Differences in the Windows and Unix cultures - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Biculturalism.html

<comment><USER2> The real difference is that you can take a unix program (which obeys the dont blabber rule, is a command line program with lots of options, etc.) and with a good amount of effort put a GUI on top of it to make it look pretty. Case in point: Ubuntu. It attempts to do this to most tools, and succeeds in many ways. My computer illiterate father was soon able to wrap his head around Synaptic package manager (which is just a wrapper around APT).

But you can't take a Windows-culture program and make it easily programmer accessible. This is a one way street. I think that the Unix-style dual access is far more powerful. Apple doesn't open source its work, but it is BSD based and I get the feeling that internally, Apple follows this "unix culture" (I hesitate to use the article's terminology, but bear with me here) and thus comes out with powerful programs that are command line accessible but have wrappers (albeit beautiful ones) around them. This is what enables them to refactor internal parts like in Snow Leopard that cut out gigabytes of cruft - it starts to sound like this "unix culture" is simply best-practice engineering in terms of modularity and flexibility of individual packages. If Microsoft even attempted to refactor some parts of the OS, they'd break something terrible.

I disagree with Joel where he says Apple follows the Windows culture. It seems that OS X is factored "the unix way" up to a point - where a beautiful API is exposed, and another team (the Steve Jobs insane perfectionist team) takes that and puts a usable beautiful front-end on it, which may, in Joel's mind fit the "Windows-culture", but is thin enough that the unix-culture layers beneath hold the meat of the OS, and thus can be modularly modified rapidly.

Linux lacks this final layer, which leaves it looking so broken and hacked together at the top. It still is an open question if the front end can be created without the dictatorships of a large company like Apple or Microsoft at the helm - but if anyone's got a shot, I think Canonical would come closest.

<comment><USER3> Too bad the web browser started on the wrong side of the street.

<comment><USER4> Check out Uzbl!

<comment><USER5> They need to optimize that thing. I may have been an early adopter but the rendering and the speed of rendering was pretty bad. Worse than FF.

<comment><USER6> Uzbl's gotten a lot faster since it learned to talk to the cookie handler over a socket (rather than spawning a new handler for every request). That was committed a week or two ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Written in 2003, and its age shows. It is clear that the people working at Ubuntu and other distros only care about making their product easier to use by non-programmers.

'Raymond does attempt to compare and contrast Unix to other operating systems, and this is really the weakest part of an otherwise excellent book, because he really doesn't know what he's talking about. Whenever he opens his mouth about Windows he tends to show that his knowledge of Windows programming comes mostly from reading newspapers, not from actual Windows programming. That's OK; he's not a Windows programmer; we'll forgive that.'

Joel is not a Unix programmer; we'll forgive that.

<comment><USER8> Canonical is being funded by a billionaire with an explicit goal of making Linux user-friendly. It didn't exactly generate that motivation intrinsically; it was injected by economic force from without.

<comment><USER9> All of the major distros do it - the biggest irritation I have with Red Hat and Debian are their package managers - both rpm and apt add a layer of cruft I have to learn without really improving on tarballs, except that they are easier for people who can't be bothered moving untarred files to the correct directories. And since the "correct" directories are different on different distros, they are a royal pain when working with more than one distro.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps what most interests me about the article is not the dichotomy of the two cultures, but in the area between them.

I'm a college sophomore studying EE in a notable university, but I spent most of my free time (and much of my homework time!) coding in high school. I had been using Linux from middle school, so my way of learning coding was picking up K&R's C book, learning the ropes, and starting to code on Linux. Linux really was an incredible atmosphere to learn to code in, and I learned more than just C. The ability to look at the source of other applications, to submit bugfixes for projects, and the incredible POSIX standard that makes C and other languages just ... whistle ... was great.

That said, I later abandoned Linux (several reasons: time, laptop incompatibility, much more time spent fiddling with radios, I "sold out", whatever) for day-to-day use. I still code and do it on Windows, but it's not the same. Now there are a lot of things of the "Windows culture" that I really like -- a shiny GUI for everyone, a huge smattering of applications which means that if I don't want to write it I don't have to, not having to deal with finding obscure driver patches so that my out-of-date hardware can stay supported, package management clashes, etc. But when I want to code, and I do so intermittently, I feel the intellectual gap.

I want that great POSIX interface, but more importantly I want an atmosphere that works around the code that I write. And here's where I feel the gap the most -- what about those of us who really enjoy a satisfying, intellectual coding experience, the "Unix culture" (and I don't code often enough to want to want to grind out consumer software), but still want the benefits felt for other users of the OS somewhat appreciably, and still want this end-user directed drag-and-drop "Windows culture".

I've heard that the Mac bridges the gap, but I'm an impoverished student, and spending $1000 on a Mac laptop is something in my semi-distant future.

<comment><USER10> If you want a {star}nix, try FreeBSD if you've got a day or two to set it up. If not, maybe PC-BSD. PC-BSD is based on FreeBSD but integrates KDE. The reason I like FreeBSD is that it just seems to have more tools available, like sysctl to view/set various options like computer temperature, turning the reading light on/off (on my used Thinkpad T43). Compared to Linux, I like the core OS more, but there are more programs available for Linux. FreeBSD _can_ run Linux programs through a compatibility layer. Actually, thats how I'm running the Adobe Flash plugin, but it is a little slow.

A second point: if you think there aren't many games on Linux, wait until you try FreeBSD - there are even less. There's minesweeper and a few similar, but thats about it.

FreeBSD users seem to think that Slackware is the most similar Linux distro. Anyway, FreeBSD might be worth a try for you!

Hardware also seems to have excellent support built in.

<comment><USER9> Maybe I'll try it; Slackware was my first and still favorite distro. The big problem is I'm on dial-up and can't download much - and too many linux resellers are apparently rip-off artists, since at least half the CDs I've bought by mail won't work. That's one reason I bought the new Ubuntu 8.10 DVD; unfortunately I don't like it much more than Vista, which isn't much. I haven't got a Slackware distro that will work on my current computer, the 10.1 setup apparently can't handle SATA disks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill Decent article, but I think that Joel should have worked in a reference to Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning Was the Command Line" as well.

<comment><USER11> Thank god, as that's easily the worst thing Stephenson's ever written -- like a rambling inept Slashdot comment, but stretched to _160 pages_ \-- it's even structured around an extended simile between user interfaces and fictional automobiles, for fuck's sake!

On top of all that, it has the misfortune of being written at the worst possible point in time:

      * too long after mainframes, minicomputers, or basic micros
      * right before the death of BeOS (which he was infatuated with)
      * right as Apple is about to die from its own bullshit
      * long after NeXT has faded from relevancy but before the buyout
      * In Linux's middle-aged (~2.2) years when a lot of things were bogged down
        in wank -- well after the initial excitement, but well before BK and git

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > This is because a textual interface is easier to program against than, say, > a GUI interface, which ...

I suppose a GUI Interface is expected on an OS built on NT Technology.</comment>


Ask HN: Which tech "currently under development only" you're most excited about? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Low-latency LEO satellite internet, so Comcast gets some viable competition where I live.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For me personally its magicleap i guess, even after all the bad press and delays. Also on the same line Intel's vaunt. Can't wait for these to be accessible and try them out.</comment>


WordPress or TypePad or....? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to start a blog and I am wondering which platform HN suggests. Thanks for voting/discussing! <comment><USER2> I started off using TypePad, then went to self-hosted MT, and then started a second blog on self-hosted WP. (I also have one on WordPress.com, but I don't recommend that to anyone serious about blogging due to lack of plugins and other advanced functionality.) I think if I were starting another blog today, I might actually go with self-hosted MT.

I had my WP blog compromised by a security flaw and then listed as a spam site by Google, meaning that anyone who came there in Firefox (which is most of my readers) got a warning rather than my homepage. Never had that happen with MT.

I also had an article take off on StumbleUpon and let's just say Wordpress doesn't handle traffic well. I later tried tossing in the most popular caching plug-in, but it borked my RSS feed such that Feedburner wouldn't recognize it.

Long story short, the last 6 months of WP have been nothing but headache after headache for me. I write all of my posts in Word and then publish via xml-rpc, so I don't care much about the interface, but I think MT's and WP's are pretty comparable.

So yeah, though a year ago I was considering converting my older blog to WP, now I'd vote for MT. (Haven't used TypePad in years, so I can't tell you about that one specifically.)

<comment><USER3> here's a blow-by-blow of an MT fiasco ... :(( [http://inboundpass.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/our-mt-media- tem...](http://inboundpass.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/our-mt-media-temple- fiasco/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How serious are you about your intention? My suggestion is, that if you want to just try it out, register instantly on wordpress.com or blogger.com and try to run it for a few weeks. The thing is, that maintaining you own installation at your own domain takes quite a lot of time.

On the other hand, if you really want to run a successful blog, register your own domain and install...well, you will not go wrong with Wordpress.

<comment><USER5> > [M]aintaining you own installation at your own domain takes quite a lot of > time.

Not sure I agree with this, at least where WordPress is concerned. What, after all, is involved? Grabbing the source from the latest stable branch on the WP svn repository takes less than a minute. Creating a new database is a few seconds; adding the database details to the config file is less than a minute; and the install routine can also be run in under a minute. That's installation. Then there's maintenance: a cron job that updates the source from svn every night, and a one-line svn command to switch to a new branch when it comes out. A database backup script which, like the domain configuration, is not WordPress-specific.

Actually, having gone halfway through this response, I'm not sure I agree with my disagreement. Once you've sorted all of the above, you need to start doing things specific to your installation: choosing or creating a theme, installing plugins (preferably over svn from the WP plugin repository so you can update them automatically), and tweaking the various settings to your liking. But only the details are specific to WordPress, or Movable Type.

It would be more accurate to say that maintaining any reasonably complex website takes quite a lot of time. But then, we knew that already, and it still only takes five minutes to get WordPress installed on your server.

<comment><USER6> I don't run my own installation (used the hosted one for about a year) but have seen friends upgrades go not so smoothly. In keeping with various updates I'd say it'd take a bit of time.

<comment><USER5> The only time I've had problems upgrading was when, running off the trunk svn build, a new tags system which changed a bunch of database tables was introduced and then scrapped shortly afterwards. Repairing the tables was annoying, but that's life on trunk for you; there's a reason it's not recommended for production sites. Other than that, all of my upgrades have gone smoothly. In my (anecdotal) experience, most problems with upgrades (and, indeed, most problems generally) are caused by badly written or incompatible plugins.

<comment><USER6> Yeah I do admit I should have included that this may have been caused by plugins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use both. For personal use, I chose TypePad, but my company's blog runs on Wordpress.org.

Honestly, for personal use, I should have went with Wordpress. I thought that by going with a hosted solution I'd save myself time and server hassles. I also thought that new features would miraculously show up frequently.

It couldn't be further from the truth. TypePad has a horrible admin interface and they don't seem to be making things better at all. In fact, in the 8 months I've used them, I don't think I've noticed a single new feature or enhancement that's made me say "damn, these guys are awesome, I should spend more money on them"

Wordpress on the other hand is becoming easier and easier to host. Now they've got this 1-click upgrade, which makes hosting your own site a walk in the park. In addition to countless plugins and themes, they're releasing new features all the time.

That said, I know that at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, if it generates an Atom feed, I'm happy.

</comment><comment><USER8> Squarespace obviously. <http://www.squarespace.com/>

Go ahead and try to do this in either of the others:

<http://www.squarespace.com/squarespaced>

<comment><USER9> Gotta say, we host our own, we're DIY, we have a designer, and this thing is still dead sexy. $25/mo is cheap cheap cheap. What's the catch?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you don't want the programming and behind the scenes nature, maybe Wordpress or Typepad to get you up and running quickly without a fuss.

If you don't mind getting your hands dirty with ultra-customizing every facet of your blog without closed-source woes, Joomla or Movable Type. The latter of which I've been using for about 1.5 years now and am absolutely in love with. That's not to say you can't get up and running quickly with these, but the level of customization they offer are top notch and take a little more time and patience. You can get right into their source code and make your own plugins... in my opinion these also have that "professional"-ism attribute as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> I recommend Wordpress. The main reason I went with it was really group think - so many of my favorite blogs use Wordpress. Looking for comparisons online, it didn't appear like either was a clear winner or had some killer feature. I have been using it for my blog and am very happy with it - I find plugins for just about anything I want, or just customize the PHP if needed. I also like that there are two multiple blog projects (Wordpress MU and Lyceum) so that if I ever decide to go that route for a new site, it should be comparable and I can leverage some knowledge I have from my current install - and perhaps plugins, though that is more hit or miss.

</comment><comment><USER9> Strongly advise against hosting your own blog. The code quality on both MT and WordPress is very, very low. WordPress, for instance, is probably worth at least another 4-5 game-over security flaws in the next 6 months, and that's before you take the plugins into account. Kids scan the Internet for installations to drop with PHP zero-day.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd like to hear why folks prefer Wordpress...I use Typepad for Altgate.com and I have to say that I'm not terribly impressed. I also use Blogger for a company blog (virid.us/blog/) and it's fine.

On a related note, has anyone done a Typepad-->Wordpress conversion? How'd it go?

<comment><USER2> I did a MT to WP conversion and it went great. Haven't used TypePad in a very long time though, so couldn't tell you there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would go with Wordpress if you are just looking for a blog. If you want something more robust then you should look at Drupal. Steer clear of Joomla unless you just like messing around with platforms. (I have used Joomla for a few projects and have grown to hate it)

</comment><comment><USER14> We'd love for you to try posterous.com -- it's a YC 2008 company and we're growing fast.

It's great for a beginning blogger. It's dead simple blogs by email, and it's the easiest way to post a ton of photos or video straight from your digital camera.

<comment><USER15> Interesting. How do you control against spoofing of the From email header?

<comment><USER9> Wondering the same thing here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I shopped and tinkered, and eventually went with WordPress. Be sure you use the subversion install so you can easily update down the track. Choose a simple skin and away you go.

Very happy with it (technologyinvestment.info)

</comment><comment><USER17> I've heard (and found from experience) that wordpress is a bit more professional and polished. Not having used TypePad a bunch, I couldn't give a very detailed comparison. But those are my two cents.

</comment><comment><USER18> WordPress is great! Another cutting-edge blogging platform is Habari - <http://www.habariproject.org/en/>

</comment><comment><USER19> I've used both and like Tumblr + Disqus. It's simple, customizable, and a joy to use. It's also free to use your own domain.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you have hosting, Chyrp is an interesting newcomer:

<http://chyrp.net>

</comment><comment><USER21> Wordpress. Have used WP, Typepad and Drupal, but Wordpress is what works for me.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wordpress or Chryp if you want something lighter. But Wordpress all the way.

<comment><USER23> I like Chyrp, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> blogger works for me. WP has been a headache, sometime back the edits wont reflect in the published site until much later.

</comment><comment><USER25> wordpad. sorry i couldn't help myself =)

</comment><comment><USER26> if you want to try ruby on rail-based blog, try typo. it's pretty decent.

</comment><comment><USER27> TypePad.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> TypePad

</comment><comment><USER28> WordPress.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> WordPress

</comment><comment><USER29> wordpress

</comment><comment><USER6> tumblr</comment>


Bitcoin falls below $5,000 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46263998 <comment><USER3> I wanted to get some bitcoin to buy some things off a website where bitcoin was the only thing accepted.

I was immediately turned off when a different, exchange website asked me to upload a photo of myself holding my driver's license in one hand and a paper with the name of the website and date in the other.

Just my experience. To me, it seemed like a joke.

<comment><USER4> KYC is an awful thing for user experience.

Expect it moving forward.

<comment><USER5> FMI, KYC is a TLA for "Know Your Customer" based authentication.

<comment><USER6> FYI, TLA is a TLA for "Three Letter Acronym"

<comment><USER7> FYI, FYI is a TLA for "For Your Information"

<comment><USER5> FMI is a TLA for "for my information"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I honestly don't know what to make of it. I'm surrounded by a lot of bankers, none of them believe in cryptocurrencies but all of them are focused on the price and have zero understanding of the technology. I'm also surrounded by a lot of blockchain people who are insanely hyped by the future of cryptocurrencies and who have little idea about their current prices.

Being in the middle I see 99% of bullshit blockchain stuff, but I'm really hyped by some cryptocurrencies and some of their tech. It is a really interesting field if you ignore the market, but there is also a lot to win/lose if you can predict where the tech will go.

Bankers and blockchain people are both the worst people to ask for an opinion. So I might be in the right position to make a guess.

There is value. This market might become as strong as the stock market is nowadays. As long as there is hype, there will continue to be a market. If it's a scam/pyramid sheme/mlm, then it's an international one and it's probably not going to stop.

<comment><USER9> I 'm confused about the position of bankers. Our bank terminated our business account because they found out we ran a cryptocoin price aggregator (oh the horror!). I had to terminate the site (because it was making peanuts and i didn't have the time) to have the account reinstated but i didn't understand the hostility. And this came from a bank that in 2013 crashed and literally stole money from their customer's accounts. This weird situation actually made me a lot more optimistic about the future of crypto, because , you know, banks are thieves too.

<comment><USER10> > _i didn 't understand the hostility_

Cryptocurrencies are an AML nightmare. Ironically, this is a social–not technological–problem. Even on HN, you'll regularly see "I don't have to pay taxes on cryptocurrencies because the authorities can't catch me" comments. This creates regulatory risks. Regulatory risks are regulatory costs.

Add to that the credit card fraud (buy cryptocurrencies with a card, charge back; profit) and theft risks, and a cryptocurrency-affiliated customer is more likely to cost a bank rather than make them money. Layer on top of that the time it takes to develop expertise and a blanket ban on everything around cryptocurrencies becomes understandable (versus training employees to comb through them).

I don't like this outcome. But I see why a big bank would decide this. Community banks, on the other hand, might be willing to invest the time into understanding why you don't pose a fraud or my-assets-got-stolen-now-I'm-broke risk.

<comment><USER9> But i wasnt running a crypto exchange, but a listing of cryptocoin prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When it comes to the general public adopting crypto as usable, cash replacement currency, I think there's two issues with adoption.

One is of course the network effect. I can't pay with (whatever)coin unless other people use it too. So unless I'm just really excited about crypto and _want_ to pay with it, it's not very useful to me until more people start using it. And considering most of the crypt-hype has worn off, there's less and less people that are just dying to use it.

And the other is that people (and businesses) are not going to try things over and over until someone gets it right. Bitcoin is terrible as a currency. I tried paying a friend of mine for a sandwich once, just for fun, and it cost me $10 to send him $10, plus it took almost an hour. Of course it's less bad now, but it's still not great. Valve started accepting bitcion and later stopped. Lots of retailers did too. No one is going to jump on Bitcoin Cash or Monero or whatever, even if they're better, because they were burned pretty hard with Bitcoin.

Someone is going to have to genuinely nail it with a currency that is instant, costs almost nothing per transaction, is very easy to use, and they're going to have to make sure everyone knows it. And even then I think it's going to be uphill.

<comment><USER9> > No one is going to jump on Bitcoin Cash or Monero or whatever, even if > they're better

I think they will, if it is better.

> going to have to genuinely nail it with a currency that is instant, costs > almost nothing per transaction, is very easy to use,

There are such cryptos. stellar, nano and i m sure also others. And i think monero's anonymity promise is a big selling point too

<comment><USER5> Who will use bitcoin without it having a stable value?

<comment><USER9> The fees are a much bigger problem. Bitcoin is unusable, it s a speculative vehicle for rich people. Zero-fee , or very-low-fee cryptos (i remember stellar, iota, raiblocks, even xrp) would be very usable if they had a large userbase and a very easy way to buy them. One of those has to focus on real world growth, i.e. get many websites to support them by providing a dead- simple payment solution.

I think there are ways to make them less volatile. For one, don't list them in any crypto-to-crypto exchanges, instead allow only dollar cash-ins/outs, or limit the amount that can be exchanged to some fixed value like $100 / hour. Speculation and greed is limiting the prospects of most coins.

<comment><USER12> Iota is unusable from (almost) the very first day it got out, they are just scheduling and rescheduling the removal of central coordinators, making that in no way different from a central authority authorizing payment, they cashed and they disappeared basically

Stellar is trying to achieve a completely different goal than exchanging stellars coins.

Almost no one of those crypto could achieve even half of the current daily transaction processed by CC, and the proof they are using is in no way as safe as proof of work, even if more efficient. Why would people adopt them? There's no advantages, fees would be similar probably

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> $5000 still seems like an insane number for something that I have no idea how to judge the value of.

<comment><USER14> I felt the same about Facebook, and it's now worth $380B.

<comment><USER15> The value proposition of FB seems much easier to explain than cryptocurrency, though. We at least know what FB gets used for and where it earns money. That's 100% more than I can say about Bitcoin.

<comment><USER16> Bitcoin core derives a good deal of value from being the entry to exchanging for coins/tokens to buy into an ICO, which is now more restrained due to last week's SEC actions. While there are stinky ICO-funded projects, there are also valid projects that are growing. I have always seen it as more of a front door, given that it's the primary pair across exchanges and given tx costs. LTC was, for long, promo'd as the coin that would be used for day-to-day purchases. Unfortunately traditional fiat users do not think in that way as this is not the usual use of something fiat.

<comment><USER17> > Bitcoin core derives a good deal of value from being the entry to exchanging > for coins/tokens to buy into an ICO, which is now more restrained due to > last week's SEC actions. While there are stinky ICO-funded projects, there > are also valid projects that are growing. I have always seen it as more of a > front door, given that it's the primary pair across exchanges and given tx > costs. LTC was, for long, promo'd as the coin that would be used for day-to- > day purchases. Unfortunately traditional fiat users do not think in that way > as this is not the usual use of something fiat.

I understood most of those words individually, but the combination was a complete bafflement.

And that, in a nutshell, is a big problem for Bitcoin. I understand cash - <USER2> has value because the government says it has value and it's directly exchangeable for something that I can relate to that value (say, a huge bag of bubblegum). But how do you explain an ICO and it's value to someone, without an actual, physical object being present?

On the surface, it sounds like something virtual being exchanged for something else virtual which may or may not lead to some other virtual thing, but at no time is anything physical, representing concrete value, present.

In re the bubblegum example - when I was young, my grandfather handed my cousin and I a dollar to buy some gum, expecting we buy a piece or two and hand him the change. You can figure out the rest, I think. He was kinda pissed off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amusing that the Bitcoin / Bitcoin Cash split is now even deeper with a split in Bitcoin Cash. Just keep on forking until everyone has their own cryptocurrency, I guess.

Aside from that, a point nobody seems to bring up is just how unproven most cryptocurrency technology is from a monetary safety standpoint.

It's not just about a 51% blockchain attack. In multiple cases of some of the most popular cryptocurrencies, we've seen danger [0] (these are not the only examples). Nobody talks about this though, so while you're worried about centralized banking, consider for a moment the threat of bad actors to the core of your system.

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/09/cryptocurrency- insecurity-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/09/cryptocurrency-insecurity- iota-bcash-and-too-many-more/)

Of course many fanatics (some of the same people who still treat John McAfee seriously) will blindly "hodl" by the logic that it's gone up after the post-2013 crash, it must surely skyrocket again. Some people can justify their belief, but many are just playing follow the leader.

<comment><USER19> Please don't confuse Bitcoin with any other cryptocurrency. Bitcoin Core is where developers who treat it responsibly as a multi-billion dollar system are concentrated. It's very hard to submit code to it for a reason (unlike ALL other crypto currencies so far). Just as an example Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency where you can see a page with all security vulnerabilities so far.

<comment><USER18> I am aware that Bitcoin is not the same as the myriad of altcoins. Faith in the cryptocurrency market as a whole can affect _all_ prices, and that's half the point. Besides, it's only been what, not quite 10 years since the first Bitcoin implementation, and there's still plenty of ongoing work. I'm sure the developers take their job very seriously, but even so, there's no promise of impenetrability this early. Maybe in another 10 years.

Volatility induced by technical failures in the cryptocurrency market should be just as concerning, particularly when people expect / expected the price to stabilize following the surge in price in 2017.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The price of bitcoin is actually a pretty good metric to observe the Gartner hype cycle in action: from the rise, peak of inflated expectations, and slide into the through of disillusionment. I predict that in 2019 or 2020 the price of bitcoin will _slowly_ begin to come back up once we hit the slope of enlightenment.

<comment><USER21> That assumes Bitcoin is the ideal expression of the near-term cryptocoin. Perhaps Bitcoin will be surpassed for technical reasons to become "The Yahoo! of crypto-currencies" one day.

From a speculator's perspective, it'd probably be a riskier but more rewarding bet to make in the cryptocurrency space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "On Thursday, 15 November, Bitcoin Cash - an offshoot of Bitcoin - split into two different crypto-currencies, which are now in competition with each other"

Could someone explain why did Bitcoin Cash split _again_ , were there technical reasons that couldn't be resolved by creating a new cryptocurrency?

edit: clarification

<comment><USER23> By design the Bitcoin Cash network upgrades every 6 months. There were some proposed network upgrades that a certain influential mining group led by someone claiming to be the creator of Bitcoin disagreed with, and decided to band together with some other large miners to hard fork with their own protocol changes.

The changes were mostly around blocksize (the camp that disagreed wanted larger block sizes), how transactions are ordered in a block, and adding/removing certain functions.

<comment><USER24> I haven't followed the split very closely at all, but "someone claiming to be the creator of Bitcoin" really understates things. That someone is Craig Wright. Craig is _obviously_ not Satoshi (the creator of Bitcoin) -- he is a transparent fraudster, lacks technical understanding, and is unhinged (see his tweets and crazy threatening emails).

I think a lot of this is just stemming from Craig's ongoing desire to fraudulently control Bitcoin by claiming to be it's creator (the fork is called "Satoshi's Vision").

I'd stay far away from anything he touches.

<comment><USER23> Yes, I've followed his tweets on occasion. I'm not saying I think he is Satoshi. His "unhinged" Twitter behavior is not any more crazy than a certain leader of the free world IMO and on par with the general eccentricities that is crypto right now.

<comment><USER24> This email is pretty unhinged: [https://coinjournal.net/craig-wright- threatens-to-crash-bitc...](https://coinjournal.net/craig-wright-threatens-to- crash-bitcoin-cash-in-email-to-ver/)

Comparing him to Trump only speaks to the fact that Trump also has issues, not that Craig does not.

Moreover, the style of writing/behavior is polar opposite of Satoshi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So, it looks like this post got ripped off the front page.

Question: was the Bitcoin breaks $20000 post ripped off the front page last year?

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm surprised it's that high, given that its biggest uses are just speculation, drugs, and ransomware.

</comment><comment><USER26> Please let this mean cheaper GPUs

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm really shocked by the whole cryptocurrency experiment. We are now ten years in and it seems like literally nothing of value has come of it at all. Billions have been spent and we have absolutely nothing to show for it.

I've thought it was overvalued for a while but I still kept expecting the whole ecosystem to create something I or someone else might find useful in the real world. I've waited and waited and waited but no. Teams of brilliant people, tons of money, and nothing!

It started as a sort of crypto-libertarian critique of financial capitalism, but then it seems to have evolved rapidly into a "reductio ad absurdium" parody of financial capitalism.

Among other things I think this experiment proves that the excesses and absurdities of financial capitalism are not a technical problem. They are a social and political problem. The instant cryptocurrency got legs it became yet another speculative casino just like the rest of the financial system.

Edit: so prove me wrong. Does anyone actually use a cryptocurrency based system for anything other than cryptocurrency itself, speculation, or gambling?

<comment><USER28> There are a number of real-world applications to which cryptocurrency has been proven to be useful outside of gambling and financial speculation, such as darknet markets, ransomware, donations to blacklisted organisations, paying international contractors sotto banco, transporting money illegally across borders... While you may notice a common pattern in their legality or lack thereof, they certainly have real needs that are fulfilled by cryptocurrency.

<comment><USER27> I'm aware of that niche, but I was speaking mostly of the ICOs that promised new technologies and of broader adoption of cryptocurrency across the economy.

The thing that's shocked me the most is the amount of money raised by ICO-type projects during the boom and the fact that not one of them appears to have delivered anything. I'd expect some to be scams, but _every single one of them?_ Not a single reputable functional team raised money with an ICO and shipped something?

I'm excluding ICOs that shipped things of use only to other ICOs, cryptocurrency, gambling, and speculation. That's self-referential: crypto to make crypto for more crypto. I'm talking about things of use in the real world. That's why I called it a parody of financial capitalism. The point of money is to facilitate useful things, not to just chase itself around in circles. The latter is the essence of financial capitalism vs. real productive capitalism.

<comment><USER29> I mean what timeline were you expecting? Did you honestly think that an application with the attack surface of literally everyone would come-out polished in a year or two?

Ethereum's ICO was in 2014, and most ICOs were on Ethereum and are less than 1-2 years old. One of the older "smart contract" projects has been in development since 2013 and it is still a massive work in progress.

You have a shit ton of people who want to reap the benefits of what-to-come, in fact that is what ICOs made easier. What it lacks are extremely competent people willing to dedicate anywhere between 3-10 years of their life to make it happen. It is hard to say you can buy that with strictly money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't think mining will be profitable anymore at a certain point. As soon as mining becomes unprofitable, there will be a death spiral for the price of Bitcoin.

<comment><USER31> When miners leave the network the difficulty drops automatically keeping it profitable for those who remain.

<comment><USER32> But this then brings the question back (atleast for me): What happens when all coins are mined? I just looked it up and it's already >80% mined. So if miners would leave the pool and then suddenly (suddenly might even be a long period of time here, I don't know to much about bitcoin) all coins are gone. What happens?

Edit: What just got to my mind is that we will never gain more bitcoins then those 21 million, but we surely will lose them (people lose they keys, die, whatever). Will the price go up to "infinity" or will it suddenly drop to 0?

<comment><USER33> According to [1], in 2140 each block will give 0.00000042 BTC (big guess based on mining trends). The reward per block goes down as the number of remaining coins reduces.

This introduces a very unstable system. If the price of bitcoin doesn't (double + increase with inflation), as the block reward shrinks, the rewards will become useless.

1: [https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10486/when- will-...](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10486/when-will-the- last-bitcoin-be-mined)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There will be a whole spectrum of cryptos with different advantages over one another... like there already is.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is good news, very good. I hope it psychologically affects people and that it lasts long enough that people will stop focusing on speculation and pumps, and instead focus on adoption and expansion.

<comment><USER35> I'd go even further: I hope it keeps falling until a better crypto currency is worth more. Bitcoin even existing proves the market is more speculative than functional.

<comment><USER9> there does seem to be some disentanglement from bitcoin: [https://coinmarketcap.com/](https://coinmarketcap.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I never saw this coming.

</comment><comment><USER37> What's the momentum for adoption in places like venezuela?

<comment><USER38> Nowhere to be found. I kid you not, the government tried to start a nationalized crypto. Many are just using other currencies like the Colombian peso.

<comment><USER39> O really? [https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/VES](https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/VES) seems to tell a different story. Ofcourse no one wants to buy a 'nationalized (read: centralized) crypto'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's a lot of posts here questioning the utility of cryptocurrency when we already have cash. I sometimes ask myself the same question, as none of my day-to-day transactions would benefit from cryptocurrency (or even offer it as an option). But I'm a cantankerous old man who just goes to the grocery store and gas station, not some malleable young whipper-snapper shaping the future, for better or worse, with what I participate in.

However, I recently listened to a Reply-All episode [1] where a young girl casually received $100 in bitcoin from an anonymous individual mid-episode, a sort of restitution for having her account stolen, while corresponding with the thief on discord.

It took practically no time, and gave me some pause to consider how this might be a glimpse of the future. The exchange could have been done through PayPal or something else with less anonymity, but it wasn't, they used bitcoin. Perhaps it was staged, perhaps she was primed to have a coinbase account already by the show hosts knowing this would happen, I don't know. If it was an authentically candid situation, it would be somewhat remarkable that she was already prepared to accept the payment with zero friction other than asking "It's super long, right?" when asked for her bitcoin address.

So clearly there's already utility/convenience for _some_ people today, and the fact that this group includes youngsters could mean it's just be a matter of their becoming mature adults continuing to use cryptocurrency before it takes over in a big way.

Here's the excerpt from the transcript for the curious and lazy:

\----8<\----8<\----8<\----8<\-----

ALEX: And then (clears throat) he was like, "Look, do you have a bitcoin account?" And she was like, "Yeah."

KEVIN: I sold the Snapchat for 100 so I'll just send that directly back to you. So um, you can do whatever you want with that since it is rightfully yours.

ALEX: Lizzie, do you have your Bitcoin account number handy?

LIZZIE: Yeah.

ALEX: Do you want to drop it into–

KEVIN: Yeah, let me–

LIZZIE: It's super long, right?

KEVIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah no. Post it. Yeah, yeah. It starts, uh, it's usually with a three. You have coinbase, right?

LIZZIE: Yeah.

KEVIN: Yeah, let me boot up my ledger. Okay. [typing] Alright I sent it.

LIZZIE: Yup.

KEVIN: Got it?

LIZZIE: Yeah, thank you.

KEVIN: Cool. Yeah, of course. Yeah you can do whatever you want with that. If you wanted to donate it, go for it. And if you want to keep it and buy groceries go for it.

LIZZIE: Awesome.

\----8<\----8<\----8<\----8<\-----

[1] [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply- all/130-lizard](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/130-lizard)

[1.mp3] [https://traffic.megaphone.fm/GLT8967905844.mp3?updated=15416...](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/GLT8967905844.mp3?updated=1541657837)

</comment><comment><USER40> something that I think is commonly misunderstood about Bitcoin is that something can bring a lot of value, without being valuable in a market capitalisation sense. Think Wikipedia and Linux.

</comment><comment><USER41> Shouldn't all the True Believers be mortgaging and leveraging everything and going all in?

<comment><USER42> Well the funny thing about the True Believers is that their numbers are strangely correlated to the price of bitcoin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Oh no, my $10 is now worth $5

<comment><USER44> HODL!!! I'm told you'll soon be so rich you could buy a yacht! Or two!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London Bridge is falling down, my dear lady

(ambiguity intended)

</comment><comment><USER46> Crypto is going to come back with vengeance. Maybe not bitcoin and maybe not in the next 6 months, but people have seen the future and they want more.

In order to maximize "exchange of value", there needs to be a way to exchange tiny amounts of money easily. Right now there isn't such a way and crypto might solve it.

<comment><USER47> (not an investor nor a banker)

"At its peak, in November 2017, it briefly hit $19,783 - which means the price has fallen by about 75%."

If this were a real stock market and those were real $$$s, isn't that the kind of crash that causes great depressions or investors jumping out of windows (movie trope, but not really)

How can something so volatile possibly be worth pursuing or investing in, other then get rich quick schemes.

<comment><USER48> Surely the speculative value of bitcoin is independent of the inherent value of cryptocurrency technology. You wouldn't argue that cash isn't viable because some countries economies have crashed.

<comment><USER49> > You wouldn't argue that cash isn't viable because some countries economies > have crashed

On the other hand, I _would_ say a country's economy weren't viable if their cash had crashed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> My feeling: HN is generally negative against blockchain and it's applications, rooting to be proven useless because the Silicon Valley actually missed the window and it's not on the cutting edge of the wave.

My feelings towards bitcoin(cryptocurrencies in general): A tool to misbehave in a society that is completely regulated and monitored. Its price is going to match the market for misbehaviour. The size of the market for misbehaviour is going to be based on how much the society deviates from moderate: that is, in total anarchy bitcoin can replace the total global money supply and reach millions of dollars equivalent per bitcoin and in totalitarian governments in multipole world order it can be the currency to trade between camps and illegals when the governments tells you not to.

Edit: Hey, it would be nice if you also write why you disagree.

<comment><USER51> I don't think SV missed the window. Coinbase has done very well.

I think the reasons a lot of HN people are negative on bitcoin and blockchain are:

\- For most use cases, blockchains seem like a really inefficient database. While blockchains are are neat data structure and might have some great uses in the future, most of the proposed use cases seem better served by a normal DB. Would love to be proven wrong.

\- The "power used vs. utility provided" ratio of BTC seems insanely bad. A fairly small financial network (at the global scale) is sucking up a noticeable fraction of energy production.

\- Crypto brought a wave of very non-technical get-rich hucksters into the tech scene doing pump and dump ICOs and the like.

\- It seems like a lot of non-sophisticated, non-technical investors are getting duped out of their money. I hear all the time about working class people "getting into crypto" because they think it's a magic money machine and don't really understand the risk.

\- And the biggest for me: Almost every crypto investor/fan I ask in person has NEVER used crypto to buy anything other than more crypto or to make small purchases. Crypto fans make huge claims like crypto is transforming commerce but it doesn't seem to jive with real life experience.

<comment><USER25> >For most use cases, blockchains seem like a really inefficient database. While blockchains are are neat data structure and might have some great uses in the future, most of the proposed use cases seem better served by a normal DB. Would love to be proven wrong.

As a corollary to this, a lot of blockchain "solutions" don't seem to even understand the problems they're purporting to solve. They're shoehorning blockchain into issues where it's absolutely inappropriate and claiming victory. Elections come to mind.

<comment><USER50> Just like the programmers trying to solve every problem with an app at some point a few years ago.

Not long ago every app idea was getting funded only to decay in irrelevance.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is it worth trying to advance as a late hire in a faltering startup? - <AUTHOR> https://startupsanonymous.com/question/is-it-worth-trying-to-advance-as-a-late-hire-in-a-faltering-startup/ <comment><USER2> The company will only recover if new management/owners step in and go in a new direction.

I've been in your situation and ended up quitting 2 years too late.</comment>


CSS Micro Reset - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vladocar/CSS-Micro-Reset <comment><USER2> >Another thing: It's Ok for some elements to be different between browsers.

This is one of those lessens that took me a while to learn. I spent a lot of my time early in my career trying to get every pixel the same between between IE and Firefox until someone asked my why I cared. I never gave the "why" much thought until that point; it was just something I felt I needed to do. As long as the site functions correctly and looks good in the various browsers, getting them exactly the same is nothing but a fool's errand.

<comment><USER3> sometimes managers and clients are fools.

<comment><USER4> No kidding. I don't support IE at all, much less slave to make pages look the same in it, because I _want_ to. I don't try to make things look the same in desktop browsers because I have some ideological devotion to the idea. I do that because otherwise, the clients whine.

Every time I see someone go, "Hey, have you ever thought of a page design, like, _not_ being consistent between browsers?" and seeming to expect readers' minds to be blown, it makes me want to ask, "Have you ever considered doing this, like, as a job?"

<comment><USER2> Maybe I have just been lucky, but I have never had a job in which my only function was to translate a design doc or mockup into a website. I couldn't imagine working in that type of environment for long. Part of the job has always been to talk through design choices with bosses or clients because it is easy for a non-developer to make a decision they don't feel strongly about that would add a multiplier to the development timeline. So my original comment wasn't purely about my own preferences. It was also realizing the benefit of pixel perfect design is negligible and that I should be willing to argue against it when the issue is brought up.

<comment><USER4> _Maybe I have just been lucky, but I have never had a job in which my only function was to translate a design doc or mockup into a website._

Neither have I, funnily enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow an NPM package for 5 css rules. Reading the description this guy seems to be searching for normalize.css [https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css/blob/master/normali...](https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css/blob/master/normalize.css)

<comment><USER6> You're missing the point here. The author is not looking for normalize.css, but advises against such _nuke-it-from-the-orbit_ approaches.

It's just 5 rules, because you don't need more. And you can copy'n'paste them if you don't want to bother with npm.

<comment><USER7> You mean the original author doesn't need more? I'm all for minimalism, but my minimalism doesn't necessary mean everyone's minimalism.

And while the readme mentions you might not need it, or you might need to add to it, IMHO if it's not something that meaningfully solves the problem for a majority of users, and if it's trivially small then it probably isn't that useful.

<comment><USER8> It's not really useful, no. But it's interesting. I read the readme and the five lines of code as a blog post. It makes a couple good points. First, there's no need to reset elements that aren't being used. Second, a reset file is redundant by nature since it's overwriting a "reset" provided by the browser, that's subsequently overwritten by any custom styling. But yes, in virtually every scenario it's more practical to not think about it and use normalize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The contents:

      /* CSS Micro Reset */

      body { margin: 0 }

      h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { font-weight:normal }

      table
      {
       border-collapse: collapse;
       border-spacing: 0
      }

      th, td
      {
       text-align: left;
       vertical-align: top
      }

      img, iframe { border: 0 }

<comment><USER10> What a joke. Where's box-sizing: border-box, the most common reset of all? Is this another JS engineer seeking Github stars?

<comment><AUTHOR> I love your reference. I love it so much that I changed my github profile to: "Just another Full Stack Developer seeking the stars." :):)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I agree with the gist of things here, but surprised this doesn't include

        * {box-sizing: border-box;}

<comment><AUTHOR> That will force you to use completely different CSS layout model. Yes today is common practice the use of box-sizing: border-box and it should be the first line of code when you set your layout. I don't what to force anyone to use box-sizing: border-box.

<comment><USER12> > ...it should be the first line of code...I don't what to force anyone to use > box-sizing: border-box.

I'm not clear on what you're saying. It sounds like you're saying today it's absolutely something you should use but you don't want to force it?

<comment><AUTHOR> "It sounds like you're saying today it's absolutely something you should use but you don't want to force it?"

Yes, correct.

Let me explain.. that is the most important decision you make when you plan your CSS layout. But is your decision to make. You can absolutely add this in the reset. Feel free to add stuff in the reset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You don't need to reset things you won't use... then proceeds to reset tables, table properties, and iframe borders? This is the most nonsensical thing I've seen on here. Also resetting all h elements to weight normal when they're the most likely elements to have non-normal weights.

</comment><comment><USER14> Persisting an npm package to your project for 5 css rules is a far more egregious case of "you might not need..." than a simple css reset could ever be.

</comment><comment><USER15> There was a time when I would just add

        *{margin:0;padding:0}

at the start of every project and call it a day. That was my reset.

Later I found that was considered a bad practice, but honestly? I found CSS is very unlikely to be the bottleneck for performance in most things I deal with nowadays.

Anyway, I like this micro-reset but I rarely start css from scratch these days, otherwise I would just memorize these rules.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Browser Reset -> Your Reset -> Setting all Resetted Elements -> Probably > more styling after.

I get the feeling the author doesn't completely understand how this all works and what normalize.css and other resets are for.

There is no "browser reset". There are browser defaults which vary slightly from one to another.

The point of normalize.css and other resets is to level the foundation when starting a new project.

</comment><comment><USER17> Thanks, this is just what it says it is. Particularly appreciate the insight into headings.

`box-sizing` can be more nuanced than a wild card approach. On production stuff, I tend to use Tachyons' module, [http://tachyons.io/docs/layout/box- sizing/](http://tachyons.io/docs/layout/box-sizing/).

</comment><comment><USER18> I have always been strongly opposed to CSS resets and global CSS styling rules in general. There really is bo need for it if you know how to isolate your classes correctly. Some Atlassian plugins create global styling rules and they tend to break things.

<comment><USER19> The problem isn't with "isolating classes correctly" (how _do_ you isolate classes correctly in CSS' flat namespace?).

The problem is that even such basic things as lists and paragraphs will look differently in different browsers (different offsets, sizes, line heights etc.). Unless you cover every single element with a "correctly isolated CSS class", you need a global reset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I recently started using CSS Grid with a view to writing concise, maintainable CSS that wasn't 'Jenga CSS' that people only add on to. I also wanted to get away from the 10000+ lines of cruft that many projects seem to think you need.

All was going well with the layout but I wanted to avoid margins and padding, instead I wanted to use grid gaps.

Initially I did not have the 'bravery' to strip out all 10000 lines of cruft, I assumed some of it was 'important'.

However, just 'for a laugh' I thought of getting rid of the normalize.css buried in there, complete with rules for things like IE6/7/8\. Much to my surprise my layout suddenly looked awesome, all margin and padding issues resolved. I checked on a few browsers and all is looking very good.

The biggest bonus was on the input boxes. These now work much better for layout and usability on all screen sizes. I can use things like the 'size' attribute and make the boxes sensible for what is going to be entered.

Fluid width type and no fixed breakpoints are also a huge discovery along with CSS variables. I also gave up on divs and spans, not to mention class tags. Instead of these empty calories I use HTML5 tags with schema.org attributes. If a product has a name, description, price or other attribute, I mark it up for the screen readers first then the CSS can work on those attributes. No need for 37 layers of containing 'div' boxes each with class tags for some lame 'Foundation' style framework.

It seems absurd to remove the margin/padding and then have layers of Jenga CSS on top to get it to be as per the some designer's drawing.

The major benefit is in speed, I am sure that people who have been creating this unmaintainable CSS bloat for the last decade or find my approach heretical but the scores on the doors of what 'Lighthouse audit' says don't matter to them either.

I urge anyone to get rid of the resets as well as the inflatable arm bands and to let go of the hand-rails. Some people have never ventured out without their CSS resets, a bit like those children that have never gone anywhere without being in a car.

</comment><comment><USER21> Uncss or similar tools are your friend and time saving if you site is simple and under control.

Probably, to clone normalize.css and comment out every lines as starter style is better than this micro reset (applying the same concept)

</comment><comment><USER22> I like the reasoning behind this, but am surprised it doesn't include resets for the (fairly opinionated) user agent styles for lists, which I'd argue for most sites get used more often than tables.

</comment><comment><USER23> There's no such thing, to my knowledge, as a "browser reset"; there is a standardized normative default user-agent style sheet for HTML4 as specified in CSS level 2.

I agree with everything else the author is saying, though. But there's no point in this existing when normalize.css does. Even then, you really shouldn't be using that in my opinion for the same reasons the author specifies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I've used the word "browser reset" but is just "default browser style".

Here is the webkit style: [https://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebCore/css/htm...](https://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebCore/css/html.css)</comment></comment>


I've found my software as cracked download on Internet, what to do? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3550556/ive-found-my-software-as-cracked-download-on-internet-what-to-do/3550592#3550592

<comment><USER2> Congratulations, your software _exists_.

Since some people probably bought it anyway, rejoice about that: concentrate on your customers. Don't inconvenience them. See if you can make it more convenient to buy, for potential conversion.

That's about it, really. Don't try to do something impossible or stupid like trying to take things down off the internet, or trying to make your software uncrackable: neither of those are going to happen and you'll look like a fool (and inconvenience your customers and make enemies) trying.

If this submission's more of a comment on Stack Overflow's well-known propensity to lock every question in the known universe as offtopic or answered, I don't really know what to say to that. ;)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR>
        If someone thought your product was good enough to be worth their time to crack it, you must be doing something right. Remember that there are more honest people in the world than dishonest and you won't get the dishonest people to buy your product whatever you do. So concentrate on keeping your honest customers happy.

I think this is the best answer when dealing with such situations. A lot of people make it an ego issue and waste precious time filing DRM complaints, adding checks, etc which not only makes the software bloated but that precious time could be used to add features requested by the paying customers.</comment>


Hijacking the Verified Knowledge Panel - <AUTHOR> https://yvoschaap.com/weblog/another_mass_hijack_attempt_of_the_google_search_results <comment><USER2> I once helped a friend get his bar on Google Maps by claiming the business. They send a physical letter to the address of the bar.

How do they go about claiming other people's business? Do they just say "yeah, I own the pizza parlor on food street 3, Ohio, but send verification to startup avenue 10, Silicon Valley"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I forget this part in my blog post, but it goes like this. Once the website is accepted as the official website of the business, you can claim ownership by proving ownership of that website.

Given Slice owns the (fake official) website, it is instantly verified.

See: [https://support.google.com/business/answer/7107242?hl=en](https://support.google.com/business/answer/7107242?hl=en)

> If you've already verified your business's website with Google Search > Console, you may be able to verify your listing instantly.

<comment><USER3> And all of a sudden Slice is almost guaranteed to get the online orders for any restaurant. Pretty slick. Also pretty disgusting. Sounds like something Google should fix, and have every interest to fix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How did they got #1 _and_ #2 results above real website which even has shorter domain name? My guess: They bought off fake URL in various yellow pages listing which Google then aggregates to believe it is the official URL.

<comment><USER5> I'm guessing that Slice just has a big team of engineers that have figured out how to game Google's SEO, and the real restaurant doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Businesses built wholly on top of another business, much less a flaw in how another business operates a tiny portion of their overall business, are doomed to fail. They are 1 policy change at Google away from losing their intake funnel -- a funnel that provides no value to anyone but Slice, but that is a separate discussion.

</comment><comment><USER7> I just think of Sliceline from Silicon Valley, but like a digital version of switching boxes.

</comment><comment><USER8> wasn't there a B plot in Silicon Valley (the show) about something like this? a pizza based start up doing unethical things in the name of growth?

<comment><USER9> yea, the company (I forget the name) was ordering Domino's or something, and then repackaging the pizza in the fake companies branded pizza boxes and delivering them.

<comment><USER10> Sliceline. Almost the same business model as the Doordash story that broke a week or so ago.

<comment><USER3> That story gave me a good laugh! Not really funny, so, as it was real businesses suffering from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are they buying .com and .net tld's to host a fake website for every single business, just to outrank them on google? Is that cheaper than just paying for the ad?

<comment><USER12> these hyper-specific TLD's are likely quite cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What do the local restaurants say? Because the problem with Grubhub was that they phished the businesses' customers - no permission or relationship with the local businesses themselves.

My understanding of Slice is that they work directly with the pizza shops, so do they have this as a part of their agreement?

<comment><USER14> According to this HN user there were at least some instances of Slice doing this without permission:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16824992](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16824992)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not sure if exactly similar but I had to get a tow a while back and the first number I used on Google was not a local tow company. It was an SEO thing where they charge higher and then call the local tow company, I guess good on them but yeah idk... I suppose I did get what I wanted(a tow truck).

<comment><USER16> This happened with locksmiths too [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/your- money/lead-gen-sites...](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/your-money/lead- gen-sites-pose-challenge-to-google-the-haggler.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Surely, Google will quickly ban Slice like they do users who violate their terms.

Just kidding. Slice has ad money to spend! They'll get a gentle slap on the wrist.

<comment><USER14> Whenever I find an instance of this in the wild (such as [1]), I try to add the proper website as a correction, but Google typically will not accept the change. I assume this is because the website URL was added by the "owner".

In other instances where I suggest edits to Google Places, they are accepted almost immediately, since I am a decently-ranked Local Guide.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347930)

<comment><USER18> As of 2016, Google refused to get involved in business ownership disputes, and left the final determination to whoever claimed the business first:

[https://cdn.verticalmeasures.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/06/...](https://cdn.verticalmeasures.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/06/GMB-Request-Current-Owner.jpg)

Has this improved since then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How on earth aren't these guys behind the bars yet?

</comment><comment><USER20> dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23346971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23346971)

<comment><USER21> I disagree, this is not a dupe. That is a fluff piece for the company about how they did the hard legwork of signing up customers. This post suggests that they're fraudulently registering these business as their own.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Canvas engines performance comparison – PixiJS, Two.js, and Paper.js - <AUTHOR> https://benchmarks.slaylines.io <comment><USER2> Something is definitely up with this benchmark - PixiJS can handle over 60k objects at once in this benchmark without even dipping below 60FPS:

[https://www.goodboydigital.com/pixijs/bunnymark/](https://www.goodboydigital.com/pixijs/bunnymark/)

I checked the source briefly, and the problem is that the source draws every single rectangle manually every single tick. That's very inefficient. Just draw a rectangle to a Texture once, and create a bunch of sprites using that Texture. Pixi should be able to handle at least 10x the amount of rectangles if you do this.

<comment><USER3> That demo is insane. Din't know the browser was capable of this.

<comment><USER4> All thanks to WebGL.

I've been using this exact test for years now to judge a phone/tablet before buying/recommending - devices with the exact same SoC can differ wildly in performance.

Nowadays any phone that can't display 20k bunnies at 20FPS likely has:

1\. An underpowered GPU.

2\. Badly designed cooling.

3\. A screen with a too high resolution.

Of course there are many more thorough and appropriate benchmarks, but this one doesn't require you to install anything and will give you an answer before you're approached by the store staff inquiring what is it that you're trying to do with the merchandise.

<comment><USER5> > Nowadays any phone that can't display 20k bunnies at 20FPS likely has

Given my aging Samsung Galaxy S6 averages about 30FPS for 20k bunnies in Firefox mobile, your criteria might actually be too lax...

Edit: And in Chrome on the same phone I'm in the mid 30's FPS for 50k bunnies.

<comment><USER4> Back in 2014 when I started 20k was an impressive number.

To give an example: the Sony Xperia Z2 tablet appeared to be decent, because it had the - back then - state of the art Snapdragon 801 SoC.

I think I got less than 10k bunnies on it - no idea why(no power saving mode or anything), but it was a deal breaker for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> PixiJS is the only one to reach above 100 FPS on my desktop, though that's inbetween frequent GC pauses. Two.js gets ~70 and Paper.js gets ~48.

There would probably be less GC pauses if the benchmark code wasn't doing things like

      [...Array(this.count.value).keys()].forEach(...)

instead of a for loop.

<comment><USER7> I see people doing this crap all the time in the middle of tight loops that do a lot of work in C#, JS, TypeScript, and justifying it on the grounds of "productivity" and "readability". It seriously gets on my nerves. Do _not_ do this.

Functional code might look nice but often creates excess work for the GC and kills performance. We had a situation within the last week where a piece of code was blowing through 350MB of memory unnecessarily, and massively slowing down a heavy set of calculations, because of exactly this kind of issue.

<comment><USER2> > ustifying it on the grounds of "productivity" and "readability". It > seriously gets on my nerves. Do not do this.

On the contrary, please do this. "productivity" and "readability" are important aspects to consider when writing code, especially if someone else is going to be reading it.

When you've identified a bottleneck, feel free to write the code in the bottleneck more performantly, if necessary. But please do not sacrifice readability across the entire codebase for a couple of hot loops.

<comment><USER8> I can agree with your point in general, but [...Array(N).keys()].forEach() is not the most readable way to write "do this N times".

It creates an array of length N, but for obscure-to-most-people reasons, Array(N).forEach() doesn't work, so they Rube Goldberged their way to an array that they could call forEach() on. Their solution was to use Array#keys to get an iterable from the array. But an iterable doesn't have a .forEach() method, so they iterate the iterable into another array just to iterate it again with Array#forEach. Frankly the only thing this seems optimized for is to solve the problem without the for-loop for some reason.

The for-loop, on the other hand, is an instantly obvious solution. It's how programmers have been expressing "do this N times" for decades across languages.

<comment><USER9> Especially when Array(N).fill(0).forEach((_, key) => ...) gives you the same exact functionality without the second eager array if you're seriously trying to avoid for loops.

<comment><USER8>
        Array.from({ length: N }).forEach()

<comment><USER10>
      for(var i = 0; i < N; i++) {}

<comment><USER11> This is the best and cleanest way.

Unless there's a reason to use Array.forEach such as automatic paralellization or some other SIMD-like optimization that can be done that cannot be done in a forloop.

A lot of cargo-cult programming seem to take functional programming to mean programming using the map/reduce/foreach functions, and you end up with shitty code like [...Array(N).keys()].foreach(), just so you can somehow claim that you're doing functional programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://jsfiddle.net/vas71r68/3/](https://jsfiddle.net/vas71r68/3/)

Don't do stuff like pushing rectangles to an array to have their position wrapped, instead of simply doing it right there, unless you want to test the GC.

<comment><AUTHOR> My point was more to compare libraries than to create the best canvas performance. But you are right: simple plain canvas is usually pretty fast.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, by default it's accelerated anyway, at least if depending on browser and hardware. So, at least for something as basic as drawing a lot of things with the same color, engines and additional code can only make it slower.

Generally speaking, avoid GC, and avoid setting state that's already set... if you do these two things and use engines that do these two things, it's usually going to be more than fast enough :)

<comment><USER13> Its nice if you can avoid creating new objects, but in recent optimization I've seen no difference between reusing objects vs immutable objects. Removing unnecessary code is always nice though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I might be the only one but for such a simple website I found the menu confusing. When changing renderers, the order appears to change every time so I forgot which one I was previously looking at. Also, the Count is always reset back to 1000 so it's annoying to compare renderers at the highest count.

<comment><USER15> Not just you, super frustrating for such a simple thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use Paper.js in my main project, and if you want to make a 2D game or something it would be a terrible choice. It isn't fast. However, it gives you a ton of extremely useful tools (like calculating intersections between arbitrary paths) with a very well thought out API. For interactive diagram generation it's great. The performance is still a solid 60fps if you limit what's getting updated to fewer than 20 or so things at a time.

<comment><USER17> > if you want to make a 2D game

all of these are quite low level engines, nothing wrong with that but there's wrapper around these, like phaser which uses pixi as backend and give quite some useful abstractions on top of the rendering.

<comment><USER18> FYI, Phaser 3 doesn't use Pixi as backend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Paper.js simply isn't meant to be used to draw thousands of rectangles. You should only use something GPU-based for that, like Pixi or Three.

I love Paper.js because it has a TON of super useful vector features and is still is reasonably fast :D

<comment><USER3> The boolean functionality in Paper.js is quite outstanding. I am not aware of any other Javascript library that features such a robust implementation of path unite/intersect/subtract/exclude operations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> [https://matttt.github.io/sotu](https://matttt.github.io/sotu)

Phew, glad I picked Pixi.js for this then. I'm building the next version of Scale of the Universe

(For windows/mac/linux only btw)

<comment><USER21> This is really cool. Do you selectively render depending on the zoom level? (I looked for source but could only find the minified js on your github)

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I have basic culling implemented. Objects that are larger than, say, 3x their normal scale are not rendered. Likewise with those 1/100th their normal scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not exactly on topic, but cycling the links is extremely annoying.

</comment><comment><USER23> Two.js was fastest on my flagship Android phone with 5k elements. PixiJS was expected to perform best?

But on my flagship iOS device PixiJS got top spot, two.js close behind.

<comment><USER24> Interesting. On my iOS device and on MBP PixiJS is the fastest. Any idea why PixiJS can be slower on Android devices?

<comment><USER15> On my laptop PixJS was easily winner when it went to 5000 at 1000 Pix and Two were equal at 144fps, but two really sucked at all levels

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How do these compare to [https://p5js.org/](https://p5js.org/) in terms of performance? I've only used p5.js.

<comment><USER19> To quote my dear teacher on this "Anything will be faster than p5."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Shameless plug here, but I made a quick-and-dirty perf test that does something similar in our HTML5 game engine Construct 3, and it appears to run way faster even with 20000 boxes: [https://www.scirra.com/labs/boxperf/index.html](https://www.scirra.com/labs/boxperf/index.html)

This kind of test is easy work for a well-batched renderer. You can accumulate everything in to a single big typed array, copy to a single vertex buffer, and do one call to drawElements() in WebGL, and bingo, tens of thousands of sprites drawn in one go.

I've got other similar performance tests that can do hundreds of thousands of sprites @ 30 FPS (on a high-end machine), which I believe are bottlenecked mainly on _memory bandwidth_ , because I only managed to make it go faster by reducing the size of the JS objects involved.

Modern JS is ultra fast - if you have the right performant coding style.

<comment><USER24> FWIW the code in the post doesn't use sprites. I think it is done intentionally because not all of the engines support sprites. As someone mentioned in this thread if PixiJS would use sprites, it could be 10x faster.

</comment></comment><comment> huy-nguyen Makes sense because PixiJS uses WebGL2 by default, falling back to WebGL1 and then 2D canvas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree. I also found out that Two.js redraws 5k elements even a little bit faster but it takes a couple of seconds to render them for the first time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Seems performance is much better with sprites:

[https://pixijs.io/bunny-mark/](https://pixijs.io/bunny-mark/)

I get 10,000 bunnies at 60fps but only 2,000 rectangles.

</comment><comment><USER28> My iPhone XR has better performance than both my 15" and 13" Macbook Pro laptops. Quick, someone put a A13 Bionic in a real machine.

</comment><comment><USER29> I had to code up this test for my canvas library.

Results are ... well, Scrawl-canvas isn't Pixi.js fast!

But the results aren't too bad - I can live with that sort of speed. Especially as the library is entirely 2D with no WebGL magic added to the mix.

[https://codepen.io/kaliedarik/pen/PoPQGxz](https://codepen.io/kaliedarik/pen/PoPQGxz)

</comment><comment><USER30> Could you add a switch to change renderer, where possible (e.g. on PixiJS)? I would be interesting to compare all engines on same renderer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I made a switch at first as I started with Two.js and there are 3 types (svg, canvas and webgl). But then there was Paper.js which only had simple canvas so I removed the switch at all and used the fastest renderers for every engine (webgl or canvas).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> From this I conclude I should try using Two.js for my game. I have been limited to drawing 4k neutrons for performance but Two.js might be a better solution.

[https://darrell-rg.github.io/RBMKrazy/](https://darrell- rg.github.io/RBMKrazy/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Why is it that if I have a video playing in another tab, the FPS goes from 60 to 10?

<comment><USER33> Timers and JS get throttled for inactive tabs and windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm a total newb with GPU stuff on the web. But am curious why aren't these GPU frameworks used to render most website? Things such as facebook for instance I imagine would be a lot snappier. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER35> Lots of reasons.

Font rendering for all of unicode is extremely hard.

[https://gankra.github.io/blah/text-hates- you/](https://gankra.github.io/blah/text-hates-you/)

Multi-language input is extremely hard

[https://lord.io/blog/2019/text-editing-hates-you- too/](https://lord.io/blog/2019/text-editing-hates-you-too/)

Having to download an extra meg or 10 of code does not make your website responsive to start, worse if you're updating it constantly so you're users have to re-download that code every few days, hours.

Support for assistive technologies disappears. A page of HTML is relatively easy to scan for text to read or turn to brail or translate to another language. A screen (not a page) of pixels is not.

Similarly extensions all break. Extensions work because there is a known structure to the page (HTML)

UI consistency disappears. Of course pages already have this issue but it will be much much worse if every site rolls it's own pixel rendering GUI because none of the standard keys will work. Ctrl/Cmd-Z for undo Ctrl/Cmd-A for select all? Similarly maybe the user has changed those keys or is using some other assistive device which all works because things are standardized.

Letting the browser handle what's best for the device probably disappears. Cleartype for fonts? Rendering Text or SVG at the user's resolution (yes that can be handled by the page but will it? up to the site)

Password managers break including the browser's built in one. There's no text field to find so no way to know if this is the place to fill them in.

Spell checking breaks. Same as above.

Basically your site will suck for users if you do this. Some will say some frameworks will come up that try to solve all of these issues but that will just mean every pages is on a different version of the framework with different bugs not yet resolved. Sounds like hell.

<comment><USER34> Very good roundup! Thanks!

But don't you think there's a whole lot of apps that could benefit from being on a canvas rather than being slowed down by browser-stuff? Editors come to mind: CodeSandbox and VScode

<comment><USER36> Editors in particular, are worse for some people if they can't render Unicode text properly, have poorer rendering of fonts, can't be analysed by assistive tools such as screen readers and braille displays, and don't interact with OS and tools outside the browser the same way as HTML and native elements.

Sometimes a good compromise is to use canvas for rendering some things things on a page (the way Google Sheets does), but create HTML elements on top as needed for particular behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What can I use if I need more performance than 2d canvas can give me? WebGL ?

<comment><AUTHOR> WebGL is the fastest for now. But not all libraries and browsers support it

<comment> huy-nguyen WebGL 1 support in the wild is roughly 97% and WebGL 2 is 54% based on stats collected from a number of participating sites. [https://webglstats.com/](https://webglstats.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Paper.js looks the best on my Mac on a 4k monitor 200% scaling. The rectangles in the others look like the are upscaled from a lower resolution. Canvas vs WebGL?

<comment><USER24> AFAIK Paper.js doesn't support WebGL and uses canvas. WebGL also applies anti- aliasing, which may be a reason of blurring.

<comment><USER38> My understanding is canvas also applies AA the rectangle lines still look AA just at a higher DPI.

It looks to me like the rectangles done in WebGL are drawn at the scaled resolution (1920 x 1080) vs the unscaled resolution (3840 x 2160), whereas the canvas is DPI aware and drawing at the full 4k resolution.

I would need to dig further but basically in WebGL the rectangles are drawn to a texture at the lower res then upscaled just like a straight image of a rectangle prerendered would be at the lower dpi.

Edit:

Looks like paper.js is specifically HiDpi aware and it can be turned off for better performance which would be more fair when compared to the other implementations:

[http://paperjs.org/tutorials/getting-started/working-with- pa...](http://paperjs.org/tutorials/getting-started/working-with-paper-js/)

hidpi="off": By default, Paper.js renders into a hi-res Canvas on Hi-DPI (Retina) screens to match their native resolution, and handles all the additional transformations for you transparently. If this behavior is not desired, e.g. for lower memory footprint, or higher rendering performance, you can turn it off, by setting hidpi="off" in your canvas tag. For proper validation, data-paper-hidpi="off" works just as well.

Also PixiJS seems to support HiDpi if resolution is set properly:

[https://pixijs.download/dev/docs/PIXI.settings.html](https://pixijs.download/dev/docs/PIXI.settings.html)

      // Use the native window resolution as the default resolution
      // will support high-density displays when rendering
      PIXI.settings.RESOLUTION = window.devicePixelRatio;

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The performance on my phone makes me sad. PixiJS can barely hit 30 fps and the others do worse than that. FWIW, I have a Pixel 2 phone and I'm using Firefox.

<comment><USER19> Don't worry, the benchmark is not optimized and only testing a very specific thing, you can still do awesome complex stuff running at 60fps with any of these libraries :)</comment></comment>


Kids React to Old Computers [video] - <AUTHOR> http://thetechblock.com/kids-react-old-computers/

<comment><USER2> This is blogspam.

Source video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not meant to be blogspam. Apologies if that's how you interpreted it.</comment></comment>


How Would the FDA Respond If We Had a Drug to Cure Aging? - <AUTHOR> http://kolber.typepad.com/ethics_law_blog/2014/09/how-would-the-fda-respond-if-we-had-a-drug-to-cure-aging-guest-post-by-kira-peikoff.html <comment><USER2> Leaving aside the political tone of the article... Is aging really a disease to be cured? Do we really find so hard to let go of the world (when we are dying) or of loved ones?</comment>


Zuckerberg ousts critical board members, installs loyalist, at Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/12/facebook-board-peggy-alford-reed-hastings-erskine-bowles/ <comment><USER2> "Zuckerberg ousts critical board members, installs loyalist, at Facebook"

Please don't editorialize titles on HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the recent-ish drama about FB's memo regarding their culture that valued "connecting people" regardless of the cost (even safety), some employee comments[1] were almost cult-like and seemed to confuse "integrity" with "loyalty".

> "I look forward to working with Mark and the other directors as the company > builds new and inspiring ways to help people connect and build community."

It appears their priorities haven't changed.

[1] I included a few interesting quotes here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19232909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19232909)

[I should probably disclose that the one regret I have in life is giving the author of that memo (Boz) his first programming lessons]

</comment><comment><USER4> This is great news for anyone anti-Facebook!

I can speculate for hours but my initial impression is that people do this under stress when faced with overwhelming critism and lack the appropriate coping mechanisms to handle said stress. It almost always is an early indicator of absolute breakdown in the individual and subsequently the organization tied to such an individual. Yes organizations can move on, however usually and specifically in this case the person responsible wields too much power and is directly implementing systems that undermine the resiliency of the orginzation to respond effectively to systemic threats.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there any indication that past board members managed to reign in any of Facebook's less acceptable decisions anyway?

I get the impression there are few (if any) limits laid down as far as what Facebook does or doesn't do.

</comment><comment><USER6> Zuck does whatever the hell he wants to. He knows his baby is too big to fail now. It's like he owns the only cigarette company in the world where people are addicted to it by design. Facebook, a 500 billion dollar company, is nothing actually but a spam website pretending to be a social network. I recently installed a browser extension that hides sponsored posts and found my feed literally empty!

<comment><USER7> Can you post a link to this extension?

<comment><USER8> I use this one and it works well: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fbfluffbustingpuri...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fbfluffbustingpurity/nmkinhboiljjkhaknpaeaicmdjhagpep)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> off topic question but how do board members get compensated at bigger companies like FB?

<comment><USER10> Think this ought to be public info for any traded company.

</comment></comment><comment> village-idiot At this point in facebook's history, having a board captured by Zuckerberg is a disastrous mistake. If I were an active share holder in FB I would be _furious_ at him.

<comment><USER11> At this point network effect is on Zuckerberg's side, the only disruption that I hope is coming is a decentralized Facebook, but it's too early for that right now.

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can't say I've ever heard of a company "installing" employees instead of hiring them. Is there a joke here that I'm missing?

<comment><USER14> A board member is not an employee. The term is commonly used for board members, officers, and directors of a company.

Install(v): place (someone) in a new position of authority, especially with ceremony.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Seeking Cofounder for Twilio-based Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.impactdialing.com/

<comment><USER3> This sounds like a cool idea, and the premise doesn't sound too complicated. You could probably build something very useful quite quickly.

I think political campaigning is ripe for cool startups. I have an idea that I've dubbed "Pressure", which would be sort of a hierarchical, goal-setting and -rewarding online campaign management tool.

Basic premise: any sort of campaign, to be successful, must bring pressure on a variety of fronts - in traditional media by way of letters to the editor, calls to talk shows, etc.; online through blog posts, social media engagement, and email; by applying pressure to elected officials with phone calls, emails, and snail mail letters, and so on.

So, you would start a campaign by setting a variety of goals for these ways of applying pressure: number of letters to political representatives, size of social media presence, etc. Then you delegate these goals to top lieutenants, so that one person becomes solely responsible for social media presence - <USER2> social media division if you will. They can further delegate others, e.g. setting some other person as responsible for number of Twitter followers in the social media division.

To make things interesting, the site could either automatically, or via control by "upper management", promote people to higher levels if they have demonstrated exceptional ability in the goals they were originally assigned. Goal progress would be visible, creating a competitive, game-like aspect to the application.

Anyway, perhaps not the best idea. But the point is, I think that the field of political campaign management software could really use a shakeup.

Good luck!

<comment><USER4> There is probably a market for allowing the challenger for the 3rd Congressional District in Nebraska to have an online operation as sophisticated as Obama's was. Unfortunately, it probably requires a lot of consulting in addition to product development. And if you thought politics was a blood-sport you haven't seen the politics industry.

<comment><USER3> > There is probably a market for allowing the challenger for the 3rd > Congressional District in Nebraska to have an online operation as > sophisticated as Obama's was.

I agree. Except I think that you could do this just as effectively all the way down to the city councilor level, and you could also use it for any virtually any campaign - including ones for social justice, for changing governmental policy, etc. That's a lot of campaigns. Tie it in with innovative technology for integrating with social media, Twilio-powered telephony, etc., and you could have a winning application.</comment></comment></comment>


Uber continues using non-orthodox techniques: see Monster jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.monster.com/jobs/q-work-from-home-jobs.aspx <comment><USER2> It seems to me that the culture problem at Uber is probably unoslvable and will be it's death knell. Uber got where it is by skirting the system and now that all these other mini-crises (not that this is one) are flashing up it seems that the company is completely permeated by people who think that if something is "tricky" it must be good.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Try looking for a work from home job on Monster.com.

All you see is Uber spam.</comment>


Do US colleges have courses on the US financial crisis of 2007-2008? - <AUTHOR>

I just saw the documentary "Inside Job" and was wondering if US colleges teach about how the financial crisis went down, especially Harvard where Larry Summers was President of Harvard?<p>from http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2qwlpe/do_us_colleges_have_courses_on_the_us_financial/ <comment><USER2> Not sure about other colleges, but to my knowledge they don't have a specific class on the financial crisis in the Economics Department at RIT.

That being said, a number of professors have touched on what went down throughout a number of courses.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe widen the scope of your question: What are the best sources for learning more about the 2008 financial crisis?

</comment><comment><USER4> The banks wouldn't allow this type of education, we will be doomed to repeat!

</comment><comment><USER5> try asking on quora</comment>


Sooner or Later Your Cousin's DNA Is Going to Solve a Murder - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/golden-state-killer-dna.html <comment><USER2> Exactly. It will become very difficult to get away with murder in the future because they can now link familial DNA.</comment>