised words on the internet - and occasionally in person - from "normal people" (i.e. not leaders or other speaking personalities).

I sometimes wonder if there are leaders who, upon doing or saying something evil, hear the reaction of their constituents, and feel any remorse/disillusionment when they realize exactly how "not a joke" the hatred is. Another example was the guy who viciously attacked the journalist who was persisting aggressively - did he feel any guilt inside? What about when he saw his constituents explicitly applaud his violence in the following days?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Aren't so sure" from reading the article seems like an understatement. Many of the people featured in this article are suing the city for not doing it's responsibility.

I get that police treatment is often inequitable, but I think we've had some experiments this summer showing that some of the radical changes being proposed have their own problems.

<comment><USER10> > the radical changes being proposed have their own problems

I'd like to point out that none of said changes have been implemented anywhere in the US in any meaningful way. Save some minor defunding, I know of no locale who has transferred any responsibility away from the police, which is one of the main roads to abolition. As another poster said, this is a very clear straw man. CHAZ was a result of protesting and an incredibly aggressive Seattle PD, not an ideal people are looking to recreate everywhere.

<comment><USER9> Fair point - you're right that the suggested policies have not been implemented in a meaningful way.

My point was that some relatively minor changes (de facto abandoning neighborhoods as in CHAZ, changes to bail laws in NY being two examples) have led to some pretty drastic (negative) changes to safety.

<comment><USER10> Where have bail laws caused any issue in NY? As a resident I haven't encountered any such issues.

I wouldn't call "abandoning a neighborhood" a minor change either. It seems clear to me it's very much a calculated political move to do that so people can do exactly what you did - point and say "well we need police, look what happened without them". This should have no bearing on reform laws and abolition steps.

<comment><USER11> The article below provides a summary of the discussion on the NY bail law impact:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/nyregion/crime-stats- nyc-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/nyregion/crime-stats-nyc-bail- reform.html)

<comment><USER10> That's based on one month (January 2020) with clear political motivations directly discussed by NYT in the article If you look at NYC crime YTD, it's down 3% [1]. I don't see how thats a drastic or even minor change to public safety.

Per your own link:

> "Law enforcement experts say crime statistics can rise or fall in any given > month for numerous reasons and explain that it is far more important to > track trends over longer periods of time."

One month just isn't representative of if a policy worked or not. Take March 2020 [2]. Crime down overall, including for assaults, something the NYPD blamed the bail law on in January. I specifically cherry-picked March on purpose - you can see if you look around that months go up and down. I'm not saying it's an open and shut case in either direction, but there's no macro rise as again evidenced on the YTD stats in the first source.

[1] [https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statist...](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs- en-us-city.pdf)

[2] [https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p0402b/nypd-citywide- cri...](https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p0402b/nypd-citywide-crime- statistics-march-2020)

<comment><USER11> Hey; I'm just providing a source that talks about it - I don't have a dog in this fight.

<comment><USER10> Didn't mean to come off as attacking, sorry :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is rich. The comments are largely in favor of diminishing police funding presumably to protect black people whereas black people want nothing of the sort [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsweek.com/81-black- ameri...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsweek.com/81-black-americans- dont-want-less-police-presence-despite-protestssome-want-more-cops- poll-1523093%3famp=1)

Truly bizarre

<comment> john-shaffer Just FYI, you're likely to get downvoted for posting an AMP link. It's generally best to link directly to the source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We can split hairs about 'defunding' vs 'abolishing', but I just get the distinct impression that many people have got no real idea about the threat that crime poses to the prosperity of a community (or city or state), and the effort that is required to keep it in check. The occasional misbehaviour of police officers is a small price to pay compared to the oppression and privation wrought by widespread crime.

<comment><USER6> Most of the examples that spurred this movement are killings that are disproportionately either negligent or depraved heart _at the very least_ (let's pretend we can't form an argument that any of them were purposeful murders that were not necessary to save the officer). Even given this benefit of the doubt, it is _still_ reasonable for independent citizens of a free nation to fight tooth and nail against such an assault on a tenant of civilization: That the state _never_ kills you in the streets, _if they can at all help it_. Further, I can't see from any angle how allowing these instances to continue is a necessary price for preventing _widespread crime_.

>I just get the distinct impression that many people have got no real idea about the threat that crime poses to the prosperity of a community

I can't disagree more strongly.

>... and the effort that is required to keep it in check

This I agree with. But this is a weak argument against people who live with a constant background, and sometimes foreground, fear for their lives from their own government.

<comment><USER13> You have to consider the stochastic nature of crime and policing. The size of the population, the size of the force, behaviour altered by substance abuse, the prevalence of deadly weapons, the mental toll of dealing with criminals every day, the presence of organised crime, the antagonism, the heat of the moment, the type of personality needed to want to do the job: _of course_ you are going to end up with _some_ bad encounters. That is the price of having police.

The price of not having police is the constant and imminent danger and cost of crime. We all have to avoid certain parts of our cities. Women can't walk safely at night even in the "safe" parts. Children can't be left unattended. Public goods are ruined by vandalism. The stabilising effect of family households is lost as many flee to safer locations. Property values languish. Nobody can invest in the area, lenders and insurers aren't interested. Innocent people are brutalised and they can't rely on the police to protect them. Violent criminals operate with impunity. These aren't isolated incidents, this is a trend of misery.

And this will be the legacy of many of these BLM protests/riots. More misery heaped on the poorest communities. That's why I say that many people seem to have no real idea about the trade-off.

<comment><USER14> > of course you are going to end up with some bad encounters. That is the > price of having police.

> The price of not having police is the constant and imminent danger and cost > of crime. We all have to avoid certain parts of our cities. Women can't walk > safely at night even in the "safe" parts.

And yet many countries don't have police forces that are pathologically violent, and don't have no-go zones in their cities.

<comment><USER15> If you look up "Gun Ownership" on Wikipedia, it claims there are around 850 million guns owned by civilians in the world, around 400 million of those 850 million are in the US.

Whatever your politics are, you can't begin to understand crime and policing in the US until you internalize those numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If I understand correctly, the main call is for defunding the police, not abolishing them.

<comment><USER17> I think for most people defund sounds like "take away all funding for" which would be tantamount to abolishing.

<comment><USER16> That's not what it means when we do it to schools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Human ego seems to be the most powerful thing in the Universe.

Whole communities commit "suicide" just to fuel the delusions of a handful and the self-preservation of another handful. How many injustices have been perpetrated in the name of justice?

No one comes out of this looking good, certainly not the police too.

</comment><comment><USER19> The reform movements of the last ~15 years have consistently failed to learn one lesson: pick a simple, easy to understand slogan that leads to simple, actionable goals. Occupy had the exact same problem and ultimately accomplished nothing.

Obama and Trump both understood this and both chose slogans that virtually no one can disagree with ("Change / Yes We Can" and "Make America Great Again.") Pretty easy to understand.

"Abolish the police" seems almost designed to fail as a slogan right from the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought well over half of the US population "aren't so sure", not just "survivors of the chaos in Seattle".

</comment><comment><USER21> People want security. That means different things to different people. Law enforcement is not necessarily the same thing as security. Law enforcement means just that, and the laws themselves may not be what many would consider just. The laws are likely to reflect the prejudices of those in power, which may lend itself to why we're seeing the clashes we're seeing in the US right now.

Those with the resources to do so have on-site security. This ranges from gated communities, to some condo/apartment buildings, and even shopping malls. Even this isn't necessarily free of problems, but it needs to be seen as something fundamentally different from law enforcement. So when we talk about "abolishing" the police, we have to ask what we really want in its stead.

<comment><USER16> > Law enforcement is not necessarily the same thing as security

I'm having difficulty finding my source right now, but it appears that in cases of homicide by someone unknown to the victim, a police officer is the perpetrator in between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 incidents. These statistics don't consider whether the killing is justified; they just observe that if people know of someone who was killed by a stranger, there's a 1-in-3 or 1-in-4 chance that stranger has a uniform.

And as we know, people's perceptions of safety are more important than actual statistics. We rewrote the nature of air travel in response to 9/11.

<comment><USER22> How would that imply lack of security? Wouldn't it be perfect if every single homicide by a stranger was by a cop? It would mean that a cop was there every time to stop the criminal before they hurt someone.

<comment><USER16> That's assuming that the only people cops shoot are criminals.

in point of fact, legally, almost everyone the cops shoot are innocent people in the eyes of the law.

<comment><USER23> Innocent in the eyes of the law, meaning what? No prior convictions? Not convicted of the crime for which the police officer is looking for the perpetrator? Of course they're not; they haven't even been arrested yet. And once they're dead, nobody's going to bother to prosecute and convict them.

For example, we recently had an armed robbery outside a bar here. Police came looking for the perpetrator. They found a man who they suspected might be the robber. He ran from them. They chased him. He turned around with a gun in his hand. They shot and killed him.

Now: Was he innocent in the eyes of the law? He wasn't convicted of that robbery. He wasn't even arrested for it. They _would_ have arrested him (or at least detained him), but he fled, and then turned around with a gun.

So I'm not sure that "innocent in the eyes of the law" says very much. Other than escaped prisoners, _everyone_ the police encounter is innocent in the eyes of the law, at least on the issue for which the police are confronting them.

<comment><USER16> > Was he innocent in the eyes of the law?

Yes.

> I'm not sure that "innocent in the eyes of the law" says very much.

It says that we still believe in the rule of law, not in just allowing cops to be judge, jury, and executioner on our streets. To be sure, shootings due to self defense happen, but we have entire protests and riots in the United States right now over how often cops kill innocent civilians without justification, and are protected by the system from any consequences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Am I the only one under impression that the article is chaotic and it's hard to tell from it what is the extend of the damage done and who and to what degree contributed to it?

</comment><comment><USER25> Was anyone surprised by this? Defund / Abolish the police sound like the stupidest ideas ever.

<comment><USER26> As an outsider looking in, it seems to me like reducing the scope of responsibility , and increasing accountability, of your police forces would be a boon to public safety.

<comment><USER27> We've tried to hold police accountable for murder. Charging them results in incidents like the entire police force rallying behind the one and just not doing their job anymore. And nearby police refusing to do their duty as well.

This happened in Atlanta. You can't even bring charges against a cop, let alone make it to a trial, without horrendous outcry and mass refusal to do their job.

[https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/us/rayshard-brooks-atlanta- po...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/us/rayshard-brooks-atlanta-police-not- answering-calls/index.html)

<comment><USER26> Where I am we have many levels of public safety enforcement; I've heard that in the USA there's a lot less variety in policing?

Ie, bylaws are enforced by armed and armoured officers who have full power to arrest.

Is that true? It seems to me that dividing the forces would help to break their unified defensive behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A reminder that police "do not owe a specific duty to provide police services to citizens based on the public duty doctrine."

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

</comment><comment> dorian-graph > "Seattle's unprecedented decision to abandon and close off an entire city > neighborhood, leaving it unchecked by the police, unserved by fire and > emergency health services, and inaccessible to the public"

Is this what people advocating for abolish the police are advocating for? Removal of health services? Isn't it literally the opposite, to have more and more varied health (and social) services, that people are advocating for?

"Abolish the police" is a scale where there is an extreme end where they may call for completely removing police from across the USA. From what I've seen, that isn't what the majority who are calling for abolishment are aiming for. Maybe "abolish" was a poor choice of a word.

The more common level I've seen is advocating for replacing parts of policing for more appropriate systems and services.

I'd call this article a straw-man argument, but there are those on the extreme end of the scale, apparently.

<comment><USER29> > "Abolish the police" is a scale

Words have meaning though. No one on the political board is against reforms but "abolish", "defund", or "shut down" mean what it means.

<comment><USER30> "Let's move funds from police departments to public health infrastructure, and additionally, use remaining funding on accountability mechanisms"

doesn't exactly roll off the tongue at a protest.

<comment><USER31> "Reform public safety" works though

<comment><USER16> Has less punch, and we're not talking about restructuring fire departments.

<comment><USER32> Is the goal to be as polarizing as possible, or to persuade people on the fence to come over to the party?

<comment><USER16> How many people, at this point in the first four years of the Trump administration, are still on the fence?

<comment><USER33> Pretty much everyone who matters if you're trying to convince people of something.

<comment><USER16> I suspect we're well past the time of convincing and into the time of doing.

<comment><USER32> In the 7 or 8 swing states that matter, you think the election is already decided in each of them? I would expect a bunch more defectors if the economy is still in ruin by then, and a bunch of 'moderates' who end up deciding based on how recent foreign policy turns out.

Remember, most people are single issue voters. The rest of everything he does, doesnt matter.

<comment><USER16> Possibly, but this administration has been so polarizing that at this point, I think it's a lot more about getting like-minded people out of their chairs and to the polls than it is finding more like-minded people.

It's been year after year of polarizing decisions and rhetoric. At this point, basically everyone's dug in on how they feel about this direction for America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Remember back when people had such issue with the language and phrasing of "Black Lives Matter" until people (over 50%, according to recent polls) finally came around after George Floyd? "Abolish the police" is going to be the same scenario in time.

Please, do your research on what abolition actually looks like. This article does not describe abolition, it describes a PR tactic the Seattle PD decided to pull as punishment to protestors. Linked below is one with actual interest and nuance.

[https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2020/6/12/21283813/g...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2020/6/12/21283813/george-floyd-blm-abolish-the-police-8cantwait- minneapolis)

If you look around and see incredible injustice, great. Don't spend your time policing the language and methodology the oppressed use to argue for their rights, go do things and help them be more effective. This is a classic white liberal issue of "I support the ideas but not the way to them" that has been around for centuries.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/17/martin- luth...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/17/martin-luther-king- polite-racism-white-liberals/)

"We do not need allies who are more devoted to order than to justice" \- MLK

<comment><USER34> >>>This is a classic white liberal issue of "I support the ideas but not the way to them" that has been around for centuries.

"The white liberal is the worst enemy to America, and the worst enemy to the black man....The white liberal aren't white people who are for independence, who are moral and ethical in their thinking. They are just a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. The same as the white conservative is a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. They are fighting each other for power and prestige, and the one that is the football in the game is the Negro..." \- Malcom X

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8869214-the-white- liberal-i...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8869214-the-white-liberal-is- the-worst-enemy-to-america-and)

<comment><USER10> Was looking for this when I was typing that post up! Should have known it would be Malcom X. There's another great quote along the lines of "those concerned with how something is said than what is said" that I can't seem to remember the source on either that is very relevant here too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cutting the Seattle police departments budget by 50% would be the perfect way to provide an argument for Trump Republicans that the alt-left/Antifa are out to get you .

This combined with the portland protests will get Trump re-elected and keep the GOP majority in the senate.

This is what you call __a diversion __from the real issue which is COVID, that republicans have not managed well at all.

The CHOP was a nightmare that was not shut down soon enough. There were armed gangs patrolling the entire thing who would try and make you delete cellphone footage. There was also rape/Iv drug usage/trash all over. I was literally there back in June.

That is NOT what I want to deal with on a daily basis.

We need to hire more police and private security to stop the crazies, make cal Anderson a gun free Zone and stop the chaos.

</comment><comment><USER36> The NYT is bootlicking with this article; they entirely left out that Seattle _did_ defund their police, cutting their budget by about half. So did Portland. But NYT would rather focus on how scared business owners feel, because that's their target audience.

<comment><USER37> Portland cut 3%.[1] Seattle is going to vote on 2%.[2]

[1] [https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2020/06/17/28550006...](https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2020/06/17/28550006/portland- city-council-approves-3-reduction-in-police-budget)

[2] [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/seattle-c...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/seattle-city-council-takes-a-swing-at-the-police-and-mostly- misses/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "Abolish the police" isn't "abolish law enforcement". It's "abolish the centralized, generalist paramilitary model of local law enforcement."

The ability of a blanket law enforcement withdrawal from selected neighborhoods, is largely a product of, and historically has been applied as a negotiating tactic by, exactly the model of law enforcement targeted for abolition by people who Say "Abolish the police".

<comment><USER23> All right, but then comes the question: Replace it with what?

<comment><USER38> Among the alternatives: dividing law enforcement among domain-specific agencies that that have law enforcement within their domain as part, but not usually all, of their remit. You might have relatively pure enforcement in a central criminal investigation service, traffic enforcement enforcement within the agency responsible for roads and transit; truancy and school resources officers organizationally within the education office rather than assigned to them by a separate law enforcement agency, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Business owners describe a harrowing experience of calling for help and being left all alone."

No one advocating defunding the police was saying it would be good for business owners. The point of the whole movement is that police protect the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.

<comment><USER40> Then the businesses will leave and the local economy will suffer. Those with little will have less. Those with enough to start over elsewhere will leave. This phenomenon is called "blight".

Good luck Seattle.

<comment> donkey-hotei That this article is written by someone who isn't from Seattle, and posted by someone on hacker news who isn't from Seattle, really amuses some of us who live on the hill.

<comment><USER41> Here in Minneapolis the feeling is similar. Suburban and rural folks seem awfully concerned about crime in the city, while those of us who actually live in the city just want the cops' boots off our damn necks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Commerce 2.0?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/03/commerce-20.html

<comment><USER2> I recently read the book Groundswell and it had me putting in a lot of thought about the social aspects of e-commerce. I'd definitely recommend it.

I've done some e-commerce consulting projects and in the end it always turns to a discussion about "best practices". There's always the meeting with a client about something where the bottom line ends up being "Well... how does Amazon do it? They've invested a lot so they're probably doing it the right way".

Then they get their SEO people involved, and they put in their "best practices" 2 cents. And then it's the expert on conversion rates, and on and on until the site is just like everything else. But it's following best practices!

There has to be a better way, but with money at stake I think people are less likely to try something radically different than what's already working.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it doesn't give enough credit to Amazon et al who have done a fanatical job in making their businesses awesome.

</comment><comment><USER4> _So the question is who will the YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter of commerce be?_

It might be facebook. fbConnect + fbCredits = social buying. Both of these exist but have yet to be combined.

</comment><comment><USER5> Its these kinds of posts that encourage me to get my startup to market, quick.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting read. Curious to see what will emerge</comment>


Acceptable or Not? - <AUTHOR> To go to a university, pay tens of thousands of dollars to learn programming, and graduate without knowing how to use Source Control? <comment><USER2> Not really, but it happens all the time. Ultimately, the university just provides you with a piece of paper, of more or less reputational value. Learning is all in your own hands; you've got to own that, and seek out the things you need to know, and learn them. Even at the best universities, and perhaps especially at them, what your professors have experience with will be a decade or more out of date. And this is what your entire career will be about; like Sisyphus, you must continually struggle to push the stone up the hill, and keep abreast of the current technologies and practices. There is no resting on laurels, no complacency.

</comment><comment><USER3> What if you graduated knowing how to use an IDE, even if you didn't know source control? Or your OS's command line shell? Or a CI tool? Make? Would any one of those things make up for not knowing source control, or would it be unacceptable not knowing all of them?</comment>


HTML tables are not evil. Using them is not a sin. They do not suck. - <AUTHOR> http://arclanguage.org/item?id=13521

<comment><USER2> I felt like that when learning XHTML+CSS in the HTML 4 days (when the most common question seemed to be 'Best layout method: iframes or tables?!'), and with IE 5.5 still being used a bit it was a big annoyance to switch over to XHTML and CSS.

But honestly, I now couldn't go back. I seldom run into any cross browser issues (apart from the odd IE 6 and 7 issue, which conditional comments takes care of in a minute or two), and I now couldn't imagine using tables for a layout.

But you're right that using HTML tables isn't evil. They're designed to display tabulated data and using them for this purpose is definitely a good plan ;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not going to say I use them all the time but I sure do love me a good table. Just today I had to debug some code that was a css-simulated-table that went all wonky with its floats and clears.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sure, until you need to print the page. Or show it on a iPad.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sure, tables are not inherently evil. But like every other HTML element, they have their correct and incorrect uses. The reason you hear so much crap about them is because of very widespread misuse.

When used correctly (read: where you need to display tabulated data) tables are perfect. In some cases, they may even be warranted in layout design. However, this is not common. Using DIVs and CSS makes for much cleaner code where a table is not explicitly needed.

Hacker News actually uses tables. Not sure why, but maybe there's a good reason.</comment>


All those people with cheap Android smartphones have finally started buying apps - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/114601/all-those-people-with-cheap-android-smartphones-have-finally-started-buying-apps/ <comment><USER2> Spin spin spin... where it stops nobody knows.

Same data used in an article yesterday. [http://www.macrumors.com/2013/08/12/apples-app-store- still-n...](http://www.macrumors.com/2013/08/12/apples-app-store-still-number- one-in-revenue-despite-google-play-growth/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an apples to orchards comparison and a very misleading title. The Google Play Store includes purchases of movies, TV shows, books, magazines, etc. You can compare it to the iTunes Store in its entirety, but certainly not to the "Apple App Store".

</comment><comment><USER4> There are, still, far more experienced iOS developers than there are Android developers. Some people think the learning curve and development effort are steeper and higher for Android. I'm inclined to believe them if only because I think Android is a more expressive app environment, and it takes longer to learn, more effort to design, and longer to implement apps that take full advantage of Android. It's just going to happen more slowly than the iOS app market.

I think there are going to be waves or generations of Android software. We are about at the end of the "porting wave" and we'll next have a wave of apps that really digs in to the modularity, IPC, background processing, and RPC technologies available in Android. Facebook was an ambitious first try at a suite of cooperating apps, and I expect more successful attempts to follow.

<comment><USER5> I completely disagree about the learning curve. In my experience, the iOS frameworks are quite complex and multi-layered (i.e. CoreData). Furthermore, you run into the fact that you have to learn Objective-C. The abundance of iOS experts probably has more to do with the fact that many Mac OSX developers easily transferred their skills to iOS development. With the Android platform, however many more developers know Java already, so that is less of a hurdle for your average dev.

In my anecdotal experience, for example, more college students try to do Android development, since they already know Java (taught in most college CS classes), whereas the students that try iOS development only do so because of the cachet of having an iPhone app.

<comment><USER6> Core Data has to be the single-most difficult framework Apple offers (From their own documentation: "Core Data is not an entry-level technology.[0]"), so it makes a poor "ObjC is hard" starting point. Other than the message syntax, Objective-C is no harder to learn than any other language of it's type. Frankly, I think Android is needlessly complex, give that nearly ever app needs some combination of Activities, Receivers, Providers, etc, not to mention it's take on threading.

0\. [http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/DataMan...](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/DataManagement/Conceptual/iPhoneCoreData01/Introduction/Introduction.html)

<comment><USER5> I did not cite Core Data when I argued that Obj-C is a hurdle. I cited Core Data as an example of the fact that iOS frameworks are complex. I also didn't claim that Objective-C is hard to learn. Merely that it presents a hurdle in a way that Java does not - any given developer is more likely to know Java than Obj-C, Java is more widely used and is general purpose language for a breathtaking variety of applications, whereas Objective-C is pretty much only used to Mac OSX apps and iOS apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Android is catching up really fast. The things you can do with it and some of the design choices can be quite clever. For example, the new Gmail app has pull-to-refresh, but they didn't want to look like a direct rip of lorenb/Twitter so they redesigned the visual concept completely.

<comment><USER8> It's not that refreshing. There are dozen of different pull to refresh animations across OSes. Check out Path's droplet, Facebook's simpler allow, Mailbox's no spinner at all (just an indication on the status bar), etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those wondering, I believe that Google Play in China does not support purchases, thus their absence from this article.

<comment><USER10> I don't think most Chinese Android phones ship with Google Play, or any of the other Google apps.

<comment><USER11> The cheap "generic/no brand" ones don't, but the Huawei and ZTE ones do, and both companies are on track to be bigger than Samsung - Huawei made 35 billion last year, compared to Samsung Electronics' 52 billion. ZTE is smaller at 15 billion.

Speaking of Android phones, see for example the Huawei Ascend p6, not yet Samsung Galaxy S4 territory but it's getting closer:

[http://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_ascend_p6-5467.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_ascend_p6-5467.php)

Edit: for completeness, a ZTE high-end phone, not yet as polished as Huawei's I think. Sold as "Sprint Vital" in the U.S.

[http://www.gsmarena.com/zte_vital_n9810-5511.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/zte_vital_n9810-5511.php)

<comment><USER12> I'm more interested in trying something from those small Chinese brands than Huawei personally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am really surprised that Australia drives more revenue than Germany, Canada or France. All have much greater populations and all are similarly wealthy nations.

However language probably is a factor...

<comment><USER14> Germany has 46 million english speakers. Canada and France have over 25 million. Australia has 17 million.</comment></comment>


Elon and the collective - <AUTHOR> https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/12/28/elon-and-the-collective/ <comment><USER2> > when one of the SpaceX boosters will have flown 100 times with between > flights maintenance at an economical level, then it will be an actual > success

Talk about moving the goalposts! They _already_ reuse boosters, and they _already_ give discounts for doing so! And using the shuttle as proof that reusability is not tenable is disingenuous: we know the reasons why the shuttle was expensive and absolutely could design a version where it was not.

Looking through the rest, it's clear this guy has goggles on where he sees everything around Musk in a negative light. There is absolutely stuff to criticize about about Musk, and there for sure exists a cult around him. But I think this guy is in another cult, where Musk can do no right.

<comment><USER3> You're attacking a strawman. That quote makes sense in the context (basically the whole previous paragraph):

 _The rocket as it performs ascent and then descent undergoes some serious accelerations (way higher than a typical plane), while being built extremely delicately to minimize the mass (much tighter margins than an airliner). The rocket engine undergoes much higher stress than a jet engine. Hence all that stress can cause material fatigue and small malfunctions, while the margin for error on a rocket is extremely small. Hence if e.g. it turns out that the risk of mission failure on these reused boosters increases substantially after every use, all the anticipated savings from reusability may be quickly wiped out by one or two lost missions. And it should be noted, that the cargo that goes into space is often MUCH more expensive than the rocket itself._

<comment><USER4> The quote may make sense, but it's still moved the goalpost.

> when one of the SpaceX boosters will have flown 100 times with between > flights maintenance at an economical level, then it will be an actual > success

The hope is that the boosters will be able to be reused indefinitely (stated goal of 10+ for block 5 I think?) but they only need to be economical to refly once and they will be successful. There is some argument that they need to refly multiple times in order to recoup development costs, but the reality is that they are already cheaper than the competition on expendable flights.

We know it's already economical, because as stated in parent they have flown reused boosters at a discount.

The concern you quote above is that reused boosters are somehow more likely to fail, but the best indicator that a booster can fly is if it has already flown before. Recovering the boosters has allowed the effect of stresses during flight to be measured, and we have seen them make design modifications in response. It's plausible that this has already improved reliability of all boosters, but more importantly it means that the boosters that have been reflown (or ones like them) have been heavily investigated.

Of course everyone knows that reused boosters need to be dependable, the fact that they're being reflown means that the engineers are at least _reasonably_ confident that they're not going to blow up with the payload on top. Even if a reused booster blew up, you would need to identify that something about it being reused was at fault. If you did, and were not able to fix that issue for some reason, we still have the situation that the boosters are already cheaper in expendable mode than the competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article started out good but got pretty lazy toward the end. "This idea is stupid" is not a good description.

Also I think Elon is generally looking at problems we have (traffic congestion, expensive space travel, fossil fuel cars) and trying different things to fix them with his considerable funding. Why is this a problem?

It's much easier to criticize others ideas on a blog then it is to generate and execute ideas yourself.

<comment><USER6> For each thing, there's a big question whether he's really trying to fix it or is just showboating. The useless submarine for the Thai cave rescue is a pretty clear example of the latter. SpaceX seems to be doing well, but Tesla's still an open question; they've had big production problems, they've lost execs left and right, they've had just one profitable quarter, and their cars get decidedly mixed reviews. [1]

Also, I think Musk's extensive self-promotion means that public criticism is entirely within bounds. Especially given Musk's dedication to criticizing his critics, like the Thai cave diver he called a pedophile. Or his obsession with people shorting Telsa.

[1] E.g., [https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-tesla- model-3-test...](https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-tesla-model-3-test- review)

<comment><USER7> ^ This.

For someone who claims to be dedicated to saving the world he (1) is receiving one hell of an executive package and (2) spending a significant amount of time being a rude asshole to critics.

<comment><USER8> Those things can be simultaneously true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."

Dude literally is, to quote the author, "the next Steve Jobs, but better". Is he occasionally an idiot? Yes. Is he occasionally an asshole? Also yes. But he's on track to have done not one, not two, but _three_ things others widely consider impossible (SpaceX, Tesla, StarLink) and may even squeeze in 2-3 more of those things in his remaining lifespan. If that's not genius, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't say PayPal is nothing, although lot of people hate it, I always prefer paying with it than giving my credit card number to a new merchant.

What's the most important for me is that Elon showed people that clean great electric cars are possible (and China already has a higher growth rate in electric cars than Tesla). I'm literally sick of the toxic air pollution that cars make, which is a problem I didn't have when I was younger.

<comment><USER6> What exactly did Musk do at PayPal? He didn't start it. He was CEO for a hot minute, but that's about it. From what I can tell, his major initiative during his short CEO stint was to try to shift them from a Unix infrastructure to Windows, for which they fired him.

I have no idea why people give him credit for it.

<comment><USER10> I don't think Peter Thiel would have given so much shares to Elon if he didn't think about X.com as a serious competitor. Peter still looks up to Elon for a reason.

At the same time Elon is making huge mistakes and huge risks as well (and also has borderline lies that sometimes step over the border), so I'm not saying he's perfect, just the best we have right now.

<comment><USER6> That avoids the question. What did he do at PayPal? As far as I can tell he deserves no credit for his success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Many of the flaws with the article have been pointed out, but can I just point out the author is so lazy that he doesn't even remove the weight of the fuel from the Boeing 737, nevermind the jet engine and the many other optimisations that can be done when designing from scratch without the ICE constraints. His thought experiment is literally a Boeing 737 with a 25T battery attached to it, and he takes that to be the best case of what Elon is proposing... What makes smart people write things so trivially dumb?

And in case the author objects to me dissecting his rough sketch of an argument and drawing conclusions about him from it, he should have thought of that before taking 5 sentences spoken in a podcast and assuming he understands what the complete idea someone else has in mind is.

<comment><USER12> The author replaced the 25 tonnes of fuel a 737 carries with 25 tonnes of batteries, which is generous towards the electric jet (as the fuel burns during the trip).

Edit: It looks like you deleted the post I was replying to, but a 737 with 72 tonnes of MTOW does not carry just 17 tonnes of fuel; you can easily look up the product matrix on Wikipedia.

<comment><USER11> The author doesn't really state that he did that, but I ran the numbers, and it seems he's doing that indeed. Not sure how he came to the conclusion that 25T fuel is in the 737, as that doesn't seem to be the case. He still didn't consider the engines that would be almost completely gone weightwise, and of course the main point stands -- the 737 is a specific model, with specific tradeoffs, to handle specific cost variables, including engines and fuel. If one is considering a new design, with drastically different variables, different cost of fuel (almost 1/5th or less) different weight distribution, different acceleration capabilities, different aerodynamics (no more bulky engines at the wings), different takeoff strategies, then this kind of "what if I flipped the fuel on the 737 for a battery" approach cannot be used as proof that an idea is "ridiculous". The author comes to the fight extremely underprepared, and honestly if we all reasoned like that we'd still be in caves. I'm all for calling Elon out on things he's more vulnerable on, but the author tips his hand with shoddy work like this.

<comment><USER12> I don't think the author is saying the plane has to be like a 737 with the batteries removed; the argument is more like: a 737 with battery replacement is an order of magnitude away from being viable, so the design is going to have to close that gap, and that's a pretty tall order.

It's a fairly lazy argument, but also one that effectively illustrates the challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "No one in the engineering community ever questioned whether it would be technically feasible to land a rocket booster on a barge."

Not to be pedantic, but it was technically impossible to land a rocket booster on a barge. SpaceX did the R&D to make it happen. They made it technically feasible by developing the technology for a task that was previously _not_ technically feasible.

<comment><USER14> Actually, you are not being pedantic at all. No one in the space industry thought it could be done in a commercially viable way. SpaceX was dismissed time after time by space pundits until it landed a rocket, and then another, and then another. Now the goalpost is 100 reusable flights! I wonder what the next one will be when SpaceX gets to that one.

The article started with a biased premise and then worked to prove that.

<comment><USER15> SpaceX executives have stated several times that their company is profitable. But, when SpaceX was trying to do a $750M debt raise just last month, their internal financials were divulged: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/musk- said...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/musk-said-to- divide-wall-street-with-demands-for-new-spacex-loan).

It's a company running in the red. Unfortunately EBITDA is still negative (much less earnings). The jury is still out on whether or not SpaceX's approach is in fact commercially viable.

<comment><USER14> Negative _including_ R&D. If SpaceX was to turn around tomorrow and stop pursuing the Mars goal they would probably be in the black within a year: the Falcon platform is completed, Falcon Heavy already flew and block 5 is optimized for quick reusability. But, SpaceX is dead serious about going to Mars and Musk will use the profits generated from the stable part of the business to fund that objective. That is part of the reason why he says he will not take SpaceX public until it gets to Mars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I get the impression that this post repeatedly tries to make it sound like 'we' are the dumb guys for believing Musk. I think he's done some good things, is a likeable marketing personality, and genuinely cares for a lot of the projects he's working on. And this is me saying this without ever having owned a product of his.

There's a bit of emotion in this post, but that's alright.

<comment><USER17> I think the most important thing is that he's moving the goalpost and forcing the competition to innovate. Whether one believes Tesla will become profitable long term or not, that company has definitely accelerated the shift towards electric cars, which is a good thing for all of us. I feel like SpaceX is doing the same for the aeronautic industry. It would be amazing to see SpaceX send astronauts to Mars, but even if that doesn't happen, now other space launch companies are thinking about reusable launchers, bigger rockets, and finding creative ways to reduce costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Wind, tiny earthquakes or even birds walking along the roof displace the > tiles ever so slightly and they loose contact. Once the circuit is broken it > is difficult to find and fix the fault. Even worse a short circuit can lead > to heating and fire danger. Turns out regular solar panels are way easier > and cheaper to work with.

How can you say this much about an unreleased product to which you have zero insight on technical details? This is even more bs than if the tiles never come to market...

Also, you can't call a machine-bored tunnel a "tube" and expect to be taken seriously. Questioning lofty, sci-fi-is goals? Fine and reasonable. Gaslighting actual, tangible products? Sounds shady.

<comment><USER19> About the roof tiles :

Other companies already have solar roof tiles on the market.

[http://www.dyaqua.it/invisiblesolar/_en/](http://www.dyaqua.it/invisiblesolar/_en/)

They are popular in areas of Europe where architecture is regulated. Sure they are more expensive and less efficient, but there is a niche market for it.

<comment><USER18> I can't find any record of those being actually sold/installed, or any issues like mentioned in the article? Either way, it is pointless to speculate on technical issues affecting the viability of the Tesla product that doesn't exist yet. We'll only know when solar roof is on the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some fair critiques but the tunnel one is way off base. Showing that mass transit is more efficient than cars in tunnels has nothing to do with the question of if building cheaper tunnels for cars will result in a virtuous cycle of commercial investment and development of underground tunnel infrastructure. One of the core theses of boring as far as I understand it is that people prefer cars over subway trains for the most part from a comfort standpoint and so if anything drawing on some of the on-paper benefits of underground rail but transferring them towards passenger vehicles seems like a no-brainer if the economics and logistics work.

</comment><comment><USER21> On the reusable boosters -- has Spacex released any information on what the inspection / refurbishment costs (and time) are for the ones that have been reused already (or is there any educated guesses)? Also, if they end up being highly reliably reusable, wouldn't that slow down the production of new boosters, thereby making them much more expensive to produce?

<comment><USER8> Folks at forum.nasaspaceflight.com and reddit.com/r/spacex do a meticulous job of tracking the booster numbers. You can tell when a reused booster was last flown which puts an upper limit on the amount of time it takes to refurb a booster (and a rough proxy upper limit for cost).

This info is summarized in this Wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches)

One booster seems to have been reused in just 2 and a half months (launched July 25, 2018 and October 8, 2018), compared to a new-production time of about 18-24 months from aluminum stock to launch. So a ~tenth the time of production and so probably about a tenth the labor (for the first stage).

As far as slowing down production...

...SpaceX's production rate of new boosters has been roughly flat while their launch rate has increased, so this effect has not occurred. In fact, you can make a good argument that the primary benefit of reuse for SpaceX is that it has allowed them to squeeze a lot more launches (double) out of the same production capacity. They launched cores 23 times (3 at once for Falcon Heavy) in 2018, and only 10 of those were new. In 2017, it was 18 total launches, 5 with reused cores and 13 new.

SpaceX can switch resources between upper stages and first stages, too, and eventually mothball first stage production or convert it to BFR production, thus giving them a benefit from reuse that you might not consider from a first-pass analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Don't have experience with most of the industries that Musk dabbles in, but did spend a decade in construction. I have no doubt in my mind that Musk's roofing and tunneling ventures are sham.

</comment><comment><USER23> When writing about Elon negatively start the core argument in the first line. Go straight to the core of the argument instead of wining about elon fan's e.t.c. The reason is simple, the people who write negatively about Elon have accomplished very little compared to Elon and so the reader will give as little time to judge your argument and if you waste your first few lines with BS then there is no chance of getting people to read the entire article.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's a much more thorough look at SpaceX economics: [https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/7lp52o/a_thorough_e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/7lp52o/a_thorough_examination_of_the_economics_of_falcon//)

tl;dr - Recoup on development costs is slow right now, but the post- development economics of rocket reuse are a big game change. Space shuttle comparison is flawed because both the nature of the system and the need for teardown were significantly impacted by being manned.

Comparing tunnels to planes is weird too - the target is an order of magnitude greater passenger throughput at a majorly reduced energy cost. The speed comparison is superficial.

</comment><comment><USER25> I can't imagine what Elon goes through, the amount of trash talk he receives on social media is just insane.

On Twitter there are people whose existence is only to bring anything about Elon/Tesla into a negative light and whip up storms in teacups. Sure, he's probably not a saint but man that must be tiring.

<comment><USER26> So tiring that he tells the world he's taking the company private in his pointless battle with "short sellers."

So tiring that he falsely accuses a critic of being a pedophile.

He can't control his emotions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> \- Comparison to the space shuttle: Not remotely apt. The space shuttle, among other reasons, was a failure when it came to its design requirements because those requirements were expanded in incompatible directions by a congress that doesn't understand engineering. "It was done badly before, therefore it is not possible to do well" isn't a good argument.

\- "Rockets are irreconcilably more dangerous than planes": That might actually be true, at least for many more decades. Rockets are at least 10^5 times more dangerous than planes and the failure modes are much, much worse. That doesn't mean that SpaceX can't revolutionize space transport for satellites, unmanned commercial endeavors, and limited manned missions. A tenfold decrease in the cost of space access would make entire new industries economically feasible, even after accounting for risk. SpaceX is currently kicking ass, and I have no reason to doubt they will continue at it.

\- "Earth-to-Earth passenger rockets are insane": Yes, they may well be. I did a detailed analysis here: [https://www.bzarg.com/p/some-numbers-about-the- spacex-passen...](https://www.bzarg.com/p/some-numbers-about-the-spacex- passenger-rocket/) As before, safety needs revolutionary changes, probably several times over. Economics and engineering will be very difficult, and the hardest part-- still totally unsolved-- is making something that can withstand re-entry many dozens of times without being totally rebuilt.

\- "The advertised orbital travel times are wrong": This is likely garbage. The details of flight navigation are something SpaceX has down pat and would not reasonably lie to themselves or the public about. Without a proper orbital analysis to back up this claim, I would not give it much credence. The point about transport to and from the launch pad adding time is likely valid, though-- his figure of a 5 mile journey from city center would actually be more like 10 miles, minimum. In a ferry this would be multiple dozens of minutes, which would add up at either end, especially once you account for travel to the ferry terminal itself. 30-40 minutes would be launch-to-landing time only, not door-to-door.

\- Colonizing mars: Mars being inhospitable is a solvable problem. Radiation can be avoided by living underground, and temperature and pressure can be maintained inside a habitat. The unanswered question is economics and logistics-- It would require many billions of dollars of infrastructure-- flight costs _not_ included-- to get a colony going. SpaceX isn't working on these logistics; their attitude is "someone else will figure that out." It's not clear what pot of gold would drive that initial investment, and by whom.

\- "Extinction danger is a bad reason to go to Mars" \- Agree that this is mostly BS; even the worst Earth is much more comfortable than Mars. But I would say there are plenty of other, better philosophical reasons to try-- What is the economic and social value of an _entire inhabited planet_? We should treat the failure to pursue it as an opportunity cost of that magnitude.

\- "We should go to the moon first" \- Going to the moon is not mutually exclusive with going to other places in the solar system.

\- "Hyperloop is infeasible" \- Maybe. I'll believe it when I see it, but happy to let them try.

\- "Neuralink is garbage" \- Neuroscientists I've spoken to would love to see more advanced neural probes. Money toward that problem could reasonably do a lot of good and make a lot of progress. Right now we can get about 100 neuron readings from a small area, and this is already used in humans with various degrees of paralysis to control artifical limbs. We are a long way from a "seamless brain-computer interface", and it is probably 10 times harder than Elon imagines-- I doubt he understands it-- and healthy skepticism is in order. But investment in the problem would give real returns, especially for the quality of life of disabled people. A limited consumer brain-computer interface within the next three decades is probably not terribly outlandish if resources are dedicated to making it happen. A hell of a lot can happen in 30 years.

\- "Boring company is dumb" \- Solution to mass transit? I agree that the idea is probably not very thoroughly thought through. Are 10x gains in the efficiency of tunnel drilling possible? I could believe it. If Elon and his company have to convince themselves that subterranean packet-routed car skates are the future, only to arrive at mass transit later on, so be it if that results in making infrastructure 10 times cheaper to construct.

\- "Self-driving is dangerous" \- Self driving does not have to be impeccable to be a benefit-- it only has to be better than the average driver, which is often quite bad in some pretty trivial/preventable ways. About 50,000 Americans die in cars per year, so there is a lot of room for improvement and a lot of potential good. As a society, we should try to make this work. I do agree that Elon way oversells its capability, and that's dangerous/disingenuous. I also think that many car localization and navigation problems are very solveable, but Tesla does not seem to be solving them effectively-- see examples of autopiloted cars hitting dividers earlier this year. The hard part is getting machines to participate in the nonverbal social environment that is a road full of human drivers... but Tesla seems to be struggling on problems several tiers below this.

\- Problems in Tesla management - From the outside, it looks as if Musk's stubbornness may have lead to his underlings being unable to convery to him what is realistic to accomplish, resulting in repeated missed deadlines, as predicted by the people who appear to have been oustered for saying so. He does not seem like someone who it is easy to give bad news to, which means he and his company are going to have a hard time seeing and reacting to peril. I do not side fully with the shorts, though; Tesla is positioned to completely change the auto industry. I just hope they can execute without shooting themselves in the foot.

\- Elon's childish toxicity - Completely agree. Not behavior becoming of a leader at his level, let alone any emotionally well-adjusted adult. It's a huge liability, c.f. the SEC fiasco, which Musk still doesn't seem to comprehend. Musk supporters frustratingly seem to attribute his companies' success as being due to these flaws instead of in spite of them.

</comment><comment><USER28> It seems the article was written as an experiment to gauge people's reaction on a critical Elon article. Not much credibility.</comment>


Intel declared war on general purpose computing and lost - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2017/05/09/management-engine.html <comment><USER2> It wouldn't be a Cory Doctorow headline without hyperbole.

<comment><USER3> Well to be fair it is a huge issue AFAIC. But, yeah, Cory; he did start out as primarily a fiction writer...

<comment><USER2> I like what he's fighting for, but honestly, if he could step back and be a little more objective about these things it would help his cause.

Not everything is nefarious and evil. Sometimes a feature is introduced with the best intentions, but those intentions are misguided.

Corporations _do_ want to ensure the laptops are booting a legit copy of Windows, that the image hasn't been corrupted, and they do want to be able to wipe and restore machines remotely. Maybe people don't want this, I don't, but corporations buy way more computers than people do, so Intel's compelled to produce these features.

They absolutely could have done a better job, they absolutely could have offered hardware without it, but to just blanket slam them in the harshest possible terms isn't productive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The media companies will let the world burn before they will give up any control.</comment>


Americans finally understand that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/02/americans-finally-understand-that-marijuana-is-less-harmful-than-alcohol/ <comment><USER2> Americans apparently don't understand that daily use of marijuana will damage your brain.

<comment><USER3> Nor is the article trying to convince people otherwise. It cites a recent medical study:

> A 2010 study in the journal Lancet, for instance, graded common drugs on > sixteen criteria relating to how harmful the drugs were to users, and how > harmful they were to society overall. On both measures - harm to self and > harm to users - marijuana scored significantly lower than alcohol.

It links to the Lancet site, and if you don't want to register, the article is available from [http://www.sg.unimaas.nl/_OLD/oudelezingen/dddsd.pdf](http://www.sg.unimaas.nl/_OLD/oudelezingen/dddsd.pdf) .

It ranks cannabis as safe than alcohol, but not as safe as ecstasy, LSD, or khat, and a few other drugs. It doesn't say cannabis or any of the other drugs are safe or have no side effects.</comment></comment>


The top 10 most entrepreneurial company alumni networks - <AUTHOR> http://founderdating.com/entrepreneurial-company-alumni/

<comment><USER2> Trilogy at one point of time was among fastest growing software companies. Its training program for new employees called Trilogy University was covered by HBR in one of their case studies [1].

One of the reasons why so many Trilogy alums have gone ahead to found their own startups is because Trilogy University in itself encourage entrepreneurial thinking. New grads who had joined Trilogy were given opportunity to form teams and pitch new business ideas to the CEO. Irrespective of the fact if the CEO liked the idea or not, you could go ahead and work on it. The goal somewhat ( maybe similar to YCombinator) was to have a working prototype with real users live by end of 3 months. And then the whole team decided which ideas were success and worth pursuing post the training program.

[1] - [http://hbr.org/2001/04/no-ordinary-boot- camp/ar/1](http://hbr.org/2001/04/no-ordinary-boot-camp/ar/1)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll guess Yahoo is quite high because they have historically grown by acquisition. All those entrepreneurs aren't really "native" to Yahoo. They're acquired by Yahoo, stay for a couple years, and then start a new thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems to suggest that founderdating needs to do a better job getting members from the more successful alumni networks (Paypal, Salesforce, etc); the salesforce alumni network had $8b in IPOs in the past 6 weeks alone.

<comment><USER5> Or perhaps the Paypal and Salesforce mafias don't need Founderdating?

It seems like a very non-scientific sample, but still interesting. Google versus Yahoo was a surprise, but perhaps Yahoo also has incented more people to leave over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll be curious to see success rates of entrepreneurs from those alumni networks - although we'll have to define what's successful in the first place.

<comment><USER7> Good call. I'd love to see the stats on that as well. Love seeing Twilio on that list. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was surprised to see Netflix so high and not to see Amazon on the list at all. Anyone else?

<comment><USER9> I wasn't. :) Working at Netflix now, I can see why. It really is a great place to work, and I can't imagine someone offering me something more interesting (but I'm not completely locking that out).

I'm pretty sure my next move will be to my own startup, as that would be the only place that might offer a better work environment and better opportunity for learning and growth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Half of the startups in India have an ex-trilogy founder.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why does eBay include Skype?

<comment><USER8> just corrected that, was just a mistake on the blog.</comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg's work desk. Check the video. - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/12/05/mark-zuckerberg-60-minutes/

<comment><USER2> "Do you want to own the whole internet?"

That question is right up there with the tubes analogy. She should ask that question to the CEO of Comcast.

<comment><USER3> He didn't say no.

<comment><USER4> He didn't say no, because the question backs him into a corner where answering either yes or no implies things he doesn't want to imply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Has HN had a thread where people share pics of their desks/work environments?

That would be interesting (at least to me).

<comment><USER6> maybe this one <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1507695>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Remember this great article on the NYT (Zuck's most Valuable Friend)?

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/business/03face.html>

        A few minutes later, Mr. Zuckerberg, Facebook's co-
        founder and chief executive, walks into the company's
        headquarters here, says a few hellos and heads to a
        conference room where he and Ms. Sandberg huddle for
        an hour. The two executives end the week the same
        way, with a closed-door meeting on Friday afternoon.
        They discuss products, strategy, deals, personnel —
        and each other.

Given he has no office of his own, it makes sense that they hold their daily meeting in the conference room rather in his or her office.

</comment><comment><USER8> Where are Mike, Morley, Bradley? Even Rooney? Sorry but I could hardly believe this was from 60 minutes: with the OverTheTop "reporter" lady. "The ___whole_ __internet [exuberant smiley face]?"

</comment><comment><USER9> The question "Do you want to conquer all of he internet?" sounds like a line sprung straight out of Die Hard 4 movie script. >_>

</comment><comment><USER10> 2 mackbooks on his desk -- why not a macbook + a mac desktop (iMac/Mac Pro)?

<comment><USER11> Also missing is a monitor and a mouse.

I doubt much real work gets done at that desk.

<comment><USER12> On the contrary. A laptop with a small screen and decent trackpad (like the Air) is perfect to focus on whatever you need to work on at the moment. For some people (me included), having extra tools or real estate just makes it easy to find distractions instead of working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> yeah somehow I doubt that is his office :P

</comment><comment><USER3> The 60 minutes interview [http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7120522n&tag=rela...](http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7120522n&tag=related;photovideo)</comment>


Show HN: A social code snippet manager - <AUTHOR> https://slickb.it <comment><AUTHOR> Hey there HN!

I want to share a project I've been working on. _slickbit_ , the _social code snippet manager_

 _Features_

\- Cloud storage

\- Private snippets

\- Unlisted snippets

\- Snippet history

\- Collections

\- Full text search

\- More stuff coming!

 _Why another code snippet manager?_

When looking for a code snippet manager, I found many of them to be too expensive (~$100/year) or lacking the features I wanted like strong social and sharing features. I hope slickbit can become a place where we can focus solutions instead of problems while preserving public discourse and feedback.

 _Where do I sign up?_

Visit [https://slickb.it](https://slickb.it) to sign up and give it a test drive. Its 100% free to sign up, no card required. As an incentive, the first 25 users will get a _free premium account_. Thanks for checking it out!</comment>


Ask HN: What search library can be used for the new communication platform? - <AUTHOR>

Hello Hackernews, We are developing a communication platform, where users share content in the group. Group consists of two parts - messenger (for discussion) and part with files and links, where only files and links are located. One or more files are connected to the text message, that was sent with it.
So now we want to implement a search system, that will be able to search in messages, file names, links, image tags, file contents (if possible). What is the best solution that you can suggest (both paid and free are ok)? Thanks in advance <comment><USER2> elasticsearch is the way to go.

<comment><USER3> If you go that way, be sure to read Jepsen: Elastic Search [1]

[1] [http://aphyr.com/posts/317-call-me-maybe- elasticsearch](http://aphyr.com/posts/317-call-me-maybe-elasticsearch)

<comment><USER2> to get proper perspective, be sure to read all of their articles</comment></comment></comment>


Half Life 1 Running on Open Pandora - <AUTHOR> http://pandoralive.info/?p=5029

<comment><USER2> BTW, that blog has a corrupted RSS feed. (Try loading it in FireFox.) I tried posting a comment asking for them to fix it, but they didn't. It looks like a simple error, just an incorrect newline at the start of the file.</comment>


Ask HN: Rent a SysAdmin? - <AUTHOR>

My startup's team is 2 developers and a designer and we usually can get anything figured out that we haven't done before.
But we don't have anybody that is a real systems administrator and that is starting to cause some issues.
Is there any service that lets you rent a system administrator for a couple hours?
We could use some advice on a few issues as well as some actual system setup work but don't know where to look.
Any advice? <comment><USER2> I don't think you want to "rent a sysadmin" (that sounds real low brow to me). Instead look for a contact sysadmin but first make a list of the tasks you want to hand off. If it's a logical grouping you may find that a managed host can take care of you (like SliceHost or DreamHost). If not, then use that as a job posting a la 'Seeking Linux Contractor' and screen carefully. Your best candidate will likely have a couple long term clients they take care of a little room for a new one.

<comment><USER2> Also, plan on a long term relationship. "Rent" sounds like you'll toss the sysadmin away and when new work pops up you'll just fetch another one. Don't do that. Establish a relationship as you may grow into needing a lot of work done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I suggest you stay away from any of the elance/rentAcoder type sites, even if some of their customers seem to offer the skills you want at a price you find acceptable.

I gave them a try a couple of years ago to earn some beer money (I'm a sysadmin), and the rates that people went for were /so/ damn low that I literally couldn't see the point and just negotiated a raise instead :-)

I somehow doubt the genuine expertise and experience you'll derive most value from during a couple of hours session /won't/ be found at those low, low rates. Sysadmin are _expensive_ ;-)

<comment><USER4> I see that you are based in London. I'm guessing that's why your rates are much higher than the Elance crowd. There you'll find lots of sysadmins in India/Russia with rates from $5-10/hour. There's no way you or I could (or would want to) compete with that (I'm based in Los Angeles, US). I wouldn't doubt their expertise just because of the low rate...it's just that the cost of living is much lower there. That said, wherever you find someone, you would want to do a certain amount of vetting before you give them access to your server and network, and once you invest the time finding someone, you want to keep them around more than a few hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wearing the sysadmin hat has been the hardest part of my startup. I just don't have the smarts or bandwidth to do some of the stuff I know I need. But on the other side I'm super paranoid about security and insider threats. So rent-a- sysadmin would be intriguing but there'd have to be some chicken and egg rating system in place to vet them.

</comment><comment><USER6> Mario Danic is a freelance sysadmin, and is quite good: <http://vpsbuddy.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Put contact information in your profile.

</comment><comment><USER8> You are wasting money on a designer. Contract the design work and hire a system admin with broader skills.

<comment><USER2> Without any context about the nature of the start up, the product line and business, this advice is simply nonsense.</comment></comment>