Would You Stand on Short Flights if It Meant Cheaper Fares? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/07/22/would-you-stand-on-short-flights-if-it-meant-cheaper-fares/ <comment><USER2> No. With the holds at gates and taxi times, even if the scheduled flight time were 10 minutes, my experience is that flights usually have 1 hour of waste: taxiing, waiting in line to take off, waiting in a holding pattern to land, waiting for the previous flight at the arrival gate to leave.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about passing out parachutes and jumping off at your stop?

I'm a bit leery of using the following for picking up passengers though ( but if not, perhaps a special suit with pants open at the derriere might help jettison excess cargo !8-)):

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPUPOTczy7I&eurl=http%3A%...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPUPOTczy7I&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ejunkworthknowing%2Ecom%2Ftechnology%2Ffulton%5Fskyhook&feature=player_embedded)

<comment><USER4> _How about passing out parachutes and jumping off at your stop?_

This is an existing business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I might. I'd at least try it if given a substantial discount. Flying coach is already an uncomfortable experience. I wouldn't be surprised if short flights were actually more comfortable standing.

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought that this seemed odd till I realized that it was RyanAir. Those guys will do _anything_ to cut costs.

<comment><USER7> I don't get why they'd even propose something like this. It'd be against commercial passenger air regulations in any reasonable country, because it's dangerous to let people stand up for the whole flight.

Every so often, people are either killed or end up wearing cervical collars due to turbulence.

<comment><USER8> It's dangerous to let people stand in a normally-equipped airliner. That doesn't mean there isn't some way to outfit one to safely hold standing passengers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I suspect that if RyanAir offers this they will nickel and dime those standing passengers for everything to recoup the lost ticket revenue. For example, in the standing configuration they effectively eliminate the overhead storage, that's one more bag passengers will have to check.

<comment><USER6> RyanAir already nickels and dimes passengers. How would this be different?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> They said they polled 120K people on their website to gauge the sentiment for this idea. Isn't it true that polls that depend on self-selection are very biased? That obviously doesn't completely invalidate the idea, but isn't it a bit much to use it as supporting evidence?

 _The answer was an overwhelming 'yes' if the tickets were free. Two-thirds of respondents said they'd stand on flights of less than an hour if their tickets were free; 42% were willing to do so for tickets that were half-off._

In this case, who knows, it may be only that the hardcore, frequent fliers responded to the poll and that the majority of fliers actually hate the idea.

</comment><comment><USER11> Given the trend in people packing less into smaller luggage, I wonder how feasible it would be to completely dispense with the overhead lockers and the cargo areas and have a bilevel plane, with slightly more room at the seats to stuff your things.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've wondered why an airline doesn't try a "capsule hotel" style setup ever since I went to Japan.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel>

<http://www.yesicanusechopsticks.com/capsule/>

If you built a section of plane for it specifically, I bet you could fit as many people, and I'd love to be able to lay out and sleep. Maybe the engineering or safety wouldn't be possible, but if it was, I think it'd be fantastic.

<comment><USER13> There is a precedent for traveling like this and it's not very positive.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Slavetrade2.jpg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Given the number of people I've had the fortune to sit next to who believe flying is not a "shower-required" activity, hell no.

</comment><comment><USER15> That is just completely out of the question. And I won't have people standing up next to me either.

</comment><comment><USER16> It seems like the article neglects to define what a 'short flight' is.

Without stating how long you'd have to stand, any answer would be worthless.

<comment><USER17> Well, I don't think I've ever had a flight that was less than 30-40 minutes. So I think that most reasonable people could infer that a short flight less than 60-90 minutes</comment></comment>


Combine Twitter and RSS for a Beautiful Timeline - <AUTHOR> https://timur.mobi/tr-newswall <comment><USER2> Wonderful article, RSS needs to make a comeback. Especially among friends and family who love to make large posts about important topics. I try to tell them to build a blog and then just link to articles that they write. Your article and others inspired me to finally just put together a system to make it easier to start blogging. And gave me the idea to just mimic a social media platform. They do all of the design for you so why not have a blog generation system that a user doesn't have to mess with, just make content.

Any feedback would be wonderful. [https://your-media.netlify.com/post/make- your-own-media/](https://your-media.netlify.com/post/make-your-own-media/)

I will also mention that [https://www.stackbit.com/](https://www.stackbit.com/) is doing basically the same thing but more from a "Make life easier for Website designers" perspective.</comment>


Ask HN: Remote work for non-developers - <AUTHOR> My friend is looking for remote work, he's not a dev and has mostly made his way doing a combination of trades and tech services for small businesses and locals, he's pretty remote away from urban centers to boot.
He wants to find something bigger and work for someone, but I don't know remote work job listings that aren't dev work. I am in an urban area and I'm a PM getting an MBA- my career is all about non-remote work, its about face to face and being with teams all over the world. I have no concept honestly how remote work.. works.
Can you give some tips for me to give him? <comment><USER2> I have a tip from the trenches. Just about every site he looks on will have ads for writers. On one hand, freelance writing is a good way to make money and the jobs are generally great intros to working remote. Hell, freelance writing has been 'remote first' since before people even knew what remote was.

However, these same sites tend to attract bottom feeding pieces of shit who will offer insane rates like $0.05 per word for articles that require a fair amount of research. $50/1000 words isn't much and generally equates to significantly less than minimum wage.

Complicating matters, many pubs (including famous ones) are absolutely shitty clients. Net 30 is a pipe dream. Most of the time, you should be happy with most of net after eighteen emails to your editor. Those $0.05 per word sweat shops will generally want at least three treatments before picking one they like enough to do six rounds of edits on. And, about half the time, your article will never go anywhere and you just won't get paid.

</comment><comment> good-idea Here are a few remote-focused job board websites that include non-dev roles:

[https://remotive.io/](https://remotive.io/) [https://weworkremotely.com/](https://weworkremotely.com/) [https://remoteok.io/](https://remoteok.io/)

<comment><USER3> To add to that: [https://remote.co/](https://remote.co/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > has mostly made his way doing a combination of trades and tech services for > small businesses ...

Basic Sales/Marketing question-- (think Buyer Personas). WHO exactly would make an ideal target employer for this guy?

Assuming he's interested in Contract Consulting-- what types of small business does he like to help? What kinds of problems does he solve?

If he can get clarity around those questions-- the World is his marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER5> He needs to find companies that are fully remote already, as they will have those positions available.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is another great resource for finding remote jobs not specific geared towards developing: [https://whoishiring.io](https://whoishiring.io)

</comment><comment><USER7> Check out this site -it's focused on non-dev remote jobs: [https://dynamitejobs.co](https://dynamitejobs.co)

</comment><comment><USER8> Pocketputer.com has a listing on the _Links_ page. I'm on mobile or I would give the direct link.</comment>


Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> NewsBlur - <http://www.newsblur.com> \- a visual RSS feed reader with intelligence. I have a few hundred paying users and a few thousands free users. I develop it almost entirely on the train, which I'm on for almost an hour and a half everyday.

It's a ton of work and is profitable in the sense that the hundreds of dollars a month in server costs are just a bit more than covered by the premium users. But otherwise, it did help land me a number of great connections, both in NYC and SF, where I just moved.

I code in the open. NewsBlur is entirely on GitHub: <http://github.com/samuelclay>. The iPhone app I'm working on is also there, so some folks use it as a way to send me issues, others go so far as to add their own pet features. It's kind of neat to see a community spring up around the code itself.

<comment><USER3> Very cool UI. May I ask what laptop you use for coding on the train? I spend ~2 hrs on the train everyday and have been trying to figure out what would be a good laptop to code on. I realize personal preferences play a role, but it seems like large laptop is a hassle to hold, and a small one is difficult to code on because of the smaller screen space.

<comment><USER2> A 15" MacBook Pro. So I bike 4 miles with this thing strapped to my back, then hop on the train (Caltrain, where bikes are treated like kings). I think I just got used to schlepping 5.5 lbs. around.

I recently came from NYC where I would use the same laptop on the A train. 15" is exactly the width of my legs and the seat, so I would comfortably take up my area, but no larger. I can't work on a dinky 13" screen, so 15" or bust for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Clean Up Your Mess (<http://www.visualmess.com/>) is just a mini visual design tutorial and not a product, but it was a side project and it's made a few hundred bucks from amazon ads. I did not intend to make money from it, so it was nice surprise that I did.

<comment><USER4> The OP asked about profitable side/weekend projects. This is a project I worked on on the side, and it made money. So why did my comment get downvoted?

<comment><USER5> Most awesome to-the-point short web design booklet, I bookmarked it the first time I saw it on HN some moths ago and visit religiously. I lost the bookmark at some point and made great efforts to find the site again. Great job. (I'm a programmer not designer but I like the instant gratification of the booklet. It's similar in feeling to <http://bonsaiden.github.com/JavaScript-Garden/> for JS)

<comment><USER4> Thank you! I worked very hard to keep it short and useful, and it's nice to see that appreciated. Thanks, too, for the link to JavaScript Garden. I've only scanned it, but I love the table of contents and I know that will come in handy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I only have 1 side project, which is a utility for Windows laptops (a battery meter). It does about $1500 to $2k per month in sales. I've been thinking about expanding it to have a Enterprise (B2B) product.

I'm trying to get another idea I have into a startup, but I haven't been able to get that off the ground.

<comment><USER7> Where do you sell such apps?

<comment><USER6> I just have a website. It's almost all word-of-mouth, blog posts, and people posting on forums recommending it that drives traffic. I do some Google Ads.

<comment><USER8> How much does the app cost? Are these one-time sales? If so, what's your best source of customers?

<comment><USER6> It's a one-time sale. It's a freemium model. You can download the app and get limited functionality. You can purchase for $10 the "Pro" version which is a serial number that unlocks the advanced features.

For a while I was doing cheaper time-limited licenses, like $1 for 6 months, $2 for 1 year, etc and $10 for lifetime.

Best source of customers is from free users. I started the app as free until version 3.0 when I switched to freemium. Sales have been fairly consistent each month for years, with spikes when a blog picks it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> An instructional DVD I made on SEO for wedding photographers and their websites (<http://photographyseo.com>).

Recorded screen casts and mastered it in iDVD. Did a run of 1,000 at Discmakers for about $900. Sold out the initial run (@ $79 per disc) in under 2 years. Now we just one-off them or give them an option of viewing online.

Looking back (or if I do it again), I would probably do it as just an ebook or online videos to avoid shipping hassles.

Regardless, it's been a fairly easy ~$80k.

(BTW, if any HN folk want to see it for research purposes, let me know)

<comment><USER10> This looks like a nice number . How do you advertise your product?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Made a wireless stumbler for iOS in about two days that sold a bit over $100k total.

Admittedly, I spent probably another day in random debugging for version 3-ish of it (just went walkabout in Chicago with a debug build, logging AP details when it had bad behavior). And then ungodly amounts of time answering e-mails and on the phone with the iOS app review team, but that was long after the "weekend project" phase.

<comment><USER12> Very nice bit of work but what is a wireless stumbler?

<comment><USER13> A program that looks out for any wireless networks it can detect. Mostly used to find an open access point, debugging wireless lans or just to map them. See eg. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardriving> for more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hello World attached to a random number generator.

<comment><AUTHOR> what?

<comment><USER15> He's talking about Bingo Card Creator

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Gumroad - <http://gumroad.com/> \- right now I'm trying to turn it from a million dollar business (current valuation) to a billion dollar one. :)

<comment><USER17> Cool! Just out of curiosity, what's the justification for the million dollar valuation?

<comment><USER16> The valuation of the last round was greater than that. A combination of potential and % chance of reaching that potential. So really, plucked out of thin air by those with money :)

<comment><USER18> Seems to have very little traffic, when viewed in alex though.

<comment><USER16> Most traffic is on gumroad.appspot.com links for security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I once did a fixed bid contract that was sized by someone else at $150K.

I completed the bulk of the work over three days. I spent about 40 hours on it total including the production roll out.

I most likely could not pull that off again because I had very specific domain knowledge. I knew the software I was modifying and I knew exactly what to do over all of the various systems.

<comment><USER20> Jackpot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hampton Catlin (creator of Haml and Sass) was working with us at Unspace when he went home for the weekend and came back having written iWik.

He made $60k or so before ultimately selling it to WikiPedia and becoming their director of mobile development.

Not too shabby!

</comment><comment><USER22> I made a very simple iOS gym log app for my own needs and decided to sell it in the App Store. I think I've generated almost $5k in revenue. So, not a 'business', but it certainly paid for my developer account! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, do you have a home page?

<comment><USER22> <http://pumpapp.tumblr.com/>

Iroically, the app isn't truly native, but was built in jQTouch. When I get around to it, I'm planning to finish a native version, which I think it desperately needs to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My most profitable side project is actually my newest - <http://bugmuncher.com> \- it's been live about a week and I'm already quite profitable. Admittedly it's a very low overhead project (costs around $30 / month to run), but so far it's looking good.

I think the reason it's doing better than anything else I've launched is because its my first one that isn't entirely ad supported. My advice to anyone looking to launch a side project is try to go for something people will pay a monthly fee for as opposed ad revenue.

<comment><USER24> Neat. Remind me of the feedback integration on Google+ -- is this where you got your inspiration?

Love it...

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the kind words. If I'm honest I think 'inspiration' may be playing it down a little, I pretty much just ripped off the Google + feedback tool :)

As soon as I saw the G+ tool I knew it was something people would want on their website. I also knew I wouldn't be the only person doing this, which is why I went for a really lean approach, and managed to go from idea to first customers in 2 and half weeks.

<comment><USER23> I think I should probably add that I didn't rip off any of Google's code, just the idea :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I made a juror selection app for the iPad that generates about $1K / month

<http://www.front9technologies.com/ijuror.html>

</comment><comment><USER26> I started working at what was supposed to be a contract job to fix some computers for a guys business (at the time it was literally just a place that made copies) back in 2007.

I was still in college but me stopping in and telling the guy how much some of these customers having boxes of paper copied could benefit by having them scanned and organized led to me having my own company and employees as a sophomore in College which did just that.

I eventually built a host of sharepoint plugins which sold for a nice exit while I was still in school. I still havent finished school yet, but man did I have some fun with the money lol

</comment><comment><USER27> I've made about $100 in ad revenue over the lifetime of this game:

<http://crookedgames.com/game.php?name=space_grabber>

Almost covered hosting costs!

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com> and <http://www.contemporaryartvenues.com> earn about $2,000 per month, and indirectly generate lots of web design business.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wrote a WordPress plugin in about 4 hours to run a website listing web hosting company reviews. Simple affiliate stuff. The plugin was generic, it would add star ratings to WordPress comments and display average ratings for the post and such. I used the plugin to run my own site, then also built it a little site to sell to anyone else that wanted it. In 18 months it sold over $200,000 in licenses before I sold rights to the plugin to another individual for $90,000.

<comment><USER29> i think i bought your plugin ;)

what is that wordpress review plugin everyone uses?

<comment><USER28> It was called WP Review Site. I don't know if it's still widely used, the current owner unfortunately seems MIA at this point. He's let the affiliate program balance drop to $0 and go offline, and isn't responding to support questions in his forum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ok, so as far as non-client work goes:

The first iPhone app I ever made was a very simple Shopify app for seeing your orders and checking inventory. I dropped the ball on keeping it up to date because of client work and Shopify ended up buying a competitor to make into the official (free) app, but at its peak it made about $2000/month and up until I pulled it from the App Store a few weeks ago it was making around $300/month.

<comment><USER8> We're building some apps for Shopify too - what was the name of your app? Which app did Shopify purchase? As a side question - what has your experience with Shopify been as an app developer?

<comment><USER30> It was called Shopkeeper, and I don't remember the name of the app they purchased but it was subscription-based (this was long before the in-app subscriptions) and supported more than just Shopify.

Developing for Shopify was great. Their API is good to work with, and they're very developer-friendly in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Boxcar (<http://boxcar.io>) started out as a weekend project. The prototype (v1) was literally built in a weekend.

Now we have a great team, have raised a seed round and are killing it in general!

</comment><comment><USER32> My current hobby is writing simple cardgames in javascript. Currently I have Hearts - <http://www.hearts-cardgame.com> , Idiot/Shithead <http://www.shithead-cardgame.com> and Crazy Eights <http://crazyeights- cardgame.com> .

Am getting my first payout from Google Adsense this month, about 120 $. Which isn't much, but they're pure client side games, require no maintenance or anything so I'll just keep getting a small check every month :)

<comment><USER33> How did you advertise your sites?

<comment><USER32> Basically just posted about them on Facebook. Two of them also have links on the Wikipedia article for that game. And they all link to each other.

The biggest referer is Facebook, with Google coming in second. Ive also created all of them as Chrome Apps in the Chrome Web Store so people can "install" them there. (basically just a big bookmark on your New Tab page in Chrome)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hacker Newsletter - <http://www.hackernewsletter.com>

Sold about $1000 worth of advertising so far and have had more than that in donations. Lots of ideas to do more.

<comment><USER35> Only Newsletter I actually enjoy receiving!

<comment><USER34> Awesome, glad to hear that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Cupcake Wrapper Creator. Stats over the first five months:

26,358 Pageviews

4,837 Unique Visitors

235 Trial Users

20 Paying Customers

$283 in Receipts

Over 4000 Designs Created

Over 7,000 PDFs Downloaded

</comment><comment><USER37> After a football-related post on my personal blog got a surprising amount of search traffic, I threw up a quick Blogger blog with similar posts for a few football teams. The traffic rolled in. I threw on some more and eventually added baseball which was a much bigger source of traffic. Right now baseball season is earning me about $10 a week. I think I've spent less than 30 hours on it total. Not a great return on my time so far but it just keeps cranking away and Google keeps paying me. I've certainly spent more time on projects that have earned zero.

<comment><USER38> Is it information about pro teams/leagues? Or is it information on the sport itself?

<comment><USER37> Just short specific information about each team. Pro baseball is my biggest money-maker, I guess because there are more games during the week and day games, when people are at their computers to search and possibly spend money. College football is second place. Pro football is surprisingly weak in comparison. Hockey made a little during the playoffs, but NBA and even college basketball playoffs aren't even a blip on my traffic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've made $40 in pro subscriptions (2) and about $50 in ad revenue from <http://www.twistertracker.com> While the money isn't yet covering hosting costs I've learned a ton and managed to gain 1500+ free users and 1200+ twitter followers at @twister_tracker.

It's a pretty seasonal site so I'm hoping to grow it more next spring with additional features and a better pricing model.

</comment><comment><USER40> Back in 2005 I decided to implement a tag-based source code snippets repository over a weekend. Mostly as a way to keep my hand in with Rails. So I did. It went fine and built up over a couple of years to serious traffic but only about $800/mo in Adsense. I sold it to Dzone for low/mid 5 figures and they still run it (but they have proper big name advertisers).

</comment><comment><USER41> Birejji - <http://birejji.com> Was earning $100/day with adsense as a normal chat site (with 2M+ impressions per Month), but adsense banned the site due to "fraudulent clicks" (I've always had a consistent CTR so no idea what happened there). Since then it's turned into a Paid to Chat site.

</comment><comment><USER42> For a game hackathon I built an engine/CMS for creating phone-based choose your own adventure stories (<http://uchoos.com>). It's not actually a commercial product yet but I won $250 from twilio, so it's technically profitable.

</comment><comment><USER43> <http://goodmorningcmc.com> I sold ad space at the top of the email to students for $5 per day, to about 500 students. Made about $250. I had other motivations than money but it was still nice to earn some back.

</comment><comment><USER44> getmetricmail.com creates simple Google Analytics reports and sends them to you as a PDF. Currently 3000 free users. A handfull pays, so it makes about $100 per month. A good example of Freemium gone wrong.

<comment><USER45> I've signed up to check it out. As Alex said, it's a good idea, nice design, etc.

Maybe the feature exists and I didn't spot it, but if you white labelled it so that web designers could send out branded messages to their clients as a value-add, I think you could see paid accounts pick up a bit.

Edit: OK, first email is in. Seems that I have to click a link or get an attachment - this is why I already avoid the Analytics mailed reports. Any chance you can just send the data in the email or does the API not permit it for some reason? I probably wouldn't use this going forward if I had to click through to something or open a PDF, I know that's sulky but just how it is.

<comment><USER44> You can receive pdf attachments directly, so you don't have to click on the link. Nevertheless that's not what you're looking for, I guess ;)

We thought about putting the data directly into an email, but the crappy HTML/CSS support in the gazillion email clients, make this a pretty tough job.

<comment><USER45> Yeah, I think Analytics does PDFs from memory and I cancelled all of those.

Can appreciate the frustration with HTML/CSS support - maybe if you kept your layout really simple and/or called it an Old School theme. Mostly I'd be looking for anything that quickly showed me if there was something wrong with a site (or right, e.g., major incoming link).

Wonder if you can throw in some marketing factoids like "Fourth straight month with an increase in traffic" or "Traffic growth continues; fourth straight month" - the sorts of things a marketing guy can repeat to the boss without any more time or research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I made a few JavaScript scripts that I'm selling on CodeCanyon and the last month I made around $200. I'm thinking of expanding the business, but this time in ThemeForest building WordPress Themes.

</comment><comment><USER47> <http://www.jpictag.com/> A Jquery plugin for image tagging. It had some cool steady sales for over a year, which gather a reasonable money.

</comment><comment><USER48> Domainr -- <http://domai.nr/> \-- a search engine we built for finding available domain names.

~80% of its revenue is registrar commissions from successful referrals (domain name purchases, hosting, ssl certs, etc.), and the other 20% is from ads (from adpacks.com).

We launched it in 2008, and both traffic and revenue have been growing slowly but steadily ever since. These days it's covering our respective apt rents (in the Bay Area) each month.

<comment><USER49> I use this all the time, thanks for making it so easy :) Helped me find HopOnTheB.us which is still in the works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I started Stormpulse purely as a fun hobby project in late 2004. Incorporated in 2007. Can't share revenue numbers, but this year we should be profitable with a team of 5.

<comment><USER51> I enjoyed reading about Stormpulse in the Hacker Monthly: Startup Stories. Congrats on the hard earned success!

<comment><USER50> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> iScrob - <http://iscrob.com> \- a Last.fm scrobbler for iOS. It's free with ads, or $5 with no ads. I released it almost exactly 1 year ago, and it's averaged about $20/day in revenue since then.

It's unique because there's some trickery involved getting around the strict iOS backgrounding requirements, and most of my competitors haven't done a great job with it.

<comment><USER53> "Solve a difficult problem" is certainly one way to create value that you can sell. Thanks for sharing the figure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> My android games, hands down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, what kind of games/how much did they bring in?

<comment><USER54> Over $100k so far (after google fees, but before taxes and expenses)

I don't like publishing which games they are because there's already a lot of competition in their genres, no reason to extend it. However, for each, I was actually one of the first few of their kind when the market was just getting rolling with paid apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, 100K over how many months? So after taxes maybe 60-70K?

<comment><USER54> Yes, my taxes in April were pretty heavy, but I put a lot aside because I saw it coming.

I'd say most of the income came in over a 6-7 month period of really amazing sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This: <http://zvrba.net/software/cspim.html> I didn't get any money for it, but I got a publication on a peer-reviewed conference: [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5438...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5438087)

</comment><comment><USER56> I started DNSimple (<https://dnsimple.com/>) a year ago and it's doing pretty well. It's a side project but I put a lot into it, so it's really like a second job. I currently put all of the money back into it rather than paying myself, so profitable might be pushing it.

<comment><USER57> DNSimple is a side project? I would never have guessed; it's such an awesome service. Keep up the good work!

<comment><USER48> Agreed that DNSimple is a fantastic product -- we just moved Domainr's DNS over to it, which went very smoothly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Apart from contract work, there's currently only one. It's called Snippets (<http://www.snippets.eu>). It replaces the caps lock key with note taking functionality. Although I wouldn't call it profitable, still trying to figure out how to get traction.

<comment><USER59> Change to "The easy way to take notes".

Pay someone to do some copy writing.

<comment><USER58> Thanks for the tip. I'll take a look into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I made a silly Mac vs. PC parody video with South Park characters for a college class final project that went viral and made me a few thousand dollars through various ad deals: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id_kGL3M5Cg>

</comment><comment><USER61> I am building a learning system to feed me only content that is relevant to me. I blogged here. [http://saranyan.com/post/7946363708/consuming-content- the-ri...](http://saranyan.com/post/7946363708/consuming-content-the-right- way)

<comment><USER62> How would you distinguish your approach from, say, StumbleUpon?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tiki-Toki (<http://www.tiki-toki.com>). Web-based software to create interactive timelines. Launched four months ago. 10,000 sign-ups. About $500 a month in subscription revenue from premium accounts.

</comment><comment><USER63> Great stuff here. Thank you for the inspiration to keep going. As an aside, my only side project that has made me any $ is a blog from which I've earned $0.24. Not enough to withdraw from, but better than nothing.

</comment><comment><USER64> I did some stuff one afternoon about 4-5 years ago and it continues to pay my mortgage ever since. It's the goose that lays the golden egg and under no circumstances do I mess with it.

<comment><USER65> Any chance you'd share what it was?

<comment><USER8> He got a goose. It lays eggs. Gold ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> With some student colleagues we build <http://sharedesk.at> during last semester. Its a file sharing tool build on node.js , was fun :)

</comment><comment><USER45> I've got a site collating interior design photos for inspiration. Makes about US$2k+/mo fairly passively from ads. I would spend maybe 10 minutes on it every six or so months.

<comment><USER67> I'd like do do something similar for landscaping inspiration. Any advice?

<comment><USER45> I have to say honestly that I think I just got lucky. I had a site with decent PR that I pushed/linked towards the interior design site and it gave it a good start. From there, it's been Google traffic and AdSense/Text-Link-Ads. Nothing I've done has been particularly smart - the site is ugly, it's rarely updated, the categories were picked on a whim, etc.

<comment><USER67> Where would I find content for the site?

<comment><USER45> I've emailed you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I made <http://wacchen.com> in a couple of weeks. I have rewritten it a couple times since. I eventually sold it for 7k.

</comment><comment><USER69> Just a simple office picture blog for me that earns $200-500 month: \- <http://officedesigngallery.com>

</comment><comment><USER70> A print magazine that publishes existing online articles.

<comment><USER71> Yeah, Hacker Monthly is awesome!

<comment><USER70> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Selling videogame cheat source code to interested cheating websites: a few thousand. Was surprised to find such a robust market for that stuff.

</comment><comment><USER73> <http://likehub.com/>

No revenue because my AdSense account was banned a few years back. :(

</comment><comment><USER74> my 30 minutes project <http://hackertyper.net> !

</comment><comment><USER75> pen.io

</comment><comment><USER76> I made an iOS application for reading comics in literally 6 hours. I released it back in May and it's currently earning me ~$1000 a month via ads. Impressions are still increasing by ~25K each day, so profits are likely to increase in the coming months.

<comment><USER7> What kind of comics?

<comment><USER77> Probably manga. The US manga market has expanded hugely since I started reading manga (~8 years ago). Just about any genre (or subject matter) you can name has manga dedicated to it, which contributes to its ability to appeal across all age groups.

The other big thing is that most of the hardcore fans (those who would also like to read on their iOS devices) like to download & read scanlations (A $10 manga volume takes at most 90 minutes to read, so this is an expensive hobby for a hardcore fan, many of whom are children. Also, the hardcore fans prefer the scanlations because they allow them access to manga that hasn't been released in America or has been Americanized by the official English-language translator/publisher.), which are easily placed on an iPhone/iPad, whereas American comics would much more often require legal licensing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> My current company, which operates a number of ecommerce sites, started out as a side project. It's profitable, but it is no longer a side project, so it does not exactly count.</comment>


Tracking down the Comic-style font from Mortal Kombat and other 80s/90s games - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/codeman38/status/1200243842521415681 <comment><USER2> It's a really good thread, it reminds me so much memories with my brother playing old video games.</comment>


FBI director claims that videoing police is causing crime uptick - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/12/fbi_director_claims_again_that_phone_footage_is_causing_crime_uptick/ <comment><USER2> He needs to be replaced.

I get that law enforcement sees the world through a filter that has been tainted by criminals. But, law enforcement needs to remain objective in spite of that.</comment>


Amazon Jumps into Freight Brokerage - <AUTHOR> https://www.ttnews.com/articles/amazon-jumps-freight-brokerage <comment><USER2> Not mentioned in the article, but this is interesting because Jeff Bezos invested in Convoy, a Seattle startup working to optimize freight brokerage, back in their seed or series A, forgot which.

Though I'm sure nobody at Convoy, now valued over 1BN, honestly believed Amazon _wouldn 't_ jump into a market this big and ripe for improvement.

Then again, there's almost certainly room for dozens of big players. I don't think I even comprehend how big the freight brokerage space is, but I'm sure I'm underestimating it by multitudes.

<comment><USER3> It's big, it's technologically really old / behind the times, lots of customization.

And a lot of the human interactions are with people who have borderline computer skills, even decision makers.

It is a strange space. LOTS of room for efficiency and at the same time so easy to say "oh yeah this could be done better" and then you fall on your face because logic is not how anything / anyone works ;)

<comment><USER4> I worked at a major third party logistics company from 2012-2015 and they were less than halfway through a massive project to rewrite their COBOL mainframe systems in Java, and I doubt they're anywhere near being done yet.

The industry also runs on FTP transfers of flatfiles and ANSI X12 EDI messages. The most "modern" partner API I saw was SOAP. No one I talked to had even _heard of_ REST.

Meanwhile, on multiple occasions I heard senior managers express terror at the prospect of Amazon entering their market and competing with them. Rightfully so, given the size of Amazon's resources. Making money off a logistics network is an economy of scale game.

<comment><USER3> >Making money off a logistics network is an economy of scale game.

And yet there are so many small niche providers.... you'd think that would have gone away long ago...

Such a weird world.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but the niche providers flourish when the market is good, but they're the first to get killed off when it's bad. The post-2008 economic collapse saw mass consolidation in the industry as smaller players either went bankrupt or got bought up by competitors.

There's also a big difference between asset-owning and non-asset-owning carriers.

You can start a logistics company with very little capital--just licensing, bonding, and insurance. In that case, you're basically a travel agent for freight. Some of these agents have grown into very large companies, however, because they help big customers allocate freight across many asset-owning carriers and mitigate their risks, and they handle dealing with international customs and compliance regimes. They're like an outsourced supply chain operations department.

In air and ocean, the niche asset-owning carriers generally have some statutory protection. A good example is Jones Act carriers--there's a law called the Jones Act that requires that only American flagged carriers can transport freight between any two American ocean ports. That means there are only a couple of ocean shipping companies that are allowed to go to places like Hawaii, Alaska, Guam and Puerto Rico.

<comment><USER5> Interestingly, similar laws come in to play with cruise ships - non-US-flagged passenger ships that depart from a US port aren't allowed to return to a US port without first stopping at a foreign port. Almost all American cruise ships are flagged in countries outside of the US. The practical effect of this is that the many cruises that travel between the west coast and Alaska all have to stop over in Canada before they can return to the west coast, which is a major driver of tourism to Victoria, BC - since that happens to be the largest port city between Alaska and the mainland US.

<comment><USER6> IANAL, but I don't think it's "similar" laws, but the exact same law. Cruise ships are just (very inefficiently) transporting human cargo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> >Lunak told Transport Topics that in the flurry of reporting earlier in May, some outlets compared Amazon's spot rates with contractual rates, which she said was not "apples to apples."

Rates are a weird thing in the industry in the sense that nobody pays the up front rate and the "real" rates are heavily discounted.

<comment><USER4> Yes, and the mathematical reason behind this is straightforward. Capacity planning is the hardest problem in logistics[1]. You have to plan weekly capacity several months ahead of time, and you have a minimum break-even load factor to hit, but you also want enough capacity to not have to leave business on the table when demand is high.

Contractual customers commit to give you a steady weekly load, which reduces week-to-week variance in your demand and makes your forecasting more accurate. A more accurate forecast means you need less excess capacity and can run at a higher average utilization. This is very valuable, hence the discounts.

[1]Actually route optimization might be the hardest problem in logistics because the traveling salesman problem is a classic NP-complete optimization problem, but in practice it's not so hard to find a good-enough solution and the stakes are lower. Suboptimal routes won't make or break your profit margin, but poor capacity planning absolutely will.

<comment><USER7> The alternative way of thinking about it is that buying at spot rates includes an embedded option to not use the capacity. This real option has some value, so customers are willing to pay higher rates in the spot market rather than through contracts. There's necessarily some level of contract discount - otherwise, everyone would pay spot rates for the free optionality.

<comment><USER8> Which, at the end of the day, was the original value prop of EC2. Capacity planning is a challenging problem, no matter the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Japanese and Korean conglomerates' stocks are usually discounted compared to their parts: their P/B is less than one. This is traditionally seen as a inefficiency tax on their underlying value due to their inability to communicate and mobilize internal structures in an efficient manner.

Amazon has achieved what many other conglomerates have failed to do: effectively mobilize and monetize every part of their business. This is something that is nothing short of a miracle are is a testament to their organizational structure and managers, most of Jeff Bezos.

One would be hard-pressed to find a large diverse company that is as efficient and well run as Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm honestly surprised Amazon hasnt bought Flexport. They seem to "get" how things should work.

<comment><USER11> > They seem to "get" how things should work.

What makes you say that?

<comment><USER12> They're like Uber for Freight?

They even have a website that's a tongue-in-cheek reference to this: [https://www.uberfreight.com/](https://www.uberfreight.com/)

<comment><USER11> What part of uber do you perceive they emulate? Why isn't amazon just buying Uber if it's so desirable?

<comment><USER12> I was talking about Flexport, not Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> le-mark Really interesting, odd move imo. As others have said, this is a highly diverse industry, with entrenched players and smaller players as well. I think it's interesting to consider 'why'? Clearly Bezos thinks he can make money at it. A lot of money I'd wager.

<comment><USER13> Leveraging a huge amount of organic demand from yourself makes a lot of businesses feasible, that aren't otherwise.

Worst case, they lean less on their own brokerage. Best case, they excel and can begin billing everyone else for providing the service. Win/win.

<comment><USER12> How is this different than the railroads that owned the railways and were broken up in ye olden times?

<comment><USER13> In US law, the key phrase from Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197 (1904, "the first railway monopoly case") was _" in restraint of interstate commerce."_

The trust was deemed by the Supreme Court to have been created for the purpose of ceasing active competition between the companies who joined it (there having been recent strife between them in the news, the trust being the negotiated solution, to back this purpose up).

So, very different. A similar case would be if AWS, Azure, and GCP decided to create a holding company that combined all their assets.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/193/197](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/193/197)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know it's unpopular to talk about limiting Amazon because America is a "free-market" but that's the argument of the dumbest kind, it's short-sighted. You can't compete with them unless you have an advantage they can't replicate, they have all the money and can buy any company they need, they can pay the best salaries for the same reason, they own a lot of relevant data in every industry, they can buy all the patents and license them to third-parties so they sue you, etc... I am an Amazon fan, but looking into the future, these companies will rule every aspect of our society.

<comment><USER15> Amazon currently does just above one quarter the retail sales of Wal-Mart. They're growing faster, but not enough to overtake them within a decade.

<comment><USER16> Wal-Mart and Amazon are not really in the same industry.

Wal-Mart is an old retailer with a lot of physical stores and a well- established business model.

Amazon is a young software company with the world's biggest Internet store, the world's biggest computer apparatus, and a bunch of other things I probably don't even know about.

But it's the software thing that's the important bit. Software is intelligence, intelligence is efficiency, and Amazon is software first. In any "old" industry it wants to enter, it becomes, by default, the smartest competitor therein. It will _start out_ with better logistics than the incumbent industry experts with decades of experience.

It's like Amazon has a 20-point IQ advantage in anything it wants to do. Or more.

A scary competitor. Scarier than anything from the Robber Baron era.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I stumbled across this article while searching for something related to Amazon Logistics. This freight service and the article are both wildly interesting.

But I still don't know how to do what I wanted to do in the first place -- does anyone know if there's an API that allows querying Amazon Logistics tracking? Basically scan history and estimated delivery date given a TBA######## tracking number.

<comment><USER17> There was no way back when they were just using it internally. They'll probably open up something eventually after it has significant external usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Now they are heads on competing with Uber.

Also heard that they bought a food delivery startup today. Maybe Lyft is next!

This will be interesting to watch.

<comment><USER12> Like Google's core business gives them the infinite cash to burn to prevent an alternative to YouTube ever showing up, AWS might be that but for Amazon.

<comment><USER19> Out of curiosity, has Google bought/killed potential YouTube alternatives in the past?

<comment><USER12> Is that the metric we should use? Who would even bother trying to start a YouTube alternative? Does Google break out YouTube's financials in their quarterly? They don't. How do you compete with a bottomless wallet?

<comment><USER19> Google has been clamping down on content they don't like and ramping up the ads like crazy. Their recommendation algorithm is also terrible. There is definitely room for competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a triple whammy for UPS, who is experiencing pressure from:

* Self Driving Vehicles

* Amazon Freight

* Neo-Luddite Teamsters union resisting new tech

</comment><comment><USER21> Is this similar to what FreightHub is doing?

<comment><USER22> Looks to be different. FreightHub is a forwarder, this looks to be a trucking brokerage. For most trucking within the United States, the company you contract with to move your stuff doesn't actually own the trucks. You're dealing with a broker who matches your order to a trucker on the backend. The truckers are independent owner/operators or employees of large truck lines like JB Hunt, etc.

The better comparison would be to Uber Freight and Convoy, who seem to be operating on the brokerage model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> see: [https://freight.amazon.com/](https://freight.amazon.com/)

also: [https://ship.amazon.com/](https://ship.amazon.com/)

</comment><comment><USER24> At what point does Amazon get broken up? Grocery chains, freight, aws, ecommerce, each of these could be companies on their own. Seems like we're heading to a dystopian future where megacorps own you in every sense.

<comment><USER25> > At what point does Amazon get broken up?

They'd have to violate the law. As it stands, they're not engaging in anti- competitive activity. Simply being better at something than your competition isn't anti-competitive.

> Seems like we're heading to a dystopian future where megacorps own you in > every sense.

Literally every business that Amazon has entered has improved my life. Books are cheaper with an enormously larger selection available. Prime Video offers alternative to Netflix. AWS has revolutionized the software industry.

Don't get me wrong -- Amazon is in it for Amazon, and I think Jeff Bezo's can be an asshole. But the reason they get my money year after year is that they do such a great job.

<comment><USER26> it's improve your life because you're probably a highly paid software developer or engineer (guessing because here you are on hacker news). I would like to hear more from the people who work for amazon (not the devs reaping all of the rewards of stock shares) and the retailers selling their goods on amazon to see if the company has "improved" their lives.

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon- warehouse...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse- jobs-worker-conditions-bathroom-breaks)

<comment><USER27> Engineers are not the majority of Amazon's customers. Nor are they the ones that benefit most from buying there.

For example, consider single mothers working two jobs, ordering from Amazon.com to save time & money. And depending on where they live, they might even get the order within a couple hours. That's a new kind of efficiency that many benefit from.

<comment><USER13> Consider why that person has to work two jobs, and the contribution Amazon made towards that.

Low prices aren't free. Some of it came from efficiency, the rest comes from simply paying labor less.

<comment><USER27> That's a different discussion and it's hard to untangle and weigh all of the effects. But it's worth noting that the % of people working multiple jobs has actually decreased with the rise of Amazon.

[https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/4-point-9-percent-of- worke...](https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/4-point-9-percent-of-workers-held- more-than-one-job-at-the-same-time-in-2017.htm)

That's not to say it's casual. Maybe it would've decreased more sans Amazon. Who knows.

Anyway, the point was simply that it's not only/mostly engineers who derive value from their existence. It includes every Amazon customer who saves time & money - especially those who have too little of both.

<comment><USER28> It also includes every person who lives in a city whose tax base has been eroded by Amazon, so those "hard working single moms" send their kids to shitty schools that will perpetuate the cycle of poverty.

For tens of millions of working poor who live in apartment complexes, Amazon provides absolutely zero benefit since they cannot order anything bigger than a kumquat without risk of it being stolen off of their porch. The office? The office doesnt exist or is closed during the hours they are working - and UPS wont deliver there anyways a lot of the time.

<comment><USER29> In theory that's what Amazon Locker is for, though it's less convenient.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The End of Communism in Russia Meant the End of Democracy in the West - <AUTHOR> http://russia-insider.com/en/history/russian-thinker-1999the-end-communism-russai-signalized-end-democracy-west-alexander <comment><AUTHOR> An interview from 1999, with a for me, until now, unknown Russian intellectual, Alexander Zinoviev. I thought it had some rather interesting and lateral views on the post-Soviet era -- and sociology.</comment>


Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone - <AUTHOR> https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/10/26/massachusetts-is-considering-leaving-the-eastern-time-zone/23256633/ <comment><USER2> Personally, it would be brilliant if we'd just go to permanent daylight savings time nationwide. The transition is hard on the kids and living in the northern part of the country, the extra daylight is appreciated.

<comment><USER3> Better would be to go to a single Zulu timezone nationwide. You just go into work an hour later in the central area compared to the east coast.

<comment><USER4> [https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish)

<comment><USER5> Your conclusion is a thing of beauty:

> If it's any consolation, all of this is extremely unlikely to happen, since > it relies on an international agreement between every single nation in the > world. Or on China attacking and conquering the entire world and installing > China Standard Time as part of a totalitarian regime, which is slightly less > unlikely but still very unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks u

</comment><comment><USER7> One of the main purported benefits of DST is that it in effect moves some of the extra sunlight from the longer days of summer from the morning to the evening, where most of us are in a better position to use it.

That's because without DST as the day lengthens the extra daylight is split evenly between morning and evening.

But WHY does it split evenly? It's because we historically use noon as our reference. We think of noon on day N+1 as being exactly one day after noon on day N. Noon is a sensible reference, fairly easy to determine with ancient technology.

Suppose that instead we had historically used sunrise as our reference. By definition, then, sunrise would be 8 AM every day. As the days lengthened in the summer, all of the extra daylight would then have shown up in the evening automatically.

It's interesting to ponder whether or not such a reference could have worked. I think that in the days before clocks, when the sundial was the most sophisticated timepiece, this could have worked quite well. It would also fit in well with work schedules, meaning people who needed to wait for light to work would be going to work at about the same time every day. It would also fit in with animal sleep schedules.

With clocks, though, a noon reference is easier. A sunrise reference requires a much more sophisticated clock, or it requires frequent manual adjustment.

Nowadays, though, clocks easily have the sophistication to handle that. We probably could actually reasonably handle using sunrise as our reference, and have our clocks adjust daily to keep that so.

It would mean that a given clock time on day N+1 is no longer exactly 24 hours later than that same clock time on day N, but I don't think that would matter for ordinary life. I'd be willing to put up with that if it means I get the benefits of DST (more evening light in summer) without the two big discontinuities a year.

Edit: to be clear, I am assuming that if we did a sunrise-based system instead of a noon-based system we would still do time zones. 8 AM would be simultaneous everywhere in the zone.

[1] In this comment "day" refers to sunrise to sunset.

<comment><USER8> There is one flaw with your theory here: Historically, noon was defined locally by the sun being directly overhead. All time was local time.

Then we invented trains and railroads and you couldn't schedule anything with such a system. Thus was born standardized time zones where it is the same time across large swaths of land. Noon is no longer strictly correlated to the sun being directly overhead.

I think there are all kinds of things we could do, including promoting the gig economy. If I work when, where and as much as I choose, it makes little difference what time it is (as long as I meet deadlines).

The world population is both high enough and mobile enough that you can now find 24 hour establishments in a lot of places, even relatively small towns. The small town I am in has enough 24 hour places that I have quite a lot of latitude on when I shop, when I get lunch, etc. I don't care all that much when the sun rises or sets. I care much more about things like if it is raining, and that is because I live without a car, so I walk everywhere.

<comment><USER9> My experience with the gig economy is that my schedule ends up being whatever is convenient for my clients.

<comment><USER8> That hasn't been my experience. I do what I can to try to promote the idea of gig work done well such that it is a net positive for the worker in metrics like quality of life and control over their schedule.

Granted, some things are inherently more flexible than others. An Uber driver can choose what hours to work, but is at the beck and call of people who need rides. If you want to make good money, you realistically need to work during busy times. But a lot of knowledge work can realistically be done whenever works best for the employee, so long as they get it done in time for the due date. You do need to arrange for such expectations though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maine is tentatively on-board:

[http://www.pressherald.com/2017/04/27/maine-may-switch-to- at...](http://www.pressherald.com/2017/04/27/maine-may-switch-to-atlantic- time-zone-if-new-hampshire-and-massachusetts-do/)

New Hampshire looks to be against it so far:

[http://www.concordmonitor.com/time-zone-change- atlantic-9808...](http://www.concordmonitor.com/time-zone-change- atlantic-9808198)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, it really screws with us up here. Once you get up above the meridian, days get pretty short in the winter. Moving those hours around helps exactly none. No farmer has their life improved. It's not saving energy. It's just a dumb setting on the clock.

<comment><USER12> It's super depressing in December and January when you get up to go to work in the dark, and by the time you get out at 5, it is pitch dark again.

I do wish we'd fallen back earlier, like we used to. I'd much rather have that extra hour of daylight in the morning when I could maybe use it, rather than on my commute home.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, you know where I live, as I recall? You should come visit. ;-)

Anyhow, we'd have to throw the clock off a full two hours to get any benefit. It's just getting light at 0700 and already getting dark at 1600 - during the shortest days. Daybreak was at about 0700 today, maybe later. It is raining. I couldn't tell and I didn't look online,

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really hope NY get on board as well. Being in Manhattan during the winter, the sun is gone many days by 4pm, sometimes earlier depending which part of the city you are in (which skyscraper is blocking the last bit of sunlight). As a native Texan it's tough to adjust to :O

[edit] my grammar

<comment><USER14> Thinking a little bit more about this, I'm wondering how much this would really help. Yes, there would be more daylight in the evening, but given the latitude, how much longer in the morning would it be dark? I found this handy tool to get a feel for it:

[https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/new- york](https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/new-york)

And here's Boston:

[https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/boston](https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/boston)

<comment><USER15> >[https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/boston](https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/boston)

Well _that_ explains why I feel like winter nights are somehow worse and darker than summer ones. In summer, it's mostly _not night_ at all: the twilight periods eat half the clock-nighttime. In winter, twilight gets cut in half and combines with the losses of daylight to extend nighttime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> starlig-ht I would rather see the planet stop using time-zones altogether. Let's all go UTC, adjust our clocks and schedules once and be done with it.

It doesn't matter what number my clock says at noon/sunrise/sunset. If it is about working-hours coinciding with daylight, businesses can adjust their working hours as needed (and post them on their site without you having to convert to local time to know when you can call)

 _edit: the link below just changed my mind. dammit, I hate being wrong_.

<comment><USER4> [https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish)

<comment> starlig-ht damn. some good points in here. I stand corrected.

<comment> b-ryan All of the arguments seem to assume you have today's current tools and knowledge at your disposal, just with timezones abolished. This is clearly not what would happen. The real answer to "What time is it there?" without timezones would be the same exact thing, you google "what time of day is 4:25 in australia?" and google would tell you something like, "it's equivalent to 8:00 where you are"

<comment><USER16> Haven't you just then re-created time zones?

<comment><USER17> Yes, but with none of the inconsistencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A bit off topic, but I was equally intrigued by the fact that the article was on aol.com. Made me do a brief double-take.

</comment><comment><USER19> The major problem here is that far too much effort was put into accommodating everyone by including them in the eastern time zone. Last time I looked, I think something like 48% of the US population lives in it, and it's just unnecessarily large. Obviously there are benefits, but it creates a ton of perverse consequences too.

Realistically, the eastern time zone should probably stop between OH/PA, west of West Virgina, east of TN, etc.

But of course we'd then need 5 time zones to cover the continential US to keep other time zones from becoming far too large.

<comment><USER20> 4 time zones is enough to cover the 48 states unless you want half-hour zones or radically different sunrise times on one coast or the other. Just need to reduce the sizes of Eastern and Central to better match the longitude lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unless all the states east of New York switch, this is a non-starter.

<comment><USER22> It's even more subtle than that - about half of Connecticut is heavily involved with business in NYC, and would probably be quite unwilling to jump an hour over.

To a lesser extent, south-western Vermont is economically linked to the Albany metro area, and would also likely vote against a shift.

Were you to poll on support for moving New England over to Atlantic time, I'd bet you'd wind up with a map closely matching that of local support for the Boston Red Sox vs New York Yankees: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/23/upshot/24-ups...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/23/upshot/24-upshot- baseball.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Everyone whines about DST, but I love the DST "timezone" in summer. I leave work in the sun. It feels like I still have time to play and have fun after work.

It's great.

<comment><USER24> People don't whine about DST, people hate the one hour change every year.

<comment><USER25> Especially people who debug calendar software. Just sayin..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Over here in Seattle sunset is at 4:19 in winter. Maybe we need to switch to some other time zone.

<comment><USER27> Two things to say: a) come spend winter in Sweden... in Lapland the sun does not set at all in June and there is darkness around the clock in January; Stockholm is not that far up North, so we get a few hours of daylight in mid- December; and b) if lack of daylight in the winter is such an issue, maybe move to Southern California, or somewhere even closer to the equator.

Three things, actually :-) c) consider spending your winter months in the Southern Hemisphere. Some animals migrate vast distances twice a year.

<comment><USER19> I was actually surprised during a visit to Stockholm (granted, in May) that it was not light that much later than my native Seattle in the summer. I guess there's probably a reason major cities in Scandinavia are not all that far north in their respective countries :) I've been above the arctic circle in the summer, but thankfully never in the winter.

<comment><USER27> The really long days are in late June. In early May you'd be halfway between equinox and solstice...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just wrote a post a week ago on the subject of date/time issues programmers have to be aware of: [https://medium.com/@florian_32814/date- time-526a4f86badb](https://medium.com/@florian_32814/date-time-526a4f86badb)

It's almost sad that Massachusetts switching wouldn't even make it into that document... (too normal)

</comment><comment><USER29> This is an unpopular opinion but I'm a big fan of DST for most of the reasons enumerated in this article: [http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i- like-dst/](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/)

>If we stayed on Standard Time throughout the year, sunrise here in the Chicago area would be between 4:15 and 4:30 am from the middle of May through the middle of July. And if you check the times for civil twilight, which is when it's bright enough to see without artificial light, you'll find that that starts half an hour earlier. This is insane and a complete waste of sunlight.

>If, by the way, you think the solution is to stay on DST throughout the year, I can only tell you that we tried that back in the 70s and it didn't turn out well. Sunrise here in Chicago was after 8:00 am, which put school children out on the street at bus stops before dawn in the dead of winter.

</comment><comment><USER30> _Laughter_ from India. We don't have this DST stuff but I have to deal with this at work as the clients are American. Damn, this is some serious mess.

</comment><comment><USER31> Seriously only clicked because aol.com. That's a thing I've not seen in close to 20 years.

</comment><comment><USER32> I get the strange feeling that I might be the only happy person who loves early sunsets.

</comment><comment><USER33> Gee, should Nova Scotia move into another time zone?

</comment><comment><USER34> I wish we'd get rid of timezones all together - is there really much point aside from tradition?

<comment><USER35> Yes, there is, and it ties into a whole mess of interrelated standardisation, information, and control capabilities. Beninger's book is a fascinating exploratiion of this.

[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674169869](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674169869)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The sun sets around 4 in the winter even in Philadelphia. This would imply that basically all of New England should move to Atlantic Time.

<comment><USER37> Philadelphia is not in New England. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England)

Also the article says Massachusetts wouldn't do it without the rest of New England also joining:

> A majority of other states in New England would have to jump on the time- > zone train, too.

Edit: Must have been downvoted by west coasters who don't know what new england is ...

<comment><USER38> If New England is North or East of Philadelphia, then shouldn't the situation for New England be worse, iow, sunset earlier?

<comment><USER37> It's both north and east. And I think that was the point of the article, that New England has it particularly bad for this.

Most people think that east coast cities are on a north-south axis, but as you go up I-95 (the major highway connecting these cities) you are actually traveling northeast. It was a head trip for me being from DC when I realized I could drive straight north for 5 hours and end up in Rochester, NY, or drive "north" on 95 for 5 hours and end up in New York City, but the distance between those two points was also itself a 5-6 hour drive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


UK's National Portrait Gallery Threatens To Sue Wikipedia User - <AUTHOR> http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/07/11/1239244/UKs-National-Portrait-Gallery-Threatens-To-Sue-Wikipedia-User?from=rss <comment><USER2> summary: user uploaded photos of public domain works, and the impression i get from comments on slashdot, is that in the uk they'd have a case because the photos are copyright of photographer but since this is a US user and US servers, the user will be fine due to Corel v Bridgeman (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corel_v._Bridgeman>) which decided that photos of public domain stuff is not copyrighted.

looks as if things are going to be k.

<comment><USER3> If you want a public domain photo of a public domain artwork, then take such a photo yourself and assign it to the public domain. Simple.

<comment><USER4> Which is why galleries in the UK usually forbid photography.

<comment><USER3> _Flash_ photography, as they are worried about the cumulative effect of millions of flashes per year damaging the pigments, same as leaving the painting out in the sun would.

<comment><USER5> /All/ photography in the National Portrait Gallery in London is forbidden, with or without flash. They are worried about losing control on works where copyright has already expired.

[http://www.npg.org.uk/about/FAQ/do-you-allow-photography- in-...](http://www.npg.org.uk/about/FAQ/do-you-allow-photography-in-the- gallery.php) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dcoetzee/NPG_legal_th...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dcoetzee/NPG_legal_threat) is the full letter. I hope this goes to court. I'm really looking forward to seeing how they intend to argue that copyright extends to documentary copies of public domain work.

<comment><USER7> Public domain work published by a government funded institution.

<comment><USER8> Your US-centric assumptions are faulty in the UK legal context; stuff funded by the government isn't public domain, it's Crown Copyright.

<comment><USER7> I didn't say that it was in the public domain _because_ it was government funded or that all government funded work is in the public domain. That was your implication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Putting aside the legal questions, the Wikimedia Foundation's moral position appears to be this:

[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:When_to_use_the_PD...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:When_to_use_the_PD- Art_tag#Why_do_we_allow_the_.7B.7BPD- Art.7D.7D_tag_to_be_used_for_photographs_from_any_country.3F)

<comment><USER10> I was going to post the same link but for the subtleties of the wikimedia policy, e.g. Photos of coins aren't public domain but flatbed scans are.</comment></comment>


Marshall Islands warned against adopting digital currency - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45485685 <comment><USER2> You can download the full report from the IMF here: [https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2018/09/10/Rep...](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2018/09/10/Republic- of-the-Marshall-Islands-2018-Article-IV-Consultation-Press-Release-Staff- Report-and-46216) This is an ARTICLE IV CONSULTATION which is a type of report the IMF publishes about each country each year.

The Marshall Islands are obviously a relatively small market, and the IMF devotes a chunk of their report to the new currency and the risk of losing their correspondent banking relationship (CBR) in the section "PROTECTING FINANICAL STABILITY" which is 3-4 pages (starting on page 6)

I recommend you read it yourself. The IMF's primary concerns seem to be AML issues and the prior existing risk to their CBR, which amount to a large amount of risk for such a small country to take on. Note the Marshall Islands are part of the Compact of Free Association with the US and are highly dependent on the US for almost everything, so having a falling out with the US would be _really bad_ for them.

Maybe I haven't drank enough kool-aid but I'm unconvinced this is the IMF making threats (it's not like the IMF really has any power anyway) and more them advising the Marshall Islands that they're likely in dicey territory with the US regulators and that that is a substantial risk to their economy.

<comment><USER3> The IMF report is overly biased because it does not take into account the benefits that the Marshall islands could obtain from being an economy with a crypto official currency. For example, having a crypto official currency would eliminate currency controls and could encourage new economic activity on the island.

The Marshall islands is desperate for solutions to grow their economy so they have very little to actually lose if they do adopt it. The IMF report does not reflect this.

<comment><USER4> "biased" doesn't mean the same thing as "I disagree with the conclusion and methodology"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I lived in the Marshall Islands for two years. AMA.

My current thoughts are that of all countries to adopt crypto, MI makes little sense. Only on the main island do people have cell phones. Smart phones are even less common. Internet is a rare commodity. On the outer island, they barely have a reliable mail system. Electricity is pretty much non existent. They get their power by using solar panels to charge car batteries. They use those to power tvs and such. But internet and phone's, etc, are completely non existent on the outer islands. That being said, some islands already have a "ledger", where the people themselves never actually have money, they just earn "credits" and can make orders with them. The ledger is mostly a trust based system with the "lord". So a public, immutable ledger here would be cool, but they lack the culture and technology to have that everywhere.

<comment><USER6> It makes perfect sense if you look at this as a get-rich-quick scheme: brand as first ever sovereign cryptocurrency, launch IPO, mint money.

And I'll take you up on your kind AMA offer: _why_ would you live there for two years?

<comment><USER5> I was volunteering for my church to spread the gospel and help the people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People need to understand, the Marshalls is a _small_ country, consisting of less than a hundred thousand of people. The islands in the Micronesia are small, isolated, and can hardly sustain themselves without foreign aid. I had never heard this till now even though my parents are from a nearby island.

I did some searching, and the only thing I could find in articles about it were quotes from the CEO of Neema and quotes from politicians. Not a single quote from any normal person on the street and whether they think its a good idea or even know what's going on. It smells very fishy to me.

Finally, I'll say, I don't have the kindest opinion of the IMF, but adopting a potentially volatile cryptocurrency and thinking they'll be able to augment their internal commerce with it is ill-fated.

<comment><USER8> > Not a single quote from any normal person on the street and whether they > think its a good idea or even know what's going on.

I never really expect to hear normal, man-on-street, type folk queried about international monetary policy.

Personally, I don't think my few semesters of economics qualify me to discuss the economic impact of a US Federal Reserve decision. In a democratic government, we have to trust that the powers which we elect, have placed suitably expert people into the bureaucracy and act accordingly to their advice.

<comment><USER7> There are 50K people in the Marshalls. Imagine a rural town in the US decided to do something like this[0]. Wouldn't the strangeness of the arrangement with the small size of the city prompt a reporter to ask a random farmer or guy on the street? That would be the first thing I'd imagine. Regardless, I get it, unlike a small town, you can't really just ship your reporter on a road trip there without buying a $3K ticket, I'm just hinting that it's hard to tell whether people on the ground are really aware this is going down from just reading about it.

Regarding the politicians it's very possible that the policy makers were sold a one sided perspective on this. People in the pacific just don't have access to information that people elsewhere do. That said, I'm not Marshallese, so I don't know the circumstances of the vote so I'm assuming a lot here. I've just seen a similar script play before in Palau and it usually doesn't turn out well.

[0] Of course, cities can't issue their own currency practically, so the analog doesn't really work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "The IMF is not strong-arming the Marshalls, what they're doing is > describing what will obviously happen if they proceed - the large > correspondent bank will be quite worried," he added.

This guy really is an expert at "no really this isn't a threat wink wink".

<comment><USER10> Sometimes people are just worried for others...like: "You have a nice store, it would be a shame if it burned down" :)

<comment><USER11> how are you supposed to express that sentiment without it sounding like a threat?

<comment><USER12> You don't. Because that's what it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > In 2014 Barak [CEO of this Sov coin] founded Neema, a Y-Combinator company > focused on easy, fast and secure money transfers for the unbanked.

Can anyone shed any light on Neema? It seems to be the forerunner to this. Very unusual for a YC company - it has almost no coverage on HN whatsoever - just two mentions that I can find in the search.

<comment><USER14> Their app in on the appstore but has no reviews. I guess they didn't get much traction?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >There is just one domestic commercial bank in the country and it is at risk of losing its only correspondent banking relationship with another bank in the US.

Is that a statement of fact, or a threat the IMF is making?

</comment><comment><USER16> However, IMF directors said the potential benefits of the move were much smaller than the potential costs of "economic, reputational and governance risks".

Who is really in charge?

<comment><USER12> The ones who own stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Many in the cryptocurrency space throw around the "currency is not real" and "currency only has value because we believe it does." These cliches betray an ignorance of the very real power relationships at play in the space.

The strength of the US dollar is supported not just by the imaginations of its users, but by the political and trade relationships made and sustained by the will of the US government.

This is just one small example of the weight thrown around when the dominance of the dollar is threatened.

</comment><comment><USER18> When I saw the headline here my first question was, which crypto currency? Are we now lumping all crypto currencies together, when the broad category of "crypto" contains everything from Bitcoin to dogecoin to proposed ERC20 coins that only exist on paper? I too would warn _everyone_ against using certain crypto coins for _anything_

</comment><comment><USER19> And how do you suppose to teach these people how to use it? On the opposite side, you can lose it very easily.

</comment><comment><USER20> Such risks as "being able to devalue one's currency" ?

A public ledger provides greater protection against money laundering and other criminal activities than a paper currency does.

<comment><USER21>
      A public ledger provides greater protection against
      money laundering and other criminal activities than a
      paper currency does

This is not true, especially when it comes to larger amounts.

For example, laundering millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies was easily achieved though services such as ShapeShift which up until recently had no KYC/AML paper trail. If someone wants to launder millions of dollars in physical cash, they would need a business acting as a "front" which could be scrutinized to an audit.

      The Bitcoin network allows anyone to move millions of
      dollars across the world without any in-person
      meetings, and without the approval of any financial institutions.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/technology/bitcoin- russia...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/technology/bitcoin-russian- hacking.html)

      The Russians also created Bitcoins themselves through
      the process known as mining, the indictment said.

This detail is particularly interesting, because if we assume state sponsored spies with a technical understanding of how the internet and the Bitcoin protocol works, that this sort of transaction _could_ be untraceable to the source and so it would be safe to assume their operation was discovered though other forensics outside of blockchain records.

<comment><USER22> > ... laundering millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies was easily achieved > though services such as ShapeShift ...

I'd like to request a source on that. It was my understanding that ShapeShift limited trade sizes, so moving large amounts was difficult, impractical, slow, and exposed to a lot of market value risk.

<comment><USER21> Any basic search within the Bitcoin community and you'll find many many guides and services for Bitcoin money laundering:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptocoinMixing/](https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptocoinMixing/)

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=436467.0;all](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=436467.0;all)

[https://darknetmarkets.org/a-simple-guide-to-safely-and- effe...](https://darknetmarkets.org/a-simple-guide-to-safely-and-effectively- mixing-bitcoins/)

[https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2699/is- there-a...](https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2699/is-there-any- ether-mixer-tumbler-available)

Vitalik Buterin himself has attempted a money laundering feature into the Ethereum Virtual Machine codebase: [https://github.com/ethereum/serpent/blob/develop/examples/ec...](https://github.com/ethereum/serpent/blob/develop/examples/ecc/ringsig.se)

Another famous way to launder money as described in this post from a moderator on BitcoinTalk dated August 22, 2013, 02:32:31 AM [ [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0) ] , is to give Bitcoin to a mining pool in return for renting their hashpower, in return for freshly minted coins:

[https://www.nicehash.com/buy](https://www.nicehash.com/buy)

<comment><USER22> Please forgive me if I'm being dense, but I was asking for a source to the claim that ShapeShift (in particular, since you singled them out above) could "easily" be used to launder "millions of dollars." After reading through these links, I'm still not convinced. Only one link you listed mentions ShapeShift, which to some credit, suggests a theoretical, many-step, multi-blockchain process for using ShapeShift in such a way.

My understanding still hasn't changed that "moving large amounts [with ShapeShift before AML/KYC] was difficult, impractical, slow, and exposed to a lot of market value risk," but I'm interested in evidence to the contrary.

<comment><USER21>
      Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is
      a type of trolling or harassment which consists of
      pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or
      repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of
      civility so as to discredit their target

ShapeShift was setup without any KYC/AML or login, thus it facilitated automation.

More obviously, the entire ecosystem is designed for money laundering. As evident the previous post, and any rudimentary search will turn up countless results on services or guides on using native wallet apps for Bitcoin or Monereo to mix and launder wallet addresses.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Handling a low traffic website with extremely high traffic peaks? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm an experienced web developer that has found a new hurdle.
I'm developing a web site providing a service for a big company which will have a relatively low traffic (in the order of 1000s per day) and a few moments during the weeks where one could expect 100,000 visits in an hour. Each visit implies a somewhat server-intensive transaction, so server load is an issue.
What considerations can I make hardware and software-wise in order to minimize the impact caused by these peaks?
Amazon EC2's elastic structure seems fit to this specific kind of problem, but I have no experience with the platform, so any recommendations on whether this is convenient or better than a server array with load balancing.
Also on the software front, I normally run a django-nginx-apache-memcached stack, which works wonders for websites with constant demand, but is there any other framework that can help with load handling? Or in the case of a server array, some load balancing framework.
EDIT: Clarity/format. Any help will be really appreciated. Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> I'm interested in this as well.</comment>


Tale of two hypervisor bugs – Escaping from FreeBSD bhyve - <AUTHOR> http://phrack.org/papers/escaping_from_freebsd_bhyve.html <comment><USER2> > The below patch fixed the issue:

              struct {
                      uint8_t         dac_state;
      -               int             dac_rd_index;
      -               int             dac_rd_subindex;
      -               int             dac_wr_index;
      -               int             dac_wr_subindex;
      +               uint8_t         dac_rd_index;
      +               uint8_t         dac_rd_subindex;
      +               uint8_t         dac_wr_index;
      +               uint8_t         dac_wr_subindex;
                      uint8_t         dac_palette[3 * 256];
                      uint32_t        dac_palette_rgb[256];
              } vga_dac;

> The VGA device emulation in bhyve uses 32-bit signed integer as DAC Address > Write Mode Register and DAC Address Read Mode Register. These registers are > used to access the palette RAM, having 256 entries of intensities for each > value of red, green and blue. Data in palette RAM can be read or written by > accessing DAC Data Register.

> After three successful I/O access to red, green and blue intensity values, > DAC Address Write Mode Register or DAC Address Read Mode Register is > incremented automatically based on the operation performed. Here is the > issue, the values of DAC Address Read Mode Register and DAC Address Write > Mode Register does not wrap under index of 256 since the data type is not > 'uint8_t', allowing an untrusted guest to read or write past the palette RAM > into adjacent heap memory.

Ugh, this looks like an ugly patch :( How about not letting the index overflow in the first place?

> Though FreeBSD does not have ASLR

Why not?!

<comment><USER3> re: "How about not letting the index overflow..."

I'm fairly certain a real hardware VGA implementation would maintain that index as an unsigned 8-bit value. There's no letting the index overflow, per se. It should overflow back to zero when incremented at 0xFF. The mistake was representing it as anything other than an 8-bit number because that's what the hardware really would have done.

If I had the patience (and a machine close at hand) I'd boot MS-DOS and run thru a little test in DEBUG to see how it acts on a real card to write beyond address 0xFF via the auto-increment feature.

Most of the palette-cycling / setting code I ever wrote just updated the entire palette at once and stopped. I can't think of any particular reason why somebody would want to overflow the DAC write index but it should work. (I suppose there's probably some demoscene code out there somewhere that repeatedly updates the entire palette, outputting to the address write register once then just banging on 0x3c9 repeatedly...)

<comment><USER4> > If I had the patience (and a machine close at hand) I'd boot MS-DOS and run > thru a little test in DEBUG to see how it acts on a real card to write > beyond address 0xFF via the auto-increment feature.

Good excuse to load up a bunch of old games and see how they work, or fail to. The old Raymond Chen test: Grab a bunch of old software and let the application programmers bang on the emulation layer. Abandonware and old shareware on archive.org makes this a lot cheaper than you might imagine.

[https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos](https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos)

<comment><USER5> Don't forget all the demoscene productions --- they'll use all the tricks in book, and then some. They'll be the first to break if the emulation of the hardware isn't perfect.

This masterpiece is a great example (but targets hardware which is older than what the hypervisor in the article can emulate): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16938029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16938029)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really wish phrack.org had an RSS feed so I can keep on top of their latest papers.

<comment><USER7> So do I!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any reason why phrack talks about 2016 vulnerability 4 years later? I was thinking that once security advisory is published it is a fair game.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wondering if it directly or indirectly affects xhyve and Docker's HyperKit.

<comment><USER8> If they are based on it, the chances are high that they also are affected, but the vulnerabilities are somewhat old so probably already patched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interestingly this is the kind of thing Rust is great at protecting against, and why Firecracker is such a neat project.

<comment><USER11> How does Rust prevent you from choosing the wrong size for an integer? It's easy to imagine a bug in Rust code in which someone is supposed to write "u8" as in this case, but didn't think carefully and just used "usize" (the most typical integer type used for indices).

<comment><USER10> The palette memory would be bounds checked, which is the real bug.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook is using your personal data, here's why it's fine - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/10/06/facebook-is-using-your-personal-data-heres-why-its-fine/ <comment><USER2> It is most certainly not fine.

Regardless of individual choices to share private data, the platform itself is a large step in the direction of something horrible.

</comment><comment><USER3> Says a guy whose job relies on this data. OK, digital marketer guy.

My counterpoint is that the majority of content out there does not deserve any monetization, for example: the associated article.</comment>


Okta may have found a better way to handle our online identities - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/a-company-youve-never-heard-of-may-have-solved-the-password-mess-cd5d1725209b?source=rss----d16afa0ae7c---4 <comment><USER2> Super clickbait title for yet another enterprise single-sign-on product.

<comment><USER3> On many other stories this would be a snarky dismissal, but here, it's just about right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I sure would like to dump all of my passwords. I had always been told that the biggest risk of having so many passwords is password reuse. ie If the password for an inconsequential service is stolen it can be used to access more important accounts.

In 2009 or so I had 4 I would use and I had two more that I used only for my Gmail and my bank.

Two or three years ago I got tired of it and now I use three, one for Gmail, one for the bank, and one for everything else. I know I'm probably not applying best practices, but I'm so tired of it.

For an article that mostly read as PR for Okta, I'm glad that they mentioned browser/OS keychains and OAuth.

If Mozilla Persona had a big push from a sales force behind it like it appears Okta has, I wonder if they couldn't have blown out this whole market a while ago.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use Okta on a daily basis. I'm not a fan.

I still use a password and 2fa code on a daily basis. On pages where the appropriate fields don't capture the cursor by default, so my first attempt to enter either will fail, since I have to tab over to or click on the field first. Also, since you have to sign in daily, if you forget your phone (or it fails), you're locked out of _everything_ until you sort it out.

There's also limited support for external applications, so it has to fall back to being a simplistic password manager if you access anything without Okta integration.

That said, our IT group loves it, since they can integrate all kinds of authentication and authorization into it, without having to manage it themselves.

</comment><comment> nikki-9696 I used Okta for a few days. Not a fan, especially after I had to reset my password on one of the sites I had in it, and there was no nice way to just set the new password in it. I'll take a normal password manager with browser plugins for as long as I'm stuck using passwords.</comment>


70 Unique Ways to Encode < - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/lucasrizoli/1603274 <comment><USER2> Ironic because the headline isn't even <

It's FULLWIDTH LESS-THAN SIGN: [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/ff1c/index.htm](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/ff1c/index.htm)

<comment><USER3> Is that supposed to be some kind of HN easter egg? I mean, who has quick enough access to that character to accidentally write it instead? And if he's using some esoteric layout, I'm sure he knows his keyboard well enough not to mix them up!

<comment><USER4> No, it's likely deliberate on the part of the submitter, since HN stupidly strips stuff which looks like HTML.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know that "unique", which became a synonym of "unusual" years ago, has now also become a synonym of "distinct", especially in tech contexts, like "unique hits", but it still grates on my ears (or eyes, in this case). Languages are fluid, and change is inevitable, but I'm sad when those changes are careless and cause a loss of precision of expression.

<comment><USER6> What do you even mean by this? What did the word originally mean?

<comment><USER7> "etymology: unique" on Google gives [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=unique](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=unique) and [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unique#Etymology](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unique#Etymology).

With definitions "forming the only one of its kind" and "being the only one of its kind". I don't have a trillion unique bits of memory on my SSD, as they are all interchangeable.

<comment><USER8> What are better words to use?

Would it matter if the audience is international or if the audience mostly has English as a first language?

"70 Different Ways to Encode〈"?

<comment><USER5> "70 Distinct Ways to Encode <" would be the traditionally correct way to say it. I should have made that more clear in my original rant. My objection to using "unique" in this context is that doing so further erodes the original, narrow meaning of "unique" as "one of a kind". I suppose that makes me a prescriptivist and I'm okay with that.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps the concept of "uniqueness" itself is dying, rather than language being watered down.

"Everyone is unique." with the watered down version of the word "unique" just means "Everyone is distinct."

Perhaps people are beginning to collectively believe that nothing is irreproducible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > StoneCypher: All of the entities missing semicolons are incorrect.

> aprilthemoo: are you autistic or something StoneCypher?

Quality discussion right there.

<comment><USER11> Is this the quality of github comments in general?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well... at least if you're trying to detect/remove HTML tags, the only one that works is the first in the list, as far as I know, thank goodness.

All the others actually render the character, someone please correct me if I'm wrong?

</comment><comment><USER13> aka Why IDSs are practically useless, here's a NOP slide AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

<comment><USER14> Complex systems always fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, it's like a little piece of postmodern art.

I give you mine, Untitled 7 (solidus on web page):

/

</comment><comment><USER16> Can someone explain lines 49-52?

</comment><comment><USER17> So what

</comment><comment><USER18> Here's another: \\\546

and another: %%

etc.</comment>


Employee gets £10,000 bounty for revealing software abuse - <AUTHOR> http://news.techworld.com/applications/3238361/employee-gets-10000-bounty-for-revealing-software-abuse/?cmpid=sbycombinatorschapman <comment><USER2> What they want me to hear: don't pirate software.

What I actually hear: use as much free software as possible.</comment>


Mesos 0.14.2 platform packages available - <AUTHOR> http://mesosphere.io/downloads/

<comment><USER2> Should I somehow suppose to know what this modified version of Apache does?</comment>


Ask HN: Would You Pay $7/mo for Server Monitoring? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently in process of examining a potential business of monitoring servers/systems.  You'd have a dashboard where you could hook in a connection to all your servers to see # of http connections, memory consumption, process performance.  Would this be something you'd be interested in? <comment><USER2> Yes, but its already been done by both Server Density and New Relic.</comment>


A Letter to Google - From Inbound Marketers - <AUTHOR> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-letter-to-google-from-inbound-marketers

<comment><AUTHOR> This if from the SEOMoz blog and would love to hear how the community feels about this.</comment>