Bing search results showing up in Google - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/Bing+search+results+showing+up+in+Google <comment><USER3> With respect to the author, the conclusion here is very flawed.

If you search for Bing in Google, you get Bing all over page 1. If you search for Google in Bing, you get Google all over page 1. That's not the result of Google capturing click stream data from Google Chrome and copying Bing's results, nor is it the result of Microsoft capturing click stream data from IE8 and copying Google's results. That's just the nature of indexing.

As for robots.txt disallowing those URLs, there is _no_ standard for robots.txt behavior. I have observed some user agents treat it as case insensitive, and others treat it as case sensitive.

Honestly, this isn't even in the same ballpark as the Google accusations made earlier this week, and it smacks of just _looking_ for things to accuse Google of in response to the "Binggate" (ugh, I typed it) drama. Can't we go back to more productive things?

<comment><USER4> I don't understand why everyone is using the term "copying the results". I think what Bing did was very smart, they incorporated user clickstream data. One could accuse this method of walking a thin line morally, but I suspect that Google's accusation wouldn't have stood any water as a lawsuit.

<comment><USER5> Because by incorporating clickstream data from Google, they're effectively copying Google search results. Bing should blacklist Google from its clickstream data.

<comment><USER4> Let's say tomorrow DDG is the search engine with the largest market share. Then Bing would be getting all the clickstream data from DDG. I hope you do realize that this "algorithm" is not Google specific. Its just a novel ranking technique that incorporates a human user feedback loop and is a pretty well known technique in the information retrieval field.

<comment><USER6> It would be equally unethical to be copying DDG's results in this fashion.

<comment><USER7> Highly ironic, though, as DDG uses Yahoo as a backend, which uses Bing, which uses Google, which would use...DDG? I think there's a cycle in that list somewhere...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The two major issues in this article were:

\- Google can see and return links to pages without crawling them. I made a video and a blog post about this a while ago: <http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/robots-txt-remove-url/>

\- URL paths are case sensitive. Bing blocks /search in its robots.txt but not /Search. That's how the /Search urls got crawled.

In a later edit, the author suggests "It would be fairly trivial for bots to test if the server is IIS (if the server identifies itself as such of course) or to try to retrieve Robots.txt and robots.txt, if those come up as equal then the sever can be assumed to be case insensitive."

The issue of case sensitivity in robots.txt is a long, very nuanced topic. Here's just one example to get you started: at least back in 2007 when we were talking about this amongst ourselves at Google, the web server for developer.apple.com was case-insensitive, but their robots.txt had lines like this:

Disallow: /documentation/quicktime/

Disallow: /documentation/Quicktime/

Disallow: /documentation/QUICKTIME/

Disallow: /documentation/macosx/

Why would they do that? Apparently because Apple wanted the canonical link to be /documentation/QuickTime . Back then, at least 21M robots.txt files on the web had mixed-case paths. If Google started interpreting robots.txt files from servers that claimed to be IIS differently... well, I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to come up with some of the unexpected bugs and behavior that could result.

I know it's really tempting to write a headline like "Bing search results showing up in Google," but I wish the author had done more research instead of going for a gotcha. Any SEO worth his/her salt could have explained what was going on here.

<comment><USER9> >"...but I wish the author had done more research instead of going for a gotcha."

That's a bit of irony right there, isn't it?

\--wow, Matt, I guess it cuts both ways, eh?

<comment><USER8> Anything in particular you're talking about? I've said a lot of stuff online over the last 10 years. :)

<comment><USER10> I don't know, but I would assume that they're one of the people who don't think that what Bing did is a big deal. If I understand the arguments properly, most either believe that the clickstream data belongs to the user (who gave it away), or they believe that you haven't actually proven that they're singling out Google in their clickstream data.

Anyhow, I've already posted in this story how anyone who wants to could go do their own experiment (it appears that Bing's data isn't too hard to fake, that goes double for anyone who can reverse engineer the toolbar). Similarly, I'm not convinced that Bing doing this is going to ruin search any time soon, mostly because I can see spammers/blackhat SEO types renting botnets to feed Bing all the bogus clickstream data they want.

It appears to be a simple http request with some time zones, link text, and an identifier or two that can be harvested from actual toolbars. If they don't bother to spam them, it's because they believe that Bing is irrelevant. And when I say "irrelevant" I mean "even less relevant than a low-traffic wiki for a free game that's currently under a massive assault from spambots."

Which, incidentally, might be one good reason for your team to look more at keeping wiki-spam out of your index. Some spam results from that wiki (in spite of having rel=no-follow) were seen in Google's index and stayed there until the admins caught on and cleaned things up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dear Microsoft, case-sensitivity is important. [1]

m.bing.com/robots.txt says "/search", not "/Search". All of the crawled [2] urls are "/Search" or "/~/search".

Also,

wap.bing.com/robots.txt explicitly "Allow:"s several search pages, which are indexed by google.

[1] EDIT: Case insensitivity is often important. Above comment notes that some robots are case-insensitive. I suspect Google is not, based on the results.

[2] EDIT: I said indexed, a reply corrects to crawled. Good point, thanks.

<comment><USER12> Naturally, Bing is hosted on a Windows server, which inherits the Windows filesystem eccentricities. Case insensitivity is among those. Because "search" has six letters, that would mean that the robots.txt would need to have 64 entries to completely exclude this directory. That's not even including the tilde thing or any other paths to that directory. And that's for one directory.

Lame? Yes. Google's fault? Not in the slightest. But it brings up an interesting question: if MS clickstream gathering included an opt-out mechanism that happened to be impractical for Google, would that change the ethics of any of this? Say, by having the Bing toolbar identify itself in user-agent so that Google could block it if they wanted?

I wouldn't think that would materially change the situation. If Google really wanted to, they could probably "block" this now by encrypting their existing URL redirects, thus hiding the URL from the Bing toolbar entirely, at least until the user is out of the Google system.

<comment><USER13> What is the value of processing robots.txt in a case-sensitive way? If urls are to have different status when considering case change, the the site structure is just broken. Plus considering robots.txt in case-sensitive way has already result in lots of errors, this one included, and will result in even more in the future. Plus HTTP is not mandated to use case-sensitive URL (though it's recommended). I can't think of any argument of why robots.txt should be processed in a case-sensitive way (i mean for a good reason -- obviously search engine have a very "good" incentive to handle it that way: the possibility to cheat and index more than they should, with an excuse when they are caught), on the other hand i can think of many for case-insensitive processing...

<comment><USER6> Webmaster's shoot themselves in the foot _a lot_. "My site isn't showing up in google" is a frequent complaint on webmaster help forums, and typically the problem is robots.txt or meta noindex. From that standpoint, since most sites do want to be indexed, it makes sense to follow the standard as strictly as possible. It should be hard to remove your site by accident, which case insensitivity would make somewhat easier. Google states explicitly in their robots.txt policies that it is handled in a case-sensitive way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > never mind that Bing only used its toolbar as a url discovery device

That is obviously untrue, and shows that the author does not understand the issue even superficially. The Google experiment showed that Bing was associating urls to search terms for no reason other than that Google had done so. You know, like making a search for mbzrxpgjys return rim.com, a URL which we can safely assume Bing was already quite aware of.

<comment><USER15> _the author does not understand the issue even superficially._

That, in a nutshell, is it. I don't know why we're spending so much time on this post, as the author has no idea about how search engines work, and what is robots.txt . If he had just looked at Bing's robots.txt and the URLs in Google's results, he would have seen that each and every one of them passed robots.txt . Since he site-restricted the search to ".bing.com", naturally you _will_ get only Bing results!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Aren't /search and /Search considered two different directories when it comes to robots.txt?

<comment><USER17> Yes. RFC 3986, sections 126.96.36.199 and 6.2.3.

<comment><USER7> I think you got the wrong RFC number:

<http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3938.txt>

No mention of robots.txt, nor a section 6.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, the correct number was 3986.

RFC 3986 - Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Never underestimate the ability of a human being to rationalize.

If I was in the Microsoft camp, I'm sure I would also be grasping at straws to explain why it's totally fine for Bing to use Google's search results. It's human nature to rationalize.

The bottom line is that Bing's index contains associations that it could never have figured out if Google hadn't figured them out first. How many there are, we cannot know. There's no way around the fact that Bing is piggybacking on the work of Google's search engineers.

Is it "good for the customer?" In the short term, it's good for the customer if they can buy $1 bootlegged DVDs. In the long term, it's bad for the consumer if the money goes to bootleggers instead of the people who are doing the actual work.

Think I'm exaggerating the effect of just "1 out of 1000 signals?" This argument would be extremely easy to refute. Stop using Google's results. If it really isn't that significant, then why should it be a problem to stop using it? Just turn it off and let everyone observe that the quality is 99.9% as good as it used to be, and avoid any accusation of copying.

By refusing to turn it off, Microsoft makes it clear that it _is_ an important part of their index, and that they have no qualms about having an important part of their index ripped off wholesale from their biggest competitor. Maybe it's a smart business move. But if that's the case, spare us the outrage about being called "copyists."

<comment><USER19> The thing that bothers me about all this drama is that the actual offense Google wants everyone to be so worked up about is that Bing doesn't filter Google from its clickstream data.

Bing wrote code that works across the whole web. The whole web includes Google. As a result, Bing gets some info from Google. But they didn't get that info because they _copied_ Google, they got it because they didn't filter Google out - or, said another way, because they _ignored_ Google as someone they needed to special case for clickstream analysis.

I don't work in search, but the idea that you're supposed to special-case your competitors when writing general-purpose tools sounds an awful lot like a unilaterally recognized gentleman's agreement. If it's not illegal, and it doesn't hurt end users, why shouldn't it be considered fair game?

I also think it's odd that throughout this whole thing, nobody has really noticed that the only possible way Google could have spotted this issue is if they're keeping very close tabs on Bing's search results. It's another arbitrary line that Google seems to have unilaterally drawn: it's clearly fine to monitor your competitors results closely, which presumably is going to have an effect on your own results; it's only out of bounds when that effect is directly measurable.

<comment><USER7> I thought part of the point is that whatever Bing is doing _doesn't_ work across the whole web. They need to associate the URL with a query, and most websites don't have queries. It's not just that Bing has recorded a click on Miley Cyrus's webpage; it's that they've done that _and_ associated it with the query [kecgxjpgqoe].

<comment><USER19> People have made that point, but I don't understand it. 'kecgx...' shows up as a parameter in the url of the Google query. Tons of sites include relevant information in parameterized urls; why is it unexpected that Bing would use that information across the whole web? Other people have said that implies that Bing has to have special Google url-parsing code, but that's not true at all - query parameters in urls are standardized. You would have to have special code to understand the specific semantics of Google's query urls, but there's no reason to think Bing needs or wants parameter semantics, they could easily just be interested in making probabilistic associations.

<comment><USER7> "You would have to have special code to understand the specific semantics of Google's query urls"

That's why people say that it's special-cased. There's no web standard that says the 'q' parameter means that the page is a search engine and the parameter is the query. That was something AltaVista did a long time back (possibly for byte-saving reasons, or possibly because they were lazy) and Google et al copied. Many other search engines use a different system, eg. DDG puts it in the request path, InfoSeek used qt=, Excite used search=.

<comment><USER19> Why do you think Bing cares or has to know that "q=" means a Google query term? My point is that they don't have to have any semantic information about parameter keys to be able to derive probabilistic associations between parameter values and clicks.

If you consistently see pages with 'foo' as a parameter value to _any_ parameter key, and clicks on those pages consistently go to site bar, it's completely reasonable to start associating foo with bar, regardless of what the parameter keys are.

<comment><USER10> > Why do you think Bing cares or has to know that "q=" means a Google query > term?

If that's true, then they should also be associating the sites linked with all the other weird parameter values in a search query, which would spam them to heck. Here are all the params from a search I just did on google:

q=test&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls={moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}:{moz:official}&client=firefox

They'd start making a lot of strange associations between random sites and "utf-8" if that were true, because that parameter shows up in just about every Google search done in English.

It's also a perfectly normal thing for programmers to search for, so they'd clutter up their index with millions of sites that had nothing whatsoever to do with utf-8.

So to make any real use out of that, they had to understand what the parameters in there actually mean, rather than associating ALL of them with whatever site was next in the clickstream.

Though I grant you, that does not disprove the alternate hypothesis that they were dumb and polluted their index with loads of irrelevant crap.

And I admit that I found weak support for that hypothesis by trying to see if utf-8 was linked to rim.com (one of the tests sites, if memory serves):

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=utf-8+rim&go=&form=QBRE](http://www.bing.com/search?q=utf-8+rim&go=&form=QBRE)

Those results appear to be crap, though I'm not sure that any sensible results exist that they _could_ return.

<comment><USER19> _If that's true, then they should also be associating the sites linked with all the other weird parameter values in a search query_

If it's a parameter value people will ever actually use Bing to search for ('utf-8'), there's probably plenty of other signal to help them figure out which results to return. If it's not ('kecgxjpgqoe'), we already know they sometimes return crap, thanks to Google's little experiment.

 _They'd start making a lot of strange associations between random sites and "utf-8" if that were true, because that parameter shows up in just about every Google search done in English._

If it shows up as a parameter for every search, why do you think Bing's algorithm would decide it was a good indicator for a particular url? P(foo.com|utf-8) wouldn't be any different from P(bar.com|utf-8), making 'utf-8' basically worthless as a discriminator. I'm pretty sure the folks at Bing understand the concept of conditional probability.

 _It's also a perfectly normal thing for programmers to search for, so they'd clutter up their index with millions of sites that had nothing whatsoever to do with utf-8_

I see no justification for the idea that url parameters are somehow a more difficult challenge in this regard than the mass of crap that is content on the web, which we know they crawl and index at a massive scale.

<comment><USER10> It would only show up as a parameter "relevant" to whatever sites were next in the clickstream. Remember, not every page transition is Google -> other site.

They'd also be gobbling up tons of random things from forums and whatnot (which should appear on long tail searches, if we knew where to look), most of which spam the heck out of you with random parameters, forum names, and whatnot.

> I see no justification for the idea that url parameters are somehow a more > difficult challenge in this regard than the mass of crap that is content on > the web, which we know they crawl and index at a massive scale.

Which is why I see no reason to assume that they don't understand or attempt to understand the actual meaning of parameters passed to one of the biggest sites on the internet.

<comment><USER19> You said 'utf-8' shows up as a parameter in almost every English Google search, and suggested that this would cause weird associations between 'utf-8' and random pages.

I pointed out that there's no reason to expect this to be true, because Bing engineers are likely smart enough to realize that if the probability of clicking on to foo.com is not significantly different than the probability of clicking on to bar.com given the presence of the 'utf-8' parameter, then 'utf-8' is a pretty poor discriminator between foo.com and bar.com, and probably shouldn't be used to determine search results.

It doesn't matter that not every page transition is Google -> another site. You still wouldn't need to special-case Google to determine an association with a parameter is useful or useless - the same code could build that model for any site with params.

 _They'd also be gobbling up tons of random things from forums and whatnot (which should appear on long tail searches, if we knew where to look), most of which spam the heck out of you with random parameters, forum names, and whatnot._

How do you know that they don't? Google pointed out some longtail results that look bad, and you yourself pointed some out in a previous comment.

 _Which is why I see no reason to assume that they don't understand or attempt to understand the actual meaning of parameters passed to one of the biggest sites on the internet._

You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I don't assume that they don't; I'm just saying there's no evidence that they do, and that assertions of wrongdoing based on the belief that they do are just irresponsible speculation. I have no knowledge of what Bing actually does, but neither do the vast majority of the people on the internet who are talking about this, many of whom assume the worst based on a mistaken notion of what's technically necessary to see the results that Google demonstrated.

<comment><USER10> > the presence of the 'utf-8' parameter, then 'utf-8' is a pretty poor > discriminator between foo.com and bar.com, and probably shouldn't be used to > determine search results.

And yet, it will link random text to websites even if they appear only in Google's URLs. I realize you're talking about discrimination (as in, "what's the better result for utf-8?"), but if the code is generic, it ought to be generic in this respect as well. After all, it linked up random nonsense to random sites given nothing more than Google's say-so, even though there's plenty of information out there about, say, rim.com that would tend to indicate that nobody except Google thinks that random text is relevant to an otherwise well-known site.

> How do you know that they don't? Google pointed out some longtail results > that look bad, and you yourself pointed some out in a previous comment.

Indeed, I do not know. I know that it would be dumb to link those things to random sites, but you are correct that I do not know if they're doing things that dumb.

> I don't assume that they don't; I'm just saying there's no evidence that > they do, and that assertions of wrongdoing based on the belief that they do > are just irresponsible speculation.

Well, for one, I'm not really asserting "wrongdoing" here. That is, I don't particularly think that it's wrong of them to do things this way. My interest is mainly technical, so I'm more interested in figuring out exactly what they're doing rather than blaming them for it. As such, I'm going for the most likely explanations I can find, rather than worrying about whether it's been proven to such an extent that they can be blamed for it (as I'm not really going to blame them anyhow).

You may have seen where I pointed out that I don't think it will "ruin search" in the end because they should expect a crapflood from spammers now that it's clear that they use clickstream data to rank sites. After all, there's a large spam attack right now on a tiny wiki for a game I play. I have to think Bing is more of a target than that. I can't prove that, true, I'm just playing the odds here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We need to get over this partisan "gotcha journalism". No one really benefits from everyone making low content blog posts with any random accusations that make their side 'right' (which just happens to be ad hominem anyways).

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks like microsoft is assuming robots.txt is case insensitive?

<comment><USER15> It is. Only domain names are case-insensitive.

This document explains how Google handles robots.txt : [http://code.google.com/web/controlcrawlindex/docs/robots_txt...](http://code.google.com/web/controlcrawlindex/docs/robots_txt.html)

<comment><USER10> Are we reading the same file? Under where it describes matching paths (so replace /fish and /Fish with /search and /Search if you like):

==Example path matches==

[path] /fish

Matches: /fish /fish.html /fish/salmon.html /fishheads /fishheads/yummy.html /fish.php?id=anything

Does not match: /Fish.asp /catfish /?id=fish

Comments: Note the case-sensitive matching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you look at <http://wap.bing.com/robots.txt>, the URLs that Google is returning are actually all set to 'allow', not disallow.

It also looks like m.bing.com/robots.txt blocks /search while their actual URLs are /Search - I guess Googlebot treats robots.txt as case-sensitive.

</comment><comment><USER22> robots.txt applies to the source of the links, not the target.

So if, say, <http://www.paulgraham.com/> links to <http://m.bing.com/search>, then <http://m.bing.com/robots.txt> does not apply to that.

EDIT: If you think this is wrong, please explain it instead of just downvoting me, because I think it is pretty unfair that I lose karma for explaining my interpretation.

<comment><USER23> Why would someone with no authority over your site linking to your site override your robots.txt?

Edit: I didn't downvote you, but I think you're wrong because it makes no sense - if I link to your site that shouldn't give search engines a free pass to ignore your wishes and do whatever they want with your content.

<comment><USER22> I understand a robots.txt "Disallow: /foo" to mean that it must not crawl that page, i.e. look at the links _inside_ that page.

<comment><USER23> I've always interpreted it to mean they're explicitly not allowed to touch it - no exceptions (unless you actually specified exceptions for them which you can see on the 3rd last example at <http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html>).

<comment><USER6> One counter intuitive thing. They are allowed to link to it in search results (using links that point to it to rank it for insance) but can't use the content of the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Google has likely indexed links to Bing found on _other pages_ , rather than on Bing itself. That doesn't mean it followed the links (and it wouldn't, if excluded by robots.txt).

</comment><comment><USER25> > _never mind that Bing only used its toolbar as a url discovery device, not > to 'copy search results'_

Yeah, they just happened to discover high quality urls on google. What are the chances?

<comment><USER15> URL discovery is one thing; ranking that discovered URL at number 1 without any other signals is another. I don't think anyone cares that much about how Bing does URL discovery (unless, of course, the URL is supposed to be private and exchanged via email). Given that they have a new URL, what made them rank it #1?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> robots.txt disallows (or did until recently) only "/search". The results shown have "/Search" in the url. Bing screwed up.

</comment><comment><USER27> Bit different.

</comment><comment><USER28> Shouldn't the headline be "Bing explicitly allowing some results pages to showing up in other search engines".

The wap.bing.com/robots.txt blocks all /search/ and then explicitly allows a few. What ever the reason is for that.

Very weak article, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER29> Microsoft is way out of line. Google figures out what content is good by crawling every page and doing the leg work, and Bing copies Google data and displays what google displays.

Google proved it with the bing sting. there is absolutly NO reason why bing should have linked to those documents, other than that they copied off of Google's exam paper.

When students do this, it is called plagiarizing. The smoke getting thrown by MS is just to distract and divert while they scramble to hide what they did.

<comment><USER23> They proved that Microsoft uses clickstream data to rank websites, and in 7% of manufactured cases that's _all_ the data they have?

I think this is exactly as petty and silly as last week's news, and now _they_ get to spend a week explaining how this occurred and that they _do_ obey robots.txt.

<comment><USER6> Everyone else in this thread has already explained that microsoft is not properly using robots.txt by having case insensitive urls, hence why these urls were indexed.

<comment><USER23> The Bing context might suck for you guys, but this is your problem - <USER2> insensitivity is _every_ Windows server, not just the Bing website.

Why would anyone hosted on Windows have to specify every possible spelling variation to keep search engines out of a folder or file?

Here's another example:

<http://www.ifma.org/robots.txt>

These guys are disallowing /pv/

[http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=site:ifma.org/pv/)

You guys are indexing /PV/

<comment><USER30> Maybe I'm misunderstanding your argument, but I think you're confusing the Windows file system with the URLs that a web service provides.

<comment><USER23> The problem exists when that web service is _on_ Windows - ASP.NET, Cold Fusion, static html sites, probably a negligible percent of PHP sites etc -

/pv is /PV is /pV is /Pv

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> robot.txt excludes /search not /Search..big difference as 99.99% of return results are ../Search*

MS mistake on robot.txt file not Google's

</comment><comment><USER32> I agree with the author here. I think that Google will come away from this looking combative and childish.</comment>


Show HN: Bit v0.5.0 – Bitcoin made easy, now with SegWit support - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ofek/bit <comment><USER3> Seems more of an meta-APIs library:

\- bitcoinfees.earn.com for the fees

\- bitpay.com (then blockchain.info if bitpay fails) for the rates

\- bitpay / smartbit.com / blockchain for balance and transactions

\- And then a lot of functions mainly used to create transactions it seems (I'm not a bitcoin expert)

(utils might the common denominator of all software projects :) ) (also the repetition of methods made me think of "define_method" in ruby)

Pretty solid project! And great name IMHO, people will just google "bit github" (pretty hard to find a unique meaningful name these days), you even got the name in pypi: [https://pypi.org/project/bit](https://pypi.org/project/bit).

<comment><USER4> The name is cool, but not great in the age of Google. I would suggest also having a slightly longer name that is more unique - the way that the Go programming language has 'Golang'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm afraid I don't have anything substantive to say, but why did you give it a name that is almost completely ungooglable? It means people trying to use the library can't easily find help.

I have the same problem with the graphics language Asymptote - <USER2> examples and StackExchange questions is sometimes just not possible, even though they exist.

<comment><USER6> There are two common kinds of bad names in programming tools:

1) The descriptive where branding would be useful. The line of thought is something like this: "Apple gives everything such simple and obvious names. Their spreadsheet is simply 'Numbers'. I know — I'll call my new general- purpose programming language 'Code.'"

2) The branded where descriptiveness would be useful. Maybe I've built yet another HTTPS client library for language X with some kind of event-handling twist or whatever? I could call it 'pavlov-http' or 'evented-foobar-http'... But instead I'll name it 'robyzowitck' after my favorite Slobonian fantasy literature monster. Now, when person X uses my HTTP library and person Y inherits the project, they'll have to google what this library actually does, and briefly hate me for giving a silly brand name to a pedestrian utility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want to dive into the bitcoin internals there is this Python library that implements a lot of the protocol stuff using only the standard library [https://github.com/mcdallas/cryptotools](https://github.com/mcdallas/cryptotools)

</comment><comment><USER8> Easy to use offline transactions are huge. Thanks for the great work!

<comment><USER9> I agree

There are a lot of underused utilities of the bitcoin protocol that would change user experience and perception for all blockchain-based digital currencies.</comment></comment>


A religion to get foreign entrepreneurs into Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR> http://sprovoost.nl/2011/09/03/an-entrepreneurial-religion/

<comment><USER2> Startups are a religion. Founders are zealots.

Let me explain. In 1967, my parents received a letter from a missionary who taught at a school in rural Honduras. She asked them to help her run the school.

9 months later, my parents packed up all their worldly belongings into a Chevy pickup truck, and drove south 5,000 miles. Their 3 children under 5 rode along side my parents in the front seat.

My parents worked for 20 years in Central America, running schools, starting at least 10 churches, rehabbing 3 youth camps, doing refugee work ( Nicaraguan revolution happened then ), started a seminary, did literacy work, etc...

Most of their time was spent building community, getting people together to talk about shared values and beliefs, and helping people work together to build organizations that could help others.

I've spent most of my life hanging around missionaries. I actually dropped out of Bible school 20 years ago. My original plan was to be a missionary in the middle of a jungle somewhere. (True story). Last thing in the world I wanted to do was to stay in the US and start a business. Oops. Point is. I know missionaries.

Five years ago, my wife and I moved to Silicon Valley with all our wordly possessions in a moving van. And, we started work on our startup. Hackers & Founders is all about building community, helping other people connect and talk about shared values (building startups, and hacking cool stuff together), and enabling them to build startups that can help themselves, and their customers.

We're going to be building educational resources: Hackers & Founders University, a physical coworking space (at some point), small groups ( Hackers & Founders @ Lunch ), large events with a speaker (preacher?), and general community building at our networking events.

Missionaries and founders are zealots. They generally take huge risks for the sake of their quixotic beliefs and ideals. They are passionate and evangelistic about promoting what they believe in. They build communities of customers, and try their best to serve them.

Misionaries == Founders && Startups == a religion.

Laura (my wife and H&F cofounder) and I often joke around that we're building the Church of the Startup with Hackers & Founders.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Could there be some special religion related visa?_

The Mormons generally use Religious Worker (R) visas in the United States (and often similar ones internationally).

Please do not actually attempt to convince a consular officer that you are the representative of an entrepreneurial religion. The time it takes to reject your application -- which is as-night-follows-day _inevitable_ \-- is time that the officer could have been using to examine and approve someone who has a legitimate case for a visa.

<comment><USER4> I find it amusing/insane that a government gets to decide what is and is not an allowed religion.

Q: Do you worship someone?

A: Yes.

Q: Good! Does he live in the clouds or in some Great Beyond?

A: No he lives in Palo Alto.

Q: Sorry, that's not allowed. We reject your religion on the ground of not being spooky/irrational/superstitious/ambiguous enough. Next please!

A: I believe in faeries!

Q: Too late. Plus that's not a serious religion. Faeries aren't real. Don't be silly.

<comment><USER5> _I find it amusing/insane that a government gets to decide what is and is not an allowed religion._

The government gets to define _everything_ for government purposes. I'm not sure why this should surprise you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On a more realistic note, I've often thought that combining hacker/maker spaces, good digital libraries and some communal living would make an excellent, low-cost fellowship for people looking to experiment for a couple of years. Related as I characterize the arrangement as monastic.

<comment><USER7> I have been thinking similarly as have some friends. I think the time for this concept will be very soon.

<comment><USER8> A modern age guild

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How did the organizations which have amassed unimaginable wealth through not being taxed manage to get preferential treatment in the immigration law and its implementing system? Tough question...

Btw, remember the religious worker visa being officially excluded from GC petition Premium Processing (15 days fast track) implemented for various employment based categories in the 2007 for the exact reason of being the category with the highest fraud found by the official investigation? One can imagine how bad the situation have been for the government to start officially "discriminate" against religion :)

<http://www.murthy.com/news/n_prorev.html>

Why it isn't surprising that self-righteous people who think that they are owners of highest and the only truth [ and thus entitled to not pay their fair share ] are also the most fraud perpetrating?

</comment><comment><USER10> I've actually been joking about wanting to start the first YC-funded religion for a while. I think there are a lot of good idioms and paradigms from religion that one can use to tackle a variety of secular problems. I'm particularly inspired by the open source religion movement that's currently gaining momentum. That said, I'm not convinced that religion is the best approach for the particularly problem that you're trying to solve here. And even if it is, I think you're making the mistake of assuming that all religions have to basically look or feel like Christianity.

In any case, silicon valley already has its own set of highly evolved spiritual beliefs. And no matter how much research you did I think it would be very difficult to impose some sort of external religion on top of that without changing the sorts of relationships that people have with each other, which I'd be hesitant to mess with too much since that is sort of the secret sauce of the place.

</comment><comment><USER11> Of interest: for legal and tax purposes, some Humanist groups declare themselves religions, and this has been upheld in various court proceedings.

</comment><comment><USER12> Did I read this article wrong? Why would American Mormons need to go through American immigration to work in another country?

I live in Northeast Thailand, and there is a hive of Mormons not too far from here who always travel on bicycle in pairs, and always wearing black trousers, white shirts and little black name tags. Local people just think they are crazy and ignore them. I have know idea how they work out visas out here. But I do know they have a lot of under the table political clout in many countries mostly because of money paid over many decades. When I lived in Hong Kong, I remember someone telling me that in 50 years they had only converted a handful of people.

<comment><AUTHOR> American Mormoms in Thailand deal with Thai immigration, foreign Mormoms in the US deal with US immigration. In Utah you can get a tour in dozens of languages, so there's a lot of people in that second category. Of course there's also American Mormoms going from state A to B; they don't need to deal with immigration at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My view of this is that it is intended as humor and is kind of tossing out the idea of "surely, there must be some sort of hack available for the visa problem". I was hoping it would inspire serious discussion of that piece of it rather than having people focus on the part of it that looks to me like it is tongue-in-cheek. (I get that kind of reaction a lot myself, which is sometimes frustrating, so it's possible I am projecting rather than being insightful.) Serious discussion of immigration options would be an interesting discussion to me. Busting people on the idea of "you can't be really serious about this" is pretty meh.

Peace.

<comment><USER14> This isn't really going to move the tongue farther from the cheek, but here goes:

Why not a mail-order spouse programme for founders? Surely there must be a lot of Americans, especially with the financial crisis, who would be willing to take a bet on a founder's future income in exchange for a green card. You could make proposal pitch decks with Lessons Learned from previous marriages.

And if it doesn't work out there's always Series B.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunetaly a.f.a.i.k. you need to be in a relationship for two years in order to apply for a greencard, but I love the idea of a russianbrides.com for entrepeneurs :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> who's John Galt?

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand why people in the Netherlands are so gung ho about emigrating to the US. All I hear from europeans is how the US is a warmongering nation that has health care only for the rich. I think that's largely true, but then why is there such a big rush to come here to work. Could it be that The Netherlands is not the paradise that it is commonly promoted as?

I'd also like to see a list of nations that Americans with some sort of programming background can emigrate to with no hassle. Nothing special, just the sort of ease of moving in that they expect the US to provide to their people.

<comment><USER9> >I'd also like to see a list of nations that Americans with some sort of programming background can emigrate to with no hassle.

Have University friends who immigrated to Sweden, Great Britain, Netherlands, Germany, Canada, mathematics or programming, and their immigration hassles were less/faster or comparable to mine (for example no double labor certification like for H1 and GC in the US, and some of them even did 2 immigrations one after another while i was doing one). On the other side nobody of them has made such money like some of my friends here in the US :)</comment></comment>


Dihydrogen Monoxide, the killer chemical. Not - <AUTHOR> https://www.jiffchat.com/m/GK8Rt34GXgJ0kI7kOlRCGxHFOL2Q31Ms0ZnLHN8O_Io= <comment><USER2> In Australia alone, there were 300-odd deaths from Dihydrogen Monoxide last year. In some areas there were twice as many deaths as there were from car crashes.</comment>


Super Neat Product Tutorial Website / Software - <AUTHOR> https://www.kera.io/

<comment><USER2> We built something just like this in house, but of course as with any internal tool no one ever has time to update and maintain the damn thing.

Would be fantastic to switch over to this service if it works well. Ping me at mike at tophatmonocle.com if you have room in the beta.

<comment><USER3> Hey Axiom, we certainly will. Thanks for your support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It needs a way to stop the user messing with a demo - by temporarily disabling certain elements for click events etc?

(I expect this is already an option, but wasn't enabled on the demo on this page.)

<comment><USER3> We actually don't have that feature. The point isn't to hijack a user's experience. We are thinking about the best way to get out of a users way if they want to escape a tutorial. But thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER5> Well here's one reason you might consider disabling certain UI elements.

If you hit the left arrow button on the slide show at 0:12 you end up with this in the end.

<http://imgur.com/a/ZqiYs>

<comment><USER6> Yeah it's definitely not perfect! Our goal is to ship early to demo our progress and there are some rough edges showing. We will definitely get this cleaned up ASAP. Thanks for the screenshot.

<comment><USER5> No problem. Just something I noticed. Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is the pricing for this like? needs more upfront pricing info imo.

That said, I'm thinking of using something like this on Strangersfordinner.com and edgeyo.com too so I'd keep you guys in view.

(again, pricing!)

<comment><USER6> We are working on pricing. It will be a monthly fee at a reasonable amount and our goal is to grow with you. We know startups aren't flush with cash and you should only start paying for value when you are really getting it too. What would be your ideal payment model?

<comment><USER7> Tiered CPV.

<comment><USER8> What is CPV ? Thanks

<comment><USER6> Cost Per Value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a beautiful site! Nice to see something that doesn't look too Twitter- Bootstrappy. I like the blue highlighting around the cursor. I'd make it more clear that you really want the user to enter an email address (instead of just demo a hypothetical site asking for that). I was a little confused when the tutorial abruptly stopped.

<comment><USER6> Genwin,

Sorry about the confusion. It's a hard thing to demonstrate and I understand how moving from hypothetical to real is a little jarring.

Thanks for the kind words about our design!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome and I would totally use it if the price was right. When are you guys thinking of launching?

<comment><USER6> Hey sunwooz, we are launching with select clients slowly and we will have a more general release by the end of summer. Check out <http://verold.com> for an example in production. (Click Getting Started after signing in).

<comment><USER10> I just watched the tutorial. I just want to point out what happened. I started watching the tutorial and continued to eat my dinner. I had a feeling that it was more like a video than an interactive walkthrough so I ended up being stuck at the project creation page not realizing that I had to put input some information. The woman started talking about some stuff that were not visible on the screen so I got a little confused and started looking around to see if I missed something. Otherwise, the technology looks cool, but I don't want my users to be confused as I was.

<comment><USER6> Hey sunwooz,

There is an issue with the audio getting out of sync that we are working on. Understandably that would be confusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks incredibly cool. If you guys have room in your beta I'd love to try it out. (ian at segment.io)

This is the kind of thing that companies won't have a second thought paying lots for as soon as they can prove that it's increased retention X times.

<comment><USER3> Ian - whoa that's too kind. We can definitely work something out to get you on board. I'll reach out over email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It does look pretty great. But I have to wonder what happens when the first marketing guy sets it to autorun and disables the backspace key ;<).

<comment><USER3> We will ban them.

:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I liked it and all, but the submit button on the last screen (where I'm actually supposed to convert and sign up) isn't working.

<comment><USER14> Signup didn't work for me either. It kind of makes me nervous to consider them when their own site doesn't work. :-)

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry sign up didn't work. What browser where you using?

<comment><USER15> I'm using FF 13 and the submit didn't work for me either until I hit 'Enter' in the text input. After that I was able to click submit.

<comment><USER6> Thanks I'll investigate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love the product, it has great potential. I would pay $10 to create a tutorial personally and $50 as a company.

<comment><USER6> Thanks tadruj. This great feedback. Is that Monthly? Yearly? Would you consider paying based on how many users watched your tutorial?

<comment><USER17> Uncertainty in pricing is terrible so in my view avoid the how many users watch your tutorial pricing. It can also inhibit usage which you don't want.

I'd charge based on number of tutorials. For upto 3, it's free but your branding is there. For upto 20 tutorials on your site, it's $30/month or something. You get the idea. This ensures if some massive site is using you for hundreds of tutorials, you get paid for the value you're delivering.

Of course, pricing is a dark art so take these thoughts with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER6> Really appreciate the advice. I agree we don't to introduce unnecessary uncertainty. Thanks especially for the hypothetical tiers that is great to have from an outsider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If I click "See an example" nothing happens. Chrome 22 on Windows. There is an uncaught TypeError in the console.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the report, we'll get on it asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks so much for the kind words!

</comment><comment><USER19> Ouch. No volume controls.

<comment><USER14> And there is no way to skip over the marketing pitch at the beginning. A tutorial should be friendly and impart useful guidance, not be a marketing tool.

<comment><USER3> Hey there,

I do appreciate the feedback about fast forwarding and the comment on the volume control, good ideas. Please keep in mind I'm demoing a marketing site. We have more 'functional' tutorials inside the app :)</comment></comment></comment>


Stupid long route - <AUTHOR> http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/stupid_long_route/ <comment><USER2> I miss the early versions of Netscape, when they used to show the server domain lookups that the packets were transiting through to get to you in the status bar.

I remember being amazed at the 'magic' of the internet back then, when I would sit in Australia and request a page in the UK, and see responses flickering through at the bottom from France, Japan, Malaysia etc. Really brought home that each packet was coming to you via bouncing around all over the world, and two consecutive packets could come by incredibly different pathways.

That was dial up days too. Now I complain when NetFlix take an extra second to begin streaming a show. The magic has become mundane. I wish someone would bring out a Chrome extension that could display what the ancient Netscape browsers did...

<comment><USER3> Hmm... I'm not sure how you'd reliably do this. AFAIK routers don't usually bounce back a notification to origin every time they route a packet.

You'd have to do some kind of traceroute and then look up the ips in the geoip database. The former is pretty slow in my experience, and the latter might be pretty noisy data.

Makes me wonder what Nexflix was doing way back when!

<comment><USER4> When Netflix first started they only sent out DVDs via mail, and it was three DVDs at most at once. You paid a monthly fee, and you would mail back DVDs when you wanted a new one on your queue. It took them three or so years to get streaming set up, long after YouTube had made the idea of streaming video realistic. I believe VidX had also put a lot of effort into making high quality streaming realistic before YouTube supported it. This all occured before Netflix offered any streaming.

<comment><USER5> I think GP meant to type 'Netscape' in the last sentence ...

<comment><USER3> Whoops :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This past week, I, living in country Australia, a few hundred kilometres from Melbourne, needed to help a coworker in Melbourne to diagnose something on his VM. It was easiest for us both to hook the SSH connection via a server in New York—increasing 30ms of round-trip latency to about 560ms. A terminal alone was fairly painful to use, but this is the part that I found really interesting: stdout line buffering goes from being a performance optimisation to being a significant slow-down—nay, a _nightmare_. Installing packages via Yarn, for example, suddenly took _minutes_ , where it took only _seconds_ with `> /dev/null`, because of a progress bar that kept on flushing its stdout buffer.

<comment><USER7> This is one of those issues that Mosh handles well - it essentially emulates a terminal on the server and sends snapshots to the client, varying the rate based on network conditions.

<comment><USER6> I contemplated mosh while waiting for things to install, and wondered whether it'd resolve that issue; but I've never set it up, and would seldom indeed have any use for it, so I expect I'll continue to not use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember back in the 90´s when phoning from the US back to France you had a second of latency, forcing you to do like journalists on TV when they have to wait for the answer to travel to space and back.

You needed to be a little bit focused !

</comment><comment><USER9> Come on, the juiciest tidbit was the latency and he left it out what it ended up being! I'm guessing the latency was around 1.5 seconds. It can't get much faster than that; the speed of light is too slow.

<comment><USER10> The only thing I noticed was it took a full second

> And finally, after 178000 and change miles of data transfer, the letter I'd > typed a full second ago appeared on my screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The black magic behind those complex communication pipes is what made me love computers back in the days. Ever since then I have been obsessed by networking and how It just works even though things are thousands miles apart. I'm still amazed today but somehow the magic is gone for me. Everything is transparent in the modern internet and nobody really cares anymore about the complexity.

Everything is now about frontend and javascript design. Hard problems are not cool and trendy anymore, and that is sad.

</comment><comment><USER12> This was cool. But what interested me more is the site it's hosted on branchable.com. Is anyone else drawn to the ability to fork things on the net?

</comment><comment><USER13> Fun to do and something to think about.</comment>


Startupland: A documentary series - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/76065318/startupland-a-documentary-series

<comment><USER2> I'd watch it if it was free.</comment>


Elon Musk's Solution for Dodger Stadium Traffic Is Full of Holes - <AUTHOR> https://urbanize.la/post/elon-musks-solution-dodger-stadium-traffic-full-holes <comment><USER2> I really don't get the hate this is receiving considering the context of what is going on in Los Angeles. Traffic is a problem city wide, but it is particularly bad for events at Dodgers Stadium. Musk's plan won't fix all of that, but it won't hurt. I also don't see how the plan is any more outlandish than this [1] plan for gondolas to Dodgers Stadium which is closer to actually happening. Either way, both of those projects are using private money. If people want to try to fix traffic themselves and all they need from the public is permission, why should we stop them? That is an infinitely better approach that approving spending hundreds of millions of public dollars on a trolley system a few miles from Dodgers Stadium [2] or an even more massive investments into a subway system that most Angelenos never use and therefore are hesitant to support.

[1] - [http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/gondola- proposal/](http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/gondola-proposal/)

[2] - [http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-downtown- str...](http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-downtown- streetcar-20180818-story.html)

<comment><USER3> > I really don't get the hate this is receiving

It seems Musk went the usual hype wave way. Once it was cool to like things he does. Now it is cool to hate what he does.

It's not helping that his behavior on twitter reinforced that trend but it was one already before that.

<comment><USER4> That's akin to people saying the truth lies in the middle, a fallacy [1].

If you want to reach a conclusion you need to analyse all the situations, and figure out if the criticism is warranted yes or no. In case of the pedophile tweet my opinion is that, yes the criticism is warranted. YMMV..

..but I'm not sure we should have this discussion in this very thread..

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation)

<comment><USER5> Understanding the hype cycle doesn't tell you who is right. It just makes you more skeptical of going along with the hype cycle.

In particular, Elon Musk's bad behavior on Twitter doesn't tell us very much about the technical feasibility of building a tunnel, any more than it tells us whether a SpaceX rocket will fly. Mood affiliation might make it seem like it's closely related, but logically it's not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems like this tunnel is better thought of as a tech demo that will be open to the public.

If it turns out to be more expensive than they think, they'll find out soon enough, without cost to taxpayers.

If it works, it won't carry much traffic, but it's proof of concept and people will have fun trying it. And Boring Company will be able to do something more ambitious with better proof of their claims.

<comment><USER6> But it's a horrible POC. It's not solving any serious mass transit problem. No, the Boring company exists to solve Musk's "I don't want to share space with other people" problem.

The real problem with The Boring Company is the fact that anyone takes it seriously as a form of mass transit. The damn idea is crowding out real solutions while we indulge Musk's pipe dream.

<comment><USER7> I understand the outrage, but what are the "real" solutions, who is pushing them, and why aren't they gaining traction? Maybe tunnels suck, but at least there is something happening.

<comment><USER8> > but what are the "real" solutions

Trains. Lots of trains. Inside tunnels. On the surface. On elevated tracks. That interconnect in a network so you can get from anywhere to anywhere. On trains.

> and why aren't they gaining traction?

Because everytime someone points out mass transit is a solved problem, has been for over 100 years, everyone responds somehow saying "that's unrealistic!" or "eww gross you want me to sit next to someone else!"

<comment><USER7> I love trains. Still, other than a few major cities, they aren't a great way to get around in the states. It is a shame there isn't more public support for building more rail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a huge baseball fan and saw this Twitter thread this morning[0]. Definitely an interesting scroll. There was a meeting yesterday at Dodger stadium to discuss this, that was announced just 12 hours prior. I'll bullet some high points.

* Some of the commenters at the meeting were actually SpaceX employees.

* It's an idea to boost attendance, meanwhile Dodgers led the majors in average attendance per game. (It's true the Dodgers have a lot of season tickets to companies, who might not actually use them).

* Could only transport 3% of fans.

[0]: [https://twitter.com/erinscafe/status/1034456203890372609](https://twitter.com/erinscafe/status/1034456203890372609)

</comment><comment><USER10> From [http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/June-2018/Theres- Reason-...](http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/June-2018/Theres-Reason-to-Be- Skeptical-About-Elon-Musks-OHare-Express/):

" _[According to the Boring Company FAQ,] The current standard for a one-lane tunnel is approximately 28 feet. By placing vehicles on a stabilized electric skate, the diameter can be reduced to less than 14 feet. Reducing the diameter in half reduces tunneling costs by 3-4 times._

" _This claim is contradicted in professional literature. Studies of particle accelerator tunnels as well as rail tunnels that look at different diameters find that reducing the diameter in half reduces costs by a factor of two and not three or four._ "

That's actually quite surprising. I would have thought that changing the diameter would have no effect whatsoever on the price of boring a tunnel, to a first order of approximation. Almost none of the variables involved are dependent on the diameter of the tunnel.

<comment><USER11> Well the area of a circular tunnel is proportial to the square of the diameter. Perhaps a lower area allows the bore to tunnel faster? That kinda makes sense, but I have no idea how much the area of a circle relates to tunnel boring in reality, if at all.

<comment><USER10> The tunnel boring machine would likely cost much more, for a larger tunnel, but it's fixed relative to the length and a capital expenditure, much of which can be recovered or re-used. The amount of material moved would be proportional to the area of the tunnel, but I can't see that as a major cost factor. A larger machine would need more lining material, and more workers...

And it still doesn't address the terminals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems most of his ideas lately are like this. Was he always so...wrong? Or is something personally going on in his life? Rumors that he tweeted about the privatization of Tesla while on LSD seem to make a lot of sense when you watch his recent erratic behavior.

</comment><comment><USER13> What I don't understand about the Boring company is that Musk's vision seems to be: Cheap tunnels so that we can throw lots and lots of cars down them thus alleviating congestion. Everyone gets mad and points out that cars driving down tunnels do nothing to alleviate congestion, because cars driving down tunnels result in tiny tiny capacity (2800 people per day in this case?) and that if you want to solve congestion just build more train tracks and run more trains on them.

Here's my question: Why is no one talking about the idea of using what Musk is pushing as a new incredible cheap way of building tunnels to _build tunnels with trains in them_?

<comment><USER14> Ask yourself this, if Tesla is so good at making autonomous driving software, and can make the cheapest batteries, and can automate manufacturing more than anyone deemed possible, why do they not sell these. Why do they target only half a million cars a year while they could completely take over multiple industries by becoming tier-1 supplier to various manufacturers? It is to maintain hype, the real truth is somewhat humbling.

The same applies to boring company, if they can dig tunnels so cheaply, they would become tbm suppliers or contractors, not an end to end solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why don't they build a spur off the LA Metro from Union Station a short distance up to Dodger Stadium? They build a metro but it doesn't go where people want, like the airport, the Rose Bowl, or the new stadium they are building.

<comment><USER16> > They build a metro but it doesn't go where people want, like the airport, > the Rose Bowl, or the new stadium they are building.

Metro rail connects some of the densest residential (South LA, Koreatown/Mid- Wilshire, Mid-City, Palms, Hollywood) and commercial (Long Beach, Pasadena, Koreatown, Hollywood, Downtown, Santa Monica) districts of the region.

Prioritizing Metro rail construction to bring people to POIs like LAX or the Rose Bowl for what amounts to a handful of trips a year per person would be a waste. Better to serve trips people make nearly every day, like commuting to work or school and going shopping.

<comment><USER15> POIs like the airport and entertainment venues are perfect for the Metro because they cause huge traffic jams, there is very little parking, and the added convenience for occasional riders would increase overall ridership. Metro for commuters is great, but what about everybody else? If you want people to take the Metro, go where they want to go. I don't use the Metro for commuting but would use it to go the the airport or ball game to avoid traffic and parking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems most of his ideas lately are like this. Was he always so...wrong? Or is something personally going on in his life? Rumors that he tweeted about the privatization while on LSD seem to make a lot of sense when you watch his recent erratic behavior.

[https://jalopnik.com/was-elon-musk-tweeting-on-acid- azealia-...](https://jalopnik.com/was-elon-musk-tweeting-on-acid-azealia- banks-says-yes-1828307241)

</comment><comment><USER17> I mean... There's at least two holes, right? One at each end of the tunnel?

</comment><comment><USER18> A lot of his ideas are full of holes:

Hyperloop: See all of the problems here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk)

Boring company: summary of issues here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBtL3qDvdZc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBtL3qDvdZc)

SpaceX: How will we fund the amount of rocket fuel required to get the stuff to Mars that can produce an atmosphere? If producing an atmosphere isn't required, then how will indoor atmosphere be maintained sustainably (financially)? Matt Damon's math didn't seem to work out in that movie...

Tesla: So far so good, but what about battery recycling? "We are at the very beginning in energy storage in general," says Phil Hermann, chief energy engineer at Panasonic Eco Solutions. "Most of the projects currently going on are either demo projects or learning experiences for the utilities. There is very little direct commercial stuff going on. "Elon Musk is out there saying you can do things now that the rest of us are hearing and going, 'really?' We wish we could but it's not really possible yet." [https://www.theguardian.com/vital-signs/2015/jun/10/tesla- ba...](https://www.theguardian.com/vital-signs/2015/jun/10/tesla-batteries- environment-lithium-elon-musk-powerwall)

SolarCity: Just look at the customer reviews so far: [https://news.energysage.com/solarcity-complaints-what- homeow...](https://news.energysage.com/solarcity-complaints-what-homeowners- think/)

I would urge Mr Musk to focus on Batteries & long-term Tesla ownership. It would be a shame for that not to work out!

I hope this comment lasts for 5 years :)

<comment><USER19> Please don't link to Phil Mason / Thunderf00t. In addition to being a misogynist (top videos include "Feminism versus FACTS" and "Why feminism poisons everything"), he's also a food scientist posing as a rocket scientist.

<comment><USER20> Speaking against a particular brand of feminism does not make one a misogynist. From watching his videos, it's pretty clear that he isn't prejudiced against women. He just calls out bullshit claims by the likes of Anita Sarkeesian, who is on record stating that video games are a 'male sex fantasy' and whose only credential is being a perpetual victim. People like Phil Mason and Stephen Fry are a desperately needed public voice against bullshit disguised as feminism or social justice.

If Anita Sarkeesian went unchecked, games like GTA would be banned by now and reclassified as rape simulators.

This attitude of blindly dismissing people's arguments or entire credentials just because you bought into an agenda, this refusal to engage in civil debate and discuss matters on their merit. I think this is one of the factors destroying democracies around the world today. Everything must be polarizing, everyone expressing views you disagree with must be shunned. Any attempts to debate established status quo must be shouted down.

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

<comment><USER21> > whose only credential is being a perpetual victim

The Wikipedia page you linked says she's a "media critic, blogger, and public speaker." It seems to me those are her credentials.

<comment><USER20> She is all of those things by virtue of playing public victim. She was a no name vlogger with a handful of subscribers. Her entire 'career', if you can call it that, began when the internet overwhelmed her kickstarter to fund a bunch of videos about how misogynistic video games are. She's the Kim Kardashian of feminism and an insult to 2nd and 3rd wave feminists who fought to improve society through intelligent discourse.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqJUxqkcnKA&list=PLBBDFEC9F5...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqJUxqkcnKA&list=PLBBDFEC9F5893C4AF)

Watch this and tell me that you think she is making an intelligent argument about anything. And while you're at it, have a think about why the comments and votes might be disabled on those videos.

<comment><USER21> I'm aware of who Anita is, and I have no expectation of changing your mind about her.

That said, I think she was "all of those things" when people contributed over 100k to her Kickstarter, which was before the Gamergate harassment started. So she was earning her keep well before she was made the "public victim," as you say.

Of course the comments are disabled for her videos. Normal YouTube comments are toxic enough. She _literally_ got bomb threats over scheduled appearances on conference panels – do you think comments on her videos are productive? If your Twitter was filled by anonymous users threatening to rape you, and kill your parents, etc., then you'd disable comments on your videos too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The "hole" is that they think construction costs are too high based on "engineering literature". While the literature does undoubtedly say this, Musk's MO with SpaceX is doing things way, way cheaper than competitors, so I'm interested to see how he handles it.

<comment><USER23> Decades of civil engineering differs with you. The cost to move a cubic yard of soil is rather well known for a given area. Labor costs are well established. I don't see how he is going to cut enough corners to make it cheaper by any noticeable amount. Privately funded earthwork projects are nothing new.

<comment><USER24> >The cost to move a cubic yard of soil is rather well known for a given area

Given traditional technologies and techniques

> Labor costs are well established

Primarily for union labor using traditional tools and techniques.

When spacex was started, the cost to move a kg of satellite into low earth orbit was well known. The cost of a new rocket development program from an engineering hours / labor cost perspective was also well established. He broke a few assumptions people had, which resulted in dramatically lower costs.

I don't see why that strategy wouldn't _fundamentally_ play out similarly for TBC.

<comment><USER23> Traditional technologies and techniques for earth moving are rather simple and well refined. Moving soil still requires one to excavate the soil and transport the soil. I can't see any way around that. There are only so many ways to improve on this model. In rural environments it is possible to use larger haul trucks to move the materials. The urban nature of the construction site will limit the size of vehicles that can be used to transport the materials. As for the excavation equipment, a tunnel boring machine (TBM) is obviously the tool of choice. Maybe some efficiencies can be gained with the TBM through some sort of re-usability.

The space analogy, in mind, is not a great one. Prior to SpaceX, launches were generally a rare and expensive thing. Musk has changed that by making the process more efficient. Earth work, on the other hand, is done every day. There is likely a large dirt moving operation somewhere near every person that will see this thread. Be it excavation for the foundation of a large building or the construction of a roadway, moving earth is extremely common.

[edit] Clarity in the last sentence of the first paragraph.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Another super-negative article. Let them try and pay for it I say. As a fellow nobody, I'd never think to stand in the way of folks attempting to improve things.

The route is good. I've often thought the Red line itself should go a more direct route down Sunset. The Vermont leg could be reused as a north/south from Exposition to Griffith Park where traffic is also horrendous. The Purple line uses the rest. Unlikely in my lifetime, however.

There are a few errors in the article as well. The red line turn where the map shows it connecting is an open plaza in the middle of a three road intersection: Hollywood-Prospect/Vermont/Sunset.</comment>


Cray Website hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.cray.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> text of the site for those of you not wanting to click the link:

Submitted by 911 on Thu, 04/23/2015 - 08:59 Date: Thursday, April 23, 2015 Summary:

Hacked by #Jokr Haxor

Now you are mine....

3xp1r3 Cyber Army</comment>


What is wrong with Enterprise Architecture? - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140925154128-675646-what-is-wrong-with-enterprise-architecture?trk=mp-reader-card

<comment><USER2> Am I correct in interpreting this as 'No true Scotsman' applied to enterprise architecture?

"What is wrong with Enterprise Architecture?" => "Nothing, you just have not met an Enterprise Architect yet!"</comment>


List of places you can host your app for free - <AUTHOR> https://markodenic.com/list-of-places-you-can-host-your-apps-for-free/ <comment><USER2> Glitch?</comment>


The Griffin Warrior Tomb Upends What We Know About the Roots of Mycenae - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/golden-warrior-greek-tomb-exposes-roots-western-civilization-180961441 <comment><USER2> So this is neat, and a really long read. This guy was right at the time between theMycenaeans and the Minoans "to whom we can trace our cultural heritage since 1450 B.C." and so he has a bunch of stuff that shows some blending of the two times. Shows some different ideas about the roots of Western civilization. This one grave apparently has so much stuff someone will work on it for the rest of their career!

"There are more than 1,500 objects in all, and although the most precious items aren't here (they are under lock-and-key elsewhere), the scale of the task she faces to preserve and publish these objects is nearly overwhelming. She surveys the room: a life's work mapped out before her."

This is a drawing of what it looks like in the grave:

[http://cdn.thinglink.me/api/image/871131223215308800/1024/10...](http://cdn.thinglink.me/api/image/871131223215308800/1024/10/scaletowidth#tl-871131223215308800;1043138249')

<comment><USER3> That sounds kind of ridiculous. Why dont they just leave it in the ground and take pictures of it?

<comment><USER4> 1\. because the site is a 3D accumulation, you need to remove layers to access what's below

2\. to apply laboratory tech, you're not going to bring an electron microscope or an NMR spectrometer down a pit

3\. to keep the artefacts from spoiling further

4\. because spoilage of the artefacts will speed up once they're uncovered and exposed to the elements

5\. to avoid thefts and secreting of the artefacts in private collections

6\. because the state would have to confiscate all dig sites rather than temporary make them off-limits, which people already react to quite badly (especially when the dig site is a construction site which is rather common, look up "rescue archaeology")

<comment><USER3> The artifacts left in the ground will be around longer than the one put through your laboratory. The one left in the ground will be around for thousands of years. The one brought into your lab will be around for hundreds of years or less.

What you say is only so certain. You dont seem as quick to innovate as others. Why not put a building on top of it and add to its shelter? Everyone will react poorly to eminent domain. So what? Think about the variables.

<comment><USER5> _The one left in the ground will be around for thousands of years._

This is not correct. Looters will take the items long before then, as they have for many thousands of years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mentioned in the article, but not delved in to much, is the role that the pre- Greek Alphabet script Linear B played in our current understanding of the Mycenaeans, from the tablets found at Knossos and elsewhere. If you're interested in how this puzzle has come together over the decades, and enjoy stories about patient dedication to patterns and problem solving, John Chadwick's 'The Decipherment of Linear B' is an excellent read, documenting the work of Michael Ventris as he solved the SAT/constraint problem of mapping the Linear B script to the Greek language.

<comment><USER7> The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox is also a good book on this topic. It talks a lot about the people who laid the foundation for Michael Ventris, particularly Alice Kober.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not even done reading this article, but it's already given me a great deal to think about. I work with technology every day, and my gaze is (understandably?) forward looking. I'm beginning to think that I don't really know anything about history. And I'm beginning to feel like that's a mistake.

Let's say I wanted to test this theory and begin to address the deficiency. Anyone have some suggestions on where to start? What should I start reading?

<comment><USER6> It's a bit of an odd one, but I can't recommend Bertrand Russell's 'History of Western Philosophy' enough here. It's engaging and well written, as Russell tends to be, and its focus around the philosophical development of the Western World is a useful 'road through history'. Obviously the picture is not comprehensive, but it is a very robust facet to examine, because of the role philosophy plays in so many aspects of human life, from day-to-day existence to the nature of society and politics to the methods and proto-methods of science and religion. Plus, as a compilation/review of a massive corpus of research and writing on history, there are plenty of excellent citations to dive on if you find any particular subject matter interesting.

And of course, there are the usual concerns about Eurocentrism and Great Man History. So follows the usual solutions. Don't make it the only thing you read, and don't stop meta-analyzing.

<comment><USER9> I agree that Russell's book is good, although Will Durant's _Story of Philosophy_ is even better. :-) Of course there's no reason you can't read both.

If you want to read some ancient philosophy directly, Plato's _Symposium_ is a fun start. It is a bunch of guys staying up all night getting drunk and sharing their theories about love. And yet it is philosophy. Of course Socrates gets the last word---sort of. Also don't miss the point that one of the speeches is by Aristophanes, a comedian.

If it's the ancient Greek world that is inspiring you, maybe read Homer or Herodotus. Some quick notes there:

The Iliad - This takes place in the ninth year of the ten-year-long Trojan War. The Greeks are a loose alliance of kings, led by Agamemnon, who have sailed to Troy and are still trying to overcome its defenses. Their best warrior, Achilles, gets mad at Agamemnon and decides to quit fighting, and everything starts to fall apart. The poem is his story, although in many ways it is broader, covering lots of other heroes. So you have simultaneously the "big picture" of the war and the "little picture" of Achilles (plus some other major figures).

Most readers find this book more challenging than the Odyssey, because there is less fun adventure. It can be monotonous. It is chapter after chapter of "And X threw his bronze spear and it struck Y between the teeth and came out the back of his neck, and he fell into the dust and his armor clashed around him." But it may not be a bad monotony. Have you listened to _Symphony of Sorrowful Songs_ by Górecki? It is like that. But if you get to the end, and think about Achilles's story, it is so good.

The Odyssey - Now the Trojan War is over, and the heroes are going home. This is about how the Greek hero Odysseus gets lost, and spends _another_ 10 years wandering. It spends some chapters on his wife and just-now-grown-up son, who are fending off the crowd of suitors who want to marry his wife and steal his estate. It follows Odysseus through his wild adventures---the most fun and memorable part of the book. And it tells of how he finally returns and defeats the suitors. (Contrary to what people usually remember, that is actually half the book.)

These books are striking in how opposite they are, and in many ways their style reflects their protagonist. Achilles is simple and straightforward, and the book is too. It has that monotony, and it basically starts at the beginning and plows forward to the end. Odysseus on the other hand is "wily" or "tricky", full of lies and schemes. (He was the inventor of the Trojan Horse.) And the book jumps all over, with flashbacks and stories-within-the- story. Multiple chapters are told by Odysseus himself. Coincidentally they are the most mythical, making you wonder if they are lies too. :-)

Some people even suggest that the first sentence---maybe even the first word ---of each poem contains the rest of the story. For the Iliad it is Achilles's μῆνιν: wrath (or maybe sullenness---he is practically a teenager (or was when he came to Troy)). For the Odyssey it's ἄνδρα: the man: Odysseus.

For Homer there are lots of translations. Lattimore is great and close to the Greek, but I find Fitzgerald's to be the most enjoyable. He gives up some precision to get more poetry, and it's like reading to a soundtrack.

The _Histories_ of Herodotus are fun too, but more history than literature. If you get _The Landmark Herodotus_ , the maps and notes help a lot. I would just be aware of what you're reading: ostensibly this is a history of the Persian War, and that is the thread that connects everything together (like Achilles in the Iliad), but Herodotus's main movement is the _digression_. Chapter 2 is all about Egypt (its history, culture, etc.). Chapter 3 is all about the East. Chapter 4 is all about Scythia. You get the idea. It's like he is trying to catalog everything known or said about the world around him.

Herodotus was part of a "rationalist" movement in ancient Greece, along with the early philosophers. He is one of the first to write in prose instead of poetry. He is called the First Historian in part because he gives his sources. Sometimes he'll give several versions of something, and leave it up to you to decide. But that doesn't mean he is rational by our standards. There are plenty of myths and legends and wild stories. You will need some patience to finish this book, and a guide would help to draw out the gems, but it is pretty wonderful if you're paying attention.

Good luck, and enjoy your reading! :-)

<comment><USER10> > I agree that Russell's book is good, although Will Durant's Story of > Philosophy is even better. :-) Of course there's no reason you can't read > both.

I found Durant to be much drier. He also covers less material, both in the number of philosophers and the breadth of each philosopher's work. It was still OK and I'm glad I read it, but I only kept one of the two and it wasn't Durant. It _is_ shorter and skips most of the kinda-boring scholasticism stuff that Russell covers thoroughly, though, so it's got that going for it.

One of the things I appreciated about Russell was his willingness to critically engage the philosophy he's describing. I think it's why his book catches a lot of shit for "bias", but I thought it was nice to have an expert explain where certain parts of older philosophical work had been found to be insupportable or problematic (and why), which parts lived on in viable modern philosophies, _et c._

<comment><USER6> Agreed. There is a fantastic quote from the early pages of _History_ ;

"There is, however, a more general argument against reverence, whether for the Greeks or for anyone else. In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with the second. Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true. This exercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind."

<comment><USER11> Thank you for this. I haven't read Russell much but I like this quote so much that I decided to put it on my reading list. In fact, I'm thinking about putting an excerpt from it on the syllabus for a history of science course I'm gearing up to teach this semester. A big part of why I'm an historian is because I really value the kind of empathy that he's talking about here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sex, Lies, And Game Development - <AUTHOR> http://elizabethsampat.com/sex-lies-and-game-development/

<comment><AUTHOR> Words to hack by:

I made games. I didn't ask for anyone's permission. If you have the love and the drive, you can walk through that door on your own.

I will say some of my best and most popular/successful work was inspired when someone pissed me right the fuck off. I think I'd be a crappier designer if I were male ... because I would have been exposed to fewer stupid assumptions about who I was and what I could do, which means I would have been less angry and less inspired as a result.</comment>