How to use a super PAC to kill super PACs - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/07/02/how-to-use-a-superpac-to-kill-superpacs/ <comment><USER2> Slightly relevant: Lessig is currently doing an AMA (with Jack Abramoff) over on reddit [1].It's only an hour old so there's still a chance that your question might be answered.

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/29nq9p/lawrence_lessig...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/29nq9p/lawrence_lessig_and_jack_abramoff_here_we_both/)

<comment><USER3> For me the association with Jack Abramoff damages Larry Lessig's credibility on the topic of corruption. Abramoff has no special insight into the problem; nothing he did was particularly innovative or insightful. He simply did things that everyone knows is wrong, and got famous because he got caught.

Abramoff demonstrated that he would do or say anything to succeed in lobbying. Now that he's a convicted felon, he's doing and saying anything to succeed as a pundit. He's exactly the same person; only the context has changed.

That Lessig takes him seriously makes me think that Lessig is dangerously naive about the system and people he is criticizing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is incredibly important. For all the really impassioned conversation about the broken state of US politics (on HN and elsewhere), the Mayday PAC is one of the very few legitimate plans-of-action. It's no silver bullet, but 1000% a needed step toward reform and worth your support.

<comment><USER5> It might be interesting if they had more of a platform, than 'fixing broken government', or 'fundamental reform', everyone wants that.

The entire point of government is to figure out what those statements really mean...

<comment><USER6> Mayday is run by Lawrence Lessig of Creative Commons fame (the guy also did a lot of work with Aaron Schwartz). He has very specific plans on what he wants this PAC to do. Check out his March TED talk for example: [http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_the_unstoppable_wal...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_the_unstoppable_walk_to_political_reform)

The problem and his strategy are laid out in his (free CC-licensed) book The USA is Lesterland: [http://lesterland.lessig.org/](http://lesterland.lessig.org/) As with all big ideas, that requires a bit more time to digest than a HN comment. Plus, he's a better writer than I am.

The main idea of his PAC is if political bills can only happen in our system with the approval of 'Big Money', you need Big Money to pass the reform that would get rid of Big Money's influence. Hence, you need a PAC that gets involved in specific races and puts pressure on candidates who don't support the changes they're pushing for.

On a more broader level, Lessig is one of the big names in a loose coalition pushing for a constitutional convention that would amend the Constitution to overturn Citizen's United. The neat thing about such a convention is it's a checks-and-balances way that the popular vote can effectively by-pass their congressional representatives. This has happened only once before: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendment...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution)

This can happen if 2/3's of states agree to participate. California just passed a "we're in" bill a few days ago, joining Vermont. Similar bills are pending in other states: [http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/California- seeks-cons...](http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/California-seeks- constitutional-convention-over-5579322.php)

This is actually one of the few non-partisan issues that both sides can agree on. Well, the constituents of both sides... most representatives hate this idea, which is exactly why you need a well-funded PAC to exert influence onto them.

<comment><USER7> _...a constitutional convention that would amend the Constitution to overturn Citizen 's United._

That's a great deal of effort to overturn a ruling which was literally this: a few dudes who made a video critical of Hillary Clinton _are_ allowed to advertise for the sale and viewing of that video. I haven't seen the video myself and don't particularly care to do. I'm sure it's a horrible movie made by horrible people. However, it seems like really basic political and commercial speech, which ought to be protected from government interference. If Lessig wants to overturn that, I'm glad he will fail. Why not a constitutional amendment for _Eldred_?

<comment><USER6> There's literally what a case decides, and there's effectively what it allows.

Effectively it opens the door for unlimited campaign spending by anonymous donors. Have you ever donated to a campaign? How much? $20, $100? Perhaps $1000 if you've got money to burn? What did it get you? A thank you form letter from some intern staffer? That's cute.

Now, if you allow unlimited anonymous donations, we're talking about order-of- magnitude $10k, $100k. NOW you've got the politician's ear. Think the people who donate on the order of your annual salary are going to be whispering the same thing the people who donate $20 want their representative to hear?

More importantly, if you're a career politician looking to secure $1M for your next campaign 4 years down the line, are you going to spend your time courting 50k grassroots donors, or are you going to just find 10 people to attend your $100k-a-plate fundraiser? (+/\- PAC rules on staying "independent" of course... just "fire" your campaign manager and give him a recommendation for a consulting gig... the $100k is actually for the independent consulting organization). It's a no brainer who you're going to represent.

So, now we have very wealthy people who can effectively donate unlimited sums of money anonymously outside of campaign disclosure laws (and therefore outside of unwanted public spotlight that would otherwise discourage them) to push for their interests.

When the only people who exert influence are the absurdly wealthy, well that starts to sound more like an oligarchy, not a representative democracy. Seems like a good enough cause to amend the constitution to me.

<comment><USER8> Citizens United absolutely does not allow for what you're suggesting. Citizens United says that the government cannot limit how people, organized into corporations or otherwise, spend their money supporting particular candidates. It does not say that the government cannot prevent candidates from taking unlimited amounts of money for their campaigns.

That is a key distinction: the first follows from the government's inability to restrict free speech, whether or not it takes money to produce that speech (in this case, a documentary). The second follows from the ability of the government to reasonably regulate the candidates themselves and their activities.

If Lessig wants to overturn Citizens United, I too hope he fails. Because that means the West Virginia legislature can ban Sierra Club from creating videos about the environmental destruction caused by coal mining. It means that the government could ban Sicko (produced by the Weinstein Company).

Citizens United was not a "money is speech case." It was a "movies are speech" case.

<comment><USER6>
      > It does not say that the government cannot prevent candidates from taking unlimited amounts of money for their campaigns.

Correct. Hence the "+/\- independence" comment.

Sure, they're just making a documentary. That happens to come out during an election campaign. And it's advertised heavily with the same language as campaign slogans. And given away for free to anyone who will listen.

But it's not political spending, it's free speech.

The problem is it's both.

We're still effectively in a situation where large interests can collectively pool their resources together anonymously to win far more influence than the people who are supposed to be democratically represented here.

But more perversely, it's hijacking free speech as a backdoor loophole into political gerrymandering. For every Sierra Club citizen's group, there are far more WalMarts or Koch Industries with far deeper pockets. The Sierra Club dues-paying members are being drowned out by the voices of the few and wealthy -- again, it's looking like an oligarchy, not a representative democracy. Yes, you can't stop something like that without limiting free speech, which of course nobody wants either.

As far as I see it, once a loophole like this is identified, you can either argue for abolishing all campaign finance laws (since we've found ways around them), or you reconcile campaign finance laws with free speech that looks like and quacks like campaign expenditures.

What the legal framework for that would be, you're right, I don't know. Call it overturning McCutcheon vs. FEC if you don't want to call it Citizens United. Or just call it Campaign Finance Reform. There's no single boogeyman here, it's a refactor of the system we're talking about.

<comment><USER9> I'd call it overturning the first amendment. Freedom of the press specifically concerned a few wealthy guys printing and distributing pamphlets to unequally influence politics. There is no loophole. I very strongly oppose your political preferences.

<comment><USER6> Candidates with the most spending win 8 of 10 senate races and 9 of 10 house races. It's there in the data: [https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/01/big- spender-always-...](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/01/big-spender- always-wins/)

The reality is money buys elections.

Given the choice between 10 donors that can afford to just drop well above the median annual salary (albeit as 'independent' documentaries) and trying to rally 50k mom-and-pop donors that contribute $20 each, it's a no-brainer which is the easier route to electoral success.

The question is do you want to be represented by the voice of the 10 or the 50k?

We're not talking about overturning the first. We're trying to figure out how to reconcile the first with decentralizing some very centralized influence over public policy.

You should be distrustful of any centralized political system. That's what we have, not by design but by reality.

<comment><USER7> _Incumbents_ win most elections. They also raise the most money, because... they're going to win. Campaign donors are corrupt but they're not stupid.

You're not going to fix the problems you want to fix, because you don't see how they are reinforced by every other aspect of the system.

<comment><USER6> You're right, it's a self-reinforcing loop: incumbents win most elections, so they raise the most money, so they run the most effective campaigns, so they win the incumbency.

The solution is to chip away at this self-reinforcing feedback loop. Decentralize the fundraising through effective campaign finance limits and you create more dependence on small donors. Small donors care more about having their beliefs represented than choosing the winning horse (and the influence that comes with the winning horse being indebted to you).

The incumbency bias is a circular result of centralized money going for the easy bet. Decentralize public funding and the easy bet becomes less clear, weakening the feedback loop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My wife pointed this out to me today and said she wanted to give $200 because the issue is very important to her. We gave $500.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't see how subsidizing candidates who agree to donation limits will work. In the last few Presidential elections we've already blown past the viability of the existing public funding.

Anyway, I am one of those rare folks who thinks there's _not enough_ money in politics. Or at least that we shouldn't worry about the money that's already there. The Center for Responsive Politics (a pro-reform group) estimates that total Federal direct election spending reached $6 billion in 2012[1]. Even if "shadowy groups" spent twice that over again (they didn't), that's $18 billion worth of spending to influence the future of a $3.6T government regulating a $15T economy.

To put it another way, $18B is less than half the annual revenue of the Coca Cola company, or only 6x what Americans spend on scented candles every year.

[1] [http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/10/2012-election- spendi...](http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/10/2012-election-spending- will-reach-6/)

<comment><USER12> Good points. McCain & Feingold passed campaign finance reform about 10 years ago, for the claimed purpose of getting money out of politics.

What that bill _did_ succeed in doing was put more boundaries in place for less-powerful entities, while ensuring the more-powerful entities can do what they want, via fiat, loophole, secrecy, whatever.

Mission accomplished?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Said every SuperPAC ever.

What politician isn't for fixing broken government?

Who is standing up for broken government?

What congress isn't committed to fundamental reform?

<comment><USER12> Exactly. Just the other day, Obama proclaimed that 80% of US citizens want immigration reform. When it's worded that vaguely, sure, that's true ... the vast majority want that. But "reform" means different things to different people, and very often the _opposite_ things.

Worse, it's often mutually exclusive. In fact, "reform" to some people means ensuring we _do not do_ the things that "reform" means to others.

Consider ... does immigration reform mean?

• keeping families together

• amnesty

• legal worker status

• in-state college tuition for non-citizens

• a fence, wall, drones, troops, sensors

• stopping Mexican troops when they cross the border

• dealing with cartels who vandalize billboards to threaten US officials (plato o plomo)

• ... etc

Many people want some of these things to happen, and want some of these things to _not_ happen. Yet they all want "reform".

The same is true for every "reform" of "broken" government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really like that Lessig is doing this because it is a concrete test of his assertion that money distorts politics.

If Mayday PAC raises their money (and I hope they do), they will go into 5 House races and attempt to make campaign finance reform the determining factor in how voters choose their representative.

If they succeed, it will ironically demonstrate that Lessig is right about the power of money to shape the mind of the electorate.

But if they spend the money and fail to make campaign finance reform a major voter issue, it will be a demonstration that money is actually not particularly distorting. (I think this is likely; voters typically care a lot more about issues or ideology than process.)

The most annoying aspect of the Mayday PAC coverage is watching tech reporters breathlessly report the most banal aspects of any political campaign, like this:

> Then there's the question of what Mayday PAC will spend its resources on. As > a super PAC, the outfit isn't allowed to give directly to campaigns. But it > can spend unlimited amounts to promote one candidate over another, or to > defend a candidate from attacks. There are even more choices Mayday PAC will > have to make. For advertising alone, you can choose from radio ads, TV ads > and online ads. You can take out ads on broadcast TV, satellite TV or cable. > You can pick the time of day. You can conduct a massive air war that reaches > everybody in a market, or you can spend more on selectively targeted ads > that simultaneously show one household a 30-second spot tied to gun control > and their next-door neighbor an ad linked to healthcare.

<comment><USER13> > But if they spend the money and fail to make campaign finance reform a major > voter issue, it will be a demonstration that money is actually not > particularly distorting.

No, it would be a demonstration that money, for many voters, may not initially appear distorting. It could also be a demonstration that some voters, like you, are largely apathetic to whether or not a political process is influenced by money.

<comment><USER3> If they spend a lot of money, and it has no effect, that would put a dent in the theory that money always has an effect.

They'd be in good company, though. The Sunlight Foundation found no correlation between the outside spending in the 2012 federal elections and race outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Everyone hates Washington Special Interests, unless of course it is their special interest. Then it is righteous.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can someone explain how this is going to work? They are going to send a handful of representatives to washington - what is the guarantee that those representatives won't change their stand once they get elected (or the money dries up)? And who choses which candidates to support?

Also, isn't 12 million (assuming they raise that much) too small? May be it is a good start.

Not trying to be negative, just trying to understand what their plan is.

<comment><USER5> Pass a bunch of laws outlawing what they perceive to be wrong with democracy, ignore the unintended consequences, raise money based on those consequences, pass more laws, create more unintended consequences, raise more money.

Basically they are going to do exactly what everyone has done before because their plan is to do exactly what everyone has done before, which is why they are raising money to get money out of politics, apparently this solution has eluded us for years because no one could raise $2.6 million dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They raised ~1 mil in 2 weeks. So they thought they could then raise 5x that amount in 2x the time? How is that a rational conclusion?

<comment><USER5> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have donated twice, and I hope everyone here donates as well. This is the first step toward fixing our democracy. If you want to get corporate bribery and cronyism out of politics, it's time to put your money where your mouth is.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm a little disappointed it's not called suicide PAC.

</comment><comment><USER19> The submission title ("Larry Lessig's PAC is fighting big money in politics with crowdsourced Bitcoin") was not only highly editorialized, it was linkbaity (Bitcoin is barely mentioned). Submitters: this is against the HN guidelines. Please don't do it.

The article title isn't great either. We can change it if someone suggests an accurate, neutral replacement, preferably using language from the article. Usually an article contains a natural such title in its first paragraph, but I don't see one here.

<comment><USER20> End of the second paragraph: _launching a super PAC that would dismantle the modern-day campaign finance system_</comment></comment>


The Generation Gap in Your Office - <AUTHOR> http://blog.socialcast.com/the-generation-gap-in-your-office/ <comment><USER2> As someone who runs a startup in the entry level careers space, I am so tired of people talking about generational differences, Gen-Y, Millennials, etc. I think the vast majority of it is crap.

I don't disagree with the conclusion that we will see a shift in workplace technology, but it would be stupid to disagree with that conclusion. Workplace communication technology is constantly evolving and improving. Workplaces aren't going to adopt new technology because of the attitude of "millennials," they're going to adopt it because it enables more productivity (or because they took on a stupid contract with a terrible provider).

<comment><USER3> As someone who just graduated from college and now working in a large company, this generation gap is extremely apparent. I understand that as a whole workplace technology is evolving, but it definitely takes a bit too long to catch on at larger companies with older people in management that don't understand the newer technology. The only way I can see to fix it (fast enough) is to start new companies and let the older ones fail.

<comment><USER2> I find that the reason that older people in management are slow to adopt new technology has little to do with their generations. It has more to do with the fact that their time is extremely valuable and they don't have a lot of it. Investing time in learning new technology just isn't worth it for them.

I've seen plenty of older people who are unemployed adopting social media and other new technology. Their time isn't that valuable, so they make the effort to learn the new stuff. They're same generation as the folks in management, but the value proposition of investing time in learning technology is very different.

<comment><USER3> So when I go to management and let them know that I've spent my less valuable time and figured out a way to speed up our process, they should then either trust me and let me implement it, or spend the time and evaluate for themselves if I'm correct. When management says their time is too valuable to learn how to do their job more efficiently, they're just bad managers. It would be like a programmer entering a bunch of data by hand over and over again because it might take too long to figure out how to automate it. It may not pay off immediately, but it will in the long run.

It seems to be a misconception of older people that a manager's time is too valuable to learn new things. I don't know why that is... it just always seems that way to me. Maybe you can enlighten me...

<comment><USER4> You might be wrong in thinking that your "faster" way is better. Given no details I can't really elaborate, but a fresh perspective often omits important subtleties that management values.

For instance: paper forms becoming web forms / database tables. Great for 99% of enterprise situations, but there is a loss of flexibility in edge cases. You can't write notes in the margins, or enter "invalid" but actually correct data.

Adoption will be seen differently by different people - those who have seen no edge cases (aka you) see the common case become substantially more efficient. Those who have more experience (aka management) might see the frailty of the new system and worry that important business will be lost.

So, people who value their time (doctors, lawyers, etc) still use older systems (often paper) that are more mature and flexible. Heck, I find myself (a "Millennial" early adopter) moving towards free text systems as I run into random inflexibility.

<comment><USER3> exactly... inflexibility to change an old process because of 1% or less of the use cases could be justified or not. If a new process makes 99% of things take 10% of the time and 1% of things take 1000% of the time, you still win. I would argue that edge cases should rarely be a reason to hold up improving a process.

<comment><USER5> ...except that those 1% might be incredibly critical to the business. Perhaps if you break them, the fallout will be bad enough to kill the company.

Whether or not you should try a new process is entirely a function of _what kind of company you're in_ , not what generation the various players grew up in. If you're in a startup, you should definitely try any new process you can think of that might give you an edge. If the company is basically milking a cash-cow, be _incredibly_ risk-averse when thinking about "making things better".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm in a very small company. I am the youngest employee. I'm not certain of the exact age difference, but I suspect I'm on the order of 25 years younger than the next youngest employee.

This company was founded by people who all worked at another place and started their own show. They are all doing things they would never have dreamed of doing 3 years ago, let alone 10. There is blogging, talk of twitter, talk of facebook... social media is one of the new favorite words of the president.

I don't think the generation gap really drives the technology change. Sure, young people may be able to change faster, but old people can still get it when it makes sense to.

That said, I wish there were some younger people around... it's hard to relate to their discussions about kids, houses, etc...

<comment><USER7> Indeed, I'm the youngest person at this particular office and I dread going to group lunches and having to hear about husbands, kids, mortgage payments, and other stuff I just don't deal with at this point.

The biggest thing for me is having to pretend...this false maturity is tiring. Definitely not a good sign, but yeah. At least, around folks your own age you can let loose a bit.

On the other hand, having older folks around (who are the same ages of my parents in my case), gives me room for lots of great advice about the stuff I don't care about now like kids, houses, cars, etc. from folks that aren't my parents.

It's a balancing act--be sure to keep up with folks your age outside the office. And when you're at work, if you can, catch up with somebody who's like-minded, even if they're older...they're not mutually-exclusive.

<comment><USER5> _Indeed, I'm the youngest person at this particular office and I dread going to group lunches and having to hear about husbands, kids, mortgage payments, and other stuff I just don't deal with at this point._

I remember thinking this, exactly!

And then I remember a few years later, having to pretend I was still interested in younger peoples' stories about drinking, clubbing, getting high and dating - when I really wasn't at all anymore. Strange - once I _loved_ that stuff and couldn't imagine not loving it... and then it just got boring.

Still later (right now actually) my wife and I have made a big effort to branch out and maintain friendships with people everywhere from a decade younger to a decade older than us. I think it's been a pretty big positive change in our lives fwiw.

<comment><USER8> _...younger peoples' stories about drinking, clubbing, getting high and dating - when I really wasn't at all anymore. Strange - once I loved that stuff and couldn't imagine not loving it... and then it just got boring._

Do you think those things got boring as a result of doing them too much? i.e. do you subscribe to the idea that you can "get it out of your system" while you're young? Or do you think it's more a result of age? Once your friends start getting married, you feel the need to settle down too?

I'm asking because this subject has been on my mind a lot lately. I'm 25 and don't really feel like I've "gotten it out of my system. On the other hand, I feel like I've kind of started down the "settling down" road in such a way that I can't really be 21 again. Any thoughts or words of wisdom?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From their graph, looks like Gen X got screwed even as to the number of years their generation covers. Boomers and Millenials are both allotted 19 years, while Gen X only gets 13.

</comment><comment><USER10> _Historically, shifts in enterprise communication happen every 20 years, and with the millennial generation, this shift will be from email to activity streams._

As a 'millenial', for actual business communication, I strongly prefer email.

<comment><USER3> I think as long as you have separate streams, they can be much more powerful and useful than email. Think about github and trac. Both have a type of stream to condense information that would be too much for email. Obviously, no one wants to actually integrate facebook with their business communications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Activity streams? Like being on your dev group's build queue and CVS commit log email aliases?

Being easily bored and ready to work anywhere, anytime -- like every enthusiastic college student or young hobbyist programmer ever?

Sounds like not much is changing.

<comment><USER12> People like that making up nearly half the office would be a significant change. What you describe is highly useful and productive, but also a small minority.

<comment><USER13> The (probably false) assumption there is that the oldest millennials will still feel the same when the youngest start working and they've got 15-20 years of work experience.

<comment><USER11> There's also an assumption, again probably false, that typical individual millennials actually embody the new trends associated with their generation. Just as the hippie generation didn't have very many hippies, the millennial generation probably doesn't have many individuals like the hyper-networked, hyper-social individuals that serve as its poster children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14>
      EnterpriseAdoptionDate = EarlyAdoptionDate + 5 years //  that is all

[EDIT: Changed "OpenSourceAdoptionDate" to "EarlyAdoptionDate". Thanks, coderdude.]

<comment><USER15> Is that how they figure out when to buy new copies of Windows? The article doesn't mention open source software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ack! The green shade pie chart is almost impossible to read.

</comment><comment><USER17> The article makes some good points but ignores one essential factor. As much as this "millennial" bored-again-generation will change the enterprise (the big corporations) these big corporations will change them even more. The author as a millennialist does not realize that those retiring boomers are really the "hippie" generation. They had no less revolutionary intentions when they infiltrated the enterprise in the late 70s. When the millennials will be retiring the enterprise will not be much different (they may have updated their current XP Professional set up though) but the revolutionary millennials will look not much different than today's retiring boomers.</comment>


Show HN: Magit for VSCode (Alpha) - <AUTHOR> https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=kahole.magit <comment><USER2> Wow, that definitely looks like a good magit replica in VSCode.

As someone who suggests every git user to try out magit (without all of the Emacs stuff that others dislike) because it provides a great mental model on how git works, this is very useful to people who use VSCode.

Some suggestions:

* Looks like the command UI is enabled through the VSCode command bar(? I'm not sure of the name) much alike Helm, but I think that the popup window style used in magit allows much more discoverability - a UI similar to that would be preferable.

* Just using the name magit inside the plugin name might not be the best naming; A rebranding would be better I think.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here are some articles that explain how (the original) Magit is different from other Git clients:

* [https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/the-magical-git-interface](https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/the-magical-git-interface)

* [https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/magit-walk-through](https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/magit-walk-through)

</comment><comment><USER4> What benefits does this bring over the built in vscode git commands?

<comment><USER5> Magit, together with maybe Org-mode, is one of the Emacs packages that make it very hard for people to migrate off Emacs, to other tools, ever.

Whatever IDE or editor I work in, I still use Emacs and Magit for Git interaction. Maybe that as perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The biggest thing that I see as missing right off the bat is the popup. That lets you execute anything very fast. Having to use the Command Palette to run commands really breaks that flow.

<comment><AUTHOR> The commands in the pallete can be triggered by a single key-press (indicated to the left of the item). This makes it only visually different from Magit.

Its not perfect, but close your eyes and its the same sequence of keys to triger an action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good start! Looks like it's still missing a lot of stuff I use daily, like staging chunks, ediff etc. I can actually imagine in 10 years that VSCode is going to be impossible to ignore even for die-hard Emacs users, so I do hope people keep iterating on this stuff, and Microsoft on the platform underneath it all.

<comment><USER8> The strength of emacs is that once you can program it it's extremely easy to write extensions for it, even for one off tasks, because it's so quick and easy.

Compared to this in vscode writing extensions is much more convoluted. You wouldn't create a new vscode extension for a 1 hour task, for example, while with emacs it's trivial to write some small code which can help you with your current task. I often do.

<comment><USER7> Is it that heavyweight? There's nothing akin to just pasting something into your .emacs, or even a scratch buffer? I admit I have looked around with no luck.

Doesn't seem like that's improbable over the product's lifetime though, if there's enough demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's amazing! After using Emacs for years, I switched to VS Code. Magit was one one of the things I really, _really_ missed from Emacs and I've never found anything remotely as nice. I'll definitely give this a try.

<comment><USER10> Die hard emacs user here (but looking sometimes into vscode). Which things you get from vscode that couldn't get in emacs? Are you definitely set?

<comment><USER9> I've made the full switch. I still love Emacs, and if VS Code suddenly disappeared I'd switch right back. That said:

VSC looks and feels like a Mac app. Keyboard shortcuts to system services work the same there as in any other app. Emacs doesn't, however much time I spent trying to get it to do so. It also feels faster in a lot of ways because slow operations usually don't block UI updates.

VSC is _way_ more popular lately, and it's extendable by people who don't want to learn elisp. I personally don't mind elisp at all, but I've come to accept that this is the minority position. So, what's that mean for VSC? It has a ludicrous number of packages / themes / etc., installable from the builtin package manager (that everyone actually _uses_ ; no more fetching code from some guy's website because he's politically opposed to the idea of a package manager), that actually work out of the box and are configurable through a GUI (or JSON if you want to commit the settings into source control).

I love Emacs, VSC is much better at editing Python than I've ever been able to configure Emacs to be. Linters and formatters are well supported and Just Work.

Here's the majority of my main settings.json file:

      {
          "files.trimTrailingWhitespace": true,
          "[python]": {"editor.rulers": [99]},
          "python.formatting.provider": "black",
          "python.formatting.blackArgs": ["--line-length", "99"],
          "python.linting.flake8Args": ["--max-line-length", "99"],
          "workbench.colorTheme": "Dracula",
          "editor.fontSize": 13,
          "editor.fontWeight": "400",
          "editor.fontFamily": "Fira Code",
          "editor.fontLigatures": true,
          "git.enableCommitSigning": true,
          "workbench.iconTheme": "material-icon-theme",
          "editor.formatOnSave": true
      }

It's clearly not as configurable as init.el, but look how easy it is to change the theme or font size, and to add vertical rulers, and to configure font ligatures. As it turns out, I would much rather have settings be that simple than to have a Turing-complete language for computing the config at runtime. Others will disagree, _and that 's OK_. But for me, it gets rid of one more massive excuse for screwing around with my editor config instead of writing code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using Magit inside a VSCode terminal for a couple weeks, this is a great alternative!

</comment><comment><USER12> I tried magit briefly, but found it unusably slow. Is this different?</comment>


Ask HN: What timezone do you use in conversation with a distributed team? - <AUTHOR> We are scattered around there world, originally with a core group on the west coast.  So we kind of use PT + relative time, like...
"Let's sync about X at 1pm PT in ~3 hours"
Which works okay, but I don't love how it forces the non west coast people to do the extra time conversion step all the time.  Not that that's so hard, but it is not so egalitarian as I would like to be striving for.
So we are wondering about switching to UTC in conversation. Has anyone tried that?  Or used any tools that were actually effective at normalizing time references in conversation?  How do you do it? <comment><USER2> Our team is on the coasts of the US and all over India right now. Luckily India uses one timezone, but it is an oddity with a 30 minute offset instead of 1 hr. Anyway, in my google calendars I show both the IST and my local timezone so that while setting meeting we can easily tell people at the extremes what the time is. I also use the worldtimebuddy website (and Klok app on iOS) to show all the timezones so I can tell people the times when I am setting a meeting time. This way no one has to do the math. It takes 2 seconds to glance at the website or app and see everyones timezones and write it down or say it on a call.

What would be better is if we could add more than 2 timezones to google calendar, then it'd be easier. But still not hard. My rule is the place that has the bulk of the people is who gets the most favorable time for the meeting. That way if 4 people are in one TZ and one person in another, we inconvenience the one person, if anyone has to be, not the 4. For some meetings I have switched it up, when it is me and one other person I will alternate who does late vs early etc, so it is a shared burden. This helps the team all feel equal, regardless of title or position.

<comment><AUTHOR> For scheduling meetings ahead of time, that makes sense.

Do you ever think it would be easier if you all just declared, "we only deal in UTC at this company" and then everyone would just get used to doing their own conversion? Or would that be more trouble?

<comment><USER2> No. I feel using UTC then means everyone spends mental energy on time conversions versus just the organizer doing a quick check and coordinating with the team. UTC for software is best, but I don't think it works well for people in general that are spread across timezones.

There are systems that exist like calendly that helps you solve one to one meeting issues. For example, it works great for interview scheduling when people are in different timezones, but for internal meeting and coordination process is better then automation IMO.

Process here is easier. Use google calendar to find 2-3 times everyone is available (at least internal people) and send them out, that is the fastest way if you aren't already on the phone talking to everyone. This way it only takes 1-2 communications at most to schedule a meeting. You have to bake timezone management and meeting process into the company culture, it is really important. Just like I always add 24-48 hours to any estimate when I know it involved me speaking with the team in India.

Last point, meetings should be avoided for things where a document can be created, and comments added to it for the communication. We use Quip, write up the details in Quip, ask everyone for feedback by a specific date/time and then you move forward from there. It stops a lot of unnecessary meetings and lets you do things faster. It follows the adage of slow down to go faster.

I've been leading remote teams since 1997, which started because we had people in India, Germany and the U.S. The struggles we ran into over the years were all solved by setting basic processes and building a culture around accountability to the process. One key is reducing unnecessary meetings and using documentation and comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another potential bonus for UTC is that generally logs and database entries are in UTC, so when troubleshooting I imagine that could be one click easier if we're already used to thinking in that mode.</comment>


Every move will be recorded: the machinic police utopia in 18th-century Paris - <AUTHOR> http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/news/features/features-feature14 <comment><USER2> Almost like Facebook, but without the DIY approach. :D</comment>


Hackurls.com: please review my one-day python-django project (Source provided) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackurls.com Hey, I love you HN, and I love reddit, but I got bored of clicking around to see all the news, and I mostly don't like how RSS readers layout.
So I created this project in python (with django template system) to read rapidly all the news I care just hovering on titles.
I actually use it and I find it quite comfortable but I still have to improve some interface aspects. For suggestions etc. use comments or mail to vuotomeccanico on gmail. <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I love you HN, and I love reddit, but I got bored of clicking around to see all the news, and I mostly don't like how RSS readers layout.

So I created this project in python (with django template system) to read rapidly all the news I care just hovering on titles.

I actually use it and I find it quite comfortable but I still have to improve some interface aspects. For suggestions etc. use comments or mail to vuotomeccanico on gmail.

</comment><comment><USER2> very nice! but why isnt there a tooltip for the hn posts?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, there is a tooltip only if it's a AskHN news (news without a link).</comment></comment>


NULL Is the Worst Mistake in Computer Science - <AUTHOR> https://dzone.com/articles/the-worst-mistake-of-computer-science-1?oid=hn <comment><USER2> I was listening to a podcast on Dot Net Rocks where they were talking about Haskell and how it doesn't have nulls and has option types (Some/None) instead. The thing is, that isn't much different from nulls, you have to check if there is a Some or a None just like you have to check for nulls. Now, the program may not blow up but it isn't like Some/None save you any time.

How do Some/None fit into the scheme of declare objects, typically on the heap? Null means no value indicating that the object has not been initialized yet (I'm using C# as my basis for this) so what should it be, None(type)? I don't think NULLS are necessarily bad but just like the "evil" goto it has to be handled correctly in order to not be a problem</comment>


Putting Sugary Soda Out of Reach - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/well/eat/putting-sugary-soda-out-of-reach.html <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12875168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12875168)</comment>


Sherpa – self-driving AI for your car - <AUTHOR> http://www.epilog.com <comment><USER2> What cars is it compatible with? Does it have to go inside an already self- driving car? Or could it integrate say, with a 99 Toyota Camry? I would assume that the car its put on needs to have at a minimum electronic steering?

</comment><comment><USER3> CTO of Epilog here!

We built Sherpa on top of openpilot, an open source framework for self-driving cars. The original developer (comma.ai) is shipping it on a LeEco cell phone in a case.

We designed a system with a discrete GPU and 8K optics. Jabil (the manufacturer of Apple's AirPods) helped us make it automotive grade and is handling manufacturing. We're training certified mechanics to install Sherpa in under 30 minutes. It's reliable, user-friendly, and safe.

I'll be around to answer any questions.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does SNAP need 1,859 employees? - <AUTHOR> Do they really need this many people to handle advertisers and run the app? I know they have a research team for the spectacles but this seems excessive. <comment><USER2> [https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/](https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/)

<comment><USER3> This was a great article.

The point about adding engineers until marginal returns per employee reaches their salary is a great angle in explaining why companies don't want to stay lean.

<comment><USER4> That would be a good point if Snap inc was making money.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/technology/snap-public- co...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/technology/snap-public-company- start-ups.html?_r=1)

<comment><USER5> It's still a good point. Scaling a company is orthogonal to scaling it profitably. One is primarily an engineering problem and the other is a business problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Judging by their jobs page, it's uber-specialization and the natural tendency of job preservation.

For example, there's these four jobs: Character Artist/Bitmoji, Illustrator/Bitmoji, Product Design/Bitmoji, Technical Lead/Bitmoji

No idea how many people already work on it. But there will be four more. And they will find ways to justify their existence, and grow the size of the group so that their relative importance versus other products gives enough internal power.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm sorry, but do you mean SNAP as in SnapChat, or do you mean SNAP as in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program? Either one has good reason to have a sizable team.

<comment><USER8> I was really confused by the comments until I realized SNAP must be SnapChat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's the iron law of oligarchy at work. I struggle to find many tech companies outside of the big four that didn't begin to decline long term post-IPO.

<comment><USER10> Their obligation to maximize shareholder returns is what drives them to grow as much as possible.

The big 4 just happen to have done a good job at it (or got lucky).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Compared to the # of users -- i.e. orders of magnitude greater -- that's a pretty reasonably-sized team.

<comment><USER12> "As of January 2016, 45.4 million persons were participating in SNAP." [https://www.snaptohealth.org/snap/snap-frequently-asked- ques...](https://www.snaptohealth.org/snap/snap-frequently-asked- questions/#howmany)

[https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/pd/SNAPsummary....](https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/pd/SNAPsummary.pdf) [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2016/jul/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2016/jul/21/donald-trump/trump-43-million-americans-food- stamps/)

<comment><USER13> I think they meant SNAP the ticker symbol for Snapchat and not the government program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Snapchat does a few different things now:

\- hardware design

\- computer vision

\- iOS, Android, and server development

\- content production -- shooting video, writing scripts, etc.

\- selling advertising -- they need many account managers and salespeople for this

and then there is HR, Legal, and Finance to support the aforementioned orgs.

For a company like Snap, 1,859 employees is pretty small. At this time of writing, Uber has somewhere around 12,000 and Facebook has about 18,000.

</comment><comment><USER15> They don't need that many employees. Every team wants to hire more people for various reasons, so more people will be hired as long as there is budget for it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Building the core platform maybe took 100. Optimizing the platform to make money probably takes 1000+.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's like when you watch a film and the credits roll by at the end. There seems to be hundreds of people involved and I often think maybe they could have gotten away with a few actors and a cameraman.

<comment><USER18> I've seen (but can't find) some discussion on here about the movie industry in relation to this, I think in relation to what Netflix is doing with their originals. Apparently it's really heavily unionised, with people having incredibly specific jobs which only they are allowed to do, which is strongly baked into their general culture. Doubt it's the same case as SNAP, but just an interesting titbit. Can't find a source offhand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Because you don't get a big valuation without the appearance of being big.

<comment><USER20> Instagram and WhatsApp show this to be false.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's just how bubbles work.</comment>


Ask HN: Which wireless router do you use at home? - <AUTHOR> I've been using an Airport Extreme for many years, but recently I started having trouble with wi-fi quality. I'd been thinking about getting a new router anyway, because I'd like one that can run a DNS server I can use to add a few records only visible to my local network. Which hardware do you use? If its software is customizable, what do you run on it (e.g. OpenWrt)? <comment><USER5> This might seem weird, but I use an old PC with a wireless card in it (get one with a good antenna, and connect wireless APs via ethernet if you want more coverage). I've put Ubuntu server on it, and it has quite a few advantages over my old router which had OpenWrt

1\. Persistent DNS cache using pdnsd (even after reboot because it is on-disk) with a long minimum global TTL. You would imagine this would be a problem, but surprisingly I haven't had any. I've only had to get in once to correct something. You can manually purge a specific domain, and all of them if you think something is wrong.

2\. Powerful enough for good OpenVPN settings. Automatically routes through a VPN, and can be disabled for a specific client if needed. The AES instructions (which are on any Intel chip after 2008) help out _immensely_ compared to using just a generic router.

3\. Smoother LAN transfers. A cheap gigabit PCIe card (Intel EXPI9402PT - <USER2> ebay for about $20) which takes away local transfer rate problems, especially if you have an NAS.

4\. Use it as an NAS. It isn't a good idea to mix devices which need good security with non-critical systems, like NAS so be sure about your settings and know what you are doing.

Another cool thing is port forwarding to the remote VPN instance so you can login remotely and check out your network or access any files/media you have on your NAS.

There are more things people can do which give more control and/or better experience, like setting up rate limiting on clients, custom settings for clients with unknown MAC addresses, etc. Traffic shaping is a good one (prioritize specific type of connections over another - example VoIP > Netflix > torrent).

The extra power really opens up the possibilities of what a router can do.

If anyone has any questions, I'd be glad to help out.

<comment><USER6> Something to keep in mind is that even at idle, a PC will probably run at 50W or so. This would cost $80-100/year to run where I live, which isnt insignificant. Unless you are using it as a NAS, need very high speed OpenVPN (>100MBit/s), or other things that a PC can do best, you're much better off with something like an ER-X, which has a _max_ power draw of 5W, and has no problem doing gigabit line-speed routing/NAT/etc.

<comment><USER5> True, power consumption should be considered. I guess doing this would be a good choice if someone has a NAS already running.

>you're much better off with something like an ER-X I pretty much recommend a plain jane router which can run DD-WRT for anyone. All this is clearly overkill, and more importantly useless for most people.

Another choice is getting a cheap NUC like x86 device and get AP-only devices for good coverage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X [1] with a Unifi AP Pro [2]

Extremely happy with the performance and quality. I don't know of any router for $180 that can rival this combination overall.

[1] [https://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgerouter-x](https://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgerouter-x) [2] [https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap](https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap)

<comment><USER8> Same setup for me. Two things to look out for with the EdgeRouter X:

1, IPv6 is not trivial to setup. In my case I struggled to find documentation on configuring it on a PPoE connection.

2, It can't reach 1 GB/s on WAN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mikrotik wAP ac [1] positioned in center of home with a Mikrotik Hex POE [2] as the main router and DHCP server. There is TP-Link HomePlug [3,4] between router and WiFi base station.

The wAP ac has a stronger and more reliable signal than any other WiFI unit I've tried (various Linksys, Asus, and BT units).

The Mikrotik gear is rock solid, but not exactly what I'd call consumer friendly. Great if you know or want to know something about real routers. I got fed up with buggy consumer routers and decided to go with either Mikrotik or Ubiquity rather than struggle to get the right hardware and firmware combo for Tomato et al. Nothing wrong with these, but none of my existing hardware had an image on the various options.

[1] [https://mikrotik.com/product/RBwAPG-5HacT2HnD](https://mikrotik.com/product/RBwAPG-5HacT2HnD), $89

[2] [https://mikrotik.com/product/RB960PGS](https://mikrotik.com/product/RB960PGS), $79

[3] [http://uk.tp-link.com/products/details/cat-18_TL- PA4010KIT.h...](http://uk.tp-link.com/products/details/cat-18_TL- PA4010KIT.html)

[4] Always, always change the HomePlug network name and password :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> I have an Asus RT-AC66U w/ merlin firmware. I've been running it for years now without a single crash. It's only been rebooted once to update the firmware as it's on a UPS. I have a 2 TB HDD that turns it into our house's media server.

<comment><USER11> Similar: RT-N66U, with stock firmware. In Wireless Access Point mode, attached to my ISP-provided modem/router, whose WiFi is turned off. Very happy with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For OpenWRT - at the moment the current code is at the fork called LEDE - <USER3> is a ToH: [https://lede-project.org/toh/start](https://lede- project.org/toh/start) \- both projects want to reunite but it seems progress is slow - use the 17.01.2 release for LEDE at the moment - it's the most stable current version.

As for the hardware - If you want to use OpenWRT/LEDE you have to be selective about supported WiFi chips. ath9k is battle tested but no ac wifi. ath10k should work reasonable well if you only want to have an access point. Broadcom / Mediatek and others can have issues - stability or signal strength depending on the driver.

Check out kmod-sched-cake and sqm-scripts for the latest in research regarding bufferbloat - [https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/codel/wiki/Cake/](https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/codel/wiki/Cake/) together with airtime fairness - [https://linuxplumbersconf.org/2016/ocw/system/presentations/...](https://linuxplumbersconf.org/2016/ocw/system/presentations/3963/original/linuxplumbers_wifi_latency-3Nov.pdf) you can archive some crazy results in good wifi (only on ath9k / mt76 partly on ath10k).

If you want something off the shelf - Mikrotik and Ubiquity and to a degree TP-Link and Asus models get good reviews. In terms of hardware and antennas Mikrotik and Ubiquity are usally better.

You probably want 802.11ac and 5GHz - at the moment 802.11ac Wave2 is probably not worth the money because you need support on the client side and that is rare.

TP-Link Archer C50 would be my budget pick (30€) and runs LEDE - no Gigabit through. Archer C7 for Gigabit.

If you don't mind soldering a serial console and flashing LEDE using the bootloader get a used Cisco Meraki MR18 / MR24 without licence and wall mount kit for a few $ from ebay - top notch hardware and antennas (but ath9k not ath10k) and lot's of CPU / memory.

<comment><USER13> +1 For LEDE/OpenWRT, I'm running 17.01.02 (uname -a=Linux LEDE 4.4.71 #0) I am using a TP-Link TL-WDR4300 v1 and am very happy with it so far.

I would probably be more happy with ubiquiti unifi

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> PFsense on a Dell Optiplex FX160 running a router-on-a-stick configuration with a Cisco switch (router-on-a-stick refers to pulling the external and internal interfaces over a single ethernet cable on separate VLANs)

</comment><comment><USER15> Currently 1 Unifi AP with Long Range, with a RPi 3 as controller (docker image). Setup was done in 30 minutes, and I'm just amazed how well it all works. I'll soon buy another 1-2 APs for the other floors in the house, and expect perfect wifi signal everywhere. If I need to, I can let the RPi run things like dnsmasq, printer server or whatnot.

Apart from the Unifi centric hardware, I have an Asus router that currently handles all the routing (also DHCP), and a cable modem.

</comment><comment><USER16> Google WiFi (mesh of 3 units). Really love it so far. Very easy to configure and manage. No more clunky webpages to navigate, no more worrying about firmware upgrades. Switched recently from Linksys WRT610N after using it for about 8 years without any issues except for lack of firmware updates.

<comment><USER17> Same here, but with 5 units, and I'm supremely pleased by its overall performance.

For some odd reason, after moving to a new house, the Powerline networking in my office degraded from the consistent 300-400Mbps in the old house to < 10Mbps in my new office.

The new house is old, with thick walls, and I wasn't getting good throughput with the old pair of OnHubs I was using, but I figured that enough mesh points would overcome that, and as one of the mesh points is in my office, I've found plugging the desktop ethernet output directly into the ethernet input on the Mesh unit to be extremely performant.

<comment><USER16> I did the same thing on one of the mesh units as well as it was in one of the rooms diametrically opposite from the main unit and on the second floor. The mesh shows great signal strength now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Before paying for a Ubiquiti product, take a look at how they treat the GPL:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquiti_Networks#Open- source_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquiti_Networks#Open- source_licensing_compliance)

<comment><USER12> They also run PHP 2.0 (sic!) on all routers - [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/16/ubiquiti_networking...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/16/ubiquiti_networking_php_hole/)

<comment><USER19> _" A command injection vulnerability was found in 'pingtest_action.cgi.' This script is vulnerable since it is possible to inject a value of a variable. One of the reasons for this behavior is the used PHP version (PHP/FI 2.0.1 from 1997),"_

The first time I heard someone is using a pre PHP 3 version. Must be perl/cgi based and really old stuff. Why do they even ship with an inbuilt web server with cgi enabled - it's so outdated and screams 1995 tech. (even back in 2002 cgi, and Perl and PHP3 were considered outdated, and we had already PHP 4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> a ubiquiti AC-lite with pfsense on an APU2

I'd rather have my wifi be a black box that just works and my router be a little more just raw hardware with openbsd or linux or pfsense.

<comment><USER21> Same here: APU2C4 running vanilla OpenBSD for routing, DHCP, DNS, attached to a Unifi AC configured in pure bridge mode. I was not too pleased with Ubiquiti's firmware though and flashed LEDE, for which you can find ready-to- use firmware images. No more need to install and run a java-based controller instance on another PC for just a wireless bridge. For guest WiFi, I got a GL- AR150 for 20€ and also run LEDE, this time in isolation mode -- guests are NAT'd on their own network and cannot see each other.

<comment><USER20> Cool didn't know about LEDE, I use the iPhone app to manage the ubiquiti. But I don't really need to manage much. Just upgraded the firmware once...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here's how our home router is set up at our code school:

I bought a cheap gigabit router (from craigslist for around $30) and then bought a wireless range extender ($60) for the far end of the house. The router is not connected to the modem (so obviously no internet). We built our own server to host all the code, exercises, videos, as well as a DNS server. Our gitlab repository is resolved to google.com, so they usually get a kick out of pushing their code to 'google'. We have our own internal q/a site that resolves to facebook.com. Everybody gets to pick their own domain name to host their own projects.

We experience 0 downtime (unless there is a power outage), pushes to our repository is almost instantaneous, and tests run blazing fast on our speedy i7 desktop with 62GB Ram (that I got for $600 on craigslist). Also, students are not limited to their machines, they can code on whichever device they want (as long as it runs chrome or ssh) because code is hosted on the server. This way, we don't have to deal with people's installation problems.

I didn't touch the router's firmware at all. Our server acts as a dns server. However, everybody would have to modify their dns records on their wifi settings to add our server's ipaddress.

<comment><USER23> > However, everybody would have to modify their dns records on their wifi > settings to add our server's ipaddress.

Why can't you just push it over dhcp? (This is what I've always done for this use case...)

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the insight! Its my first time I've setup up something like this (coming from a front end dev background), so I didn't know about dhcp.

<comment><USER24> Where did you learn to set something up like this?

<comment><USER23> I learned from [http://tldp.org/HOWTO/DHCP/x369.html#DHCPSERVER](http://tldp.org/HOWTO/DHCP/x369.html#DHCPSERVER) when I got tired of auto-managing IP addresses -- the basic setup is not terrible. If you're using something else for DHCP assignment (e.g. PfSense) you can usually just provide the extra DNS server in the config there and it propagates out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Netgear R7000 [1] with AdvancedTomato [2], which is Tomato but with a pretty UI. It runs DNS, nginx as a reverse proxy, SSH gateway and some other bits & pieces with minimal fuss. Pretty sure I've never had to reboot it outside of testing configuration changes. I even managed to upgrade to a significantly newer firmware version without blowing away the NVRAM/other settings and having to redo everything from near scratch as is IME so common with custom router FW builds (note: YMMV).

It has USB 3, GigE, wireless speed has been fine etc... certainly one of the best home tech purchases I've made in the last couple years.

[1] [http://www.netgear.com.au/home/products/networking/wifi- rout...](http://www.netgear.com.au/home/products/networking/wifi- routers/R7000.aspx) [2] [https://advancedtomato.com](https://advancedtomato.com)

</comment><comment><USER26> I had a quite pricey $120 Asus n66u as primary router and a cheap, TP link router, as backup, lying in the closet.

At one point, the Asus started to become unreliable and unstable so I disabled it and put the $40 TP Link instead.

Now, about 3 years later, I completely forgot about my router setup and this TP link is rocking it every day. I'm really impressed by the brand. I only had to pull the powercord to quickly reset it once, during several years. I can not say this of most other brands I've worked with in the past.

You can run OpenWRT etc on it. It's quite similar to the legendary WRT54G.

I also bought a Wifi 4G portable router from TP Link later, and this is also high quality hardware at affordable prices.

[https://www.amazon.de/TP-Link-TL-WR1043ND-Ultimate- Anschluss...](https://www.amazon.de/TP-Link-TL-WR1043ND-Ultimate-Anschluss- Glasfasermodem/dp/B002YLAUU8)

</comment><comment><USER27> Ubiquiti Edgerouter + two Unifi UAP-AC-Pro

</comment><comment><USER28> I've been using ASUS routers with the Asus Merlin[1] firmware for a very long time -- they're just fantastic if you want customizability.

Current router: ASUS AC3100

[1] [https://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca/](https://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca/)

</comment><comment><USER29> PfSense on passively cooled j1200 celeron [1] running to a netgear PoE switch hooked to 3 ubiquiti unifi pro ac.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AJEJG1A/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AJEJG1A/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm still using an old WNDR-3700 (gigabit ports, dial band, agn) with OpenWRT, though the 2.4 wifi has gotten pretty spotty lately and I now have it set to do nightly reboots.

I'll likely replace it with one of the newer Mikrotik routers soon, mostly because we've started using them at work and for clients and it'd be good to have another spot to get and stay familiar with them. That said, while RouterOS is powerful it has a not insignificant learning curve. I've also seen firmware images and wiki entries indicating that you can run OpenWRT on some models, but I'm not sure how well supported that is.

</comment><comment><USER31> The ASUS Google OnHub. I used to face a router that reach DD-WRT and customised all the options... then I got sick of it all. The OnHub just works, and updates itself. It's not glamorous, but neither are my requirements.

</comment><comment><USER32> Mikrotik hEX RB750Gr3 5-port Gigabit Router feeding an AmpliFi Mesh Wi-Fi System (router plus two meshpoints). Performance, configurability, and reliability have been excellent. ~$350 total cost.

</comment><comment><USER33> Located in Germany where the company AVM has a very high market share. As a result, I use a Fritz!Box 6360 for Cable Internet (400 down, 25 up) with a Fritz!Repeater 1750E on every floor connected via gigabit ethernet. Manually set up 2.4 and 5 Ghz SSIDs to segregate devices like printer an other ancient stuff to the 2.4 SSID while using the 5 GHz SSID for my modern devices. I cannot imagine a better setup.

<comment><USER34> I'm from Germany too and am using a Fritz!Box 7490 behind a cable modem (200 down/12 up). The router let's you set up one wireless network with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz so devices automatically get switched onto the band with higher Tx rate. Currently pretty happy with the setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm using TP-Link WR802N [1] and installed OpenWRT on it. Its small form factor is quite useful for me since sometimes I took it when I traveled back to my hometown (to easily have my local wifi network).

[1] [http://uk.tp-link.com/products/details/cat-9_TL- WR802N.html](http://uk.tp-link.com/products/details/cat-9_TL-WR802N.html)

<comment><USER36> WR802N is excellent out of the box.

Unlike newer models it allows created your own WiFi access point that is routed to the Internet via another WiFI network. Very useful when travelling with multiple iPads and such - no need to connect them all one by one to a hotel WiFi (no need to configure them at all as a matter of fact) and you get your own isolated subnet with working broadcast and multicast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> We're using Google WiFi. Not super (or at all) customizable as you'd like to do, but it does work very well. It's stable and offers really good performance throughout our 1000 sq ft apartment (even given all the numerous networks around us). In the new home we're buying, I plan to use the mesh network (buy more Google WiFi units) capabilities to blanket the whole home.

</comment><comment><USER38> Didn't have the patience to sort through who knows how many options, so I just read The Wirecutter's comparison [1] and bought the one they recommended: TP- Link Archer C7 (v2).

[1] [http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi- router/](http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-router/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Router is a PC Engines APU2 (apu2c4) running OpenBSD, wireless APs are Buffalo and run OpenWRT in plain bridging mode.

</comment><comment><USER40> I use a couple TP-Link Archer C7 v2 (dual band ath9k and ath10k) running OpenWRT. 1 of them acts as the router and the others are just bridge over Ethernet to extend wireless coverage and provide local switch ports. Works pretty well for me.

I would also suggest Ubiquiti and/or pfsense if you want an out-of-box experience.

</comment><comment><USER41> A rackmount pfSense router built from an old Core i3 desktop from circa 2010 and a Intel 4-port NIC. I have 150/150 FTTH at home. Might have 250/250 or 1000/250 by the end of the year (the router can handle 800mbps WAN->LAN with about 50-75% CPU usage)

UAP-AC-LR for the wireless.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm using eero (1st gen) and with the latest update I've became less happy, as I now have to reboot it once every two weeks to get performance back. And speeds became slower as well. Disappointed, but hope it's a bug, not a way to force me to gen2 model.

</comment><comment><USER43> There was a black friday deal for the following router:

[https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-10864](https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-10864)

Which was easy to upgrade the firmware and then override so I could install Tomato.

</comment><comment><USER44> At home, 3 Netgear WNDAP360s to cover 2 floors and a detached garage. I've needed to reboot a few times in 2 years.

At work, a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter. Fast and trouble-free so far, and easier to set up than the Netgears.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've got Comcast Business Class, so I have one of their routers (Cisco/Technicolor) as the actual router - but I run my own DHCP and DNS - <USER4> use an Apple Airport as the access point itself.

</comment><comment><USER46> AirPort Extreme with a couple of peripheral units acting as a Wireless Distribution System (WDS). I'm heartbroken that Apple won't be developing any new units.

</comment><comment><USER47> Nice try NSA!

Omnia Turris, open hardware, OWRT by default, top tier hardware, HAC encryption, 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

<comment><USER48> Is it really worth the €330?

<comment><USER49> It depends.

Is the hardware worth 330€? Probably not. But IIRC everything is open source, including the hardware design, which you'd never get from a commercial router.

Is it worth 330€ as a router? CZ.NIC has put a lot of effort into the OS and updates. The router has 8GB of NAND and they are using btrfs to handle updates (snapshot, update, rollback if there are issues).

This kind of update feature doesn't exist in OpenWrt and LEDE, though mainly because most routers ship with 16MB of NOR flash and there simply isn't room to take a snapshot while upgrading. Some routers like the Xiaomi Mi 3 have 128MB of NAND and it would be possible if there was upstream support in LEDE (although that router has other issues with MediaTek WiFi).

So if you're looking for a reasonably secure router that auto-updates, I think it's worth it. Set it and forget it mentality.

If you have the technical skills and time to manage the router yourself, then just buy a low power PC (e.g. PCEngines APU, Solidrun ClearFrog, Marvell MACCHIATTObin) and install Linux/PfSense/OPNSense.

I don't own the Turis myself, I just saw some conference presentations of theirs about how they implemented the Turis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> PF-Sense on a SuperMicro server in a VM. Ubiquiti Unifi AP Pro HD

</comment><comment><USER51> Have a peplink and typically like peplink or tp-link devices

</comment><comment><USER52> Amplifi HD mesh, base station plus 2 APs

</comment><comment><USER53> Unifi ER-X-SFP from Ubiquiti Networks.

</comment><comment><USER54> Netgear WNDR3700 running OpenWRT.

</comment><comment><USER55> Mikrotik

</comment><comment><USER56> I have an (awesome) ASUS RT-AC5300 router but I use my Synology DiskStation to run a DNS server.

Everything worked out of the box. No custom software installation, no messing around. I love them both, they're very powerful.

It's easy to install dnsmasq on Synology but now you don't have to do that manually anymore, they have their own package system now which includes a DNS Server built upon dnsmasq.

</comment><comment><USER19> What access point/repeater with 2+ antennas (visible) can you recommend?

<comment><USER5> Often people go about doing this the wrong way.

It is better to get two cheap routers and use one as an AP only. The AP only can be placed where ever you want so it'll have better coverage than a multi- antenna router any day.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of this business idea? PDF printing & delivery - <AUTHOR>

The idea's simple: you upload a PDF, and then a hard printout is mailed to you ASAP. Useful if you don't have a printer, or want it mailed to someone else, etc. Like FedEx Kinko's except way simpler and only solving the one problem.<p>If you know of some place already solving this please let me know cuz I have some PDFs to print and I don't want to have to go to Kinko's.. <comment><USER2> Actually, I do this: www.mailfinch.com

It started out as a joke -- partly inspired by Dustin Curtis' Snail project and the fact that my dad (and a bunch of his friends) sent a lot of flyers for their small businesses.

<comment><USER3> That's pretty cool. What do you have that's automated?

<comment><USER2> The back-end printing operations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm struggling to think of a genuine use case. The problem is the waiting time.

It might work if your target user was someone who didn't need the printout immediately. Otherwise, you'd have to deliver the printouts pretty damn fast. Faster than Amazon to deliver a printer. But then, you'd have to charge loads, so there may not be a viable business there.

You might want to look for people in some specific profession who have printing problems. Otherwise this might be a solution looking for a problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> i agree, i'm mostly looking to see if anyone else has this exact same problem

<comment><USER4> Ok. What exactly is your problem though? Why wouldn't you just buy a printer?

On second thoughts, this service might actually be useful if the printouts are to be sent to someone else so that you don't have to deal with the handling and postage. For example, web or print designers might find it useful to send hard copies of their initial designs to prospective clients as a way of giving a quote. Small high street businesses and shopkeepers who don't have an online presence would probably find it more convincing to see something in the flesh rather than on a computer. In fact, designers could probably do this without even being asked for a quote. Find the postal address of potential customers and snail mail them some designs with a quote and your contact details.

Does that make any sense?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't have access to a printer this week and this would have definitely been useful for me. When sending to third parties, its not just the effort of printing that's being saved but also buying the stamps, having enough envelopes and going to the postbox.

If this was also available internationally it would also cut delivery times down if the printing was done in the local country.

</comment><comment><USER6> From the suggestions made so far, it sounds like there are a variety of niches where this might be suitable. Tailor your offer to each niche - for example, you could offer a high speed courier (i.e. motorbike) option for those who are speed (but not price) sensitive.

Perhaps offer a range of quality vs. cost.

</comment><comment><USER6> This could come in useful for large documents or many copies of a document. It could be significantly cheaper to print 1000 copies of a ten page document on dedicated hardware (and have those copies delivered) rather than try to print that sort of volume locally.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks great to me. I don't personally have need of it, though if I found I had need to send letters in the US it would be cheaper than airmail it seems (from the UK).

If you want international trade you should probably list paper sizes in cm and as standard measures (A4?, US Letter?) and give paper weights in gsm.

Do you only handle PDF?

Are you planning on using something like TinyMCE, <http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/>, in your "type in your letter" box?

If you need someone in the UK then I'd be interested...

</comment><comment><USER8> about 10/11 years ago, this company called homeindia.com used to do this. The idea was that a whole bunch of Indians work in the US/Europe and use email every day, but their families back in India have no internet access. They provided a service where you'd email stuff to them, and they'd print it out and snail-mail it to the destination for a small fee. I have no idea if they survived the dot-com crash of 2001.

They still exist today, but looks very different from what they were back then.

<comment><USER4> DTDC couriers used to do that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just bought an expensive course on writing articles faster & more effectively, and it was from a dude in NZ - he had it printed, bound and shipped to me by: mimeo.com.

They offered great, very fast service and excellent customer service (had a problem with deliverability in Austria & they dealt with it right away).

So the idea of routing around printing is good, but I'd say you should tweak your use case.</comment>


First successful beam at record energy of 6.5 TeV - <AUTHOR> http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2015/04/first-successful-beam-record-energy-65-tev <comment><USER2> This is awesome!

I highly recommend 'Particle Fever', in case you haven't seen it yet. It cover's the LHC before the shutdown and restart, which included the Higgs boson discovery. Just fascinating look into what an international collaboration of human beings can accomplish.

IMDB: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385956/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385956/)

Trailer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rikc7foqvRI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rikc7foqvRI)

Netflix: [http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70296323?trkid=13752289](http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70296323?trkid=13752289)

<comment><USER3> The recent reviews at the Netflix link are _priceless_ :)

<comment><USER4> Some highlights: mealy-mouthed malcontents

BIG-BANG-BELIEVING-BABBLERS

dead darkness drool that drips from the drooping face

Every fickle frame is filled with the foul stench of arrogant atheists

sad little men sit in the silent abyss of spiritual darkness wearing their dirty diapers of despair

dead-dogma doctrines

best movie ever, could use moar magnets

Though now as I go back through, some of the more ridiculous comments seem to be disappearing...

<comment><USER5> I need a t shirt with "sit in the silent abyss of darknes wearing their dirty diapers of despair"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the dashboard updated in real-time if this sort of thing fascinates you (as it fascinates me!)

[http://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/op-webtools/vistar/vistars.ph...](http://op- webtools.web.cern.ch/op-webtools/vistar/vistars.php)

<comment><USER7> That's pretty cool. Is there anywhere that explains what it all means?

<comment><USER8> Yes and no.

Yes: there's a link called "Doc" on the bottom of the page. This is the one for LHC Page 1, which is the most important display: [http://op- webtools.web.cern.ch/op-webtools/vistar/Doc/LHC1.p...](http://op- webtools.web.cern.ch/op-webtools/vistar/Doc/LHC1.pdf)

No: well, you may only understand it if you have some background knowledge in some particle physics terms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Could someone explain the significance of this, for those of us that don't know?

<comment><USER10> The LHC just doubled it's power. While only operating at 50% it discovered several new particles including the Higgs Boson. Now that it's nearing 100% they're hoping to discover physics beyond the Standard Model. That could include things like additional spatial dimensions, Dark Matter, microscopic black holes and more.

TLDR: Hopefully opening the door for some mind blowing discoveries.

<comment><USER11> Microscopic black holes scares me. I once heard (entirely anecdotal - I'd love it if someone more knowledgeable on the subject could comment) they had calculated the probability that the LHC would create a black hole that consumed the Earth. The result was more likely than SHA1-hash collision, and was deemed safe enough to try. Somewhere between humorous and scary.

edit: did some Googling and found some documentation ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_of_high- energy_particle...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_of_high- energy_particle_collision_experiments)). It cites an estimated upper limit of 1 in 50 million and references the book in which that estimate is made.

<comment><USER12> I can't see how this would be a problem even if a black hole _was_ created.

A black hole is no different than any other massive object in that it doesn't exert any stronger pull than its mass allows for. In other words, if the Sun suddenly turned into a black hole right now, we would not get "sucked" into it. The Earth would continue orbiting at the same period and distance. Of course, it would suck (no pun intended) not to have sunlight but hey, maybe the energy emitted by the accretion disc would equal the energy output of the sun :P! Of course, an accretion disc would probably take a while to form, so we would probably be fucked anyway, but certainly not because we would be sucked into the black hole.

Similarly, if the LHC created a black hole through its collisions, I can't see how it would be that massive. If it's not very massive, then it's not a threat. In fact, there are theories that support the notion that it would evaporate rather quickly (via Hawking radiation). Of course, I don't have any numbers on this and only have a laymen's knowledge of the physics involved. Anyone care to comment with more info?

<comment><USER13> Here's a summary I posted a few days ago of an article I found explaining why it's absolutely impossible, not just unlikely, for the LHC to create a black hole that destroys the earth:

[https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/could-the-lhc-make- an-...](https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/could-the-lhc-make-an-earth- killing-black-hole-886d9e600c28)

TL:DR: 1.) If these miniature black holes exist, the Earth has been getting hit by them for billions of years, and it's still here. 2.) If you do create a miniature black hole, they will decay, via Hawking Radiation, on ridiculously small timescales. 3.) You can compute the rate at which a black hole eats matter, and it's not even close to being as small as the lifetime of our planet

<comment><USER14> >>Capturing 66,000 nucleons per second, how long will it take to get the black hole up to even one kilogram? Three trillion years

Thanks for the wonderful article.

A small question. Is this rate of consumption linear? Correct me if I'm wrong, the heavier the black hole gets, more and faster it can absorb matter. Of course given there is matter around it.

<comment><USER13> I'm not a physicist or anything, but the idea I'm getting from that is that the event horizon of such a micro-black hole would be much smaller than a subatomic particle. It's too small to actually draw anything into it from a distance, so it would only be able to absorb something by running into it. The rate of consumption can't increase until the mass gets large enough to actually draw matter in from a greater distance than something like the size of an atomic nucleus.

The article author calculated how big that would be, and the black hole would reportedly need to accumulate about a billion tons of mass before it could start to grow exponentially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And that's just one beam. There's a second beam, too - so they will crash into each other at 13 Tev.

<comment><USER8> Also, that's probably just a few bunches. (I'm guessing only one, but I may be wrong.) Every bunch contains ~10^11 protons.

When LHC is running in full, a total of 2808 bunches per beam are expected to be colliding there. That's a lot of energy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/](http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/)

<comment><USER17> So the script checks if the variable _worldHasEnded_ isn't defined to see if the world isn't destroyed. Hmm....

<comment><USER18> I guess that's a valid use for a global variable then.

<comment><USER19> [https://www.youtube.com/v/tKdcjJoXeEY](https://www.youtube.com/v/tKdcjJoXeEY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wasn't there an article on HN earlier this week about a 6.5 <some unit> pulse of energy being detected in space? It went on to suggest the possibility of intelligent life out in the universe. Maybe it was just some time warped echo from the LHC?

</comment><comment><USER17> Weren't they aiming for 7 TeV?

<comment><USER21> It's so easy to be disappointed, isn't it? Fermilab had a .9TeV beam 30 years ago, so that's only ~7x in three decades, basically nothing for people accustomed to Moore's Law.

<comment><USER22> I will gladly accept mere incremental performance upgrades when my CPU speed crosses the ole terahertz barrier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> wooooooooooooooooo! congrats :) the screaming electrons live on. :) love that classic HMI screen. Just waiting to read the status line "Organics detected in reactor core." :) haha

<comment><USER24> What is that a reference to? Google links to here.

At first I wondered if it were this (Another World intro, 1991): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j4gO9sR7zs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j4gO9sR7zs)

<comment><USER25> I think it's a game. It sounds familiar; I was going to ask the same thing!

<comment><USER23> :) Glad you like it. Yeah, "screaming electrons", "organics in the reactor" \-- digital culture is awesome :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How do they even create a 'beam of particles'?

<comment><USER27> Remember CRT's?

<comment><USER28> ...or SLCs, "small lepton colliders" ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So is that more or less than 1.21 gigawatts? ;)

<comment><USER30> I started some basic calculations in Google to find out what do you mean. So I converted 6.5 TeV to about 1 microjoule, then typed '1.21 GW / 1 uJ' to find out the beam intensity in particles/second, and realized that the first link is the Wikipedia entry for 'DeLorean time machine'.

<comment><USER31> (And the answer is that it's more than 1.21GW so long as they're sending 1.2x10^15 of them every second.)</comment></comment></comment>