With GroupMe's acquisition, zero revenue companies are back in style - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/22/groupme-zero-revenue-acquisition/

<comment><USER2> I see this as a talent/technology grab instead of a revenue play. Obviously, Skype will be able to integrate the technology and find a way to monetize it with their user base. There have been multiple companies purchased before they even launch a product. What's the difference?

<comment><USER3> The difference is the price. Most talent acquisitions don't go for $85 million.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think it's zero-revenue companies. I think it's group messaging apps that actually got traction and users.

Beluga Kik Messenger GroupMe

all of them got snapped up in short order. There is obviously a demand for the team and the userbase.

<comment><USER5> The fact it has users actually makes it a negative-revenue company, since every message the users send costs GroupMe money. At 100M msg/mo, that's probably a bit more expensive than keeping some servers running.

<comment><USER6> That's less than 40 messages/second. Even if every message goes out to an average of 20 people, that's less than 800 messages/second. If each message averages 1KB (and why would it be that large?), 800KB/sec, or less than 7mbps.

For high availability, I'd guesstimate maybe 6 physical servers in geographically diverse locations.

If they're spending more than a couple thousand a month on raw infrastructure, I'd be utterly shocked.

Edit: By the way, this kind of thing is nothing new. IRC networks have handled traffic with similar properties for 20 years.

<comment><USER7> GroupMe was sending SMS text messages, and while they're nominally just a tiny amount of data, the cellcos don't bill the same way as your local upstream internet provider.

<comment><USER8> Correct. So... use that 800/sms/second. Even assuming they were getting SMS at a bit over .1 cents per SMS (highly unlikely - probably much higher than that), that's about 80 cents per second - round it up to $1/second that would be $3600/hour.

Sheesh - is my math right on that, or did I move a decimal place?

I'm guessing they weren't burning through thousands per hour every hour on SMS fees, but even hundreds would put a serious dent in a startup's pocket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _could be the first indication that the zero-revenue company is back in style._

I'm not sure that "it happened this one time" equates to "back in style".</comment>


The only video portfolio videomakers need  - <AUTHOR>

www.viplr.net<p>We are working hard on our beta now and feel free to signup for our beta or email me at firstname.lastname@example.com for any question. <comment><USER2> Maybe it's a good idea to explain in short why your service is better than lets say Vimeo. Now only the very curious will leave there email address.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! will few more lines to explain.</comment></comment>


Google to Add Social Feature to Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703630404575053480962942848.html?mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews

<comment><USER2> Yay! ReadWriteWeb (aka, me) just posted on this too: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_creating_twitter...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_creating_twitter_clone_for_gmail.php)

The best part is, they've invited me/us to the Googleplex tomorrow for an event explaining "some innovations in two of our most popular products."

I'm so excited! It'll be my first time at the Mountain View campus. =)

<comment><USER3> That WSJ article was REALLY low on information (at least in my non-payer's view), so I was glad to read your write-up.

Hopefully, this will integrate with other Google products really well and be available on my Google Profile, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dear Google,

Please stop adding things to my Gmail that make it a worst email reader. If you want to make some sort of social center, please create a new tool that ties into Gmail. Gmail was a really great product 2 years ago, but you keep adding dumb shit to it and making it less stable. Please stop. Thank you.

<comment><USER5> The additional functionality is okay with me, so long as Google keeps it in the Labs section.

Just out of curiosity, what is being added that is making gmail less stable for you? In the years I have been using gmail, I've never had any issues, and I currently have 17 labs features running (FWIW).

<comment><USER4> I'm really not sure what makes it unstable for me. I've had issues across browsers (Firefox, Chrome and Safari) and OSes (Windows and Mac OS X). Something the page just stops responding, or clicks result in it's error message showing. Or clicks do nothing and I have to reload the entire thing. Nothing reproducible just lots of small issues that are basically crashes.

I use no labs features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's with companies trying to be something that they're not these days? Facebook changed user's privacy settings so they could be more like Twitter, but why? Facebook does/did sharing photos, updates, and news with family and friends very well, and I can't understand why they're trying to go against that original goal of "closeness". I see the same thing happening here. I can't really see how tacking a status update feature onto Gmail will help Google in the social space.

</comment><comment><USER7> more info: [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/technology/companies/09soc...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/technology/companies/09social.html)

The meat:

 _The Gmail move signals that Google remains serious about becoming a social media force at a time when some of Silicon Valley's younger start-ups have stolen some of its thunder.

"It might look like a minor feature advance, but this is another blow in the war against Facebook," said Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at Altimeter Group, a technology consulting company. _

</comment><comment><USER8> This is confusing to me. How many GMail users who want to use social networking don't have a Facebook account already? It seems unlikely to me people will want to maintain a second (third, forth, etc) list of friends and upload their pictures multiple times. There's not much chance of people quitting Facebook to use GMail as a social network. Just a bad idea all around. Sometimes I feel like Google is really lacking focus. They want to be involved in everything yet they only do a few things really well.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is it appropriate to flag a link that requires you to access a paid service to be of any use? I mean, you can argue it's a "spam" link, as if a WSJ cohort posted it, they may be hoping for subscriptions.

I'm eyeballing the link pretty intensely right now...

<comment><USER10> The submitter probably went to the link from google and didn't realize it was a pay wall.

Go ahead and try it [http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Google+to+Add+Social+Feature+to+Gmail)

It is under the nytimes article at this time

<comment><USER9> Weird. Still likely shouldn't be a link here, though I can grant it's more likely a mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hooray! Congrats to the team!

</comment><comment><USER12> I wish they'd add spelling correction to their search.

<comment><USER13> I wish the search would search contacts...

(Yes I know I can go to the contacts widget and do a completely different search in there - not the same)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazing what the power of Google's brand can do for press coverage on feature releases.

Yahoo Mail implemented this feature maybe a year ago and has the LARGER user base but got very little coverage.

[http://news.softpedia.com/newsImage/The-Email-Battles- Gmail-...](http://news.softpedia.com/newsImage/The-Email-Battles-Gmail-VS- Yahoo-Mail-2.jpg/)

<comment><USER15> The media is also more likely to report on a pretzel choking incident when it concerns a person of interest like the president rather than a less interesting subject like me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >> "[To continue reading subscribe now]"

Yeah how about [To continue having a viable business model stop pissing off visitors with stupid pay/subscribe walls].

Sorry, offtopic I know. It just irritates the hell out of me.

<comment><USER17> How do you suggest places like the Wall Street Journal continue to fund themselves?

<comment><USER9> If it's exclusively a paid service, then why do they have ads? I can't tell for certain if they do in the paid version, but looking at the sample page on the "subscribe now" link, there appears to be an ad for something like a smartphone.

And plenty of other newspaper sites give content for free, and only lock older articles. They seem to be doing well enough with that model.

edit: and then why allow Googlers to access everything for free?</comment></comment></comment>


Teens Smuggle Burner Phones to Defy Parents - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/teens-smuggle-burner-phones-to-defy-parents-11557826201 <comment><USER2> Their rules seem a little extreme, but I do think it points to an obvious issue when teens are willing to go to such lengths to get their fix.

</comment><comment><USER3> Paywalled. Cannot read</comment>


Show HN: Online Exquisite Corpse Storytelling Game - <AUTHOR> http://thenextline.net

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure I've seen sites like this before, but it is fun. Unfortunately, there are only are few stories in play at the moment and so you can only cycle through a couple of lines before it just asks you to start your own story.</comment>


UK official involved in national porn filter arrested for child porn - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/top-uk-official-involved-in-national-porn-filter-arrested-for-child-porn/ <comment><USER2> A lot of people who are rabidly fighting against the Internet being a free- for-all are significantly damaged and assume the rest of the world is damaged in the same way so need to be protected.

<comment><USER3> So if the internet were a free for all, there wouldn't be child pornography? Your logic here doesn't follow.

<comment><USER2> No, I neither said nor meant anything of the sort. I was meaning that people who overreact and propose unworkable solutions tend to be those that have a problem themselves. They assume we all need saving from ourselves in the same way that they need help, they have trouble coping with the idea that their thoughts/desires/reactions to such things are far different from everyone else because in (almost) every other way they consider themselves normal.

Filtering the web will not make any real long-term difference to either those distributing or those looking for CP, IMO. You are not going to just stumble upon CP because a filter failed: people distributing that sort of material don't want to be found that easily because they don't want the authorities to stumble upon them. Likewise if someone really wants to find that sort of thing then the sort of filters proposed with not stop them in the slightest. It is one of those "people problems" that I very much doubt you can fix with technical measures (how you could fix it I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure that the proposed filters will be ineffective and will cause inconvenience elsewhere while not actually doing their job).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I still find it incredible that merely possessing some files is enough to get you arrested and possibly end your career. Weirder still, it seems to be ok to have just about all other sorts of horrific photos depicting, say, brutal violence..

<comment><USER5> I could be wrong, but I think there's far less of a market for producing photos of brutal violence than there is for producing photos of illegal pornography - the law is really about trying to kill the market, rather than it actually mattering that they are looking at the photos (really the only reason to punish people for looking at them is that by stopping these people you can help take away the incentive for people to produce them in the first place).

Edit: In response to tomp's comment about how cartoon images can be illegal... yeah, I don't understand that. Maybe there's scientific evidence that paedophiles who look at cartoon images are more likely to become sex offenders than those who avoid all pornography? Even then, not sure it's the right approach... but who knows.

<comment><USER6> But how can be the market destroyed when there is a demand. We should understand that there are those people who are being attracted to minors (we call them pedophiles), call this a disease, or whatever, but these people exist, and the vast majority of them are normal people in the real life. We, normal people (or what is normal?), are attracted to other adult people, but it doesn't make us rapers just because we imagine having sex with somebody. And it doesn't make those people child-molesters if they are only imagining it. And we are allowed to watch porn. If we want to kill the CP market (so the criminals stop shooting new CP material) let's give those people the possibility to watch it legally (because if not they are going to do it illegally). Let's collect all those already made illegal materials and give it to them for free (like the medical marijuana) so they can somewhat fulfill their sexual desires without harming anybody.

<comment><USER4> And when there's demand, I just don't see how outlawing possession would end that demand. Think guns. Does outlawing the possession of guns put and end to the black market for illegal guns? On the contrary I think!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most interesting thing about this to me is that shortly after the advisor was arrested, the rightwing Daily Mail started a smear campaign against senior members of the opposition, effectively accusing them of having supported paedophilia in the 1970s[1].

It dominated UK headlines for about a week, until the Ukraine crisis, at which point the (much more serious and concrete) allegations against the government advisor are revealed.

Nice work.

[1]: [http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/feb/20/dail...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/feb/20/dailymail- harrietharman)

<comment><USER8> And as that Guardian article concludes:

"But I'm with the Mail on this. On the basis of the paper's evidence, I think Harman, Dromey and Hewitt do need to address this matter seriously.

It isn't good enough to say the world was different then (as some have been suggesting in relation to the recent crop of historic sex abuse court cases) because there has never been a time when it has been all right to advocate sex with a child."

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I posted that article because it gave a good summary of the sequence of events w/r/t the Mail's reporting. I don't really agree with that last point.

There's no evidence that any of the Labour politicians expressed sympathetic attitudes towards paedophilia. Their argument at the time was about exactly where criminality should begin --- arguing against a blanket ban on images of nude children (because it might criminalise totally innocent parents) and sex between underage children of a similar age (which is arguably more an issue for education, youth services, etc. than the police and courts) --- y'know, the sort of things you'd expect a civil liberties organisation to be concerned with.

You might disagree with their position, but the Mail's reports really were trying to cast them as having been sympathetic to child abuse ("LABOUR MP ADVOCATES LOWERING OF AGE OF CONSENT TO 10", etc.), which clearly wasn't the case. It's hard to see it as anything other than a smear campaign (or, at best, extremely sensationalized journalism) given that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a longish, but awesome quote from my favorite Christopher Hitchens speech that's quite relevant to this:

 _Every time you violate – or propose the violate – the right to free speech of someone else, you in potentia you're making a rod for your own back. Because (…), to who do you reward the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? Or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom you're going to award the task of being the censor?

Isn't the famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography, in order to decide what is fit to be passed and what isn't, is the man most likely to become debauched?

Is there anyone you find eloquent enough to decide for you what you could read? You would give the job to decide for you? To relieve you from the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?

Does anyone have a nominee? Hands up?

You mean there is no one who is good enough to decide what I can read? I had no idea.. But there's a law – or some pebbling sub section of a law – that says there much be such a person. Well to hell with that law. It is inviting you to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently already know already.

About this censorial instinct: we basically know already what we need to know, and we've known it for a long time, it comes from an old story form again a great Englishman (..) Dr. Samuel Johnson, the author of the first great dictionary of English language. When it was complete he was waited upon by various delegations of people to congratulate him, (..) also by a delegation of respectable ladies of London (…). Dr Johnson, they said: "we are delighted to find that you've not included any indecent or obscene words in your dictionary."

"Ladies, said dr Johnson, "I can congratulate you on being able to look them up."

Anyone who can understand that joke gets the point about censorship, especially prior restraint as it is known in the US for it is banned by the first amendment of the Constitution. It may not be determined in advance what words are apt or inapt. No one has the knowledge that would be required to make that call and – more important – one has to suspect the motives of those who do so. In particular those who are determined to be offended, those who will go through a treasure house of English language (..) in search of filthy words, to satisfy themselves, and some instinct about which I dare not speculate…_ \- Christopher Hitchens

[http://howtoplayalone.wordpress.com/hitchens-on-free- speech/](http://howtoplayalone.wordpress.com/hitchens-on-free-speech/)

<comment><USER8> I get the "slippery slope" arguments etc, but I can't help feeling that the right to free speech shouldn't include the right to look at pictures of children being raped.

<comment><USER10> I've struggled with that for a long time but in the end how is an image of a child being raped different from an image of a man being killed ? Both depict equally heinous acts.

<comment><USER11> I don't think most people really care for snuff films either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even more worrying is the fact that it appears that he was tipped off about the police investigation by senior Downing Street figures.

He resigned from his post at the policy office several hours before the NCA came to arrest him at his flat, which meant that he could potentially have had the opportunity to destroy evidence.

</comment><comment><USER13> I imagine it would be somewhat trivial to entrap / SWAT somebody with this kind of imagery and then make an anonymous phone call, right? The tendency to rush to judgment on these issues is what makes those kinds of tactics much more powerful.

Not saying that is the case here, but it's something I try to keep in mind whenever headlines like this hit the news. It is rare that we ever see the follow-up verdict / judgment reach the same level of visibility.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish I could be surprised by the ongoing hypocrisy of our UK politicians but ...

<comment><USER15> It's hilarious just how badly you can pick them...

Immigration minister resigns after hiring illegal immigrant cleaner [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/106261...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10626150/Mark- Harper-resigns-after-hiring-illegal-immigrant.html)

Communications director resigns after phone hacking scandal [http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jan/21/andy-coulson- re...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jan/21/andy-coulson-resigns- david-cameron)

<comment><USER16> I dunno, the Immigration minister there seems like he acted pretty well.

When he hired the cleaning lady, she showed proper documents and - if I'm reading this correctly - insisted she continued to have the right to work even when she didn't.

When he found out his mistake, he corrected it by letting her go and resigning.

Maybe the article's being too generous, but that seems like pretty above-the- board behaviour for what seems to be an honest mistake.

<comment><USER17> If I remember this correctly, I think he had just been actively accusing employers of not doing due diligence when hiring people and that ignorance was no excuse.

Then it turns out that he was doing the exact same thing...

<comment><USER15> Yes. He was in the process of passing legislation that doubled the fine for "lazy" employers that didn't fully check the immigration status of their employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In a double dose of irony it was the Daily Mail who originally broke the story, the very same paper who are being petitioned to stop posting pictures that sexualise under age girls.

[https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/daily-mail- mailonline...](https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/daily-mail-mailonline- stop-the-daily-mail-sexualising-children)

<comment><USER19> Why is that irony?

<comment><USER20> Because, you see, it's a lot like rain on your wedding day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Always wondered about these types of systems. If you are filtering certain content then wouldn't you at some point have to of had the content yourselves to hash it for checking against later?

<comment><USER22> This system doesn't involve hashing, just blocking a blacklist of URLs. Digital forensics labs come across a lot of child porn in their daily work though so it isn't much of an ethical challenge to build a hashlist of illegal material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> At first he didn't like it but then it grew on him. Damn you Internet! It is all your fault! If only he could go back in time, implement filter and come back nothing would have happened!

<comment><USER24> This comment wins best comment of all time haha.. If only he could go back in time...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> He's not an official, he's a special adviser, there's a substantive difference.

</comment><comment><USER26> Smells like a set up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm seeing a lot of snarky comments, but the only reason this is being talked about is for the irony. It neither proves nor disproves that a filter is helpful or harmful for child pornography.

</comment><comment><USER27> Oh how ironic...

<comment><USER28> ... without missing a beat, Patrick Rock went on record to say "As you can see, this filter is very effective, it even caught me. Kudos for a well implemented mechanism, I can only hope such sick, sick, basters like myself will be caught and put away promptly."</comment></comment>


Man who stole $1M bucket of gold details escape from US - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/NYC-Gold-Bucket-Heist-Armored-Truck-1-Million-Dollars-Fugitive-Thief-Speaks-472147013.html <comment><USER3> I'm no criminal genius or anything but as a monday morning quarterback here i feel like he got too many people involved and screwed himself. Fencing the gold you can't do much about I guess but if you're able to just do it and gtfo. Don't go around giving people money to go on a road trip to LA with you. Don't give your shady-ass girlfriend the money to hold onto. Take it with you and ditch the car on the border and walk across to Mexico. And what's he telling everyone in ecuador he stole $1.6m in gold for anyway? Sounds like the guy's lucky he got caught and never received the money.

<comment><USER4> How likely would it be that you could get that quantity over the border going South? Is luggage checked?

Assuming they could identify him from camera footage, he'd have limited options to keep an existing car or buy a car and stay in the US? It'd be a risk even buying a car in a friend's name.

Best bet might be to forgo a car, rent somewhere remote and informally with cash, and sit tight for a while.

<comment><USER5> The Mexicans would've stopped him. That's why he didn't take the money with him. In his case he would've need to do a reverse coyote which I am going to guess is basically impossible with $1.2m. A boat to Cuba maybe with a flight but otherwise impossible. His best chance outside of friends or family was bitcoin.

<comment><USER6> Yikes. Bitcoin: the best for illegal transactions. That's not a positive attribute.

<comment><USER7> Might be a good thing for bitcoin (heh) if that surprises you. That was pretty much it's public face for a long time thanks to the Silk Road and various mainstream pieces about money laundering.

<comment><USER6> Actually it doesn't surprise me that much. Parents asked when bitcoin was around 10k on the way up if they should invest. I told them there will probably be value for a while because it is a money laundering Mecca, but definitely risky. For a while (up to 19k+) I thought I might have burned significant tech trust.

<comment><USER8> money laundering via bitcoin, is overhyped and not as much of an issue as people make out. cash is always going to be king.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I travelled through South America quite extensively I found the Ecquadorians were much more brazen about theft than people in some other countries. The moment I wasnt looking at a bag when on a bus they were going through it. I had an old laptop stolen while asleep even though the bag was right at my feet - think they must have come under the chair somehow - <USER2> they missed the cash in there. The next time I was on a bus I put my backpack above my head - the only thing in it was some spare batteries for the laptop - I just wanted to see if it would happen on this bus too - and sure enough it did - I could see them trying to be sly about it - but I just let them have those since they werent any good to me now anyway.

<comment><USER10> Depends where you go, and how you act. In the Amazon part of the country and in Galapagos, it's hard to find crime, but in Guayaquil, it's sometimes unavoidable.

Many Ecuadorian people are comfortable about stealing from Americans, or ripping them off, and there's a sense of "these Americans won't miss it." Partly, this idea is imposed by the government, which charges different prices for some services (including airfare) to Europeans, Canadians and Americans. I've encountered (and sometimes lost money to) attempted ripoffs by taxi drivers, laundry services, restaurants, and even a surgeon.

Yet I haven't had much stuff stolen from me in Ecuador, and in fact a local acquaintance felt so bad to see me lose the only item that was stolen, she bought me a replacement.

<comment><USER11> > and there's a sense of "these Americans won't miss it."

To be fair, they're probably right. Besides, if you're traveling in Central America with any more than the bare necessities, you deserve to get robbed. At least you should assume all your belongings could be taken from you at any time.

<comment><USER12> TIL traveling within a huge multicultural region of the world with anything more than a single change of clothes and a toothbrush means I _deserve_ to get robbed.

<comment><USER13> Typically when someone says you "deserve" such a thing, they mean "you will learn a hard lesson." They aren't impugning your morals, but your judgment.

<comment><USER12> GP replied after you, they definitely mean morally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's funny how the reporters call this "the crime of a lifetime" when billion- dollar crimes run rampant in Wall Street and crypto (Enron, Bitconnect, etc.).

I suppose a few million dollars is enough to guarantee a lifetime of middle- class living. Maybe that's what they meant.

<comment><USER15> Or maybe they mean a "physical" robbery. How often does someone physically walk away with over a million dollars? IN gold, jewels, currency, etc.?

<comment><USER14> Yeah I was overthinking it. They definitely meant the average period of this happening was about a lifetime, i.e. what you said.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are the odds, that the fiancee story is fake and he's diverting the world's attention again, now that he has served time?

Maybe he did receive the bitcoin...

That'd be the bonus point after touchdown.

</comment><comment><USER17> Julio Nivelo was a convicted felon prior to this crime and deported four times. Four times! Obviously something is broken. Perhaps improving border security isn't such a bad idea?

<comment><USER11> You hear stories like this all the time, it's absurd. He was able to enter subsequent times because he used other people's passports. Wtf?? Why is CBP taking pictures of our face, scans of our retinas, and fingerprints every time we cross the border, if they can't even use that data to identify a felon coming into the country under a different name??

Sometimes I'm concerned about dragnet surveillance and the police state, but then I realize how incompetent the government is at doing its job. Honestly that might be the scarier part than the surveillance...

<comment><USER18> If you behave lawful, you'll create one single tracking history for _everything_ tied to your real life person. If you don't, you apparently can get away with stuff like that AND on top of that you won't create a single, coherent stream of data for big brother.

These are fucked up incentives.

<comment><USER11> That's a good point. Surveillance is more likely to result in false positive identification of law abiding citizens than of criminals, simply due to higher availability of data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's hilarious how he's upset that his fiance apparently stole the money from him, did he forget that it was never his to begin with?

<comment><USER20> Is it the same? Someone you know and trust, is different to him stealing from someone he has no idea about, and is likely a rich company or corporation.

<comment><USER19> There is a nice proverb about this: 'there is no honor among thieves'. Besides that, the guy could easily be lying about the whole thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The story in not over yet. He should sell the rights of his story for a movie and make the 1.2m back, only this time, the legit way.

<comment><USER22> Not a lawyer here but would that fall under "profiting from the proceeds of crime"?

This article from Australia suggests it's illegal in that country, I wonder if it's the same in the US.

>Orders may also be made to seize the proceeds of the commercial exploitation of a person's notoriety from criminal offending, literary or otherwise (but often described as "literary proceeds").

[http://theconversation.com/explainer-how-proceeds-of- crime-l...](http://theconversation.com/explainer-how-proceeds-of-crime-law- works-in-australia-78600)

<comment><USER23> OJ Simpson wrote "(If) I Did It" and made money off that

<comment><USER10> I believe he was taken to court by the father of Ron Goldman, who won rights to the book. I'm not too familiar with the circumstances arouns the case, though, so this doesn't necessarily refute the idea that OJ could potentially have profited.

<comment><USER24> My understanding was that Goldman initially won a lien on the profits from the book, since Simpson owed Goldman money from the civil suit, and later the Goldman's where handed the book rights by the bankruptcy courts, when OJ failed to pay his debts.

So in theory OJ could have profited if he didn't also, independently, owe the Goldman's a lot of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> He had no strategy. Weirdly. Because he said he told himself he'd have a chance at one of those buckets some day. In which case I'd have expected he'd have thought of an exit. Some kind of plan to leave the country, maybe even a contingency, in _case_ he ever struck it rich.

Surely, it you choose a life of crime, you'd do that anyway? Kind of a burn the bridges get out fast plan, for when things go wrong. Which they will, eventually.

</comment><comment><USER26> We should start a gofundme for him, what a horrible fiance!

<comment><USER27> I can't believe this guy has the nuts to act like he deserves a lick of sympathy. Nuts. I don't know what's worse, him acting that way or a news channel glorifying his actions. What a strange world we live in.

I know we live in a world where this guy is going to make a better, more clickable story than somebody finding and returning somebody's purse but where do we draw the line. I guess if it weren't such a large quantity of gold plus being stolen from an armored vehicle in broad daylight it might have been seen as more of a terrible crime. As it stands it's almost more laughable that he was able to pull it off than anything. The dude was such an idiotic thief after he actually got away with the goods that there is a story in that itself.

<comment><USER28> I'm not arguing that his actions should necessarily be glorified, but I'm completely unsurprised that they were, and I think there are some very clear reasons why (beyond just saying it'll get clicks):

\- First, I'm sure many people view it as a "robbing the rich" type situation, and it was completely non-violent. Those gold bars certainly were not from some small business owner making his nightly deposits. With economic disparity such as it is these days, I'm not surprised at all that people would find that amusing and root for the criminal in this case. (Of course, the problem with such "robbing the rich" situations is that the rich often recoup their losses at the expense of the not-rich. But many people either don't know or don't think about that when they see a "rob the rich" situation.)

\- Also, it was a pretty brazen broad daylight robbery itself, due to the weight of the gold, and the video of it was pretty amusing to watch, with all the effort and breaks needed.

\- Finally, this story is from an local NYC news channel, and NYC is the US metro area with the most Ecuadorians, by a long shot. That is not to say that Ecuadorians should or do necessarily feel pride when following this story, but it's at least a local (to a subset of NYC) interest piece because of his nationality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I know it's wrong but.. I can't help but feel sorry for him and hope he got away with it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Guy sounds like a complete egotistic POS.

<comment><USER31> Not that different from a disruptive startup CEO. Took his shot, broke the law, paid a price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> what are gold details?

<comment><USER33> A man, who stole $1m of gold, details his escape. Not gold details. He just provides details on his escape. Punctuation matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why on earth is this on the frontpage?

</comment><comment><USER35> he should have just gotten the guy to send him bitcoin, and he'd have been set.

</comment><comment><USER36> Calling B.S. on his story that his fiance stole all the cash that he exchanged the gold for.

Also, how come he wasn't arrested? The story starts with "he was in jail and now out". How? The crime happened in 2016 and it's less than 2 years later now.

<comment><USER37> Did you read the article? He was arrested in Ecuador, sentenced to a year in prison, and was out after 9 months for good behavior. There's no extradition treaty between Ecuador and the U.S., so he wasn't sent back to the United States (where he had a criminal record and the sentence which would have been much higher).

<comment><USER36> Yeah I just saw the video, didn't read the related text story. Thanks for the info.</comment></comment></comment>


Computers On Board The Apollo Spacecraft - <AUTHOR> http://history.nasa.gov/computers/Part1.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't link to quite what I want. See all of chapter 2, but the meat of it starts with:

<http://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch2-5.html></comment>


Namecheap: December 29th - Move Your Domain Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.namecheap.com/moveyourdomainday.aspx

<comment><USER2> namecheap appears to be blurring the line of "stopping sopa" and "boycotting godaddy".

You can choose to boycott a single company based on the lines of disagreeing with their core values, that's great to do! Show them you're pissed for their support of a bill you dislike, but this is not enough to stop SOPA.

Writing your representative helps stop SOPA, being involved helps stop SOPA, bringing yourself up to speed with the bill's progress will help. I hope that no one feels their action to address this matter stops with just transferring domains.</comment>


Ask HN: How can content based sites make money? - <AUTHOR>

How can primarily content based websites make money? for example, how can websites like stackoverflow, xkcd, theoatmeal can make money? Should there be customized method for the particular content, like jobs portal for stackoverflow and print comics for theoatmeal?
Besides advertising and referrals what are other ways to monetize content based websites.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I think you have already identified the answer. It is based upon the needs or disposition of the site visitors/users.

Stackoverflow has a self qualifying audience that is ready to be offered a job/employee matching service.

You have to find that same match for any content site that needs to generate anything more than enough income to run itself - when vanilla advertising will probably meet the need.

I have a similar issue with a site I am working on - it is not yet clear how the audience demographic will settle down. Once it starts to jell then we can probably work from there. In the mean time we are adding some value added services that can be charged for.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is every website not content-based by definition?</comment>


FDA Phonetic and Orthographic Computer Analysis Program - <AUTHOR> http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/ResourcesForYou/Industry/ucm400127.htm <comment><AUTHOR> The POCA software was mentioned in the "How FDA Reviews Proposed Drug Names" PDF and is somewhat interesting reading:

[http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/DrugSafety/MedicationErro...](http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/DrugSafety/MedicationErrors/ucm080867.pdf)

The PDF was previously submitted by 'aclimatt' here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10079659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10079659)</comment>


You're never too old to learn to code - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/anthonydelgado/too-old-to-learn-to-code-ank <comment><USER2> While I agree that in principle you can learn to code at any age, I think this article misses the entire point of _every_ "learn to code" article. Whether it's kids, women, oldies etc etc.

Coding is a calling. You can learn _anything_ if you have the calling for it. If you learn because you 'should' (ie, it's encouraged by others and or/money) you will end up being average at it, at best.

Coding is _not_ for everyone, it's a pipe dream. It's not because all modern tech is based on it that you should learn it -- same way as Lewis Hamilton doesn't need to be a car mechanic to be a good driver.

I've started programming at 12yo, got my first paid gig at 16, and I haven't stopped being a 'programmer' (as they used to be called) since, and I'm now 49yo. I can't imagine NOT doing any 'coding'. In that time I saw countless average/bad programmers (and there are more and more of them) who /probably/ would have been better trying to follow a calling of their own...

As far as having a successful career as a programmer, I think there is one major trap I've seen many, many programmers fall into. And that is 'mind sclerosis' \-- ie refusal to evolve with the time/tools. People who are actually quite/very good at one set of tools sometime refuse to evolve and down these favorite toys in favor of what is perceived (often, they are) as inferior replacements. Problem is, 5 years down the line, they are no longer employable. I've seen that too many times to count.

The NEXT trap is to realize that your time is limited. You can't learn _everything_ and you have to be very, VERY selective on the set of tech you want to invest your time in. Don't bangwagon on stuff -- ask yourself whether it's likely to be a selleable skill -- if not, don't waste time on it.

<comment><USER3> >> you will end up being average at it, at best.

What's wrong with being average and making a living ? assuming of course there's place for average people in this field ? someone need to write those simple but boring CRUD.

<comment><USER4> Well, there's nothing wrong besides your job security, which will erode over time due to competition (low-barrier to being average) and also because your tasks could/will be automated.

This stands in many other industries of course, but the point is that not pushing for being better is not a viable long-term strategy if you need to earn a living from it.

<comment><USER5> Very good point. Eventually the routine stuff gets automated. For instance [1] is an attempt previously covered on HN to generate code from an interface mockup/screenshot. Obviously this'll take years of work to perfect, but because UI wiring code is pretty routine for simple forms, I can totally see this working eventually.

[1] [https://github.com/tonybeltramelli/pix2code](https://github.com/tonybeltramelli/pix2code)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not so much bias but demographics. The amount of people in the software industry has been doubling every five years since programming became a thing. At 43, that means I mostly get to work with people much younger than me. The median age seems to be about 28. I also have friends that are in their fifties of which there are even less than my age group . For every 50 year old there are four 40 year olds, 16 30 year olds, and so on.

I actually think it's great. Keeps me young and valued because experienced people are so scarce.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely! Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) also has this view, and I think it's much more true than the "once you hit 40 you get forced out of engineering and into management" meme.

<comment><USER8> Older people have a hard time keeping up with young guns who sit on their spare time however. You usually have family, kids, less energy etc as a 40 year old. Experience is good but I've found that it's impossible to know new things as well as young people since you have a life outside work.

According to jetbrains survey, 85% of developers work on weekends.

<comment><USER9> All the young people I know are frittering away their evenings and weekends drinking and going to festivals. The idea that they are poring studiously over some machine learning textbook is pretty laughable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> People in tech like to think that they are logically, even scientifically minded but the truth is we are all subject to cultural bias, just as much as the next person. This silly idea that computers are a young man's game is going to come back and bite a great many people in the behind in a few years, when they naturally age and find themselves over what they previously considered the age threshold for the job they still love to do. I'm pretty sure that, when that time comes, the majority view will slightly shift: "you need experience to program a computer well".

Yes yes- as one grows older, one learns more slowly etc etc. I will quote the words of Rita Levi-Montalcini:

"At 100, I have a mind that is superior – thanks to experience – than when I was 20" [1].

Would it that we could all have as long, productive and intellectually rewarding life as she had. Is all I'm going to say.

_______________

[1] [https://iainews.iai.tv/articles/rita-levi-montalcini-the- nob...](https://iainews.iai.tv/articles/rita-levi-montalcini-the-nobel-prize- winning-scientist-with-a-lab-in-her-bedroom-auid-1046)

<comment><USER11> Also, the origins of this bias are fairly arbitrary.

First, there is a real reason. Young people are more likely to be engaged with newer knowledge, technology, tools and such. That's balanced against older people being more experienced. It's particularly relevant in the software space, but the youthful exuberance VS experienced sobriety trade-off exists in all fields. Think of medicine, architecture, art...

The bigger reason (imo) for the bias is entirely arbitrary. Software is a new, rapidly growing field. There aren't many 50-something coders because most people start a profession in their youth and there wasn't as much code in their youth.

Far fewer people learned to code in the 80s than today. So.. the total number of people who code is skewed young. People see way more young coders than old ones. They assume only young people can code.

The point about people learning more new things in their youth is valid regardless of field.

<comment><USER12> _Young people are more likely to be engaged with newer knowledge, technology, tools and such_

Citation very much needed. Because that sounds like pure ageism. Who invented all the devices young people love to consume media on...?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm in my 50s, but I'm learning to code, but I'm not exactly new to it. I just didn't do it for a long time and now it's a rather different world from doing Fortran on 110-baud Decwriters. I got into an electrical engineering program, but dropped out when I discovered that the number of times they let you fail differential equations is finite. I ended up with a career in publishing. No regrets, really, but now publishing like other businesses becomes increasingly high-tech (I remember editing with a red pencil and doing layouts with waxers and x-acto knives). I push xml files around and write xslt and xquery scripts. I wrote our code specs for our ebook program. Now I'm developing a python app to supplement the terrible proprietary inventory system we use.

I do not call myself an engineer.

<comment><USER14> Another 50+ guy here.

I've been thinking about getting back into coding after a multi-decade hiatus. I taught myself to code in my early 20's. Coded through my early 30's and have been in management roles (involving software development or for technology companies) ever since.

I went from Perl to Java (hated Java) to PHP and have played around with tons of languages (just enough to complete the project) in between. Right now, PHP is my go-to language for my own projects simply because I'm used to it.

I still hack stuff. I run a few websites. I write plugins for WordPress. I write little PHP or Bash scripts to automate some stuff on my server.

Recently, I've been diving into Swift. I hope to get good enough at that, that I can get a remote job and semi-retire. For me, working from home would be almost like working part-time. I don't mean that it's that easy, just that a lot of management and office politics is so soul sucking that it feels like you're working 24 hours a day.

It's tough coming back. But, I've never strayed too far from coding to begin with.

It seems the advantage I have is experience. I've been there and done that before, even if I wasn't the one writing the code. Even being in management, I still enjoy sitting in a room with engineers and white boarding solutions.

And having worked in management, I have a better understanding of the "why" behind features and can suggest different paths to get to the same outcome.

I guess I'll find out if you're too old to code when I start looking for jobs :-)

<comment><USER9> Remote jobs can be tough too. It's hard to get paid what you're worth, and you have to do extra work to be visible to the non-remote employees so that you aren't perceived as the guy who does 2 hours of real work while wearing pajamas.

I thought I had the perfect remote gig a little while ago, but the organization was so insipid and backwards that I had to leave. I found a job that's perfect for me and is a short commute and enjoy it way better.

<comment><USER14> I'm not overly concerned about getting the best rate. If I wanted to make the maximum possible I would stay in management and ride things out until retirement.

I have savings that I don't want to have to tap into so I can just let it grow for another 10 years or so. Really, I just need to make enough to cover my monthly expenses and have health insurance.

Also, I've managed development projects across multiple continents (US, Europe, Middle-East, and Asia), so I'm hoping that I have a pretty good understanding of what management needs to make them feel comfortable.

It's probably a little different for me because I'm not necessarily looking to advance my career the way someone earlier in their career might. Obviously, I want to do a good job and add value, but I could just as easily teach scuba diving or something.

I code because I like it. It also pays better than average. A good combo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >> In 2016 the organizers of a hackathon threatened to disqualify our team after 24+ hours of coding for being "too old to compete" even though the only age requirements at the event were that the participants be 18+.

Wow. Would be great to hear further details around what happened there.

<comment><AUTHOR> We won the hackathon after talking to the judges

<comment><USER16> Too old to compete? How the hell did they justify that one? Because you were too old, you'd have an unfair advantage? What was their reasoning behind that one?

<comment><USER17> too much knowledge.

Maybe the rules should have stated a maximum about of experience for the chosen tech/programming language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I really hate about articles like this is they try to convince people we are just rolling in money and job opportunities just staring at our screens and use that to flood the market with people who don't care about anything but the money and use them to lower salaries for the rest of us. I don't seem to come across nearly as much articles like this for nurses, paralegals, chefs and other such professions that pay as well and might be far more rewarding for certain types of people and the jobs are probably easier to get, based on the number of bootcamps and job hunting services solely for computer science professionals.

<comment><USER9> Take a look around you. Anyone who tried to get into coding just for the money washed out long ago, or if they're lucky they're computer janitors at gigantocorp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> No one is too old to learn to code - in particular folks that deal with quantitative or logic skills in prior career (finance, lawyers, etc).

The issue typically is that it's hard (for even existing programmers) maintain the focus to write code 8 hours a day 5 days a week, months on end, at any age, and so it often doesn't work out.

</comment><comment><USER20> We miss highlevel IDEs (like Smalltalk, Excel or even Scratch and Eve) for people who are ready to program something but won't be able to use the tradional workflow based on shell commands and textfiles.

Expecting people to massively learn programming as we know it is an illusion and even a scam (like bootcamps).

</comment><comment><USER21> Has anyone ever went the opposite direction (e.g. tech into investment banking) at a later age, and if so how barrier-absent/non-ageist did that prove to be?

</comment><comment><USER22> Ageism is real but i always had other point of view. Whats the root of this misconception? Management. Young programmers work hard, old programmers work smart. Young programmers are cheap, old are expensive. Difference is not only in mental capacity is in expertise how to approach a subject or a task. About learning in after 40: If someone has the need to learn it will happen. But if your mind is not suited for the trip, forget it, find something that gives you satisfaction and happiness..:)

</comment><comment><USER17> don't learn faddy tech, find a bunch of tech you think will last a while and be confident with them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Learning to code can be a daunting task at any age but entering a Coding Bootcamp where the average age range of the students is 18-25 can make an aspiring web developer who is older feel out of place. I attended a Coding Bootcamp at the age of 31, and while I am still technically considered a millennial (And I am super young at heart), even I have felt like there is a bias in tech/startup culture that leans towards a younger crowd. In 2016 the organizers of a hackathon threatened to disqualify our team after 24+ hours of coding for being "too old to compete" even though the only age requirements at the event were that the participants be 18+.

Although you may face some challenges as an adult coder, learning to code can be one of the most rewarding things you can do as a human being, and there is no reason to let societies biases stop you from following your dreams. In this article, we are going to talk about how you can overcome any potential bias and how you probably have a lot more advantages than you think.

Let your work speak for itself The beautiful thing about tech is that it is a show and prove industry. You don't need a license to pimp out your portfolio or create an epic Chrome extension. Showcase your skills by creating a collection of side projects and demo applications. This is how your creativity can set you apart from the pack, regardless of your age. Let your website/portfolio show your personality and your projects on GitHub; showcase your creativity and problem-solving skills.

Don't wear a suit Listen, I get it. You want to take your career seriously. But if you walk into an interview wearing a full three-piece suit & meanwhile the person interviewing you is wearing a t-shirt, it is going to get a little bit awkward. I am not saying you have to wear a t-shirt. Do your research and ask the interviewer beforehand what the dress code is when setting up the appointment for an in-person interview.

Leveraging Industry Knowledge This is a big one. If you have been an investment banker or accountant for the last 20 years and you are just starting a new career in tech at age 45, you might feel as though you have no relevant work experience, but you couldn't be more wrong.

Today, every company is becoming a tech company in some way shape or form. (And the ones who don't evolve are going extinct.) Now more than ever, software developers are in high demand at a wide range of organizations, not only Silicon Valley startups.

If you are coming from a career in another field, consider applying to the tech department in that industry or disrupt that industry in a tech startup that focuses on that vertical. Your domain expertise is super valuable and relevant at this point. At a FinTech startup, the fact that you have 20 years experience in finance AND you know how to code is a HUGE asset that can set you apart from your younger less experienced counterparts.

Project Management Another advantage to having a wealth of previous job experience is the ability to work with and manage a team of people. If you ever held any managerial role in another industry, I would highly recommend taking a course on SCRUM and learning the fundamental principles of running an Agile Software development team. Your people skills and seniority can be a benefit to an organization looking for a tech team lead where you are skilled at coding but also at managing the timeline and product backlog of a project.

Overcoming Bias Depending on where you want to apply, there can be varying amounts of age bias. The fact is that Millennials and Gen Z make up for close to 50% of the tech workforce and when you look specifically at Silicon Valley tech startups, that number is even higher. At some companies, the bias might be worse than others, and a lot of it is subliminal and subconscious.

Ageism in the Tech Industry is a real thing, but hopefully, this article provided you with some insights into overcoming age bias and even using your seniority to your advantage.

Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.

<comment><USER23> > Don't wear a suit

I guess this varies from country to country but personally I think that's bad advice.

In my experience it's better to be over dressed than underdressed.

I'm in my 40s and have never worked anywhere that had a formal dress code, it's always been wear what you want unless you're talking to a customer. I pretty much expect most dev jobs to be jeans and t-shirts.

I'm a contractor now so do quite a few interviews and a suit to an interview is an easy choice.

You look like you give a shit when you turn up and you can make a joke with the interviewer about being overdressed to break the ice.

Much harder to do it the other way round.

<comment><USER24> Conversely I was hired at a search company (no not that one... or that one) when I got out of college and wore a suite to an interview. Come to find out later the suite almost sunk me because they felt I might not fit with the culture. Fortunately my code stood on it's own.

Today I routinely wear a nice button up shirt and designer jeans (the "cheap" $80 kind not the $500 ones) to work. Which is overdressed still but I feel it is a nice medium.'

Occasionally I'll take in a Broadway play (when it travels to Boston) and I always wear a suite. Sure, half the people there will probably be in T-Shirts but I like dressing nice. 15 years ago they probably wouldn't have even let you in without a suite.

Edit: As one might gather from my lats comment. I'm North East USA (New England). NE is very different culturally from any part of the country. We are closest to California but here suites are more common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How long did it take for you to go from starting to learn and actually getting paid for it?</comment>


Show HN: Daily Curated Color Inspiration - <AUTHOR> http://color.farm <comment><AUTHOR> [https://color.farm/api/palettes/last50](https://color.farm/api/palettes/last50)

soon there will be 50, but note down the URL

</comment><comment><USER2> the 10th bookmarked palette, and not the worst.

</comment><comment><USER3> very simple and very cool. congrats. is there any API to fetch the daily array of colors ? :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Never thought about it :) Where did you want to use?

<comment><USER3> Im working on a personal project full-time, a simple paint application to do a kind of pixel art mambo. Your work inspired me to maybe provide some sort of "daily colors by color.farm" suggestion or something like that :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Now doing it, will share it here when it's done. Give us ~2hrs :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bookmarked ! Love it

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome!</comment>


Alert: Sending http://: crashes everyone in a skype chat currently - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/02/these-8-characters-crash-skype-and-once-theyre-in-your-chat-history-the-app-cant-start/

<comment><USER2> this really makes me mad. Now I can't do any work!</comment>


End-user programming with ConceptJS - <AUTHOR> http://conceptjs.com

<comment><AUTHOR> > What's your demographic?

Javascript developers for now.

> What does "Web 3.0 ready" even mean

If you develop a page in ConceptJS, another user/developer can programmatically access the data elements in that page. In other words, all pages are human and machine readable.

In traditional web-application frameworks, the HTML is the only thing that the user sees. To access the data that goes into that page, the user needs to either use an alternate API or resort to data scraping. With ConceptJS, the user can directly access the data elements that go into creating the page by looking at the structure of the concepts.

> How do you define "User programmable"? Who's the user here, and what can > they program?

Think of visiting your Facebook wall and changing the code that runs behind it directly through the browser. This is what Wikipedia lets you do for its Wiki pages. ConceptJS lets users do the same, but for a web application. The same scenario without ConceptJS, would require the user to download the Facebook source code, understand how it works, find out which file/module delivers the Facebook wall, and make the change there.

</comment><comment><USER2> What's your demographic? Power users who understand terms like "PaaS" and "repository", who know Javascript, and who are not daunted by "____JS"? Actual end-users who want a WYSIWYG-style builder (a la Squarespace) and don't actually know HTML+CSS+Javascript (or else they could do things themselves)?

What does "Web 3.0 ready" [sic] even mean? I've not heard anyone use the term "Web 3.0" at all, let alone in any meaningful way.

How do you define "User programmable" [sic]? Who's the user here, and what can they program?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Check out our announcement blog post at [http://lambdazen.blogspot.com/2014/11/conceptjs-is- out.html](http://lambdazen.blogspot.com/2014/11/conceptjs-is-out.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you feel comfortable learning new technology at work? - <AUTHOR> Or do you feel like the company can't afford for you to be wasting time playing with stuff instead of building features? <comment><USER2> I've pretty much built my career on stuff I learned at work.

The "trick" I guess, is to carefully evaluate and attempt to selectively invest paid worktime into "new technology" that will have a reasonable benefit in at least the medium term to the company. You don't _always_ get that right - both ways. Sometimes you pick a thing and spend a bunch of time learning and prototyping using it, and it turns out to not actually be commercially viable right now. Make sure you don't "hang on" too long, and make sure you document why it looked like a good idea at first, and then why it turned out not to be a good idea in practice. A track record of getting it right often enough, and for sometimes getting it wrong but with well documented learnings about what looked attractive at first, and why it didn't turn out that way under scrutiny - that will build you a reputation which allows you to chase more of them... I suspect there's always a risk/reward tradeoff going on too, I bet there's a lot of things I've encountered or been recommended where the initial analysis didn't look beneficial enough to be prepared to burn company time and "personal reputation" on, which would have turned out super well had someone spent enough time testing it out.

Mostly I think, better architecture and newer tech are much more likely to be beneficial to a company long term than short sighted feature-chasing. You need to be in a company/project where that makes sense though. If you're a start-up scrabbling for product/market fit, there's zero benefit to prototyping, say, a Flutter reimplementation of your existing React app, or rebuilding your Rails backend in Haskell. You almost certainly need to be building/testing/demoing/selling new features to see what actual customers want/need/use when they've got it in their hands (and this probably includes turning off or throwing away features they never use).

Quite where the discontinuity is where you switch from "Sure, run up the technical debt on this hacked together prototype we've convinced our initial customers to buy, and our investors to invest in!", to "OK, it's time to get serious, there's no way we are gonna scale this evolved pile of crap to FAANG scale. Time to stop code-monkeying more features in, and to start behaving like actual 'engineers' who've designed the entire system properly..." \- is super hard to do at exactly the right time. That's something I don't think _anybody_ gets right more than once or twice in a career (and even that only if they're lucky).

</comment><comment><USER3> If the technology is something that could be useful to the company, then I would talk to the team & superiors and discuss with them whether we have time for that and how important it could be. In the case they agreed, and I gave them an explanation for why and what I am doing (and how long is it approx. going to take), then I would feel comfortable learning new technology at work. I believe good communication is the key here.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not only do I feel comfortable learning new stuff at work, I actively look for positions where this will happen. It's a perk I greatly value.</comment>


How We Decoded Some Nasty Multi-Level Encoded Malware  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sucuri.net/2013/12/how-we-decoded-some-nasty-multi-level-encoded-malware.html <comment><USER2> I must admit, I think the last step was a little. uhm... well I just think its funny how you used Hacker News to decrypt a script then posted about that on Hacker News.

<comment><USER3> hopefully noodly will turn up and tell us how he/she did it.

EDIT: obviously bruteforce, but still.

<comment><USER4> It's an XOR encryption, with a largish key - 12 bytes if I make the old hacker news comment correctly. If you do the standard known-text XOR key finding algorithm, you need a 24-byte known text.

That's some brute forcing, if you ask me.

<comment><USER5> But you're just looking for the text being in a certain range of characters. The first stage is determining the key length, you can do this by looking at the number of different character values in positions 1,2,3... then 1,3,5,... and 2,4,6,... then 1,4,7,... etc.

        keylength=1 127
        keylength=2 114 116
        keylength=3 107 102 106
        keylength=4 78 94 98 103
        keylength=5 111 118 115 114 119
        keylength=6 81 71 81 77 79 77
        keylength=7 104 112 110 104 110 110 109
        keylength=8 67 85 86 94 68 91 83 86
        keylength=9 87 86 86 90 92 85 83 85 82
        keylength=10 91 97 86 89 90 88 90 90 92 97
        keylength=11 90 101 102 98 99 93 100 100 100 95 93
        keylength=12 45 45 46 53 47 46 41 47 47 51 50 47
        keylength=13 89 85 100 90 89 91 94 95 82 90 86 88 92
        keylength=14 83 84 85 88 82 81 77 72 82 85 73 81 82 86
        keylength=15 73 81 72 76 76 70 75 73 74 72 77 76 73 71 73
        keylength=16 56 68 71 80 60 73 64 73 58 71 70 76 57 76 66 68
        keylength=17 81 86 82 74 77 82 85 87 81 87 78 84 77 77 79 80 82
        keylength=18 59 55 59 55 61 56 59 55 57 59 55 62 62 57 60 58 56 59
        keylength=19 77 80 80 77 71 89 78 76 73 74 68 80 80 80 74 76 78 79 72

The stand out line from that is keylength=12 as it provides a local minima for the number of different characters.

Having a good idea of the key length you can look at which of the possible 256 values for each position of the key produce the top numbers of printable characters. A quick perl script to do this gives:-

        POSS:0: n=211 chars=FHLRSUVZ]
        POSS:1: n=209 chars=cdjkouwx~
        POSS:2: n=208 chars=DIJKLORUW^_
        POSS:3: n=209 chars=BIKSVW
        POSS:4: n=206 chars=bejkntvy~
        POSS:5: n=210 chars=@CDEFKQXZ
        POSS:6: n=208 chars="#)+.023678>?
        POSS:7: n=206 chars=fgmorswz|
        POSS:8: n=208 chars=behjknt~
        POSS:9: n=205 chars=GMORSTW\
        POSS:10: n=207 chars=FLWXY[\
        POSS:11: n=208 chars=cdjkoux~

You'll note that the actual key (SjJVkE6rkRYj) is present in this output. I'll carry on with this if I get a chance tomorrow.

<comment><USER5> OK, next pick a word you think will be in the output (it's php code so I'll guess the word "function" might be common). You then XOR each 8 character substring with "function", taking note of the position of the substring within the 12 character groupings, and count the resulting characters:-

        $ ./4.pl 12 "function"
        POS: 0: S->78 T->71 U->69
        POS: 1: j->76 l->64 m->59
        POS: 2: L->73 J->67 W->64
        POS: 3: V->65 Q->55 P->49
        POS: 4: m->68 v->50 `->49
        POS: 5: E->54 C->52 O->48
        POS: 6: 6->57 0->56 1->56
        POS: 7: u->56 t->54 x->50
        POS: 8: k->76 l->70 m->66
        POS: 9: R->69 U->57 H->51
        POS: 10: _->69 Y->62 ^->54
        POS: 11: j->70 m->59 l->55

Note that the correct key in each position is usually either the first or second possibility, but there are some times when it isn't there at all.

(It's better if you give it a longer string, if I give it "function " with the trailing space then it gets 9/12 as the most popular, 2/12 as second most popular and the remaining one as the third most popular. There are even better choices, see below, but I chose to go with this as it helps show how to continue with non-perfect information).

Next I knocked up a quick program to allow me to try different keys to decrypt it, it prints out the code in blocks of the appropriate keylength so it's easy to see if a specific character position is correct or not. The program takes various commands from stdin (k = print key, S = set key, s = set individual key character, p = print in keylength sized blocks, P = print entire decrypted block):-

        $ ./5.pl 12
        k
        key is aaaaaaaaaaaa
        S SjLVmE6ukR_j
        key is now SjLVmE6ukR_j
        p
        /)abjutt uy
        stcm&vauiadl
        es\12i`(!Gisue
        t("_UERQER/)
        {$YCIOKNE= $
        HTRPYCOHKIC_
        VATS=$_WOSR=
        &$NTRP_WOSR_
        VATS=$_@ET;&
        $HRTV_GBT_PA
        RS=}\12//cie&w
        itn crrhr
        `u
        ncriin \127_doe
        ($k)}@hbadcr
        ('NTRP/6.1&5
        ...

Getting there, but still a way off. There are a few strings like COIKOE[#n]= which could be COOKIE, so we fiddle with the 3rd column and see some interesting things in the output:-

        s 2 J
        p
        ...
        elseof(oasYp
        ...
        COOKOE[#n]=
        ...
        systcm(#c)=}
        ...

Neither of the other two choices for column 4 produce the right string, but it's simple enough to find the ciphertext and find what is needed to make elseof -> elseif, COOKOE -> COOKIE and systcm -> system. It's k:-

        s 4 k
        k
        key is SjJVkE6ukR_j
        p
        ...
        elseif(oasYp
        ...
        COOKIE[#n]=
        ...
        system(#c)=}

We carry on doing this based on more clues like this (it gets easier and easier!) and we end up with:-

        k
        key is SjJVkE6rkRYj
        p
        //adjust sy
        stem variabl
        es
        if(!@isse
        t($_SERVER))
        {$_COOKIE=&$
        HTTP_COOKIE_
        VARS;$_POST=
        ...

And printing out the entire decrypted buffer without extra linebreaks every 12 chars gives:-

        P

        //adjust system variables
        if(!@isset($_SERVER)){$_COOKIE=&$HTTP_COOKIE_VARS;$_POST=&$HTTP_POST_VARS;$_GET=&$HTTP_GET_VARS;}
        //die with error
        function x_die($m){@header('HTTP/1.1 500 '.$m);@die();}
        //check if we can exec
        define('has_passthru',@function_exists('passthru'));
        define('has_system',@function_exists('system'));
        define('has_shell_exec',@function_exists('shell_exec'));
        define('has_popen',@function_exists('popen'));
        ...

Interestingly, trying known plaintext of "define" gives us the entire key as the most probably choice first time:-

        $ ./4.pl 12 "define"
        POS: 0: S->75 X->56 _->54
        POS: 1: j->77 a->51 f->47
        POS: 2: J->71 A->55 F->49
        POS: 3: V->61 ]->44 Z->43
        POS: 4: k->59 h->43 *->40
        POS: 5: E->55 8->48 4->44
        POS: 6: 6->52 w->47 <->43
        POS: 7: r->55 d->43 s->40
        POS: 8: k->75 `->51 g->51
        POS: 9: R->59 Y->55 X->49
        POS: 10: Y->69 R->49 U->47
        POS: 11: j->61 `->43 m->42

<comment><USER3> This is roughly what I was imagining doing in my head when I brashly wrote "obviously bruteforce." Hooray! Apparently I've still got it, at least to some small extent.

Thanks for your writeup!

Why does define work so well? Chance?

<comment><USER5> Not sure, "define" only appears 10 times but "function" appears 19 times. It's probably because 'e' is more popular in the code and "define" has two of them. Looking at the decrypted code there are much better strings to try; "function_exists" gives the right key first time too.

It could have been made a lot harder by using comments at the end of each line to pad the code with extra characters to equal out the frequency distribution and make this kind of frequency analysis impossible.

<comment><USER3> Could I make it even worse using ruby's unicode support?

eg this kind of nonsense:

        π = Math::PI
        alias λ proc

        ● = λ {|r| π*r**2}
        puts ●.call 5

        # 78.53981633974483

<comment><USER5> Oh yes, although too many "alias" commands will mean that it's possible to search for the known plaintext of 'alias'. But the more non-ascii bytes there are the more it will put off my analysis which dependeds on isprint().

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And re-encoded it into low-res PNGs?

</comment><comment><USER7> Huh, how strange...I just cleaned the perl version of this out of a compromised user account on a server I manage.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great!</comment>


Is PlayStation 4 Pro's Imminent Release a Good Thing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.usgamer.net/articles/playstation-4-pros-imminent-release-may-be-a-little-too-imminent <comment><USER2> The big advantage that console gaming has over PC gaming is that I don't have to sit there and consciously think about system requirements. I can just put a disc in a slot, relax, and play my game at the end of the day 99.99% of the time with no major issues.

If I now have to try and decipher the difference between a bunch of different subtle variants of consoles, it starts to become complicated and stressful and less fun. It's certainly also more expensive to buy a console and then buy a subtle different version of it a few years later.

This seems like a very fine line for console makers to walk without alienating the mass market.</comment>


Mozilla Launches Firefox 4 for Android - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/03/29/mozilla-launches-firefox-4-for-android-allowing-users-to-take-the-power-and-customization-of-firefox-everywhere-2/

<comment><USER2> It actually seems to flow pages better than the stock browser (Atrix running Froyo). Specifically, <http://www.linux.org.ru> has tab on the left in the proper position in Firefox while the stock browser puts it after the main content div.

The mobile tabs are _awesome_. And I really like the fact that I can get to the address bar while being half way into the page. The Awesome Bar is also, well, _awesome_. I thought I might not like it, coming off of an iPhone, but it actually works really well.

My only complaint so far is that spell checking does not appear to be turned on, and capitalization does not work by default. Very frustrating when trying to post comments to HN...

Set it to the default browser in a heartbeat.

</comment><comment><USER3> By the way, I discovered there are desktop version of the mobile build available for developers (Windows, Mac and Linux)

<http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/>

Windows [http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/w...](http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/win32-i686/)

Mac [http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/m...](http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/macosx-i686/)

Linux [http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/l...](http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/linux-i686/)

<comment><USER4> Wow. I wish I could use this on my netbook but it doesn't seem to be useful for much more than testing right now. Configuration and keyboard use is pretty limited.

Really fast though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My two favorite features:

\- Tabs are actually usable.

\- With Sync, you can walk away from your desktop and have your tabs (and history/bookmarks/passwords) on your phone.

(Disclaimer: I work at Mozilla, but have nothing to do with mobile.)

<comment><USER6> I want to use Sync, but I'm really concerned with the security of it. How do I know my data is safe?

Can I install a sync server on my own domain?

<comment><USER7> Data is encrypted client-side, so even Mozilla can't read it. If someone hacks Mozilla, they could get your _encrypted_ data, but without your passphrase, they won't be able to read it. On the downside, if you forget your passphrase, you won't be able to read your data either (you have to wipe your account and start over).

<comment><USER6> Are you sure? According to this: <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Weave/Sync/1.1/Setup> it says the passphrase you use is sent in the clear (over HTTPS) to mozilla every time you get the data. That implies that while the data may be stored encrypted client-side, it's decrypted or at least verified server-side.

<comment><USER5> That is an old page, back when it was a labs project called Weave.

Try this: [http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/what-firefox- sync#w_what...](http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/what-firefox-sync#w_what- is-a-sync-key-and-why-do-i-need-one)

There is absolutely no way for Mozilla to get your data, even if subpoenaed. And, if for some reason you still don't trust it, you can easily set it up on your own server.

<comment><USER8> >>There is absolutely no way for Mozilla to get your data, even if subpoenaed

There needs to be more assurances like this in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does contentEditable/designMode work on it by any chance?

If so, it will be the first mobile browser to support it.

Basic test here: <http://html5demos.com/contenteditable>

or much more advanced here: <http://ckeditor.com/demo>

<comment><USER2> Just tried it. It does!

<comment><USER3> Wow this is huge news!

Others might not appreciate it but that means it's the first mobile browser that rich, WYSIWYG editors like CKEditor and TinyMCE will finally work!

(iPhone and native Android do NOT support contentEditable despite being a webkit branch)

This is history repeating itself where Mozilla/Firefox competition will force other browsers to finally improve their game.

<comment><USER9> When did that happen the first time? As I recall, Chrome started the second browser wars, which even caused IE to try again. FF was unable to do that.

<comment><USER10> Microsoft didn't even _have_ anyone working on IE for most of the five years between IE6 and IE7 (2001 - 2006). Without competitors like Firefox to keep web standards and cross-browser compatibility alive through that era, it would have taken a lot longer to dig ourselves out of the IE6 era.

(Remember when IE had 90% market share, and web developers routinely wrote IE- only code?)

<comment><USER9> But IE7 wasn't much of an upgrade over IE6. Neither was IE8. Browsers didn't take the next step until Google got fed up with javascript rendering speeds and took it into their own hands; now every browser is fast.

Firefox AND Opera made the web bearable in the years between IE6 and Chrome, but they hardly are responsible for the arms race that is taking place now.

<comment><USER11> IE8 is a huge upgrade over IE6. For one thing, at ship time it implemented the entirety of the then-current CSS 2.1 draft Just comparing it to IE7, it added generated content, automatic counters and quotes, tons of fixes to floats, outlines, lots of box model bugfixes. the list goes on and on. It's not a huge upgrade in terms of _Javascript_, but in terms of CSS it's light and day when you compare to IE6. Oh, and IE8 moved to a process-per-tab model.

The thing I think you're missing in the evolution of IE after the team was disbanded post-IE6 is that it takes time to build up a project team from 0 to hundreds of people, especially when the codebase is preexisting and large. IE7 was them starting to put a team together again, doing catchup on obvious UI features like tabbed browsing. IE8 was them finally having enough people to execute well on some things (CSS 2.1, process-per-tab) and try to play catchup on other things (JavaScript performance). IE9 is them having a team big enough to work on all parts of the browser at once.

You also have your history slightly wrong on the JS perf. Chrome was first announced on September 1, 2008; before that some people knew that Google was working on a browser, but the details were secret. The WebKit project initially landed the SquirrelFish Extreme jit on September 18, 2008; it's pretty clear that this was in the works before Chrome's existence was announced. Mozilla landed the initial Tracemonkey implementation in their main development tree in mid-August 2008 (weeks before Chrome was announced), and had been working on it for some time before that. So all three (Firefox, Safari, Chrome) were working on JITs in parallel before Chrome was announced; it's not like Chrome shipped a JIT and everyone else suddenly decided they had to do it as well. Had Chrome never existed, Firefox and Safari (and Opera, which joined in on the game in early 2009) would still have competed for faster javascript; IE9 would still have ended up doing a jit, or risking being left in the dust.

Oh, and the Sunspider benchmark, for example, was first released in December 2007, when both WebKit and Mozilla were actively working on their interpreters' performance and starting to work on the JITs they'd have by September 2008. Again, the competition for faster JavaScript was very much in play already.

Now Chrome has contributed to the competition, as have all the other players. But they sure didn't start it.

<comment><USER12> "The WebKit project initially landed the SquirrelFish Extreme jit on September 18, 2008; it's pretty clear that this was in the works before Chrome's existence was announced."

In fact, the Apple WebKit folks have said that they began the Squirrelfish Extreme project the day after Tracemonkey was announced. It was quite an engineering accomplishment to have an initial stab at a JIT in a month and have it shipped to users in a few more, especially considering it took Mozilla about a year (Summer '08 - June '08) to ship theirs. And everyone knew about Tamarin's development over the previous couple years - so it ended up being a really amazing coincidence that all three JITs were announced within a one month period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using the beta for a month or so, and it's miles better than the stock Android browser. Notable features:

\- supports <video> and <audio>

\- fixed-size divs (used for multiple scrollable page sections) work properly

\- Pages are rendered practically identically to desktop Firefox/Chrome; the Android browser sometimes does weird things to pages with complex CSS.

While I haven't noticed any improvements in page rendering speed, but the browser UI itself is more responsive.

<comment><USER14> It also supports using the accelerometer in javascript! [http://karlwestin.posterous.com/javascript-accelerometer- on-...](http://karlwestin.posterous.com/javascript-accelerometer-on-ios- android-via-f)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know what the hardware requirements are? The market will let me install it on a samsung galaxy but not an lg optimus. Is it the cpu speed of the optimus or something else? I can't seem to find a list of requirements anywhere.

EDIT: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms/Android#System_Req...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms/Android#System_Requirements)

It is the CPU generation. "Release builds of Firefox require a phone with an ARMv7 processor" and the Optimus has an ARMv6.

Is anyone from mozilla or otherwise familiar with how badly it would run if I built it myself with a v6 target?

<comment><USER10> Hi, I'm a member of the mobile Firefox team at Mozilla.

Building for ARMv7-only lets us use the Thumb-2 instruction set, which results in code that is smaller, faster, and uses less memory.

We used to have ARMv6 builds available, but at this point the browser is not really optimized enough to run well on older (or low-end) devices. And since we were not actively testing or supporting those builds, the code now has some crashing bugs (probably related to the JavaScript JIT) that show up only on ARMv6 builds. Without fixing those bugs, you can't actually run Firefox on ARMv6.

We continue to reduce memory and CPU usage, and if it it gets good enough to support these devices then we might start working on it for a future version.

<comment><USER15> Thanks very much for the straight dope!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The benchmark numbers seem great, but actual browsing perf doesn't seem any better if not worse than the stock Nexus S browser. Just curious if Mozilla spends a lot of time optimizing benchmarks or the top 1000 sites?

I'm just having trouble reconciling their incredible benchmark numbers with how it feels to simply browse the web.

<comment><USER17> They've been working on a variety of performance indicators:

[http://blog.lassey.us/2011/03/29/mobile-firefox- performance-...](http://blog.lassey.us/2011/03/29/mobile-firefox-performance- overview/)

<comment><USER16> Yeah, that's the page I had read and was expecting perf that killed the Nexus S stock browser. But I'm not sure if its any better. Do you see better perf on your device? Are there some pages that show the perf delta more than others (besides Mozilla built showcase pages?).

<comment><USER10> Right now, the only _big_ speed advantage is in processor-intensive JavaScript. You can see this in any JS-intensive application. For example, run the performance tests here in Firefox vs. stock Android browser: <http://lookups.pageforest.com/test/perf-test.html>

(These performance tests are based on a JS library to do efficient dictionary lookups; more info at <https://github.com/mckoss/lookups>)

In other areas, like startup speed, we know that Firefox for Android is still catching up to other browsers. It's improved a lot over the last year, and we'll keep on improving it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> oh a Saviour has come. Adblock plus for mobile. This is the one killer tool i have been waiting for.

<comment><USER19> If you have a rooted phone, you can always use AdFree. It adds entries to your /etc/hosts so it blocks ads in _all_ apps.

<comment><USER18> Thanks, i will try it out. I am actually ok with most ads on apps, i dont find them as intrusive, the browser on the other hand is a nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's great to have another credible browser for Android and Firefox 4 kinda works OK on my Xoom but there are two issues that make me hesitant to use it - Fonts - there is some "non-nativeness" there - they look blurry and - Heaviness - the native browser on the Xoom is just insanely light and fast (couple crashes everyday aside) but Firefox _feels_ heavier to use. Part of that might be drawing, part may be slow startup and some just general UI element sizes.

</comment><comment><USER21> Kind of a bummer that they require an ARMv7 processor - won't install on lower-end but still very decent models like LG Optimus S/V.

<comment><USER22> I have a HTC. Does it uses an ARMv7 ?

<comment><USER10> See the list at [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms/Android#System_Req...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms/Android#System_Requirements)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can somebody find a direct download link for the .apk file? I tried using the Mozilla website but ended up in eternal redirection and flashy pages. I really do not want to waste 14MB (!) of my precious bandwidth on a browser installation. That would be 5% of my monthly bandwidth.

<comment><USER10> You can download the APK directly from here: [http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/a...](http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/android-r7/en- US/)

You can also search for "Firefox" in the Android Market on your phone (connect to WiFi if possible, if you want avoid cellular data charges).

(By the way, if you literally ended up in a redirect loop, please let me know so we can fix it.)

<comment><USER24> Here's an easier url (goes to the same .apk): <http://j.mp/firedroid>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Anyone else having user-agent issues? Google reader, for example, shows up as what looks like the dumb phone mobile site, not the smart phone mobile site (which is great) or the desktop site. And I can't find a setting to change the user-agent.

<comment><USER10> This add-on will let you change the user agent: <https://addons.mozilla.org/mobile/addon/phony/>

For Google Reader, you don't need to change the useragent; you can just go to <http://www.google.com/reader/i/>

Reader works well in Firefox, but many of Google's mobile sites use WebKit- specific markup, and will _not_ work correctly in Firefox if you change the user-agent header to iPhone or Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I downloaded the browser and installed 3 small extensions. It asked to "Restart", which I assumed meant the application. Instead it reboot the phone.

After that, it just hung on the Loading screen sucking up 100% CPU. I searched to see if I could manually delete the extensions, but they aren't saved on the SD card from what I could find, so I uninstalled and reinstalled the application and now it actually loads.

They really need to put some safeguards in place to make sure extensions don't crash the browser like that. Having to uninstall and reinstall just to remove a bad extension is really problematic.

</comment><comment><USER27> I assume that add-ons need to be written specifically for the Android browser - no delicious add-on listed, will need to stick with Dolphin HD for now.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is awesome news..just trying it out. Minor quibble why is the installer a Huge 14 Mb in Size? On a desktop FF4 is a 12Mb download so what gives?

<comment><USER10> On Android, we ship all the locales in one package (since the Android Market doesn't have a simple way for us to deliver different packages to different locales). That accounts for part of the difference in size.

We're working on various ways to reduce the size, including moving the locale files into separate files that are downloaded at installation time.

<comment><USER28> Thank you for the answer. Please implement this quickly, I want to recommend FF to pretty much everybody and a huge honkin download is not a good sign on a mobile phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can anyone compare it to the Dolphin browser?

<comment><USER23> I switched from the last beta to Dolphin some months ago because (iirc):

Firefox did not support gestures. It was very slow to start. It did not reflow text (properly or at all?).

At least the reflow seems to be included now so I guess I try again.

edit: Installed it. Tried zooming in on reddit, hn and metafilter. Failed to reflow on all of them. Reflowing after zoom is enabled in the options, at least I think it is (the stupid apple slider shows the yes in blue, I guess that means it is on. Or does it switch on if I press it? I never got the design of those buttons.)

Apparently no way to exit the application.

Takes guesstimated 10 seconds to cold-start. 3s for Dolphin.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, those buttons always bugged me... the design could have been a lot cleaner.

I'm not sure if Firefox Mobile has the same support for theming that the desktop does, but if so I imagine they'll be some nice themes for it eventually. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> No text reflow and no text selection turn the web into a giant set of PDFs. Tab mechanism is cool. Otherwise disappointing. Uninstalled.

<comment><USER32> I have no idea why nobody mentions that copy&paste in forms isn't implemented.

It's of little use for me without that.

<comment><USER10> That's because copy/paste in web forms _is_ implemented. It was fixed after beta 5, but before release candidate 1: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=611741>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Less powerful hardware does not seem like the best place for Firefox.

<comment><USER17> Independent test by people like Microsoft and Cnet seem to indicate that Firefox is doing well with resource usage. What makes you think otherwise?:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/03/28/browser- power-...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/03/28/browser-power- consumption-leading-the-industry-with-internet-explorer-9.aspx)

<http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20047314-12.html>

<comment><USER34> Microsoft is an independent source? What?

<comment><USER35> They are independent of mozilla and the people who make firefox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Damn, I need 512MB RAM for a browser. Feels so bad.

</comment><comment><USER37> How does it compare to Safari on iPhone?</comment>


Network Storage - <AUTHOR> https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2016/12/20/Network-backup <comment><USER2> Nice write-up.

I'm personally hoping to find something a little lighter than a dedicated network appliance that will have to be powered and maintained, especially now that we're in the era where a single 10 TB could conceivably hold all media that a single person/family is likely to produce (within reason).

I'm experimenting with a single 10 TB disk attached to an old Mac and backed up to Amazon Cloud Drive via rclone — it keeps everything I have accessible locally, while also protecting against failures and accidental loss. Admittedly, it'll be a pain to pull down my whole archive in the event of a drive failure, but I've had pretty good luck with hard drives so far, so I'm hoping that this will be a rare event.</comment>


David Karp Is Tumblr's Reluctant Technologist - <AUTHOR> http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/david-karp-is-tumblrs-reluctant-technologist/?hp&_r=0

<comment><USER2> _"...in Karp's newly renovated loft, in south Williamsburg, Brooklyn..."_

Rich people are calm because they can afford space.

I'm all for Wabi Sabi, but the average tea ceremony hut is smaller than this man's _staircase_.

Seriously, I think that I'm beginning to agree with the small screen thing. Two large writing projects (words not code) have been completed on an 12" Thinkpad on the kitchen table... and my kitchen isn't the size of an aeroplane hangar.</comment>


Extracting Audio from Pictures - <AUTHOR> https://mediapreservation.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/extracting-audio-from-pictures/ <comment><USER2> Few weeks ago I saw a TED video about extracting sound from video through vibrations and figuring out their movement abilities:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npNYP2vzaPo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npNYP2vzaPo)

And now sound from paper/pictures.

</comment><comment><USER3> A 1860 recording extracted from paper [http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/scott.php](http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/scott.php)

</comment><comment><USER4> Related: extracting audio from scanning gramophones: [http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/index.html](http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> This was possible only because of the high resolution and optical reproduction techniques they used at the time.

I doubt you'd be able to do the same with a picture of a vinyl record on a magazine page that was taken with a digital camera.

</comment><comment><USER6> Pretty amazing. This old reddit thread mentions work being done on extracting ambient vibrations potentially imprinted into pottery.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/1bwyf1/extracting_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/1bwyf1/extracting_audio_from_pictures_three_years_ago_a/)

<comment><USER7> Sadly I believe this to be a hoax [0] but has been used several times as an interesting plot device - notably in G Benford's short story Time Shards (which I have not read). Similarly it has been proposed that stone stores electrical mental impressions [1] - again the subject of a quite wonderful TV play written by Andrew Nigel Kneale [1]. The most interesting version of the pottery-as-recording story is the one which proposes that Jesus's voice was recorded onto pottery - once in the X Files [0] and, to my knowledge, once in a BBC radio play, where Jesus's final recorded statement is the major plot point (sadly I can't find a reference to the play - but it could indeed be based on the short story of G Benford).

Sorry to go on.

[0] [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002875.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002875.html)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Tape](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Tape)

<comment><USER8> IIRC the xfiles episode was a parody, the "lazurus pot" wasn't real. And the recovered audio of Jesus was him saying "I am the walrus.".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a gem right at the end from 1878:

"Oldest known publication of a recording of recognizable phrases in the English language ("Brown University"; "How do you do?")"

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm loving the work going on in this space. It's very interesting. My only reservation is it's long-term implications for surveillance.</comment>